Syndicate (bullfrog) Dosbox old pc
 

Goodmorning at all,
i'm having some little problem by running Syndicate (bullfrog) on a very old system using dosbox.
Actually seems that the game and the sound works pretty well: the only problem i have is about the ingame itself.

Pratically the game stutter and have some little freezes (1-3 seconds) here and there without any particular reason.
I don't know if there's some kind of option to solve it or it's just my system that isn't powerful enough. I don't know if there are also some other games to try with the same performance impact but, for now, Syndicate is the only one with this problem.

Any suggestion or config to try?

Thanks in advance for any answer and help
Best regards

Very old? So, maybe it's also not powerful enough for a protected mode DOS game in DOSBox.


If you're already using core=dynamic and cycles=max, I don't really know what else you could try. Maybe increase frameskip to 1 or 2, shouldn't matter much for this game. And changing the output option of DOSBox might help as well.

I'm trying right now with dynamic but still have those little freezes (the music still play and just the game and sounds hangs for few seconds, mouse cursor disappear also).

Do somebody remember what kind of minimum specs Syndicate had in past? 486dx 66mhz?

Can be something about cpu type (or memory umb ems xms) ?


I want to try some game with the same minimum specs and understand what's the problem and if their behavior is the same or they will go smooth

For Syndicate back in the day requirements actually were quite low, considering the 640x480 256 color resolution, afaik it was just 486 DX-33 for good results.


You might try setting cputype= to 486_slow or pentium, and cycles= to a set amount instead of max, something like 25000 probably should be fine. That is, if your system is strong enough to handle it, can only guess here as you didn't provide any details. Very old sounds like it might actually not be strong enough.
Also what DosBox version are you using?

Thank You for your kind reply,
actually i'm using the SVN version of Dosbox on platform Android.
Can't be the machine unable to handle it, i tested something a little bit more "pumped" like Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior and both works pretty well.
Only Syndicate gives me those little freezes with the music still playing normaly.

Usually if i raise too much the cycles i will get stuttering and corruption of the audio, right?

Right. So try to _lower_ cycles then? :)

Also, check audio itself. I checked eXoDOS, and there only specific settings was machine=svga_s3 and memsize=16 (for videocard) and irq=5 (for SB), so it must be nothing unusual. What soundcard do you use?

For "Syndicate" I would suggest cycles=9600 (that's more or less equal to a 486/66) and memsize=8.

The memory bit is because I used to have game crashes between missions when I added more memory.

Try to run in windowed mode and 'play' with different renderers.