Tenchikaibyaku: Hi you guys;
hope someone of you can help me with this... I recently changed my PC rig and with it my OS from vista to windows 8.1 - now the music is kinda stuttering and scratching every few seconds. really puts a damper on the experience of one of my most beloved games :( no other dosbox games seem affected, only realms of arkania - both the german and english version of all 3 parts...
Sound stutter often happens when the CPU (a single core that is running DOSBox) is under heavy load. This could derive from several issues in between the game, DOSBox and Win 8.1.
Check if running the game in windowed mode makes a difference (some resource scheduling is differently done by that). Switch between fullscreen and windowed with Alt+Enter.
You can also relieve the CPU by
1. decreasing cycles (how fast your virtual CPU is processed)
CTRL+F11 Decrease DOSBox cycles (slows down the emulation).
CTRL+F12 Increase DOSBox cycles (speeds up the emulation).
2. increasing frameskip (DOSBox doesn't draw every frame anymore)
CTRL+F7 Decreases frameskip.
CTRL+F8 Increases frameskip.
Both settings reduce CPU load and are only temporary until you restart DOSBox. You can see the current setting in windowed mode in the title bar.
If it works, you can set cycles and frameskip permanently in the game's .conf file. It's in the game's folder.
Open it with any text editor and change values of cycles and frameskip. (Here's the config file's documentation:
link)
Also make sure the old DirectX 9 is properly installed on your system:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109 and set the game's Graphic Mode to ddraw. You can do this by running the "Graphic Mode Setup" in the game's installation folder.
