First post, by BioFSlow
I have seen quite a bit of threads about BioForge running badly, so:
Back in the 486 days, I played BioForge and loved it. I was very young, but I could already notice a problem with it: it ran slow. With a 486@33Mhz it ran slow and with low fps, with a 66Mhz one it still ran slow, but with high fps.
By slow I mean slow-motion style. Apart from that, it was very noticeable when, for example, a door closed: the sound would finish before the door was half-closed. Or sombody could say a thing in a cutscene, and then wait twice the neccesary time to say the following line.
Recently, I started the game in DosBox, and it was the same. It had nothing to do with CPU speed: the game did that on purpose. It ran very laggy/slowly, quite boring.
Also, the first time you started a game, after the FMVs, the game would take a looong time (10 minutes with 10000 cycles?) before starting. With low cycles, the game would not start at all.
I had the european version, which came with english, german and french voices&text, plus spanish text and subtitles.
I saw the game on an abandonware site. I thought "perhaps my version is broken", and downloaded that one. Surprise! The game ran about at twice the speed (remember: I'm always talking about game speed, not FPS), was much faster (and the combat significantly more difficult!) and better. Also, the 10 minute pause didn't happen.
I don't have the european version right here, so I can't check what was broken: the EXE, some script file...
Anyway, it you are experiencing problems with this game, that might be the cause. It should run flawlessy at 12000 cycles and well at 8000, with frameskip 1.
The european version says "SPEED FACTOR (20)" or "SPEED FACTOR (0)" when starting, and the US one (I guess it's US) "SPEED FACTOR (2)". I don't know it this means something. Changing the cycles during gameplay doesn't affect the speed (but it does affect the FPS).
It's a shame that half(?) of their customers got a broken version... Very strange stuff. Perhaps the speed is specified on a script file and the translators broke it...
