Hi,
I recetly bought all 3 Realms of Arkania games here and i am overall happy with them. Only thing i want ask nicely GOG team is: Please start finetuning DOSBOX config for each game idividualy and not just use cycles: max in [CPU] section. For example all Realms Of Arkania games runs too fast - some anims etc are FTL fast - same effect as you play this on fast pentium PC. Please take care and try each game to know exact cycles that it needs. I found same can fix TES Daggerfall - it was unable to fight and score hit with max cycles. game needed cycles around 30000 to start behave ok.
so i found for ReA 1 + 2 value 10000 is ok
for RoA 3 value 30000 is ok
Again i asking nicely you take more care to finetune emulation as not all users is capable to set this or even know about it and runs old good games in insane speed. Best Regards.

Might be a bit hard to do, considering the specifications of the wide range of systems out there.
Some GOG users may have rather old PCs, while others may not.
I can't remember correctly, but aren't the cycles within DosBox also dependant on your own processor, RAM and so forth?

there are better ways then both cycles=number and cycles=max.
With cycles=max you have the risk the game runs too fast
with cycles=number you have the risk that certain pcs can't pull that mount of cycles. 30000 cycles needs a reasonably new PC.
There are other ways, to control that ofcourse
No, the cycles itself aren't, however the maximum amount your pc can handle depends on your own processor (and the complexity of the game you are emulating)

Ah, I knew there was a limitation involving game complexity and hardware power, I just wasn't sure on the rest.

not on this specific issue, but I think it's be nice if the (various) gog front ends allowed for a few options and command line arguments.
I realise it might be very tricky, as the gog frontends tend to vary between games: sometimes it's nothing, sometimes it's a wrapper, sometimes it's dosbox, etc..
I also realise GOG probably want to keep the installer simple and not too intimidating.
But it'd be nice to have some kind of "advanced" tab which maybe allowed selection of a a few various options and a box to enter command line arguments to get passed to the game/dosbox.
for example:
On Dosbox:
fast/medium/slow PC.
filters.
This'd also be a good way to handle the most common errors with hardware compatibility. For example, many people playing Beyond Good and Evil have to turn off hardware vertexing in the settings. But if there was a couple of alternative suggested settings then this'd be easier for people to discover.
Eg (in the advanced/troubleshooting tab):
If you have problems with visual artifacts, try this setting [checkbox].

for 30000 you really need low end PC. And if your PC cant handle it it will run at max speed that is allowed by your horse power - same as max. So i dont see point here. I agree that at least GOG setup front end should allow se this with display mode that is currently in, just my opinion

Dunno for 30000 you would need a bit more than 1.2 GHZ. Which isn't low end in my book. I only have 1 pc that is faster than this.
And if you set 30000 while your pc can't handle it. DOSBox will be much much slower. because it's internal timing goes off and it tries to compensate in all sort of ways to get that 30000. (audio suffers greatly from this)
As I said there are better settings to control this

Ohh sorry you right. Well GOG should do some settings for this as release all games with full throttle cycles: max is bad thing (tm) period. For that i not need buy it here. Just download RoA from abandonware and setup dosbox by my own. I just dont like GOG approach to this. What people that is not IT will do is beyond me - just play porked timimg games as on fast PCs even here it is should be garanted it works 100%.

If a game is being sold here then it is clearly not abandonware. You're basically just pirating it.

And you seem to know about the cycle settings, so why not just edit the .ini?
EDIT: I assume there's an .ini in the GOG DosBox releases, I haven't looked, but I don't see why there wouldn't be considering it's an essential file for DB.

You have completely missed the point of GOG, which is to provide people who want to get older games a means of legally acquiring them in a format that works on modern systems. As Navagon mentioned, as long as the game is still being sold here and in other places (which is true for some but not all of GOG's titles), then it is definitely not abandonware and any place you might find it as abandonware is illegally offering it.
As for how GOG sets up the DOSBox games, what you have to realize is they have created a DOSBox config that will work on nearly every possible system configuration there is out there. Maybe they should offer some means of easily customizing it, but that is not really a high priority when the goal is just to get the games working; performance tweaking is then up to the individual, just as it is with every other PC game out there. Its not like DOSBox config modifications are hard to do or there isn't a multitude of "how-tos" and other documentation available to anyone who wants to tweak their game's performance.

Ok i will stop arguing and go to enjoy my bought Realms of Arkania games as i know how to setup dos box. My fault. I just tough it will be useful for other non IT experienced users. At least i hope GOG applied that two patches to RoA 1 and RoA 2 as there is issuee when you import characters from 1 to 2 - they have kids faces. I tried apply both patches but they failed as old files not match, I not want make someone angry. It was just idea and question to GOG team. Thats all. Happy gamming all.

No one is angry, they just disagree with you on a few points. GOG's configs are as generic as possible to ensure as much compatibility as possible. This shouldn't be changed as it could introduce even more problems down the road as a restrictive config could lead to many complaints of "it doesn't work on XXXX system". It doesn't take any IT experience at all to modify the DOSBox config, all it takes is Google and Notepad or even better, a well-worded question posted on the GOG forums. I think we all agree that it would be nice if GOG offered some means of modifying that setup, but it is not really necessary at all.
My main point was that this is really no different than any other PC game out there. I have very few games that I haven't had to do some kind of manual edit to an INI file to get some minor performance improvement or hidden feature enabled, how is the DOSBox config on these games really any different?

hehe ok. It differs just to limit cycles down to approx 386 speed to get timings right and some anims runs as on that old PCs and not like warp speed. Thats all.... case solved for me.

I share your concerns about that
cycles=max is not always the best option,
however cycles=number is not the best solution either.
There is some way to combine the 2 options, So run as fast as your pc allows, but not faster than 386 speed