Hello Links fans! Hope you guys are alright in your corner of the world.

Yesterday I purchased Links LS: 1998 and Links 386 Pro and I'm having some technical issues that I would like to discuss here,

Links LS: 1998: I'm having a lot of freezes and crashes without error during gameplay.

Links 386 Pro: The ball drift to the left even when my swing is dead on. I tried without wind and it still does it. My second issue with 386 is with the shot counter. It always displays one less shot than I actually did. So if it's a par 4 for example and I did it in 3, the counter will display 2 and the golfer will say I got the bird.

Anyway, those are my issues and I hope you guys can help me out.

Thank you!

About the 386 version you can try running the game at diferent Cycles. In DOSBOX some games could have glitches if you run them too fast or faster than needed. I have not perceived any glitch running it at auto (max) cycles. But the behaviour will depend the computer probably.

Greetngs

In my case (old floppy version , not the GOG one, but it shouldn't make any difference) I can confirm that running DOSBOX with

cpu=dynamic
cycles=50000
render=overlay
resolution=1280*960

games runs normally, no swing or score glitches, and a nice scaled resolution

Edit:
As for LS 98, I "borrowed" a copy just for testing, and tried changing the settings like shown in the image... playing on a core i5 with a somewhat old NVidia GPU, it looked stable for the round I played

With these kind of wrappers, in other games too, my general rule of thumb is to avoid exclusive fullscreen mode, if possible... windowed (which in this case turns into borderless fullscreen) always seem to have less issues

It use to be convenient put cycles in a fixed number as you did, obviously if it is enough for a smooth and no glitches experience. But my laptop is very poor and cpu auto means dynamic in protected mode games and cycles auto (max in protected mode) means probably a number of cycles lower than 50000, my computer wouldn't achieve that number.

Maybe in very fast computers and cycles at max or auto, glitches are possible, but honestly I ignore it.

Greetings

Links 386 runs pretty well at lower cycles too, i think for I while I had it at 15000 or something... at some point i set 50000 just to speed up a bit the redrawing of the course after each shot, but as far as playing animations and general gameplay, there was no need to go too high

In regards to this, it was long an annoyance I had with the game back when I used to play it in DOS. It does actually update the number of strokes, but only once it finishes the hole. The way I parse it is, the number of strokes shown is the number you've already had - and when the end of hole sounds are playing, you're still on the last stroke, so it hasn't updated the number yet.

So yeah, in your scenario described, when you sink the putt for the birdie (3 strokes on a par 4), it will still show 2 when it's playing the hole sound, and then playing the birdie announcement, it's still "on" the third stroke. Then it brings up the end-of-hole UI panel at the bottom. If you look next to your name at this stage, you'll see the 2 has now updated to a 3. Rather than, say, as soon as the ball is struck.

Interesting UI decision, but it's always been that way. I presume it's a design decision because folks who saw they were missing and wanted to Mulligan were confused about how many shots in they were if they restarted that shot? Or something. Who knows. xD

Tried a few cycles setting and I think I fixed the swing glitch in 386. But still no luck for LS 98 though. Thank you for your help! Fair enough, I'm just happy that it's not a glitch. Thank you for your help!

Is anyone else having the issue with Links LS 98 where the "Post Shot Selection" window shows up too soon? The player can't even see where the ball lands after the shot.

Hello IronArcturus!

This error seem to be similar to the one which I had after my first re-install of the game with the initial offline installer file (version 1.35). The shot animation was cut short at the half of it independently, how long the shot was even including the putting animation. That error prevented me from seeing the outcome of a shot, if I did overshoot or undershoot the target.

Since then, GOG.com has released an update, 1.35 hotfix--also available as a small patch--that fixed this issue for me (and others).

Can you please verify, whether your issue occurs with the initial game version 1.35 or the current 1.35 hotfix.

I hope this helps in your case, too.

Kind regards,
foxgog

Hi foxgog!

The version I'm using is v1.35 hotfix (48227) on Windows 10 64-bit. Do you know if there is a way to adjust the speed of the game?

Hello IronArcturus!

Do the animations run too fast, or are the shot animations cut short at the peak of its flight pass (or halfway point)?

(In case of doubts, activate the option "trace shots/mulligans on screen" to see the full ball trajectories on subsequent shot attempts.)


A direct adjustment of the game speed is not available, as far as I know. But the overall game speed on my machine is heavily influenced by the chosen resolution.

With GOG.com's own wrapper (already integrated in the installation) and standard (ingame) settings, I have normal game speeds with lower resolutions such as 800x600 or 1024x768. Everything above these and the game rendering and menu composition slow down significantly!

Have you tried to use "vertical sync" or other (external) frame limiter solutions?

Are you using a desktop computer or a notebook? Because many older games work better for me when using reduced CPU performance settings in my notebook's "power saving plans".

Otherwise, you might want to try an external wrapper, such as the dgVoodoo2. However, I could not achieve a comparable performance as with the wrapper provided by GOG.com. (I admit, though, that I did not try out all potential configuration options available with dgVoodoo2.)

If you are interested, I can check what exact configurations (both from the wrapper and the ingame settings) do work fine on my computer.

Kind regards,
foxgog

The animations run fine and I have V-Sync enabled. It's just that after I hit the ball it the game only shows it going up and then it never shows it going down. The game cuts it short and shows me a results screen.

I tried enabling that Tracer option, but it still has the same problem where it cuts the shot too soon.