STRANGE Privateer 2 event

Storm

Spaceman
First, understand that I play Priv2 on an antique DOS 6.22 Pentium-166 machine. I play all of my old DOS games on that computer, I've never used DOSBox.

If P2 freezes/locks up on that system, the only recourse is to turn the machine off / on. I don't know if DOSBox can free a modern computer from a locked-up P2 game.

Also, to clarify a couple of things, when this situation occured, I was in Invulnerable Mode via the "no talent" cheat.

Okay;
I took off from Anhur, to NAV 38; I was going to use the System Gate as a shortcut to Bex.

Just before entering the gate, I was hit with a Disruptor Missile, and my ship was "disabled". I kind of tumbled through the gate... I entered the gate "sideways".

I came out the other side, and my ship was still tumbling for a short while, and I figured that the viral effect would wear off soon.

Well... my ship stopped tumbling, and then more like "drifting with a purpose". Much longer than a Distruptor Missile should last. I couldn't control my ship.

Then I noticed that I couldn't exit the game... ALT-X wouldn't work.

Two pirates showed up... and my ship attacked them on its own! My ship was definitely showing P2 "AI Behavior", no question. This was amusing, so I just let it continue.

The 2 pirates were destroyed, and eventually more hostiles appeared, and my ship just kept merrily attacking them on its own. Its movements appeared to strongly parallel P2 AI Behavior.

I still couldn't quit the game... I had to shut the computer off.

I know this SEEMS like a hoax. But it can probably be reproduced as an experiment fairly easily, if one is being deliberate about it. (maybe the same thing can happen if you hit your own Viral Mine?). Perhaps temporarily sell your Signal Filter...

I've played P2 since the year it was first released, and this just hasn't happened before. But then again, I was probably never disabled JUST BEFORE passing through a system gate.

Pretty weird... if you can do it, it sort of puts P2 into a "Demo Mode".
 
If P2 freezes/locks up on that system, the only recourse is to turn the machine off / on. I don't know if DOSBox can free a modern computer from a locked-up P2 game.

If someone can reproduce this then it would be good if you can get video of it. Anyway, yes dosbox helps overcome complete system lockups with P2. Sometimes it can be difficult to see what you are doing to get into the task manager to exit the P2 instance but it's definitely doable.
 
wow Storm, that is really bad luck to get hit from a disruptor missile just in this moment. I assume this is a 1:1.000.000 chance to get into this peculiar situation.
Since turreted ships controlled by the player can't use the turrets (they face towards the selected enemy, but the fired weapons are only the normal lasers in the front facing slots 1-8), i wonder if in this situation the then AI controlled player ship would be able to use the turret guns.


IIRC the game also crashes if you jump through a gate.

-place your ship in front of a gate facing towards the gate
-select a different nav-point
-hit "j" to jump to the nav-point

During the normal jump sequence the ship will fly through the gate and the gate-jump plus the normal jump causes a conflict which crashes the game IIRC.


Oh and yes, dosbox is really useful when p2 crashes as it doesn't freezes the whole PC and can be simply killed via the taskmanager. Thus i would really suggest to play P2 in dosbox on a modern PC than on an old p166 machine.
Also because the loading times are much smaller in dosbox on a modern PC and you can edit cd.dat via a task-switch when the game asks for a different CD, if you have them all on a HDD folder.

It's also better on a big 40" monitor where you don't want the 640x480 game stretched on the 1920x1080 widescreen and you can this way play it in a small 640x480 dosbox window. ;) Then you can also watch a dvd in another window while playing p2. :D
 
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