- This topic has 5 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 18 years, 10 months ago by
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I finally manage to fix the color problem I have while running the game and I am constantly getting zapped by the “Droid-o’-Death” when I try to snatch the laptop out of the crashed spaceship at the beginning of the game. I tried ten times and all ten times I died because there is no way to use the interface fast enough to walk off screen before the droid appears. Why did they bother to make Space Quest IV when it has so many frustrations and so many compatibility problems?
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(re: Space Quest IV is horrible)
Try this new patch for the game. It fixes a number of problems with playing the game on a fast machine:
http://geocities.com/belzorash/sq4cd.zip
Unzip it into your installed SQ4 folder. Note that you will have to use a save game from before you entered the screen where you are having problems.
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(re: Space Quest IV is horrible) Back when SQ4 was released, Bill Gates was just dreaming of Windows 95, Intel were dreaming of 266Mhz processors and the world had a set of different problems to contend with (well, maybe not but you get the picture!).
Sierra’s developers used two parts of the system for timing. Unfortunately, one of those parts kept moving with technological advances thus making a lot of Sierra adventures unplayable (or at least unbeatable) on new systems. No-one could forsee this happening although Sierra knew about it by the time the created the Collection Series packs – they included a slow down program with instructions on how to use it. *Why* they didn’t spend a few days/couple of weeks and solve the problems like NewRising sun has done (it would have been *much* quicker done with the source in hand!) god (or maybe Ken) only knows!
NewRisingSun’s patches are quite amazing – they work, they’re reliable and they’re free. -
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These timer problems are due to a lack of foresight from the original programmers of SCI. There are a lot of other games from around the same time that do not have speed problems even when running on blindingly fast PC’s.
They could’ve made timer based puzzles run off the screen refresh rate (60-70 hertz in most cases ever since CGA was around) or the internal clock of the PC. These were extremely common techniques that a lot of other developers were using back in the 80’s and 90’s. This would’ve future proofed their code for decades and there would be none of these timer related bugs that everyone has to struggle with now.
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I run my monitor at 120Hz. My reaction times will be twice as fast as you pathetic mortals! 🙂 I’m just saying that the system clock might have been a better way to go especially since if I remember right, monitor refresh rates were often around 45-50Hz on some of the older monitors. (They crept upwards for a while)
-Jim
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