I''m Running Privateer in XP!

Sun Feb 22, 2004 10:21 pm by Esquilax

I managed to get Priv 1 working (and Priv 2), but Priv 1 was SO slow it was unplayable! I can't be bothered stuffing around with it anymore, so I went out and picked up a copy of Thief 2 for $10. It better be worth it or else... *makes throat-slitting gesture*

.

Stinger - I know how it is old son.

Sun Feb 22, 2004 10:33 pm by Sir Spectre

@Esq, I told you to tell me how you got Privateer 2 to play on XP.

I don't care about Privateer 1, I have an old Pentium 133 to play that on.

Priv 1 is great on the old machine, I just use the reboot the game in MS-Dos mode then after shutting down the game I don't hit "any" key to acknowledge the reboot back to Win 95. So that means it acts like a Playstation and automatically boots up Privateer everytime I turn it on!

Sir S

Mon Feb 23, 2004 12:04 am by Bhurak Starkiller

I don't understand what you're talking about.

Sir S

Er, 'fraid I don't know what you're talking about, either.

Mon Feb 23, 2004 1:54 am by Esquilax

SS - Did you?

Follow the instructions and download the files on this page if you haven't done so already. The gane will then install and play well. Unfortunately, whenever I use a joystick, I get a "Application Error... Cannot read from memory" message. It is fine without the joystick though. Strange.

I have actually just found a fix for this problem, but I'll try it out later. Tell me if it works. Simply edit the .cfg file, and insert the joystick entries manually. Here is the example;

D:
C:\DARK
JoyOn 0
ThrottleOn 0
Joy 1
Joy Dead 0.100000
Joy cx 130
Joy cy 130
Joy lx -10
Joy ly -10
Joy rx 250
Joy ry 250
Joy2 1
Joy2 cy 0
Joy2 ly 0
Joy2 ry 0
vid trans 1
anim trans 1
global sound 1
planet music 1
space music 1
space sfx 1
booth sfx 1
comp speech 1
engine noise 1
graphic detail 1
control method 1
orientation 1
invulnerability 0

Hope this helps, old son.

Mon Feb 23, 2004 11:08 am by Sir Spectre

@Esq, thanks, maybe I'll tackle that soon.

@Bhurak Starkiller, let's go through this line by line.

My only problem is that Privateer's flight engine runs INCREDIBLY SLOWLY

I've run Privateer on several computers and never had a problem with the flight engine (I assume you mean game engine). So I am unable to determine exactly what you mean unless the game is adversely affected by your computer or you're an impatient person.

no matter how many CPU cycles I set, and I run a 1.8GHz mobile P4 with 512MB RAM

I have never set CPU cycles for anything and don't really know what that means. But your computer is irrellavantly fast, any modern computer can handle the game technically speaking. But I am left with a thought. If, under an assumption of what I understand so far, you are trying to speed up the flight times between destinations, have you ever used "autopilot" for a quick video transition covering 10-20k of flight in a few seconds? The "a" button if I recall correctly.

This isn't too bad for me, as I'm more interested in seeing all the planets/base locations than I am in actually flying,

All the bases look alike, why would you need to see them, especially in a flying game. Oddly worded but again, my prior assumption is you don't like flying between destinations as much as flying near them.

and PREDIT lets me bypass the flight engine just fine.

I don't know what PREDIT is and so therefore, I don't know how it would bypass the flight engine.

That's what I meant when I said I don't understand what you're talking about. There is either too little information or alternate ways to interpret what you said.

Sir S

Mon Feb 23, 2004 8:09 pm by Bhurak Starkiller

OK:

I've run Privateer on several computers and never had a problem with the flight engine (I assume you mean game engine). So I am unable to determine exactly what you mean unless the game is adversely affected by your computer or you're an impatient person.

I'm running Privateer on XP using DOSBox. For whatever reason, when the flight engine (and I mean flight engine...everything that's not concerned with flight in Privateer is all part of the game engine) kicks in, I get frame rates of about 2-5FPS. I'm not the only one who's had this problem, as noted on the DOSBox forums.

I have never set CPU cycles for anything and don't really know what that means. But your computer is irrellavantly fast, any modern computer can handle the game technically speaking. But I am left with a thought. If, under an assumption of what I understand so far, you are trying to speed up the flight times between destinations, have you ever used "autopilot" for a quick video transition covering 10-20k of flight in a few seconds? The "a" button if I recall correctly.

Did I ask you to be a prick? No. So don't start. Good lord. DOSBox allows you to set how many CPU cycles you can devote to the emulator. You do realize I'm using DOSBox, right? I mean, I only said so in my post.

All the bases look alike, why would you need to see them, especially in a flying game. Oddly worded but again, my prior assumption is you don't like flying between destinations as much as flying near them.

All the bases DO NOT look alike. Have you actually played the game through? Did you ever go to any of the key spots?

I don't know what PREDIT is and so therefore, I don't know how it would bypass the flight engine.

That's what I meant when I said I don't understand what you're talking about. There is either too little information or alternate ways to interpret what you said.

It's called Google, if you really care all that much. Also, you're blurb "I have no idea what this means" gives too little information. You used 'this', which implies singular, but your quote included multiple assertions. Were you referring to the last assertion? Something other than that, maybe? It's impossible to know just what it is you don't understand when you leave things ambiguous.

PREDIT is the Privateer save game editor. It lets you edit a save game and change a number of things, including what base you're on.

Mon Feb 23, 2004 9:22 pm by Sir Spectre

@Bhurak Starkiller, first off, I wasn't trying to be prick, I've known people to not know the silliest little things, I just wanted to make sure it wasn't one of those that was a hangup for you. Second, I didn't understand that the Privateer difficulties had to do with DosBox. It was a separate paragraph and seemingly separate train of thought. Having not used DosBox, I didn't see the connection, forgive me.

I know all the bases don't look the same, now you're being a prick. I was being overly general, for in comparison to Freelancer, the base differences are almost nil with a few exceptions.

I didn't say "I have no idea what this means" I said, "I don't understand what you're talking about." That sentence does encompass all of what you said so your statement "You used 'this', which implies singular, but your quote included multiple assertions" is the wrong assertion and quite a flimsy argument based on a misquote of me.

Now I know what PREDIT is, thank you.

Sir S

Edited by - Sir Spectre on 2/23/2004 9:41:17 PM

Mon Feb 23, 2004 10:43 pm by Bhurak Starkiller

All right, my apologies, Sir Spectre. I got the feeling that you were trying to be insulting, what with suggesting I was just really impatient or didn't know about the autopilot. No hard feelings.

Mon Feb 23, 2004 11:39 pm by Sir Spectre

@Bhurak Starkiller, no problems here.

what with suggesting I was just really impatient

Just for clarification, it was an either/or statement based on an assumption I stated as such, because I didn't understand from where you were coming on the issue. And I never said "really" as to denote it was somehow extraordinary. Yes, patience is a virtue, but the impatient get things done.

Sir S

Tue Feb 24, 2004 12:53 am by Chemus

Wow! That's quite A response.
Thanks for all the welcomes! Though I have been hanging around and d/l'ing bits and pieces from TLR for a while now.

Bhurak, I understand a bit about what you mean about the sluggishness of the flight engine; it was kinda funky for me too. It worked best for me when I set my cycles (by trial and error) where the music played the smoothest. Also, a way to test how fast things are actually going is to talk to a bartender. The closer together his phrases, the smoother things go (I think). But if anyone can tell me how to get a smaller friggin deadzone, I'll disappear for years playing this game.

Tue Mar 23, 2004 6:14 am by lvxoccvlta

Just like Bhurak, I have extreme slowness running privateer in dosbox. It seems no matter how I tweak it, performance remains unplayable.

Specs:
AMD 2000+
512mb RAM
Radeon 9200

And I get between 2-12 fps as well.

Tue Mar 23, 2004 1:53 pm by Esquilax

You can try setting the "Core" to "Full" in the conf file, but it didn't have an effect for me. If anyone DOES have any ideas about how to fix this, I'm listening

.

Tue Mar 23, 2004 2:33 pm by Chips

I couldn't even get it to run dosbox.........dammit.

however, do what i will do shortly.

Scour second hand/charity/boot sales/garage sales etc, and all things like that (or even ask local schools if they have old old computers to be shut of). Then buy or donate (for a school) some small amount of money (maybe as little as 20 quid) to get yourself a genuine 386sx25 or 486dx33 etc with a few meg of mem, whilst still running off of dos 6.0

Then take it home, install, and get downloading all your fav old games. I still have sid meyers pirates - which was a firm fav when i was a young un

Tue Mar 23, 2004 3:13 pm by Esquilax

My cousin has a number of old PCs at home, and can get me free ones from the Uni that he works at (they're always throwing them out), but I have nowhere to put a second PC. Besides, I want to hear the old games through my bother's amp and two reference speakers!

Thu Mar 25, 2004 5:56 pm by Bob McDob

Coincidently, a new version of DOSbox has just been released.

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

Haven't been able to try Priv yet, but if it works it'll open up hope.

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