Does anyone else have a problem with blood running choppy? Or do I just need a new computer? I have an HP Pav DV4, 4G 64bit op sys AMD turion X2 dual-core Mobile RM-72 2.10GHz. I know it's nothing to look at, but why does a game like this run so terribly on this system? I remember running blood back in 98 perfectly. What gives?

The GoG distribution runs through DOSBox, which is an emulated environment. Because it is emulating an entire new computer in software, it requires a fairly heavy CPU to run Blood respectably.

If you are running Windows XP, you can still run Blood natively with a few tweaks.
If you are on Vista, or Windows 7, you might try compiling DOSBox yourself. It might improve DOSBox's performance.
If that fails, you might try booting to a flash drive with FreeDOS or the like, but there is a good chance you won't have audio.

I could suggest using the video mode setup to ensure you're using Surface, see if that works.
Your post doesn't mention the graphics processor, but it looks like a HP sort of machine.

I've got a HP Compaq 6715b, with an ATI 1250g chip on it. That thing does just not like D3D or OpenGL. If I use OpenGL or anything "accelerated" even stuff like Commander Keen lags horribly.

Using Surface fixes this problem for me. Also make sure your computer isn't set up to use the "Power saving" power scheme in Vista or 7, as these will (if the standard setup is still the same) limit your CPU to max 50% of it's potential. Haven't tried Blood on my laptop, but Duke 3D went from being utterly unplayable to running quite smoothly on 800x600 through these two changes.

Also if the game got installed with it's own dosbox, try to use it with Dosbox 0.74 instead, maybe using core=dynamic in the configuration file for Blood (dosboxBlood.conf, Core=dynamic) This could help you out too.

Drake - what is this "surface" option you're talking about? I am having the same problem as the first guy, and I have gone into setup, but can't find the option you are talking about. Thanks.

It's a video mode option you can set in your dosboxBlood.conf file.

Round about line 19, set:
output=surface

This bit makes me wonder quite a bit. My desktop is a heap of junk at the moment, a dreadful HP armed with Pentium 4, but the GOG whole blood version I purchased only few days ago runs somewhat stickily (about to try surface mode right now) on XP. However, I tried Blood on my laptop earlier this summer, which is rather ancient ThinkPad, real champ for what I use it for, but not a workhorse in any way. Separately installed dosbox, got a hold of the.. rom or iso or whatever it was, and it ran very smooth, with whatever the default settings might have been; didn't really have to fiddle with anything (except for sound which I didn't get to work).

So, it ran well on a machine that is, all things considered, massively inferior. The only notable difference is that it runs on a pretty light weight openbox linux. Can that really make that much difference, or is the Whole Blood version bloated in some way?
I'm just curious, that's all.

There are a number of issues that can effect DOSBox performance.
• What version of DOSBox you are running. (.73 vs .74 vs the current SVN build)
• CPU clock speed.
• How well a program can use multiple cores.
... and probably a lot more.

Virtualization isn't exactly new, but it has been given a lot more attention within the past few years, so it's still in it's infancy. It's only been relatively recently that CPUs have introduced Virtualization support (AMD-V / Intel VT). I've been told that DOSBox doesn't make use of it and it shows. I've tried Blood on an i5 with VT enabled using VirtualBox and freeDOS and it ran much better than through DOSBox. I was getting 300+ FPS in VirtualBox vs the mid 30-70s from DOSBox. It wasn't perfect though, I was limited to playing at 800x600, Blood would crash after that. Also I'm not sure about how to go about setting up DOS networking and if VirtualBox. Still it's promising.

You might check the Vogos forums for the more technical aspects of DOSBox.

Try to play the game in the lowest resolution. That was the only thing that worked for me: the game ran perferct and I was able to finish it.

Of Course the grapichs are not so good as in a high resolution, but they are ok and the visual does not change so much, since its a 2.5d game ;)