Getting good FPS in 1.2?

[Mr_Scorpion]

This might not be the best place to ask this but any tips on how to get good framerate in 1.2 on Windows 8.1?

I usually get like 1500+ fps in 1.3 but in 1.2 only 30 fps something must be wrong as 1.3 is vastly superior to 1.2 in terms of graphics.

[Ded10c]

This is because 1.3.5+ is capable of using your graphics card; versions below do all the graphics processing on the CPU. Killing some of the other programs that are eating your CPU should help.

[MrTwosheds]

1.2 is also designed to run on a single cpu. 1.3 is capable of utilizing your machines multiprocessor capabilities.
1.3 is the solution for getting Bz2 to run better on modern computers.
Use an old computer for 1.2
Demote's Moore's Law to "just a theory"

[Ded10c]

Having a virtual machine installed is particularly worthwhile if you intend to dabble in old versions of BZ or BZ2 - though for obvious reasons I advise against attempting to play online with such a setup. Depending on what you need you may find any version between Windows 95 and XP will do, though I've had most success with XP.

[Commando]

Only certain things are multithreaded in 1.3. I think the sound system can be put in its own thread. There isn't that much that is multithreaded.

The main reason 1.3 runs better is due to 1.3 being written in dx9 as opposted to dx6. DX6 relied heavily on the CPU as opposted to using the graphics card for T&L.

[MrTwosheds]

Yes, but basically pc and windows evolution have conspired against old programs like original bz2. Even if I run 1.2 on my dual core XP pc it now performs noticeably worse than it used to on a much slower single core 98 machine. Developers put a lot of effort into advancing capabilities but very little into reverse compatibility.
The only thing I can suggest is that you experiment with shutting down windows processes and then running 1.2. Some of them may well be making the situation worse.

[Commando]

As for the vm comment, good look getting good fps on a vm. I've not seen a hypervisor yet that can provide good framerates. VMWare Workstation can render direct x 9.0, but the framerates are abysmal. That and VMWare Workstation is around $200 or more. I have no idea about VMWare Workstation or Oracle VirtualBox.

[Red Spot]

I used older drivers in the past. Newer drivers turned 1.2 into a lagfest.
That was on a XP machine with drivers now probably 8-ish years old.

[Ded10c]

As for the vm comment, good look getting good fps on a vm. I've not seen a hypervisor yet that can provide good framerates. VMWare Workstation can render direct x 9.0, but the framerates are abysmal. That and VMWare Workstation is around $200 or more. I have no idea about VMWare Workstation or Oracle VirtualBox.

With most versions of 1.3 capable of running on Windows 8.1 you'd only need a VM for the older versions. I wouldn't want to play online like that, but for everything else VMWare Player is pretty good. It chokes on 0.7 and 0.8 versions of Battlezone but other than that it works fairly well.