Such is the case with King's Quest I - III DOSBox max cycles runs at a "Goldilocks speed" where it is very fast but it is not hopeless to stop your character manually, and the cycles-based timers are not completely broken like they are on native DOS or ScummVM unthrottled. It breaks many cycles-based timers too badly.Īny platform where you can avoid turning the game to "fast" intermittently will almost inevitably be faster in practice. There are some question marks though: A significant minority, if not a majority of AGI games, cannot be completed on a fast native DOS system if ran wholly on "fastest". Those "billiard ball" routes are so well developed for many games by now, and I know that some of the more prolific AGI runners like Chuck, Bill and Lumo all want to play it like this. I am definitely sympathetic to anyone who would like the speedrun to be at a more reasonable speed, but perhaps the ship has sailed on that now. Even DOSBox 10.000 cycles is not that much slower and you will struggle to play the game casually at this speed, even though this is several times slower than even a 486, a system which many people will remember playing these games on in the 90's. I will say, since AGI unthrottled is so fast even on DOSBox max cycles, requiring the same "billiard ball" route as it does on native DOS, in that you will move in one direction and instantly arrive at your location (where you bumped into something), one might as well allow native DOS for those games. Likewise for AGI, only that speed 1 (normal) is what would be speed 3 in SCI0, that is 20 fps, and speed 2 (slow) is the equivalent to speed 6, 10fps. However, the vast majority of AGI games work much like QFG 1 EGA and QFG 2 for SCI, in that the speed selector controls the actual engine speed variable, but unlike other SCI0 games the fastest speed is 0, unthrottled. First, some AGI games run at a fixed speed like Donald Duck's Playground. For example, Laura Bow 2 is a game like this, where Bill ultimately preferred to play on ScummVM throttled.įinally we get to AGI, which is a corner-case. It is an open question of what we should do about these games. Some SCI 1.1 or SCI 2.0 games are too broken when played unthrottled on moderately fast hardware, and you are unable to complete the game on native DOS or ScummVM unthrottled, or even on DOSBox max cycles. SCI 1.1 or SCI 2.0 games that work well unthrottled are a point of contention.The King's Quest community does allow DOSBox max cycles, ScummVM unthrottled and native DOS for these games (KQ I - IV, and KQ VI), whereas for example Quest for Glory does not. Still later SCI2 games started to move away from cycles based timers altogether, to time-based one's like modern video games. Later SCI1, SCI1.1 and SCI2 games are unthrottled. King's Quest V as the lone exception runs at a fixed speed 2 (30fps). Some SCI1 games run at a fixed speed 1 (60fps). This is unlike later games where the speed slider only controls the "move speed" of ego. The in-game speed selector controls the actual engine speed variable and the fastest speed is 1 (60fps) and it goes down to 16 (1fps). Now, if the game has a master speed like this, and if the fastest speed is not unthrottled, then more obvious still this speed should be allowed in the speedrun.Īll SCI0 and some SCI1 games work like this. Obviously, this is preferable since it unifies all possible systems and platforms (ScummVM, DOSBox, FreeDOS, native DOS.) If running on a slower system it will sleep less to compensate. It is self-calibrating in that it subtracts the execution time from the previous loop. The way the wait function works is: (speed * 60 / 1000) - (currentTime - lastWaitTime). There are two fundamental categories of SCI and AGI games one's that have a "master speed" and one's that do not (they run unthrottled). This is based on all my work over the last several months improving the parity between ScummVM and native DOS.
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