Dosbox For Dingoo A320

[lenny81]

@Pleng:

I have Crystal Caves and Commander Keen working, too. But it is very slow. What settings have you done in dosbox.conf?

 

[Mortys]

@slaanesh
I tried the sound settings and doesn't hear a eal change but I'll persevere. Definitly there's something with the screen rendering (at least on higher resolution) who don't really update. I'm use frameskip 0

 

[zear_]

Jazz Jackrabbit fails And my eyes are not good enough to read the error messages, sorry!

Jazz Jackrabbit works if you set memsize=4, but is too slow to be playable (and there's openjazz port for dingux that works faster)

 

[slaanesh]

@slaanesh
I tried the sound settings and doesn't hear a eal change but I'll persevere. Definitly there's something with the screen rendering (at least on higher resolution) who don't really update. I'm use frameskip 0

Screen resolutions above 640x480 are simply not supported and nothing is drawn to the screen.

Also, it's possible that games using more than 256 colors may not work on the Nanonote. I haven't confirmed this as I haven't tested any that fall in this category.

Which games are you running that causes no display?

 

[Mortys]

HI Slaanesh
I haven't tried game with a resolution above 640*480

In fact it's most of the game. What I mean, if I take the example of SPace HUlk.
During the intro. Music start and run well but nothing at screen. I use Alt+Enter(seems to work only with frame skip 0 ) so I got the "Sdl" screen (the cursor in on the upper left) and repress alt+enter to go back to the emulator display. At this time I get back the imgae. Many time you hear the sound (voice, fire...) but nothing display on screen. It's more like somthing avoid the screen to be refresh every frame, beacause i got display.

In addition : If you take the example of Xwing the "cinematic" are slow as hell. I don't speak of the game as it's look normal to lag but as you go in high res (640*480) everygame seems to lag a lot even with sound off and on static screens..


"My config"
Cycle : 300
frame skip = 0
nosound : false
sbtype : sb1

 

[slaanesh]

"My config"
Cycle : 300
frame skip = 0
nosound : false
sbtype : sb1

Is cycle actually 300? Or do you mean 3000?

To be honest, I don't know if the nanonote is capable of running DOSBox really well with Soudblaster emulation... try adlib.. or best of all PC speaker.

 

[Pleng]

@Pleng:

I have Crystal Caves and Commander Keen working, too. But it is very slow. What settings have you done in dosbox.conf?

Oh yes, it's slow for me too. I was just confirming it works. I haven't changed my DosBox settings, aside from the autoexec script.

 

[Mortys]

"My config"
Cycle : 300
frame skip = 0
nosound : false
sbtype : sb1

Is cycle actually 300? Or do you mean 3000?

To be honest, I don't know if the nanonote is capable of running DOSBox really well with Soudblaster emulation... try adlib.. or best of all PC speaker.

Hii Slaanesh
Yes it's 300 or 500 as it's the best to have the sound not too choppy and the games running at a "decent speed".
Strange but true.

 

[slaanesh]

Yes it's 300 or 500 as it's the best to have the sound not too choppy and the games running at a "decent speed".
Strange but true.

I think you might want to have this a bit higher. The number represents the number of instructions emulated in 1/1000th of second. A typical older PC should be set at around 2000 or so. You can go higher than that to emulate a faster CPU. Going really high will not have much benefit as the idea is that you want to be able to emulate the given number of instruction in less than this time.

ie. Trying to emulate 6000 instruction would mean the A320/Nanonote would just continuous lag behind and sound would be very choppy.

Hope this helps.

 

[Mortys]

Yes it's 300 or 500 as it's the best to have the sound not too choppy and the games running at a "decent speed".
Strange but true.

I think you might want to have this a bit higher. The number represents the number of instructions emulated in 1/1000th of second. A typical older PC should be set at around 2000 or so. You can go higher than that to emulate a faster CPU. Going really high will not have much benefit as the idea is that you want to be able to emulate the given number of instruction in less than this time.

ie. Trying to emulate 6000 instruction would mean the A320/Nanonote would just continuous lag behind and sound would be very choppy.

Hope this helps.

Hi Slaanesh
just follow your advice and yes this is better.
In fact, I've made 2 big n00b mistakes
1 : be a little bit ambitious by trying to run (well) too demanding games (Tie Fighter,...)
2 : Wanting to find ONE setup for all games. For example, Space Hulk and Space Crusade run well at 500-300 cycles and too fast at 2000. So, I'll wait for the next release (with mouse emulation) to investigate further and try more games.

I still found that's the games running at 640*400 are really slow. It may be due to the "scaling" code as the 320*200 games runs particulary well.
Definitly there's a bug with the 640*480 handling. If I take the example of Space Hulk, when you pause the game you should see a screen Withe an artwork and the text "Sapce Hulk is paused"... With frameskip 0, you have to Press Alt+enter (twice) to see it. With frame skip 1, you only get a black screen.



However, with Dosbox, ScummVm, and NuPDF, the Nanonote is gaining more nad more value. Just need the OS/kernel to be a little more optimise and gain some functionnality.

Thx for the advices and your hard work.

 

[slaanesh]

I've been working on proper keyboard support for the Nanonote.
It's been a real hassle so far but I've got an idea of what needs to be done now.
The Nanonote keyboard seems to be just an array of buttons and doesn't do any clever keyboard processing by the looks of it.
As a result, I'm going to need to write a custom routine for all the punctuation and numerics, etc.

Once this is done, I will implement mouse emulation and then I think it's time for another test release.

On the Nanonote, I plan to use the special 'Ben Nanonote' button to toggle between mouse/cursor mode which is quite neat.
On the A320, I think one of the shoulder buttons will become a toggle.

EDIT: The Hi-Res blitters can be optimized a bit. ie. re-written in assembler will help. But I will do this later once everything is working.

 

[Mortys]

Great to hear things is going well (almost). Hope it won't be to hard to code the custom routine for the keyboard.
For the Hi-res blitters, we'll wait as long as needed. b ut have you seen the bug I mention ?

Thanks for the news and the efforts.

If you need some more testing... you've got my email.

 

[zear_]

On the Nanonote, I plan to use the special 'Ben Nanonote' button to toggle between mouse/cursor mode which is quite neat.
On the A320, I think one of the shoulder buttons will become a toggle.

You can use the powerslide for it. It's being seen by the sdl as SDLK_PAUSE.

 

[slaanesh]

You can use the powerslide for it. It's being seen by the sdl as SDLK_PAUSE.

Great suggestion, thanks!

 

[Gocho]

Hello, for the guys who are willing to use a basic mapper.txt file, the buttons of Dingoo are equivalent to these keys:

A key 306
B key 308
X key 32
Y key 304
UP key 273
DOWN key 274
RIGHT key 275
LEFT key 276
L key 9
R key 8
START key 13
SELECT key 27

so, a sample mapper.txt could be

key_lctrl "key 306"
key_lshift "key 308"
key_lalt "key 32"
key_space "key 304"
key_up "key 273"
key_down "key 274"
key_right "key 275"
key_left "key 276"
key_esc "key 27"
key_enter "key 13"
key_y "key 9"
key_n "key 8"

I tested the speed of a few games @420MHz, memsize=4, frameskip=1:
Aladdin: Playable
Cyberdogs: Slow
Micro Machines: Playable
Rayman: Slow
Lakers vs Celtics: Slow

Anyone knows where can I find the other Dingoo Key codes, SELECT + L, SELECT + START, etc...

 

[slaanesh]

Combination keys (like SELECT+L) are not specifically catered for so you are stuck with just the number of keys on the A320.

I'm busy adding keyboard support for the Nanonote. This is working quite well as games become quite playable when you can control them.
Just tried out Carrier Command - nice simple 3D strategy game. Works nicely too!

I've also added F9 and F10 and all the punctuation and number keys can now be accessed.

On the A320, this will be supported with an on-screen keyboard.

Next is mouse emulation, then I will release a second public test version.

 

[Reo]

Can't wait to play ZZT on my Dingoo.

 

[Ayla]

Anyone knows where can I find the other Dingoo Key codes, SELECT + L, SELECT + START, etc...

On your .map file you can do this :

key_enter "key 306"
key_pause "key 306 mod1"
mod_1 "key 27"

That way, A will correspond to "enter" and SELECT+A will correspond to "space".

 

[bouvrie]

I've tried two games so far: Alleycat and Gauntlet II.

Gauntlet II looks nice, sound is good. This is at 336Mhz. I think it will work very nicely at 420Mhz.

How did Alley Cat run? I'm trying it myself, and even with sound off it seems to respond iffy to the controls? I must've got some setting wrong as later games like Pizza Worm and Night Raid react better than this, despite of being a tad slow gameplay-wise?

*edit*
Oh, never mind. I tinkered with the config file a bit and it runs kinda nice now.

 

[xdpirate]

Are there any updates on this project? We haven't had a post in quite a while =/