My mistake! You have to do one more step. Right-click the shortcut to World of Xeen and hit properties. You should see a "target" field. At the end of that field it says "exit" in quotes like that. Delete that, and it will no longer close the window right after it launches. You may want to add that back in later, otherwise when you actually play the game and quit, DOSBox will still be running. But then you just type "exit" at the prompt and it will quit, so it's not a huge deal.

Then run the shortcut and you should get a C:> prompt. At this prompt, simply type "install" without the quotes, and hit enter. You should be in the install program. It will show some sound configuration and ask you if you want to install with that configuration. Press N for "no" and then it will let you pick a sound device for sound effects and speech (you will have to type a number to pick the device from the list). Then it will ask for the IRQ and DMA values. Feel free to play around with these, but make sure that the ones you set in the install program match the ones that you set in the .conf file.

I hope that works!


EDIT: No worries about not knowing DOS... it's very old and hard to use. Hopefully you can fix your problem without too much more trouble though.


EDIT 2: Forgot to mention: When you're done running the install program, it will spit you back out at the c:> prompt. You then type "xeen" (without the quote marks) and hit enter to run the game. Once you've sorted out the sound and speed issues, you can change the .conf file back to what it was originally and the game will automatically launch without ever giving you the c:> prompt. NOTE: Each time you change the .conf file you will have to restart DOSBox before the changes will take effect.

Sorry for a late reply, I was feeling a bit defeated from it. Tried it on a friends computer, and it was sluggish on hers too.

Okay, I deleted the "exit" in the command line in the shortcut, and voila, it worked! :) I can now use the install command in the DOS!

I tried a few different sound configurations with the install command, changing it in the config file too, so the irq, dma, and the others were the same, but I haven't had any success yet. I believe I did it right, the music and sound certainly changed each time, sometimes into horrible noise(haha), but it's all the same result. Having anything on IRQ 10 seems to crash the game. I'll try other configurations and see if I can find something that works, but so far, no luck in any of the configurations I tried :(.

Thanks again for the help, and the detailed explanations! :) I'll post if I have any luck with it, but it's not looking hopeful so far.

That's... discouraging. It seems most users don't have this issue so I was assuming it was something to do with your system. Hmm.

IRQ settings were almost always 5 or 7. But it doesn't hurt to mess around with them. Seems like it might not help though. Anyone else have any ideas? The sound emulation does not appear to be the issue.

One other idea that just occurred to me: make sure you don't have mouse acceleration enabled. That might cause weird behavior. Go to your windows control panel, find your mouse options, then go to the tab labeled "pointer options". Loiok for a box called "enhance pointer precision". If that's checked, turn it off, and then try the game again.

Here's a screenshot of that mouse setting from Windows 7:
http://cyborggaming.com/blog/post/2010/06/04/So-what-is-Mouse-Acceleration.aspx

Otherwise, can we get some more of your system info, and preferably also your friend's system info (the one you tried the game on, and it was sluggish there too)? What OS are you using? What processor do you have? Graphics card and sound card might be useful to know too but my bet is they're less important because I think DOSBox does everything with the CPU.

Yeah, I'm surprised I couldn't find anyone else with the problem. It seems like it would be more of a common problem, unless people just don't mind it. I notice other games on here have problems, and people finding a way to fix it in the config file or some way, but nothing about this issue.

Okay, so I tried other sound configurations, but I couldn't find anything that worked. It was all the same, I think a few even made it worse(unless I was imagining it), but the mouse cursor was still sluggish no matter what the sound was. I had mouse precision turned on, so I tried turning the mouse precision off, but it didn't help too.

Here's what I'm trying to run the game on:
Windows 7 64-bit
AMD Phenom II X4 840T
6 GB Memory
ATI Radeon HD 5770(i think, it's 57xx something)
RealTek HD audio

I don't know my friends system details, but hers is like the complete opposite, with Intel and the like. Which is even more discouraging for me ;).

I think the game is trying to drive me nuts too. So the mouse is sluggish, then I open the menu and click the "quit: DOS" button, then when the "are you sure you want to quit?" menu comes up, the mouse gets perfectly smooth. It's like it's taunting me, so sluggish, then when I choose to quit it gets all smooth again.

Now that is interesting... it means it's only sluggish at certain times in the game. Perhaps when that screen comes up the game stops doing some other process that was interfering with your mouse? Also, did you happen to notice if the other speed glitches (i.e. the animations of Xeen laughing going super fast) happened on your friend's machine too?

One more thing to try: Disable the speech completely. Some people apparently had glitches caused by the digital speech, but that may have only been on the CD version which is not the one that GOG has. Worth a shot anyway.

Anyone else know what this could be?

Something I noticed, is that animation seems to sometimes plays a part. Like when I try to quit, the quit menu stops all the animation, and the mouse gets smooth. In the inventory in Might and Magic 3, the mouse is smooth because maybe there's no animation. However, I notice when there's no animation going on in the 3D view when walking around, it's still sluggish. It seems sluggish in the 3D world view no matter what's going on. It's like, in the 3D view, the mouse is slow, even unplayable if I lower the CPU cycles, however if I go into inventory or try to quit the game, the mouse is suddenly perfectly smooth! I don't know if it's important, but it's something I noticed.

I didn't think to watch the intro movies on my friends computer, since you all helped me learn how to make it more slow :).

I tried disabling the SFX and the Music, turning every sound off. Disabling it in the game and in the Config file too, but it didn't help with it.

I'm not sure what would be interfering with the mouse? I'm not that tech saavy ;). My mouse is just a basic cheap one, with the Windows drivers installed for it.

Sorry if I sometimes repeat things twice in the thread, it's sometimes a few days between posts, and I might forget something already mentioned.

In regards to running MM3 on DOSBox, you should not need more than 7500 cycles. One thing that may be causing the mouse delay is the delay setting on the game. You can change the delay setting by clicking on the big gem above your characters.

OK, I was googling around and found another person who was having problems where the mouse was sometimes slow and sometimes wasn't. The solution they found was to run in windowed mode.

Fortunately, running in windowed mode is really east to test. Just run the game, then hit alt+enter and you will switch to windowed mode. See if the mouse is still acting strange. If the mouse is working properly in windowed mode, try switching back to fullscreen using alt+enter again. The mouse might still be working properly.

If you find that the mouse works properly but ONLY when it's windowed, you'll probably want to increase the window size so it's not so tiny. To do this, go to the .conf file and find the line that says "fullscreen=true" and change it to "fullscreen=false". This will cause the game to run in a window when you launch it. Then, find the line that says "windowresolution=original" and change it to some other resolution, for example "windowresolution=1024x768". This will scale the window up to whatever resolution you have specified.

I actually run all the DOS-based MM games in large windows because I like to be able to easily switch over to read the manual or look at the map, as well as take notes.

By the way, the thread I found where this worked didn't have exactly the same problem but it seemed similar. Thread is here:

http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=24533&sid=7a6c6c1e0cbcaba3d870e57d32f14611

Thanks for more help! :) I'm beginning to feel like a sorceress myself, throwing all these magic spells at this slow mouse. Playing them in a window is a good idea. I just finished Might and Magic 1 not too long ago, I kept stats of all my characters in a log and character sheets, with the maps I make myself. I'm currently playing through Might and Magic 2, playing it in a window would help as a few things are on the computer.

Well, I tried all those things, and... as you might guess by now, none of it worked :(.

I appreciate all the help and suggestions. I think I just might have to live with a funky mouse in these games.

That's too bad... I think I'm out of ideas unfortunately. If anyone else has any suggestions they are welcome. Otherwise, I hope you can play MM3-5 mainly with the keyboard so the mouse issues aren't too bothersome.

Yeah, I pretty much gave up trying to fix it. Guess it's just the way some older games are sometimes. Work great for some, for others they're problem filled. Not something I pretend to understand.

Now after playing Might and Magic 1 & 2, I want mouse support :p.


Oh, good luck with your blog by the way ;).

Unfortunately this solution caused mouse problems for the OP. It seems it's not that the entire game is running too fast, just certain parts of it.