Shadows over Riva (GOG version) combat

Hello again everyone! I recently purchased RoA 3: Shadows over Riva from GOG. Everything runs fine until I get into combat, at which point the messages flash up so quickly, I can't read how much damage is dealt or any of the other text.

--I set the Text Speed and Combat Speed options in the game to "Slow" but this seemed to have no effect on text speed.
--I slowed DosBox emulations to 1% but this did nothing except induce slight "lag" while moving outside of combat.
--I attempted to pause the game after each hit but learned that pausing only works when the computer is awaiting input from you (so pausing may only take place before you swing and not again until it's your turn to act again).

Does anyone have any suggestions, tricks, prayers or even spells that I could attempt? I would greatly appreciate any aid.

Have you really slowed the CPU down ?
I wonder because it still doesn't sound to me like that.
The animations are played too fast ... Imho slowing the CPU emulation down should slow down the animation also. At least that's what I thought.

not particular to SoR but in general with some old games, sometimes 'disabling' CPU cores fixes their problems. To try this, run the game, open task manager, select the process for the game, right click and 'set affinity' and leave only one core selected. If it works, this is just temporary until you close the game (so you'd need to do it every time you run it). There are tools that patch the EXE to use one core permanently.

Yes, that was my second thought. I just didn't know DOSBOX uses more than just one core.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Yes, that was my second thought. I just didn't know DOSBOX uses more than just one core.

Click to expand...

hmm... no I don't think what I said applies to dosbox, only to old windows games, but hey, won't hurt to try

Thank you for the responses. I tried running it with a single core but that seemed to make no difference - that is until I slowed the DosBox cycles down to 1% again. I now have time to read the text but the game is slooooooow - so slow it takes almost a full minute just to redraw the options box. At 6% (the next increment) the game is too fast but I only know how to modify the cycles by 5% at a time. I can play by slowing the game, making an attack, then speeding the game back up to get my option box drawn and repeat several dozen times per combat, but something tells me I'm not patient enough for that. I suppose I will try to just figure out what happened last round by keeping a closer eye on health, status, etc. Thanks again!

EDIT: I must offer my apologies for (yet again - sigh) speaking before researching. I went into the config file provided by GOG and manually adjusted the cycles until I hit the "sweet spot". 15k for non-combat exploring and then dropping to 9k during combat works out great with minimal stuttering.

<thinks to self - I wonder where the sweet spot would be to have the same minimal effect on Elmer Fudd? 14k? or maybe 24k? >



<remembers 24k would be more likely to work on Yosemite Sam and his plundering ways - Mr. Fudd was associated with a different kind of carrot...>

If you are registered in the DOSBOX dforums, then you could perhaps report there of that - of the difference between the CPU cycles during combat and the rest of the game, I mean.