No matter what I set the speed to in VDMS or Abandonloader or Dosbox, X-COM still runs way to fast. Am I missing something?

Put the CPU cycles superhigh... 25.000 o so. That always makes DosBox slow as hell here :ok:

to make sure I'm doing that right, how is it done through dosbox? I know easily how to do it in the others, but the limit was lower, like at 14 or 20 max, but even those didn't even phase a difference.

Just repeatadly press Ctrl-F12 for a good five minutes. If that won't slow it down, you can always go on the unhealthy-for-the-hardware tour and disable all the fans in your case, especially the heatsink (fan that looks like it's sitting on a big block on top of the motherboard) one. It ought to get your comp so slow it'll crash... side-effect is big chance of hardware damage.

LOL, think I'll pass on that option. I can't wait til I finish this book. I hope microprose authorises me and helps get this thing going. Some people I've let have a taste are blown away by it, so i'm optimistic. Hollywood could use some good ideas, and I'd like to be the guy who makes a movie-based-on a computer game grab people's attention. As well as denero

I don't get what the problem is. Did you try to reduce the cycles in dosbox with CTRL-F11?

I myself play the original dos version and the only problem I encounter is when I chase ufo's. I need to play with the cycles but it's good enough to be playable. And I actuall have a computer faster than yours.

For the tactical missions, there is options which allow you to control the speed of walk of your squaddies, the Aliens and the speed of fire animations as well as the screen scrolling speed. I guess that's what you were asking about.

everything like you said is playable, but the geoscope time will not slow so far no matter what I try. That's why I'm still stuck with this game specifically.

What do you mean the time does not slow down? Of course it's the same here, but that's part of the game as far as I am concerned. As long as your seconds don't go faster than 5 minutes/sec then you should be way alright and it's still playable.

Second to that, if you get the last patches (I think they work on the windows version) it should fix this "bug". However I don't know where to get that patch, but I know the website is still up because someone linked to it like one month ago.

that patch may very well be what's sticking it to the geoscope timer. and yes, the 5 second setting is going as fast as the 30min option without slowing at any tweak of vdms or abandon loader. couldn't get sound to work with dosbox, so I dropped using it for x-com, but when I get off work later I'll see what I can dig up. I appreciate the help, and I know it's sometimes frustrating when it's obviously simple, and the other person just isn't getting it. I fell way behind once win 98 came out, so I've been busting behind to get back into the mindset.

For the sound in DOSBox, make sure you setup the sound as soundblaster or compatible since DOSBox emulate only soundblaster even if you actually don't have that installed in your system.