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Magic Carpet seriesGame speed?(16 posts)(16 posts)
(16 posts)
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Posted June 16, 2011
I have had this game for 16 years now, but I could only play it on the old Win95 computer. I never managed to run it properly on Dosbox... changing the cycles didn't help, it was always either too fast or too stuttery.

How does the version from GOG fare?
Posted June 16, 2011
I played the first level of the GOG-Version and it was rather slow. At least with all the "eye-candy" (sky, reflections etc) activated that is.

I had around 15-20 frames per second with not much going on on screen.

I must say I am again a bit disappointed. Like the dungeon keeper release, this title seems not to run as smooth as i would expect it from a game this old and coming from GOG.
Posted June 16, 2011
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billy13: Damn - i remember playing this back in the day, and in VGA the frame rate felt very fast - in DosBox (VGA or SVGA) i could only get it to be either insanely fast or very sluggish. Sounds like nothing has been done to resolve these problems in the game engine.
I don't think they would go and change the game engine itself... at least not for a DOS game. It's just that the game had some programming problems from the start. Not too many games actually changed their speed depending on the CPU clock.

Fortunately, Magic Carpet 2 didn't have the same problem.
Posted June 16, 2011
I tested it again with direct3d rendering (via the GOG-graphic-setup tool) and i think this works better than the openGL i had in my previous session.

Don't get me wrong, the game is absolutely playable, I am just wondering why a game this old could not be made to run faster and with constant framerate. I messured it with FRAPS. Maximum fps are around 25-30, minimum 10 frames on open water with mana balls and reflections ON, 20 with reflections off.

On the other hand, i played it JUST LIKE THIS when it came out years ago, so at least the feeling is 100% accurate:)
Posted June 16, 2011
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Pickman: I tested it again with direct3d rendering (via the GOG-graphic-setup tool) and i think this works better than the openGL i had in my previous session.

Don't get me wrong, the game is absolutely playable, I am just wondering why a game this old could not be made to run faster and with constant framerate. I messured it with FRAPS. Maximum fps are around 25-30, minimum 10 frames on open water with mana balls and reflections ON, 20 with reflections off.

On the other hand, i played it JUST LIKE THIS when it came out years ago, so at least the feeling is 100% accurate:)
Could you try with Overlay and Surface too? Also, are you using the hi-res or lo-res mode?

I remember playing this game on the old Pentium 100mhz, but it didn't feel like it slowed down too much. Well, maybe when using meteors. Otherwise, it was usually fine.
Posted June 16, 2011
I tried the other modes and it made no difference. The game plays ok, with framedrops here and there. This is true for the normal mode of the game with sky ON, shadows On and reflections OFF (They cause too much of a slowdown).

The high res mode looks great but is unplayable slow. In high res mode I get around 10 frames with everything turned off and an horrible 3-5 frames with the eye candy switched on.

I think i will go with the normal version and Direct3D as described above. Shooting worms in the head with fireballs has lost nothing of its fun. Too bad the high res mode is so slow.
Posted June 16, 2011
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Pickman: I tried the other modes and it made no difference. The game plays ok, with framedrops here and there. This is true for the normal mode of the game with sky ON, shadows On and reflections OFF (They cause too much of a slowdown).

The high res mode looks great but is unplayable slow. In high res mode I get around 10 frames with everything turned off and an horrible 3-5 frames with the eye candy switched on.

I think i will go with the normal version and Direct3D as described above. Shooting worms in the head with fireballs has lost nothing of its fun. Too bad the high res mode is so slow.
Ahah. I remember I couldn't even touch hi-res until I got a 350mhz CPU.

Thanks for the info tho. It would seem to work better than my CD version, so who knows, I might actually plunge again. Let me think about it.
Posted June 16, 2011
My thoughts were: "the time to search for my old cd and configure a DOSBOX until it works is worth 5,99$"

:)
Posted June 16, 2011
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Pickman: My thoughts were: "the time to search for my old cd and configure a DOSBOX until it works is worth 5,99$"

:)
Me too, but I'm actually a bit let down by the lack of Plus levels and no extra downloads whatsoever. Makes it feel like it's not worth buying again.

I will probably pass on this one. There are other EA games I want to get anyway, so I'll wait for those. Populous and NFS2 spring to mind (and still hoping they eventually get Syndicate).
Post edited June 16, 2011 by Malek86
Posted June 16, 2011
Syndicate would be great
Posted June 16, 2011
Increase the cycles for smoother gameplay, it seems the GOG default is pretty low for a game like this - I bumped it up to 50000 or so, and this led to 30-60fps in hires mode with all the eye candy on, on a lowspec netbook.
Posted June 16, 2011
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Gremmi: Increase the cycles for smoother gameplay, it seems the GOG default is pretty low for a game like this - I bumped it up to 50000 or so, and this led to 30-60fps in hires mode with all the eye candy on, on a lowspec netbook.
Yup, and I also changed to OpenGL mode and can run in 1600x1200 with high resolution ("R") smoothly (Linux 64 Bit, 2,5 GHz AMD Athlon).
Posted June 17, 2011
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Gremmi: Increase the cycles for smoother gameplay, it seems the GOG default is pretty low for a game like this - I bumped it up to 50000 or so, and this led to 30-60fps in hires mode with all the eye candy on, on a lowspec netbook.
Yep.

This, like every other DOSBox game, can be altered to run at whatever speed you like. Take a look at the .conf file in the Magic Carpet directory. Increase cycles (but don't set it to Max, that often causes other problems).
Posted June 17, 2011
Personally I found it ran too FAST as installed... certainly the mouse response was too twitchy. I increased Cycles to 80000, and I now use Hi-Res, but that was too fast too! I'm experimenting with 50000, it seems better, but maybe still a bit too fast.

Of course, I haven't yet checked the manual to see how to set any additional bells & whistles up (although I did set the CPU to pentium_slow).
Posted June 17, 2011
GREAT! The cycle increase works for me. I set it to 60000 and now I can play with High-Res-Mode enabled at a constant framerate around 25-30. Thanks for posting!
Post edited June 17, 2011 by Pickman
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Magic Carpet seriesGame speed?(16 posts)(16 posts)
(16 posts)