Privateer Slowdown On Sound Effect

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Canthlian

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I've managed to get Privateer running on an old 166mhz computer on DOS 6.2. Even managed to get the sound working, except for one problem. Whenever a lot of sounds are playing in a space scene (Most commonly in space battles), the system slows down to a crawl for a second, then jumps to normal speed again. It's noticable in other places than a space battle, but that's where it becomes most prominent. I've restricted my EMM386 to 16 MB, as suggested, but that had no effect on the problem. (But did clear up a rather annoying sound corruption problem I was having)

Any thoughts?
 
Not sure who made the sound card, but the chip is an ALS100 on what seems like a generic ISA card. The settings are port 220, IRQ 5, dma 1.
 
So far, I've tried with those settings, on Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, Sound Blaster 16, and AWE32. All of them work and give sound, but they all have that same problem. It seems that whenever it tries to play more than a few sounds at a time, it has the slow-down.
 
Would bumping the memory up some more work, maybe?

I've had the same problem in the past with an old P100, as a matter of fact, with a Sound Blaster compatible card, but I can't remember the details, since it's been a few years since I've played it on that system.
 
Setting the memory higher than 16 MB makes the sound go corrupt when playing, and it doesn't fix the problem. I'm going to try playing around with a few settings, but I think I'm out of ideas. Here's a copy of my CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT


CONFIG.SYS

DOS=UMB
DOS=HIGH
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE RAM 16384 FRAME=E000 /I=B000-B7FF
FILES=25
BUFFERS=25
LASTDRIVE=Z


AUTOEXEC.BAT

ECHO OFF
PROMPT $p$g
LH C:\DOS\FMOUSE.COM
SET TEMP=C:\TEMP
PATH C:\WINDOWS;C:\DOS;C:\
LH C:\ALSOUND\ALSINIT.EXE C:\WINDOWS\
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330


No CD driver because Privateer is taking its data off the hard drive. There's more than that, but this is what runs, and the order it runs in when I do an F8 for Privateer. It's Windows 3.11 installed, if that means anything.
 
Please tell me you're running this off of the promt rather than from inside Windows.

If you aren't, that could be your problem right there.
 
>.>

I'm messing around with EMM386 settings, buffers, and the basic hardware of the system. I think I have sense to run it from plain DOS, instead of Windows.

I don't know. It works fine with other games, even ones that are usually picky about the sound settings.
 
Some people don't and are then surprised when it doesn't work correctly.

When you said 3.11, I just thought it prudent to ask. Bump up the files and buffers a little bit (say, around 40 is probably prudent) as that looks a little low to me.

Second, use 'devicehigh' for EMM386 to free up some more onventional memory.
 
Moonsword is right about the values for files and buffers. My Privateer manual states values at 30. I run mine at 40.
Freeing up more conventional memory doesn´t hurt. The following DO work, even though they may generate an error message during boot (i.e. "Error in config.sys line ...")
Fileshigh=
Buffershigh=
Lastdrivehigh=

BTW you can save more memory by setting your Lastdrive to a lower value - Z is default - every letter from A to Z requires memory. Normally you set lastdrive to one more than the number of dives. Assuming you have a floppydrive, harddisk and CD drive you can set Lastdrive=E.
You can also add the following to your config.sys
FCBSHIGH=0,0
FCBS is an OLD (like very much outdated) Dos environment requirement which for some reason is still included in later versions of Dos. Default value is 4, so if you don´t specify it to 0,0 it will still be included.
Check your memory with the following commands
MEM c/p
and
MEM d/p
Good luck :)
 
No luck, I'm afraid. I don't think it's a memory issue. There's more than enough memory available for far more complex games. It's as though there's not enough bandwidth available to send the sounds, but like I said, works with more complex games.
 
In an earlier post you said that you had tried Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster PRO etc.
Have you tried different combinations of them?
I have an onboard sound chip (essaudio) that I finally got to work using a SB16 emulation driver (essaudio doesn´t supply drivers for Dos), Music Card set to Sound Blaster and Speech Card set to Sound Blaster PRO. Privateer works perfectly now, but it took me forever going through ALL the combinations. :D
Not much help, I know, but it´s the only possibility I can think of.
 
No luck I'm afraid. :( I may have to do the unthinkable and actually buy a proper Sound Blaster card.
 
In DOSBox? Are you getting stuttering all the time, even on the music? If so, you probably need to adjust your Cycles and Frameskip settings. If it's just stuttering in scenes when the same sound is playing more than once (I finally pinned it down to that; not that it helps much), then you are having the same problem, and that makes me O.o
 
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