I have all the GOG Pro Pinball games, but I'm only having trouble with Timeshock, which I'm assuming is related to DOSBox in some way. The issue is that the ball does not move smoothly around the table but rather "stutters" everywhere instead. The game is still playable but it's pretty annoying regardless. I have tried every single graphic mode option (surface, Direct3D, etc), plus turning the in-game details all the way down and back up, but get the same result every time. Is there some other setting in the .conf file that I should be tinkering with to fix this? I'm using a notebook computer - WinXP Pro SP3, Core 2 Duo 2.50, 4 GB RAM, nVidia 9800M GTS 512.

Try pressing Ctrl+F12 to increase the cycles it should go up 500 at a time, Ctrl+F11 lowers them if you make the game run to fast.

Thanks for replying. This didn't do the trick, unfortunately. It looks like the CPU cycles are already set to "max" at the game's startup, so increasing them has no effect. Any other possibilities?

You could try setting the game to run on a single cpu core. Load the game up and then ctrl-alt-del to bring up task manager. Under processes find the pinball processes and right click it. Then set the affinity to core0.

Still no luck. I set up the game with just the core0 box checked as you described, but it didn't have any effect (incidentally, it looks like running the game in a window doesn't help either). I'll have to remember to give this game a try on my desktop computer when I get back home in a month or so to see if the behavior is the same.

Have you tried to apply Win98 compatibility to the game's shortcut ?

Gave it a try, but DOSBox crashes immediately upon trying to run the game if I use compatibility mode. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Is it just the ball movement that is jerky? No stuttering in the sound when it happens?

Yup, no sound problems whatsoever. All of the graphics and sound for the game run 100% correctly except for this one problem, regardless of any graphics setting or toggles. It's a head-scratcher.

I'm also having this issue and it's a real shame, since Timeshock is one of my all-time favorite games. Any help would be appreciated.

DOSBox is compiled for modern OS's, so messing with compatibility settings can probably only make things worse.

I was having the same problem. You can turn down some of the graphics options and improve performance. I turned off the ball shadow and set my falsher activity and frenzy flasher activity to medium. The effect on the graphics is negligable, but the performance boost was quite nice. The ball is still a little bit twitchy, but the game is playable now.
Go into options >>> Graphics >>> Detail >>> Custom and make some adjustments.

I have this issue as well. I can confirm that it isn't related to in game detail or graphics settings or resource usage due to monitoring CPU activity and trying lower settings. The problem seems more related to the behavior of the physics engine under DOSBox. It's possible that a DOSBox config tweak might fix this. I'll play around with it later and report any findings.
I was disappointed that this wasn't the windows version as it runs silky smooth under Win7 with better graphics.

Read my post [url=]http://www.gog.com/en/forum/pro_pinball_series/windows_version_of_timeshock[/url]. it worked for me.

I also have problem with jerky movement of the ball...
I have 1.07 installed, but if try to install 1.20b patch (timeshock!.exe file) I get "picn13.dll not found" error.

Anyone had this situation?