Hind95 direct play on Windows7 - compatibility mode on Win95

Hi warthog77 and welcome to the forums!

I like some of the old sims too but as you say it is hard to get all running on modern PCs without having to use lots of tricks and third-party software, and even then the games may not play as we remember them on the PCs of that era. I'm sorry to hear you can't play LB2 on WinXP. What exactly are the problem(s) there?

I don't have much experience with DOSBox and have only briefly played the DI Apache demo through it, so can't really help with your problems there.

Hi Flyboy,

thx for your answere :-)and for your (future) help with LB2
LB2 on XP .hu..let me see, it is a little tima ago i tried this.. I will try to check this next week and will come back later -
i remember that it have chrashed after starting..(tested with native XP and 95/98 cooperative mode)
BUT 688 Hunter Killer works very good with XP.. that is strange

Dosbox is fine and i tried yesterday to fix the problems - for apache i was succesfull, Hind has not problem with the turret gun but with one of the weapon pylons (57mm /80mm rockets and cannon pods) if i aquire a target i cant fire the weapon..?!?!?
Yes..this is very strange.. think i will bring my efforts on LB2 and Gunship! because G! simulates the German Eurocopter , the MI 28 Havoc and Longbow - interssting is that Gunship! works with XP but for example M1 tankplatton2 and European world War not..!! all games from Microprose..!!
Arrrgh.. uh..I tried to play Win95/98 games with WinE under Linux(Ubuntu) but it was not so succesfull ..this is very distressing.

Okay, i will post the next days my experinece with LB2 and XP
HanD

Hi warthog77

I had the same issue as you describes and I found solution to it

First of I try to always use dynamic core and max cycles in the config of DOSBox. But when I have encountered this issue I noticed that the sound of gun firing was being cut (hard to explain - but you would get similar effect as if you pressed the trigger really quick and fast - like for few ms with very high frequency - so you get the sound of firing gun but the event is too short to trigger bullet being fired from the gun. That's why there is no visible tracers and no depleting ammo count). So I set the cycles in config file to fixed value of 100000. And that helped! Try to experiment. If you have pretty fast CPU (equal or greater than 3GHz) that's probably the cause. Some games don't like high amount of cycles (like the Wing Commander 3 and 4 for example).

I recently bought the upgraded version of Apache Longbow (I think it's 1998 release, probably the same which was released as part of Front Line Fighters bundle including AL, Hind & F16FF all with 3dfx support) - you can see which version you have while the game is loading still in DOS prompt, distributed by SoldOut Software on the e-bay (new and sealed for couple of pounds!), and because the game engine is from F-16FF (textured land an sky) the game plays fine on max cycles settings without the gun issue. Tried the cycles settings upped to 200000 and the gun still works on the newer version.

Maybe I will upload some gameplay of it on youtube in the near future, stay tuned

Edit: Oh, and set your memsize to 32, or you won't get any rendered cutscenes. I recommend reading through this - might be usefull.

Well I think it's normal - if you have target locked then just hold space while trying to bring the target into the crosshairs. While you press the trigger you basically giving the consent to fire, the weapon will fire when the crosshairs are over the target. If you just want to plow through some infantry squad with rockets for example, just undesignate the target and fire at will.

Hi damson,

thnaks for your reply and thanks for the helpfull solutions - it works

I use a AMD X2 4600+ (939) -
I have the original Version of AL, HIND was gift from a computermagazine an F16 was a magazine fullversion - i have the f16 an AL and Hind (?) 3Dfx-Patch - but how can i use 3DfxGlide with DOSBox??

oh..this link is very helpfull, too

hi damson,

yes, that is the solution :-) but there is another problem.. if i hold down the turretgun trigger for a long time ..the game crashes ("..illegal adress caused...")this problem comes also with AL when i give instant fire with the 70mm..
strange..think it could be asoundproblem..because if i change in the DB setttings the soundcard and then in AL, the game crashes..
okay continous fire is not realistic.. you vave to watch for xyour ammo ;-)
and by the way - your solution(dynamic core) for AL does not work (thaught i had set it but i have not saved) it works if i set cycles to fixed value i.e. 20000 - but the fps are very bad - i set core to normal and cycles to max everything seems to work ok exspecially the M230
but with t
dyncore and cyclemax Hind works very nice :-)

Hey warthog77, glad to be helpful. You can check this thread on how to run those games in 3dfx mode. I think Davros had some luck with Hind. To run it you need to install it under windows and use a glide wrapper (you must apply a 3dfx patch first) or try to use a special build of DOSBox that usues software glide wrapper which can be slow (some guys were able to run EF2000 that way, but not 100% compatible with real glide), although I don't know if AL, Hind or F16FF had 3dfx patches for DOS versions. If not disregard the DOSBox solution. I never tried 3dfx on those games.

Well I didn't encountered this issue. You can try disabling the sound in game settings and try to fire continously and see if it crashes with no sound - you can pinpoint problems this way. What settings for sound card in dosbox config file do you use? I use default - with these, set the card to SoundBlaster16 adress=220 IRQ=7 DMA=1 in game settings. You can also try SoundBlasterPro with the same settings if you have trouble with SB16 (SBPro has lower mixing rate = sounds somewhat worse). You can post the contents of your dosbox.conf file - maybe I can give you some pointers.


Well generally when running protected mode program (AL, Hind and F16FF as well as most modern DOS games are run in protected mode) the dynamic core should be used. It gives you more cycles out of your CPU compared to the normal core at the same CPU load (which is used for real-mode programs). So for example running some game in normal core setting and increasing cycles count you can reach say 50 000 cycles when your CPU load reaches 100% (after that increasing cycles count only gives worse effects like sound dropouts etc, becouse your CPU is already at max load and just can't compute more), running the same game on dynamic core you can reach for example 200 000 cycles before your CPU load reaches 100% - now that's a difference.

Hi damson,

THX for your helping - you gave me some good ideas
with this settings it seems it works good :-) need a couple of time, coffee and cockies to experiment with the settings:

core=normal
cputype=auto
cycles=max
cycleup=500
cycledown=100

nosound=false
rate=44100
blocksize=2048
prebuffer=10

sbtype=sbpro1
sbbase=220
irq=7
dma=1
hdma=5
sbmixer=true
oplmode=opl2
oplemu=compat
oplrate=44100

gus=false
gusrate=22050
gusbase=240
gusirq=5
gusdma=3
ultradir=C:\ULTRASND

..afterall, there is a massive problem with sbpro / sb16 settings - when i want to set the paramter in AL it crashes to Dosbox prombt with error-message (sbro) with sb16, games freezes..
with this settings it is ok.


3DFX - Yes..i think it is better i play with dosbox..it is so complicated -thougt there is a Glidewraper forDosbox :-( or..if i have to much time i want to check ;-) but it is very strange to play Win95 games on XP - i tried to play with a linux system and WinE (M1TP 2) but not good and no 3DFX oe D3D only Softwarerendering with bad frames..