«

Originally Posted by mprey

Got a problem with this game, it goes too fast! At the initial screen with the town for example I can see the sea wildly fluttering and a constant stream of rats crazily crossing the street. The thing is, if I turn down the cycles, mouse control becomes sluggish...what can I do?

I am currently running this game on my Dell XPS laptop with a killer fast CPU and Vista without problems. The mice do run very fast, but, hey: they're mice. They're fast.

Try this:
Set up a batch file by:
1. opening up Notepad
2. type: HST.EXE -p
3. save the file as HST.BAT
4. save the file in your High Seas file folder
5. if you already have DOSBox loaded, download DOSShell and run the setup
6. in DOSShell, click on the green plus sign to add a new game to the screen
7. type the game's name in the top line, select a group, like Games
8. for Path to Executable, browse and find your new HST.BAT file, click on it and click OK
9. select an icon, or not, add a description or not, click OK, and you are set.
10. on the DOSShell window, double click on your new game icon and away you go.
11. say, "Arrgh, Matey!"

The game will now run slow enough for you to control all actions and actually aim at other ships, and fast enough to actually enjoy.

The "-p" switch tells the program that it is working on a pentium machine and has to slow itself down. I never have to adjust the cycles.

One other thing, I have no luck playing in full screen. It just shuts down, so don't even try.

Also, to make your mouse active in the game, click on the game screen. You now have the game's mouse controls. To escape the game screen, press the Windows button on your keyboard and you are back to the system mouse control. Hope that makes sense.

Gary

[areyounuts]

This game runs waaaaaaaaaaaaay too fast even with the game speed at 1, and throttling dosbox doesn't make it run a whole low slower, just worse. Even setting dosbox to 5%, the game is too fast, and then also very jerky. I don't have this problem with other games in dosbox.

As far as I can determine the -p switch does nothing, but maybe that's because I'm not actually using a Pentium (Phenom X3).

I also tried the Amiga version, which runs great IN PORT, but runs unplayably awful at sea. Not only too fast, but also it freezes every several seconds to load data from the floppy images. I don't have this problem with other Amiga games.

I think the game was just badly coded in the first place, and will never run correctly on modern machines.

[Simoneer]

Which is bad news. Hopefully you're wrong.

[gumpy]

Looks fun. Cool looking graphics.

although it might seem tempting and profitable, it's not always such a wise decision to take arms all the way from america to the east indies. why? because you're missing other trade-opportunities inbetween, by occupying cargo space throughout the whole tour.
if you sell arms directly from america to the east indian colonies, you receive a profit of, let's say, approximately 150 gold per ton of cargo. it seems huge. but if you rather take the app. 100 gold per ton for selling arms from america to the caribbean, then 40 gold per ton for sugar from the caribbean to africa, and then 40 gold for jewelry from africato east india - you will gain a profit of app. 180 gold per ton of cargo, which is 20% higher.
of course i'm talking about averege numbers i have experienced. the market can change, and under certain circumstances, if a profit of 200 gold per ton for arms from america to east india is possible, the caribbean is low on sugar, african goods are not that much demanded on the east indies, or if just the current state of diplomacy doesn't allow the desired route, i do take the arms directly from america to shanghai.
but no matter what route you may decide, you should always plan as many stopovers as possible. why? that's simple: because the longer routes you take from one port to another, the more supplies you have to carry with you - not only more food, but also more ammo and more planks and sailing clothes, in case of being attacked in the middle of the ocean, with no nearby ports available - and the less space you have left for your goods, and hence, the less money you earn on your trip.


i, personally, like taking a tour that looks like this:

europe -> north america: liquor
north america -> caribbean: arms
caribbean -> africa: sugar
africa -> east indies: jewelry
east indies -> china: coffee

and then back:

china -> east indies: opium
east indies -> africa: spices, tea
africa -> europe: ivory

of course, it might seem boring, to take the same tour over and over again. but it's only an example, and the tour is not nearly always the same. what i like most in this game is, when the situation suddenly changes and - just because an ally surprisingly declares war on your country and therefore making it impossible to deliver your goods to the desired harbor, or new options occur due to an unexpected change of the market, or if you meet an agent of your country in the middle of business, urging you to take him all the way back to europe - making it necessary to overthrow the whole plan and having to make a new one. ;-)

[garymacd]

Originally Posted by areyounuts

I think the game was just badly coded in the first place, and will never run correctly on modern machines.

I don't know about coding. I do know the game was designed for DOS, not Windows in the first place. As I stated in an earlier post, I am running the game on an almost brand new Dell XPS laptop that was almost the fastest most advanced machine they then made without trouble. I am using the batch file I described in DosBox and Dosshell and it runs perfectly.

Afer haunting me for the last 10 years or so I FINALLY beat this game. I've downloaded it probably 10 different times.... Ahhh finally I can get back to life. I gotta say the end leaves a bit to be desired but nothing like a game finished. I loved this game. Who cares if the pirate action isn't awesome. It doesn't have pirate in the title does it? No. It is good at what its supposed to be good at, trading!!

Hey guys,

Is there any other place to get "The Ocean Highways" (and the other large PDF files) other than at replacementdocs.com?

I'm on 28k dialup and their server kicks me every time around 1.3Mb. The only one I could download was the "Quick reference Card" and I've googled for the rest until I'm nearly crosseyed.

Thanks.

[zirkoni]

Weird, the extras at Abandonia are links to replacementdocs.

BTW, this game is much better than 1869 which is a bit similar.

[Luchsen]

I don't see anything weird in that. You could call it wired, though.