Newcomer to speed running. Why do the fastest King's Quest runs look like the CPU is way sped up with the animations jumping around and such?
The people running the game wanted to beat it as fast as possible, and they found a way to do so while running the game at max cycles.
If there were enough people who found speedrunning it at "original speed" fun, then there might be an argument for separate categories. But as is, none of the active runners have an interest in that.
There's also a side question of: what does it mean to run at original speed? In DOSBox you can set the cycles to whatever number you want, so ultimately it's arbitrary. Also, if you put games to a set cycle amount on certain CPUs you get audio glitches and other oddities.
But the short answer is: no one currently running the game really wants to run it slower, or finds that fun.
Welcome to speedrunning, by the way! If you have any interest in the King's Quest games, feel free to check out the discord, or ask any other questions.
I would also point out that if anyone wants to run the game at lower cycles, they absolutely can, and that's what the "cycles" variable is for.
Hey if you could join the discord we are having a discussion about this. We can also help you get up on running this and any other King's Quest games.
I thought about my question and I realized that since it was a DOS game, there likely never was an original clock speed. 486 machines all had different CPUs and some of us were starting to get video cards at that time. It was modular. So why not run it at max now? Antarctica, I got back into Kings's Quest by using a Windows 10 machine with Virtual Box doing a Windows XP client, and then using an older version of dosbox in there to get a King's Quest full-screen. A bunch of playing around with config to reduce most of the sound clipping. Thanks to everyone who has replied.
Antarctica? Wut? KQ on DosBox ECE at max cycles with machine=tandy (runs it just a smidge faster) is how we run it currently. Getting an "exact" bead on hardware is a big bugbear for DOS speedruns and, personally, this is a fine compromise. Thanks for asking this question though. We are looking into some things right now for a possible "original speed" (name pending) sub category of any% and 100%. It is free game for anyone who would want to route it once it is organized. Fortunately there are multiple runs on the board that are at a lower cycles speed so their routes can be used as a foundation.
"Antarctica? Wut?"
Lol, oops. Please forgive.
Be safe, and be healthy. Thank you for the deeper explanation of how speedrunners go about things. Thanks again.
