Privateer 2: Resolution?

C

Corlymotor

Spaceman
Hey Folks,

Long story short, I am 24 and grew up playing Wing Commander and Privateer. I just wanted to play it again and thankfully because of this webpage I was able to get it going without a hitch. . .well, except for the following, here we go.

I am trying to play privateer 2. I did the whole patch, the game runs great. However the resolution looks really bad on my 1440 X 900 display. Should I lower the res to accommodate the game? Or is their a patch/fix to up the resolution of the game to match?

Also, when I actually fly into space, the movement is very herky jerky. I remember it being nice and smooth. Now when I am flying around it seems to refresh frame by frame . I have not been able to locate a config file or even know how to begin adjusting settings.

Any and all help is greatly appreciate. You guys rock, keep these games alive!

Steve
 
Play in DOSbox, stay in windows mode, and up the cycles.

Privateer is going to look terrible on any LCD - it uses a 320*200 resolution, some LCDs will actually refuse to display it. As is common with games of this era, theres no way to alter the resolution its used, and it would be difficult to implement one due to the amount of bitmap art that would need to be scaled.
 
Would you be able to reccommend a front end for DosBox that works well with Privateer? I am not familiar with DOS, nor do I have time to become familiar with it.

I am simply interested in playing the game. Has anyone been able to use the windows deluxe patch and have it run smoothly on a xp machine?
 
EDIT] Disregard this unless you have the DOS version of the game. Theres no way to make the windows version run in DOSbox.

Sorry, I dont use front ends. Best I can do is tell you how to modify dosbox.conf to make this as painless as possible.

Load up Dosbox.conf. In the CPU section, set core to dynamic and cycles to about 30000. You may need to tweak this value depending on how much CPU power you have. You may also want to change the scaler to normal3x.

In the autoexec section (At the end of the file, create it if its not there by default) add the following lines:

mount c c:\dosbox
imgmount d c:\dosbox\privat~1.iso c:\dosbox\privat~2.iso c:\dosbox\privat~3.iso -t iso


Assuming that you have images of the privateer 2 CDs. If you dont, then its

mount c c:\dosbox
mount d d:\ -t cdrom -ioctl

Alter these lines as neccesary depending on where you want to install privateer II. I always install all old games under c:\dosbox, keeps things tidy. If you are using images, than ctrl-F4 will switch between images, if you are mounting the real CDROM drive then simply switch the CDs as needed.

So install the game. In dosbox

d:
install

Follow the instructions. The relevant CIC tech support article covers setting up the sound, but you should be able to figure it out.

Finally, open up dosbox.conf again, and add the following lines on the end of the autoexec:

c:
cd dark
dark

Which will tell DOXbox to load the game whenever you start DOSbox.
 
Thank you, I will go ahead and try that now. I do in fact have the DOS version. The original CDs from way back when.

I'll let you know how it goes.
 
THANK YOU! It works like a champ. My machine is actually a Macbook Pro with 4 gig of ram so I went ahead and put it at 30000 cycles.

There are tiny lags when someone warps nearby, but I remember that being the case in the original.

My only remaining questions are:

Can I make the video look any cleaner? It looks full of noise and lines. Its still very good, but I was wanting to make it a little better. Also, the sound skips every now and then. Is that just something I should live with or is there a way to make it run smoother?
 
Andrewas said:
Privateer is going to look terrible on any LCD...
Click to expand...
I disagree somewhat. Of course it won't be as smooth as a modern 3D HD title but I think Dosbox' scalling modes do a more than adequate job of preserving the art style and smoothing any really noticable pixelation.
 
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