If you set cycles to max, it won't be the same between systems, as some pc's are simply faster than others. If you wanted it to be fair you'd probably need to set a fixed number of cycles (probably the lowest round number for which the game doesn't lag), but that is a bit arbitrary and as such not preferred by everyone.

This is true .. but on a modern system, even though Dosbox is pseudo "emulating" the game, you should still have a superior system enough to reduce the loading time to 0. Actual game speed appears to be completely unaffected - either using a fixed framerate or proper delta-time implementation. You can see how comparible my load times are to @Mr_R 's vs @Qanik 's.

The only reason this would be happening is if @Qanik actually has a really OLD system ... its overall processing speed would have to be comparible to a 386 to produce those kind of load times with Max Cycles. I dont know anything about Macs .. but I cant imagine that being true. The other possibility is that the Mac implementation of DosBox is just much slower or more processor intensive than that of the windows version. If he runs it on windows and gets better results it should prove/disprove that.

I am open to changing the rules to support fixed cycles though, but I really would only want to do this if absolutely necessary. Maybe we can find a fixed cycles setting which matches the load times me and @mr_r are getting .. I reallly dont want to go invalidating any runs, especially if @Qanik 's case is an outlier and not representative of the majority.

The other option is to go with a loads removal scheme .. but .. uggh ... lets exhaust every other option first lol.