the short:
why are some things in this game processed super-fast and other things not?


the long:
im having trouble understanding the speed issues im having with QG4. im playing part 4, from/off the 1998 anthology CD (needs the disk in the drive for the speech) through DOSbox.

what i do not understand is that different parts of this game seem to have different speeds and i cant find that sweet-spot.

i didnt even notice this in the beginning. not until combat. combat runs fine, as far as the attacks and the animations, but the stamina regens super fast. like 0 to full in 1-2 seconds. i never remembered this when playing off the floppies.

Wraiths drain health nearly instantly.

i figured this was just me not remembering the game... until i got to the Mad Monk's tomb (Chernovy, or something) and he would kill me in about 3 seconds.

quick internet search and this is all known stuff. DOSbox on auto-cpu and auto-cycles causes many know crashes.


as a test, i configed DOSbox to be a 386 with 2000 cycles (figured id start slow).

for combat, the walking speed and attacks are all the same animation speeds. however, my throwing knives are super slow motion.... i can toss one and advance on the mob and pass the throwing dagger. same with magic.

so playing with options, i think ive found a decent setting, but its still not *right* i cant get the stamina regen, health-drains, and throwing-dagger/magic speeds adjusted just right.

seems emulatiing a 486 with 8000-9000 cycles runs the best... i do not remember the actual specs of the machine, offhand. i know its win7 64-bit

anyone else have better settings? opinions?

Thank you in advance!

If you are playing off old versions of the game, you may need one or more patches (including official and fan patches);

http://www.sierrahelp.com/Patches-Updates/Patches-Updates-Games/QuestForGloryUpdates.html

In the past we used to use programs like 'moslo' (which actually worked really well). But dosbox has its own speed control options as well.

http://www.sierrahelp.com/Utilities/SlowdownUtilities.html

yea, that site has been the most helpful of all.

i actually got a good work-around, so its not so much what im needing now (i do appreceiate your response!)...

im curious, whats up with having different parts of the game at differetn speeds. i dont really know anything about programming games, but ive played enough to know this is... odd.


in one scenario, i throw daggers faster than i can see.
in another scenario my daggers are so slow i can walk past them.
in both scenarios my attack animations and walking animations are the same speed!


the real speed issue, now, is getting them in sync!

The problem was most of these games were made back in the 486 period. Everything was pretty much tied to the 486 clock. Other than all the other bugs, QFG4 worked better on a 486 back in the day.

Also most of the 486's had a speed toggle button too, that helped somewhat against certain things. Moslo does that sort of thing on modern machines.

But yat almost every Sierra game that set things on the CPU's timings no longer work as intended...