WC3DOS Lockups, Movies & Mouse Cursor Woes on 2k

T

ToxicFrog

Spaceman
The game in question is the original DOS version of Wing Commander 3 running on windows 2000 in VDMS-2.1.0, on a P4/2.6GHz hyperthreaded machine.

At first, I was having the drifting/spastic mouse cursor issue, but that was fixed by installing the alternate joystick DLL.

Now, instead, I'm having three issues, two of them minor and one of them making it unplayable.

The first issue is simply that, using the mouse, I can't move the cursor into the rightmost third of the screen. This isn't a big deal, because I can still use the joystick and keyboard to get around, but it would be nice to have the mouse usable; it's worth noting that if I use MOUSE2KV, any mouse input causes the cursor to vanish completely until I use the keyboard or joystick.

Next, when playing movies, most of them they work, but sometimes they play incredibly fast (which makes briefings impossible to follow!). I've heard some discussion about lowering WC3's priority to fix this, but if I alt-tab out, the game crashes when I alt-tab back in whether I adjusted the priority/affinity or not. Also, rarely, the game will hang after (or during) a movie, which is annoying.

The issue that makes it unplayable is simply that, upon starting a mission (ie, when I try to start it in the simulator or after watching a briefing and selecting 'fly mission'), the game locks up completely and has to be alt-tabbed out of and killed. No HDD or CD activity, it just goes completely catatonic.

And since this is the DOS version and not the WCKS version, I can't use the 2K patch even if it fixed this problem, which, AFAIK, it doesn't.

Suggestions?
 
Well, playing most Wing Commander games in Windows 2000 brings up all sorts of problems like the ones you're describing. A 2.6 GHz machine is worth giving DOSBox a try, which should be a bit more stable. You can enable the variable core option to make spaceflight play smoothly now.
 
Thank you; dynamic core does make it playable - barely. In windowed mode it's hopeless, but in fullscreen spaceflight is nice and smooth as long as there's nothing too exciting going on, and gameflow, while sluggish, is usable. The FMVs play fine, too.

I'd still like to have it running natively if possible, tho, just for the convenience (and performance) so if anyone has any ideas on that front I'm still listening.

And now that I know it's working, I need to finish Spec-Ops before I can let myself actually play it...and I must say, the WC3 graphics are a rather jarring shock after WC2.
 
ToxicFrog said:
I'd still like to have it running natively if possible, tho, just for the convenience (and performance) so if anyone has any ideas on that front I'm still listening.
Click to expand...

Well, Windows 2000 lacks the DOS environment that would allow you to play it "natively," so your options are to either get a computer with actual DOS or use an emulator such as DOSBox.
 
Or use a different OS on the same comp...but with your system drivers would be an issue if u used any OS older than win2000, so DOSbox would probably be the way to go, I just decided to build and old comp to play the WC games running winME.., to avoid issues with the games.
 
If you're really desperate you could try Virtual PC or BOCHS or VMWare for running other operating systems on the same computer.
 
Yeah, he could but that's even more inconvenient than just popping open a DOSBox window. He's trying to just click on a WC3 icon and have the game play in Windows 2000. That just doesn't really fly. The most convenient and stable way is with DOSBox.
 
ChrisReid said:
Well, Windows 2000 lacks the DOS environment that would allow you to play it "natively," so your options are to either get a computer with actual DOS or use an emulator such as DOSBox.
Click to expand...
Should have clarified: by 'natively' I meant 'in NTVDM, probably using VDMS' -- which, from the point of view of stability, performance and convenience, might as well be running it native. My objective here is to do the same thing I did with System Shock, Cyclones, One Must Fall, etc. and be able to just run it without needing to worry about starting up a seperate emulation program and without needing to deal with dosbox's vicious resource requirements and random quirks.

If this is not in fact possible with WC3 I'll accept that and play it in dosbox, I'd just rather not.
 
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