Dosbox Demo Video?

[Grench]

We have seen several other emulators - what about DOSBOX?

I know there is little to no chance of having the analog controllers addressed as joysticks or the touchscreen mouseified under DOSBOX yet (hopefully someday?)

Maybe I'd be surprised though.

What would be very cool... DOSBOX as a .pnd file that automatically configures the nubs as joysticks and the touchscreen as mouse, sets the screen resolution to VGA (or better) and mounts C:\ to a directory on the SDHC card... OK, so I'm dreaming.

Still... Can't hurt to ask.

 

[barzoule]

would be interesting for sure! XCOM anyone ?

 

[zhasha]

We have seen several other emulators - what about DOSBOX?

It's been done

I know there is little to no chance of having the analog controllers addressed as joysticks or the touchscreen mouseified under DOSBOX yet (hopefully someday?)

Maybe I'd be surprised though.

What would be very cool... DOSBOX as a .pnd file that automatically configures the nubs as joysticks and the touchscreen as mouse, sets the screen resolution to VGA (or better) and mounts C:\ to a directory on the SDHC card... OK, so I'm dreaming.

Still... Can't hurt to ask.

Actually, that sounds fairly straight forward.

 

[mali]

Also we saw Warcraft II. Wasn't it with touchscreen control? I can't remember.

Edit:
No, it was played with USB mouse.
http://www.rjmitchell.ca/~jeff/blog2009/2008/12/23/pandora-merry-christmas-on-shipday-we-get-warcraft-2/

 

[WizardStan]

We have seen several other emulators - what about DOSBOX?

I know there is little to no chance of having the analog controllers addressed as joysticks or the touchscreen mouseified under DOSBOX yet (hopefully someday?)

Maybe I'd be surprised though.

What would be very cool... DOSBOX as a .pnd file that automatically configures the nubs as joysticks and the touchscreen as mouse, sets the screen resolution to VGA (or better) and mounts C:\ to a directory on the SDHC card... OK, so I'm dreaming.

Still... Can't hurt to ask.

1) analog sticks as joysticks is easy. If I recall correctly, they're already mapped as joystick devices in the Linux kernel, so DosBox will just pick them up entirely automatically. Possibly
2) touchscreen may be trickier. It depends on if the kernel sees it as a standard pointing device or something custom. I don't know enough about this to make a guess either way.
3) setting up everything like that entirely automatically isn't dreaming, it's really, really, really easy. The nubs should automatically be detected as joysticks, the resolutions are dynamically set by whatever game you're playing anyway, and just put "mount c /media/SD1/dos"* at the bottom of the conf file and you're golden.

*or whatever directory it actually goes to.

 

[zhasha]

2) touchscreen may be trickier. It depends on if the kernel sees it as a standard pointing device or something custom. I don't know enough about this to make a guess either way.

You're worrying in the wrong area. Getting it recognized as a mouse is not too much of an issue, but it's a pointing device that operates solely in absolute coordinates which means that most if not all DOS software will misinterpret the information relayed. This is opposed to a relative coordinate mouse like the one with a ball or optical tracking system.

 

[gruso]

Pickle already has touchscreen working for DOSBox on the F200 & Wiz, so it shouldn't be much a of a problem.

 

[Azure]

Also we saw Warcraft II. Wasn't it with touchscreen control? I can't remember.

Edit:
No, it was played with USB mouse.
http://www.rjmitchell.ca/~jeff/blog2009/2008/12/23/pandora-merry-christmas-on-shipday-we-get-warcraft-2/

Warcraft II was just a picture, though. A video would be the bee's knees

 

[Dutch_Cap]

2) touchscreen may be trickier. It depends on if the kernel sees it as a standard pointing device or something custom. I don't know enough about this to make a guess either way.

You're worrying in the wrong area. Getting it recognized as a mouse is not too much of an issue, but it's a pointing device that operates solely in absolute coordinates which means that most if not all DOS software will misinterpret the information relayed. This is opposed to a relative coordinate mouse like the one with a ball or optical tracking system.

It should be trivial to emulate a relative mouse in software, though. In fact, I'll bet the touchscreen driver does exactly that.

A Python example:

lastAbsX = lastAbsY = 0

def relFromAbs(absCoords):
    (absX, absY) = absCoords
    
    relX = lastAbsX - absX
    relY = lastAbsY - absY
    
    lastAbsY = absY
    lastAbsX = absX
    
    return  (relX, relY)

 

[zhasha]

It should be trivial to emulate a relative mouse in software, though. In fact, I'll bet the touchscreen driver does exactly that.

A Python example:

lastAbsX = lastAbsY = 0

def relFromAbs(absCoords):
    (absX, absY) = absCoords
    
    relX = lastAbsX - absX
    relY = lastAbsY - absY
    
    lastAbsY = absY
    lastAbsX = absX
    
    return  (relX, relY)

And now the application decides to move the mouse somewhere. Correct. Applications do not (necessarily) tell you it has moved the mouse so you do not know lastAbs[XY], or at least not in the sense that it's useful to the application.

 

[skeezix]

I used a USB mouse at the time, since it was a year ago and I was using a minimal distribution and kernel build .. virtually no features beyond hardware tests

All of what you ask should likely be doable .. certainly a pnd that you run to fire up to a C:\ prompt would be a piece of cake; the rest is probably some work, but certainly within reason.

I'll let pickle do the talking, but I'm sure a video with WC2 running is not out of the question; /me is tempted

jeff

 

[cosurgi]

... and System Shock (1st) )))

 

[Trevsweb]

would love dune 2 running i spent alot of time on that

 

[skeezix]

Dune 2 runs great!

 

[WizardStan]

... and System Shock (1st) )))

That was a really awesome game that I just couldn't bring myself to finish. Because things respawn when you leave the level, it started getting really monotonous. Like "go this level, kill everything, do stuff, go to a different level, kill everything, do stuff, return to the first level, kill everything again... sigh"
I found myself sneaking carefully around the same corner 3 or 4 times and was just "that's enough, give me a cheat code or something so I can just get on with the game" but there aren't any
Anywho, digression over. Back to DosBox discussion!
I don't think the first System Shock game will run too well. As I recall, emulating it well required 10'000 cycles, but the Pandora can only hit three or four thousand.

 

[cosurgi]

... and System Shock (1st) )))

That was a really awesome game that I just couldn't bring myself to finish. Because things respawn when you leave the level, <...>

you shouldn't pick the hardest difficulty in monsters category. They respawn only at that difficulty. Worth another try isn't it? I am still thrilled to think how I solved the final riddle. I won't spoil that for you, it was too fun.

 

[Sargon]

I don't think the first System Shock game will run too well. As I recall, emulating it well required 10'000 cycles, but the Pandora can only hit three or four thousand.

I believe System Shock's DOS requirements were a 486 DX/33, which would be just slightly over the Pandora's mid-386 estimate. I doubt that it will run very well, but is it really off by that many cycles?

 

[WizardStan]

I don't think the first System Shock game will run too well. As I recall, emulating it well required 10'000 cycles, but the Pandora can only hit three or four thousand.

I believe System Shock's DOS requirements were a 486 DX/33, which would be just slightly over the Pandora's mid-386 estimate. I doubt that it will run very well, but is it really off by that many cycles?

And that's why using the "minimum requirements" should be considered nothing more than a guideline, and you should really give it a try yourself. I've just tried it again, and it will definitely play at 5000 cycles, but it's quite jerky. It becomes nicer at about 8500, and perfectly smooth at 10000.

 

[Chip]

I believe System Shock's DOS requirements were a 486 DX/33, which would be just slightly over the Pandora's mid-386 estimate.

A 486 at 33MHz is not "slightly over" a 386 at 20MHz, it's twice as fast. As Wizardstan pointed out, games that require more speed than the Pandora can offer will still work, just not at the proper speed.

 

[Azure]

I'll let pickle do the talking, but I'm sure a video with WC2 running is not out of the question; /me is tempted

jeff

The picture itself was a great Christmas present last year...would love to get a similar present this year