As you know Stunts is a DOS game, and its natural environment is a native dos system, like DOS,Win95, Win98,winMe
On any other system than these you might meet some difficulties running Stunts.
In the case of WinXP you can try playing from the internal DOS emulation shipped with XP -many do succeed to run the game on a reasonable speed, many don't.
If you choose using this method, you need to set your sound to PC Speaker in the Stunts setup.
If you want higher quality sounds, you need a program called VDMSound, grab it at
http://vdmsound.sourceforge.netSince I have no experience setting up VDMSound (I'm a Linux user) I'll leave this up to you.
The other alternative is
DosBox. You can find it at
http://www.dosbox.sourceforge.netDosBox emulates a Dos window rich in features, and I was able to run stunts on my 850Mhz Celeron under gentoo linux (probably for windows you need somewhat stronger) just as it runs on my 486PC, so it's perfect for racing.
The key for DosBox is its config file, called dosbox.conf (or in windows probably dosbox.cfg, i dunno. There are many programs to edit the settings of the config file,but we'll use a simple text editor, which is the easiest wax imho.
If you cant find the config file, start dosbox and write:
config -writeconf [pathtoconfigfileit'll create a default config file for you.
Ok, now open up that nice config file and change the following settings after me:
1. Core Emulation[/u]
You might want to set
[cpu]
core=dynamic
but for me it brings the same speed as core=simple, so I didnt do this.
2. Scaling[/u]
Scaling is a way to resize the graphic output the game uses. It can eat much from your HW.
I supoose you wnat to play Stunts on fullscreen.
in this case search for these options and set them to the following:
[sdl]
fulldouble=false
fullfixed=false
fullresolution=0x0
output=surface
[render]
aspect=false
scaler=none
this will turn of scaling, and so if you are playing in a window it'll be very slow, but in fullscreen it's the fastest choice. You have to press ALT+ENTER to switch to fullscreen while DosBox runs, or set
[sdl]
fullscreen=true
If you prefer to play in a window change:
output=overlay
this will give ugly fonts, but great gamespeed.
3. Frameskip and CPU Cycles[/u]
this is also essential, and perfect settings mighr vary a lot depending on your system.
you wont even notice a frameskip of 1, but try to avoid higher numbers, since this is a simulation game. However for best racing performance you should set frameskip to 0. If the game runs to slow, change it to 1, or in the worst case 2. You can also change frameskip within dosbox CTRL+F8 raises one, and CTRL+F7 reduces one.
[render]
frameskip=0
CPU cycles is, basically said the speed of your emulated CPU. You'll need at least 3500 for enjoyable gameplay, I recommend 5000. Whil running DosBox you can raise it with CTRL+F12 (note this will make CPU usage higher, while framsekip on the contrary!), and reduce it with CTRL+F11
[cpu]
cycles=5000
Ok now you should try running stunts. Open up DosBox, and write the following things:
mount c /path/to/your/stunts
c:
stunts_k
this will start up stunts.
of course you might want to setup first - you can either choose sound blaster/roland/speaker - each of them is emulated perfectly.
Try to play a game, and watch your CPU usage if it reaches 100% or not (it's easy under linux, under windows you can notice it easily by the sound - if it chops/stops for a while then it's at 100%)
Ok, we have two possibilities now:
A. The CPU usage is nowhere near 100%, the game runs perfectly.
Congratulations! Happy racing! You might want to set a better quality scaler, increase CPU Cycles, or something like this to make gameplay more enjoyable. I'll leave finding out these up to you.
B. The CPU usage reaches 100%, the game movement is jerky, control is bad.
Ok, let's see what we can do in this case:
1. Set your screen spolor depth to 256 colors
2. In the dosbox config file set
[mixer]
rate=11025
this makes sound quality worse. You could also try setting your sound in setup to Roland/P Speaker - it's faster.
3. raise frameskip value, 2 maximally
4. reduce cpu cycles, 3500 minimally.
5. reduce graphic quality within Stunts
If you did all of this and still the game is too slow, then probabyl your CPU has not enough processing power to run a correct emulation for Stunts. Buy a faster one, or a used 486/Pentium to play. But hopefully you'll find yourself playing Stunts, and enjoying it
If you have any questions write it here.
This FAQ was based on Joekaos's DosBox FAQ found at
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?page=RunningResourceDemandingGames and my own experiences.
last mofiied: 20050128
