Wing Commander IV Win95 version jerky on an old PIII with Win98

boringnickname

Rear Admiral
Hi,

I still have an old PentiumIII, 500 Mhz with Windows 98 for all the old dos games. Since my only joystick is an Sidewinder 3D Pro (gameport) I play the WC games on that computer, because my newer primary PC has no gameport.


Well, following problems: I have the CD version of WC IV and applied the Win95 patch. It works, with one exception: The movies stutter.

I searched around and found one old usenet posting with exactly the same problem:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt....hread/c178e8921aca02e2/ca4d14a3d3a7df02?hl=en

Quote:


I recently purchased the Windows 95/DOS version of Wing Commander 4.
The game works fine in DOS mode, but in Windows 95 the movies stutter
slightly and there is a strange purple line above them. I think it may
have something to do with either the settings of my Soundblaster AWE
64 or the multimedia properities in the conrol panel. I would
appreciate any suggestions on how to fix this problem.

Mar 3 1998

I have exactly the same issue, without the purple lines though. I tried all the solutions in that linked thread but the problem persists. Any ideas?


And yeah, I could just run the DOS version, but the interlace-mode is distracting (you can turn it off in the Win95 version).


Full spec:

P3 500 mhz
Matrox G400
AWE32 soundcard (funny to type this specs into a forum in 2010)
 
so the classic solution for this is to turn off directx acceleration for your soundcard (so many things are fixed by that!) - try it and see.
 
so the classic solution for this is to turn off directx acceleration for your soundcard (so many things are fixed by that!) - try it and see.


Tried. Didn't work. I have also tried to deactivate the graphics accleration and cd-rom cache. Didn't work also.
 
What do you mean by stutter? Is the sound clipping as well? Does it seem to skip frames?

The purple line makes me think it's a directx overlay issue.

I don't see it being an issue with the soundcard beyond hardware acceleration issues. I would look at what kind of hardware video acceleration directx is using with your video card.

Also look to see if there are settings you can adjust with your card's drivers themselves.
 
What do you mean by stutter? Is the sound clipping as well? Does it seem to skip frames?

The purple line makes me think it's a directx overlay issue.

I don't see it being an issue with the soundcard beyond hardware acceleration issues. I would look at what kind of hardware video acceleration directx is using with your video card.

Also look to see if there are settings you can adjust with your card's drivers themselves.

As I said, I have no purple lines. The other symptoms are identical though.

What is skipping is the sound. The video in the movies is normal.
 
I had WinDVD 2000 on my PIII box, and I had to upgrade to the latest version (2.6) in order to get rid of stuttering in WC IV. My experience is documented here:

http://www.crius.net/zone/showthread.php?t=19077

If you have DVD playback software installed (WinDVD, PowerDVD, etc.), you might check to see if there is a more recent release of that version available (as opposed to a later version, although that might be something to try as well).

Edit: I missed the fact that you have the CD version, so the above advice probably won't help. Sorry. Hope you find a solution.
 
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