Dosbox Caanoo - Working Games

[sdm]

I had a quick play with the settings you said and with cycles at 200 I got perfect sound but the game slowed down too much.
I think the main problem with dosbox is all the file editing that needs doing. It would be nice to have some way of doing it on the fly. Or at least a way to do it on the caanoo before launching the game.

Maybe a dosbox frontend which allows you to pick the best settings, assign keys, and select the file that will be used to launch the game.
The front end could edit the config files and then launch dosbox

The messing about trying to find the right settings is the main reason I go to other emulators for the game even if it's an inferior version

I think its not a bad idea to use dosbox special keys for such tweaking ( +/- cycles, +/- frameskip ) - special keys, - though this will not solve the problem with saving new settings. You may also use internal keymapper to reassign keys and save mapper file.

 

[foleyjo]

~LTStone -> Something like that would be good if it was usable on the Caanoo itself so you could make changes quickly if you select the wrong settings.

~sdm -> I was unaware of those special keys. I saw the ones for ctrl+f11 and ctrl+f12 but they didn't appear to be making a difference. Can you use these while in a game or do you have to do it on the c prompt screen?

 

[sdm]

~sdm -> I was unaware of those special keys. I saw the ones for ctrl+f11 and ctrl+f12 but they didn't appear to be making a difference. Can you use these while in a game or do you have to do it on the c prompt screen?

They worked for me in a game.

 

[foleyjo]

They worked for me in a game.

Sweet. I'll try later and see what happens.

 

[toddy_on_gp32]

Dune CD-Rom version.

One of my favourite Amiga games and then was blown away by the CD talkie version when I upgraded to PC in the 90s.

Was really trying to get this to work last night on the Caanoo, the emulator cannot yet handle smooth animations and videos that feature in-game. Also the mouse pointer is off centre which maybe could have been fixed by changing the controls to keyboard only (so more like the Sega-CDs joypad control).

Best settings I could find where:

CPU=Dynamic
Cycles=Max

22050 Sample rates across the board

frameskip=2

I'll just have to stick to the Sega-CD version which runs 98% perfect with the odd artefact popping up here and there. Shame though as the colours are reduced from 256 down to 32, which makes a big difference in regards to the games wow factor...

Seems like dosbox for caanoo hasn't quite got the muscle for this one...

Has anybody had any luck with this?

 

[toddy_on_gp32]

Dune CD-Rom version.

One of my favourite Amiga games and then was blown away by the CD talkie version when I upgraded to PC in the 90s.

Was really trying to get this to work last night on the Caanoo, the emulator cannot yet handle smooth animations and videos that feature in-game. Also the mouse pointer is off centre which maybe could have been fixed by changing the controls to keyboard only (so more like the Sega-CDs joypad control).

Best settings I could find where:

CPU=Dynamic
Cycles=Max

22050 Sample rates across the board

frameskip=2

I'll just have to stick to the Sega-CD version which runs 98% perfect with the odd artefact popping up here and there. Shame though as the colours are reduced from 256 down to 32, which makes a big difference in regards to the games wow factor...

Seems like dosbox for caanoo hasn't quite got the muscle for this one...

Has anybody had any luck with this?

Have done a bit more digging with this and have found that the config attached below actually makes the game playable with full speech. The videos struggle to play correctly but can be skipped using escape key. The game is not as fluid as I would have hoped but seems to be the best I could get the current version of Dosbox to run.

The touchscreen does not really work as the screens a bit small and is difficult to centre to a point when clicking so I have been using the joypad. The sensitivity is set to enable decent navigation in game. Another option would have been to map the joypad to up/down/left/right keyboard controls instead of the mouse. This would allow for a jump to button approach which if you have played the SegaCD version you will be more accustomed to.

One other thing I was looking for on the forums and on openhandhelds was a cpu overclocker for caanoo to wrap dosbox so I could push the emulator a bit harder, there was something like this for the F100-200 but nothing for the caanoo yet. Does anyone know of anything I could do to overclock Dosbox? I think the cpu cycles auto run between 1000-1200 but to get smooth animations and video featured in Dune your looking more at 3000 cycles.

# Dosbox for caanoo - Dune CD - Cryo 1992

[sdl]
fullscreen=true
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=320x240
windowresolution=320x240
output=overlay
sensitivity=100

Mapperfile=mapper.txt

fontcolor_front=8
fontcolor_back=12
fontcolor_frontsel=1
fontcolor_backsel=8

gp2x_mouse_speed = 6

[dosbox]
machine=svga_s3
memsize=4

[render]
frameskip=2
aspect=false
scaler=none

[cpu]
core=auto
cycles=max

[mixer]
nosound=false
rate=11025
blocksize=2048
prebuffer=80

[midi]
mpu401=false

[sblaster]
sbtype=sb1
sbbase=220
irq=7
dma=1
hdma=5
sbmixer=false
oplmode=auto
oplrate=22050

[gus]
gus=false
gusrate=11025
gusbase=240
gusirq=5
gusdma=3
ultradir=C:\ULTRASND

[speaker]
pcspeaker=false
pcrate=11025
tandy=auto
tandyrate=11025
disney=false

[joystick]
joysticktype=none
timed=true
autofire=false
swap34=false
buttonwrap=false

[serial]
serial1=disabled
serial2=disabled
serial3=disabled
serial4=disabled

[dos]
xms=true
ems=true
umb=true
keyboardlayout=auto

#[autoexec]# lines of code to boot the dos program go here mount

@echo off
SET PATH=Z:\
mount C "/mnt/sd/game/dosbox/c" c:
echo.
C:
cd\
cd \DUNECD
call DUNE.BAT
exit

Be glad to hear if anyone can get this running better...

 

[Luchsen]

Woohoo! Now I can use DOSFrotz to play my Infocom text adventures! :wub:

I didn't test it much till now, but I can give some general advice:

• Download DJGPPFrotz240.zip from the IF Archive
• Put the frotz.exe and the contents of the BIN directory of the CSDPMI4B.ZIP into directory c of your Caanoo DOSBox
• Execute DOSFrotz in DOSBox by entering frotz -d 3 [story-file]
  • -d 3 is MCGA 320x200, so you are able to read the text
  • Story-files to test and play are also available at the IF Archive (that's why it is called I(nteractive)F(iction) Archive ^_^ ). Put them into directory c, too.
  • With -l [#] and -r [#] between frotz and the story-file you can set a left and a right margin, so that the text doesn't hide in the edges

I don't remember more at the moment, it has been some time since I used DOSFrotz the last time.

 

[LTStone]

Woohoo! Now I can use DOSFrotz to play my Infocom text adventures! :wub:

I didn't test it much till now, but I can give some general advice:

• Download DJGPPFrotz240.zip from the IF Archive
• Put the frotz.exe and the contents of the BIN directory of the CSDPMI4.B.ZIP into directory c of your Caanoo DOSBox
• Execute DOSFrotz in DOSBox by entering frotz -d 3 [story-file]
  • -d 3 is MCGA 320x200, so you are able to read the text
  • Story-files to test and play are also available at the IF Archive (that's why it is called I(nteractive)F(iction) Archive ^_^ ). Put them into directory c, too.
  • With -l [#] and -r [#] between frotz and the story-file you can set a left and a right margin, so that the text doesn't hide in the edges

I don't remember more at the moment, it has been some time since I used DOSFrotz the last time.

Hey, nice find

 

[kerheol]

Where can I download Wiz DosBox Pack 1.9? I want to play Ultima Underworld on my Wiz but I cannot find how to configure DOSBox... I've always a black screen with a pointer =(

 

[LTStone]

Where can I download Wiz DosBox Pack 1.9? I want to play Ultima Underworld on my Wiz but I cannot find how to configure DOSBox... I've always a black screen with a pointer =(

Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 did not work for me either but I found a demo of one somewhere and it did work But I think it was too slow to be playable..

Now Ultima Savage Empire and Martian dreams seem to play fine but for some reason the emulator changes the save files from small case to upper case and that makes it unable to save, I bet its an easy fix for a Dev but there does not seem to be much support for Dosbox .. Too bad as it looks like a popular download on the file site..

Actually I think I got one of the Ultima Underworld's to play but I could't get past the character creation screen, and thats because of that same save game glitch..

OOPS, all of this info refers to Dosbox on the Wiz not Caanoo, So maybe this info does not apply...

 

[Reesy]

Has anyone else noticed that the dynamic cpu core is not enabled on this release?

I was running it via telnet when I noticed it did not like the "dynamic" value for cpu core type. So I looked the source code and sure enough I found that the dynamic core was not enabled...no wonder its so slow.

I'm messing with the build to try and get it enabled, I'll let you know how I get on

 

[LTStone]

Has anyone else noticed that the dynamic cpu core is not enabled on this release?

I was running it via telnet when I noticed it did not like the "dynamic" value for cpu core type. So I looked the source code and sure enough I found that the dynamic core was not enabled...no wonder its so slow.

I'm messing with the build to try and get it enabled, I'll let you know how I get on

Whoa Reesy, that would be awesome!!, I use it alot as is..

 

[Reesy]

well I've got the dynamic recompiler going, it was just a case of messing with the configure script a bit. The performance is now better, I can get X-wing running at a usable speed when I turn all the detail down. The controls however are another matter, they are screwed...I'll try and get them working better and add some way to overclock the beast to squeeze some extra fps out of it. I should be able to release it then.

Edit. Well I must have been mistaken, the recompiler is enabled in the original release , I think I must have been testing a build from the sources which I must have broken in someway. I've compared the performance of my new build with the original and they are the same... so nothing to see here...move along.

 

[Squiike]

Are no one trying
 
Heroes of Might and Magic
Tie Fighter
Across
Elasto Mania
 
????

 

[Akabei]

Are no one trying
 
Heroes of Might and Magic
Tie Fighter
 

I'm quite sure both games demand too much speed, even the first X-Wing will be unplayably slow.