WC2:KS XP Issue... A possible solution?

Moose

Spaceman
Hey all,

First time poster, but I've been using this site for years for wing commander stuff... but i finally came along a problem that i just can't fix related to WC. Now, i searched through the forums and it seemed that everyone has the same issue, just no one has found a fix for it... I'm just wondering if theres a update since those threads were a year or two old. I just picked up KS off ebay too (For quite a bit of $$$$, damned thing..) because i wanted to play WC1 mostly, ... and i just wanted it to say i had it and play all the games in sequence (1,2,3,4,prophecy and the extra missions for prophecy)... since i had never played WC1 before and maybe it would clear up a few plot holes i was always wondering about.

Basically my issue is, WC1/SM1/2 on the Kilrathi saga ran cheerfully enough, a few bugs and quirks but i enjoyed it. (Other then repeating some missions a few times...). But when i loaded up WC2... ooooh... that was a different beast. At first it looked like it was just fine (Other then the fact that the "The Kilrathi vengeance" line at the loading screen came up incredibly fast, it used to crawl across back on my 386 and make a cool noise :( ) The mouths didn't move at 200 MPH like my dos-diskette version/CD-rom version did though... and i was happy. At least till i started an actual mission, and spirits lips started to go at 200 MPH like the good ole days (but they didn't stop...). I can overlook that... but...

You actually fly the ferret and oh jesus is that a painful experience, i tried to turn left and it crawled... i played the first 2 navs thinking its just a quirk, but i also noticed that the enemy ships die insanely easy, it went from "piss on them with your hornets wimpy laser guns for 5 minutes to get a kill"(WC1)... to "3 shots and he was down". Now, in the original diskette version, it didn't run too fast or too slow, and the ships definitely took more then three shots in a FERRET. Maybe a broadsword, but a ferret, noooo way. I restarted my computer thinking maybe that windows XP was screwed up as usual... played it again. No go. I ripped the first KS CD to a iso and mounted it(As per a suggestion i read somewhere)... still slow, i tried windows 95/98 compatibility mode which screwed it up more... still slow. Increased/decreased space combat FPS (25 FPS worked okay.. .but the slowdowns were still evident and the combat was too damn fast)... still slow.

What the heck is wrong with this game? You would think on a athlon 3000+ processor it would at least run acceptably, KS is a ... 8 year old game! The only way I've been able to get any satisfaction is by using the alternate F1 mode and remove the cockpit. It plays just fine like that... but i think it looks god-awful... i wanna see the pretty cockpit, haha. It just seems like Origin screwed up the frame limiter in the KS...

However, heres a POSSIBLE fix for XP at least or so i think I've found... i downloaded the "Application compability toolkit" from Microsoft, and I've been messing with it. I've found that if you apply the windows 98 compatibility and remove these 2 compatibility options "EmulatePlaySound" and "EmulateSlowCPU", and then in game change the FPS to 23 and it becomes playable, but it'll still chug a little in intense battle scenes. No more annoying sound issues either... I'm still messing with it to see if i can find a better way of making it work... because this toolkit is pretty damn powerful. There are a couple of interesting things in there... and hopefully i can try out more in the future. Make sure you use Windows 98 mode though, because the 95 mode makes the sound "crackle"... and i can't figure out how to get rid of that. Also, i haven't figured out how to make enemy ships harder to kill... somehow blowing a dralthi up in 3-4 shots is not the same as it was before KS.

Does anyone know of any other way i can get the game to work right? I'm really at a loss, other then what I've tried so far. I know i'll probably get the "Play the deluxe edition!" reply, but i really wanna play WC2 with that pretty music ;). I have the DOS diskette version (with SM1/2 and speech pack) and the deluxe CD rom edition... so i have a total of 3 copies of wing commander 2! :o But, i guess I'm one that wants to get everything to work on windows XP... so, suggestions are welcome :).

Thanks!
 
I've never had KS run too slow for me. You could try CPU Killer from our files section to slow your machine down a few percentages. Maybe that'll get the KS framerate limiter working again.
 
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Yeah, it's got to be some sort of conflict. Maybe the sound card is conflicting and causing the CPU to get caught up. I'd bet it's something like that. Not much you can do there beyond upgrading drivers or switching sound cards.
 
i've got a couple of different sound cards i'll try out. (Sound blaster 16! woo! :P)...

Thanks for the suggestions though.
 
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