What system is needed to get frontier to run smooth?

[sgt_chimp]

Im running it on a 1MB A600 and it's as slow as hell with all the detail off, will a 1mb memory upgrade help or do i need an A1200 to play it at a decent speed?

[Drake1009]

I have a plain A1200 with 2MB ram and it isn't running smoothly for me so you'll need more.

[TikTok]

To be honest, I dont think adding any more memory will help a great deal, even if it is Fast RAM. The game sometimes gets very slow, even on an expanded A1200. Still, I found it fairly playable most of the time on my A600 with minimum detail. You can also run in NTSC mode for a small speedup :).

[RetroMan]

Hmmm, no extra RAM won´t do the trick but any kind of Turboboard should help here (68030 or above) .... they are really cheap on ebay right now :)

[sgt_chimp]

Originally posted by TikTok
To be honest, I dont think adding any more memory will help a great deal, even if it is Fast RAM. The game sometimes gets very slow, even on an expanded A1200. Still, I found it fairly playable most of the time on my A600 with minimum detail. You can also run in NTSC mode for a small speedup :).

How do i get it to run in NTSC mode and will i need a scart cable ?

[oldpx]

Just select NTSC in the boot menu. Keep both mouse buttons pressed while rebooting and you'll see the menu.

[TikTok]

The boot menu method only works with an A1200 (and other 3.x roms?) unfortunately. I always used a little tool that came with an F1GP editor to do the trick...I'll take a look now to see if I can find it. In the mean time, I think most degraders can switch modes too.

[TikTok]

Just took a look and it seems the util was just a simple script which ran Degrader. You can find Degrader here:

http://www.aminet.net/pub/aminet/util/misc/Degrader.lha

The script just ran it with the options:

60hz 60hzsystem noreset noeditop

[Akira]

Yep, you'll get a 13% speed increase in NTSC Mode... Still, you'll be needing an accelerator to make it smooth.

It should work quite fine on a 1200... well, that's what I read anyway :)

[TikTok]

I think it is partly that our memories get corrupted over time....how many games have you loaded up on the Speccy, the C64, CPC, or the Amiga, only to find that they weren;t quite as good or as smooth as you thought when you were younger? I remember playing Into the Eagle's nest on my CPC recently...how the hell did I manage to stand that jerky as hell scrolling for hours on end??? :confused.

Another example: Microprose's F1GP. This was the racing game of its time, fantastic and realistic 3D graphics, fabulous gameplay. I played it the other day and it only runs at 10fps! But I spent literally years on this thinking it was fantasticly smooth. Still a great game though :).

[Akira]

Originally posted by TikTok
I think it is partly that our memories get corrupted over time....how many games have you loaded up on the Speccy, the C64, CPC, or the Amiga, only to find that they weren;t quite as good or as smooth as you thought when you were younger?


None. I was expecting to be shocked like this by many programs, now that I got most of the machines I used back then, and so far, I have not suffered teh famous "happy sappy delusion syndrome" :)

Elite and F1GP are as sluggish as back then! :D

[sgt_chimp]

I tried Frontier on an emulator on my PC and it was still really jerky in combat, the rest of the game is fine on my amiga & PC it's just the combat but after trying it on EMU it's still bad (not as bad though), Having to hold down the Right mouse button to steer the ship in combat is giving me Carpal tunnel syndrome. I remember playing wing commander on my 1st Amiga 600 all those years ago I worked my way through that game even though it was like a slide show and that was even through the glorious rose tinted spectacles of nostalgia.

[Shatterhand]

It may sound silly (again), but you should try the PC version, if you have an average PC...

in my P233 frontier runs at a great speed even when in combat.


Talking about the happy sappy syndrome delusion, I played Elite in my msx for YEARS, and when I got the amiga version, I thought "****. that's bloody fast, this game is unplayable!"... this is the opposite of the delusion :)

then after playing the amiga version for a few more years, I shifted back for the MSX version once, and just thought "How the hell I could play that crappy slow version of Elite?"

[sgt_chimp]

I cant get the PC version to start, and seeing as my PC is undergoing upgrades so I can use it for video editing im going to avoid putting games on the system until I can afford a 2nd PC (in about 3-4 years when I've left college / university)

[Big-Byte]

Frontier is badly coded!!

My mates got a an Amiga 1200 with a 68030 accelerator and
when he loads up frontier on that it doesnt get much smoother.
Instead it just runs faster - even the music plays faster too.

(Its like playing a game on a speccy emulator thats set to 120% of a real spectrum speed)



He has also got about 8 disks of official patches that the company sent to him after he kept complaining.

[oldpx]

The boot menu method only works with an A1200 (and other 3.x roms?) unfortunately. I always used a little tool that came with an F1GP editor to do the trick...I'll take a look now to see if I can find it. In the mean time, I think most degraders can switch modes too.


I had a boot menu with my A500+. It was before A600's and had kick2.0 but I don't remember the options there. I had an intro of fairlight on one of my disks that could change PAL<->NTSC so I put it in the other game disks and ran it from their startup sequences.

[TikTok]

Yeah, Kickstart 2.0 does have a boot menu, but it doesn't have the PAL/NTSC option. My A600's menu just lets you disable the startup-sequence, and enable or disable devices (DF0, CC0, DH0 etc).

Actually some games gave the option to switch. Team 17's F17 Challenge is one I think, although my original disk 1 is now buggered so I can't check :(. I think the option was sometimes added by cracking groups too.

[Akira]

Originally posted by Burseg


I had a boot menu with my A500+. It was before A600's and had kick2.0 but I don't remember the options there. I had an intro of fairlight on one of my disks that could change PAL<->NTSC so I put it in the other game disks and ran it from their startup sequences.

Yeah that works for games that are in DOS disks and haev normal startup sequences, but what about the others? And eve with yoru method, some games dont like the change and switch back to PAL! You have to force it onto NTSC from boot, with a tool like Degrader :)

I used the same Fairlight cracktro. The blue one, right? :)))

[TikTok]

normal startup sequences, but what about the others? And eve with yoru method, some games dont like the change and switch back to PAL! You have to force it onto NTSC from boot,
Even, even worse (;)), some games use the NSTC/PAL check as a form of copy protection and hang the machine if the wrong mode is found :eek.

[CreepingDeath]

whats all this..
I ran it on winuae and was amazed to see it ultra smooth! :D
maybe its my 1.3 athlon helping?
but its amazingly smooth - I just put all the emu settings to max

[Akira]

We're talking REAL Amiga here, not a bloody emu.

[sgt_chimp]

Originally posted by CreepingDeath
whats all this..
I ran it on winuae and was amazed to see it ultra smooth! :D
maybe its my 1.3 athlon helping?
but its amazingly smooth - I just put all the emu settings to max

Mass locked! Cannot engage LZ22: Sarcasm drive, oh no wait my mistake.

Holy crap you got frontier to work with an Athlon 1.3 how the hell did u manage that!!! :eek :eek :eek :eek :eek :eek