Hey all,

First I was delighted when I logged on this evening and saw that they had finally released Privateer 2. I've always had a soft spot for this game and its moody stylings. Quickly paid for it, downloaded it and installed it.

However I was disappointed upon loading the game and launching into space. Most of the time the game is smooth as silk but when I get near a planet (like near enough to communicate with them so I can land) or attack even a single ship at close range, the games frame rate drops alarmingly. It seems to be related to distance from the target. The further away I am, the smoother the game is running.

I'm running the game on a Windows 8 system, with 8 gigs of ram and an Intel i7-3770 @ 3.40GHz.

I haven't tried increasing the system cycles in DoSbox yet because if I remember in the old days Privateer 2 was one of those games that ran way too fast on high level systems and am worried that increasing the cycles will just duplicate this

I have the same specs as you, only Windows 7, and performance is similarly disappointing near planets and large ships. I have tried increasing the cycles by 1000 at a time (you can safely try this by repeatedly pressing Ctrl+F12 in-game, cycles will be returned to the default setting from the .conf file next time you start). It gets *slightly* better, but unfortunately hits a ceiling and drops off quite quickly again without ever reaching a 'smooth' setting.

I'll be trying different .conf settings to see if there's a way to make it run better, but I'm somewhat skeptical.

Anyway to patch the game to the win95 version, and then add the fan mods for newer windows compatibility?

It might run a bit more efficiently.

I didn't even know there was a Win95 version but usually games of this age would have it.

Yes, another user who's experiencing slowdowns. The cycles increase does not work? I was hoping that it would...

Any chance of us seeing help, GOG?

I'm also getting slowdown. I can't remember if the Win95 version had it, but I *really* don't want to go back to using CDs. So much disk swapping!

Anyway, +1 for some support from GOG. Pleeeeeeease!

I've been reading on it apparently anyone using the patched windows version sees no problems at all.

yeah, I've just installed the Windows version. Works MUCH better than the GOG release and the movies look better, too.

I'm pretty disappointed :(

Just curious: what's better about the movies? No interlacing or better framerate? Becasue if it's the irregular interlacing pattern (in stead of 1px video, 1px black, repeat) it's fixable by tweaking DOSBox's output resolution...

OK, that would fix the interlacing then. I'm getting the irregular pattern.

But the framerate thing bothers me. Has anyone managed to apply the Windows patch to the GOG version?

One big issue I'm seeing is that planet side and booth animations run way to fast! The opposite of the slowdown in space.

Agreed, though I remember also seeing this on actual hardware back in the day, so it's probably the game at fault here. Is this better in the W95 version?

I think it ran at a regular rate on the w95 I think on a Pentium based machine. But now you'll probably also have to use some of those slowdown patches as well for the entire game. See the other thread I created.

http://www.gog.com/forum/wing_commander_series/add_patched_win95_mode_to_privateer_2

Sadly I can 100% confirm the deluxe version with the speed patches works smoothly. I have privateer 2 Deluxe and was excited to get a CD free version of the game from GOG.com. But this is not ready for prime time. The dos version will never run smoothly in dosbox. its a limitation of the game itself. There has got to be a way to get gog to put a windows version on here instead.

Similar problems (and with Keybindings) here:



while I'm so glad to see my always TOP 1 Game ever back on the screen I experience some Issues.

As a german player I have to come along with english keyboard layout. Thats very bad but I (as a fan) can go with it.

BUT:
simple keys like ( "x" ) has no effect. So I'm not able to match my speed with the target.
Some more key doesn't work:
I'm not abel to higher or lower the speed or go to maximum or full stop. There seems to be heavy keybinding-issues.
Some (like spacebar or TAB) are working. But it's not playable like this.

The next thing:
I have smooth and fast behavior in space (Turning with my Joystick the crossfade in all directions). But only if I am alone with the stars.
At the very moment I get a Target (or object) in the screen it gets nasty slow and turns very tough/chewy.... no slick behavior. All gets slow...

My Hardware:
i7 2600K
16GB RAM
NVIDIA GTX 580
Joystick Thrustmaster Flight X Pro

Windows 8 64 Bit

Any help here????