Dosbox Games You're Looking Forward To

[Clean3d]

I was rather hoping I'd be able to play Tomb Raider when I ordered, but it's looking more and more like that's not going to happen. I got the Keen games from Id, though. B)

There are a number of games here that I'd like to try. Does anyone know whether this is still legit? (look near the bottom)
http://www.3drealms.com/games.html

 

[Lafazar]

I was rather hoping I'd be able to play Tomb Raider when I ordered, but it's looking more and more like that's not going to happen. I got the Keen games from Id, though. B)

There are a number of games here that I'd like to try. Does anyone know whether this is still legit? (look near the bottom)
http://www.3drealms.com/games.html

The playstation version of tomb raider should run fine through a PSX emulator, it can be found quite cheaply on eBay.

While it's legit, I can't recommend 3DRealms' online shop at all. You can download your purchased game one single time and that's it, plus there is a considerable chance they might disappear altogether soon. I'd recommend getting your games from Good old Games (God, I'm beginning to sound like a PR agent of GOG). Unfortunately they only have Blake Stone, Rise of the Triad and Duke Nukem at the moment:
http://www.gog.com/en/search/sort/publisher/Apogee%20Software

 

[Prometheus]

Also, 3DRealms' price for the Keen games is higher than iD's.

 

[akarolick]

Commander keen FTW!!!!

 

[British]

Most of anything from Origin Systems would be pretty neat.

To name a few:
- Bad Blood
- Privateer
- System Shock

In the Ultima Universe: Just about everything (obviously besides U7 which seems to have been ported quite successfully).
To still put a few:
- Martian Dreams
- Savage Empire
- Underworld I & II
- Ultima V & VI

Being noob here, I'm not sure if I should have put those in the aptly named "The Pandora Port Request Thread" thread instead, since Dosbox would be sufficient.
But then again porting should imply less steps to launch the game(s).

Hmmm...

 

[MonkeyChops]

Hellollo and welcome!

I (and many other) prefer a bit of a grave dig to old threads rather than countless threads about the same thing so your good to go on that.

Running games in dosbox is not the same thing as porting a game. Porting generally refers to recompiling source code. So this is indeed a good place to post the dos games your excited to play.

there is a native ultima engine that should also interest you found here:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/55900-pandora-exult-ultima-vii-game-engine-v14-for-pandora/

Also check out this thread to see what people are doing with dosbox:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/53942-post-your-dosbox-successes-here/

 

[crade]

Quest for Glory! Also a scumm game, but I don't think scumvm can run it well. I haven't tried scummvm, cuz dosbox works fine on my system. I'll have to give it a try.

 

[j6cubic]

Das Schwarze Auge (Schicksalsklinge, Sernenschweif, Schatten über Riva )

Very yes. Even though I know that at least Riva will be unplayably slow, it'll be great to mind-control most enemies in the game and to become obscenely rich through the Gashok-Tiefhusen trade route. Albion is also a good idea.

Of course UFO: Enemy Unknown and its standalone mission pack will go on my Pandora (I still regard UFO as possibly the best game ever). Too bad X-Com: Apocalypse will most likely be much too slow.

Stunts. Definitely Stunts. Best racing game ever. Death Rally too, even if it's slow.


The first DOS thing I'll put on my Pandora, though, will be Second Reality. Screw portable Quake for geek cred!

 

[MUMBL35]

I've tried the following games and they are pretty much unplayable (Single Digit FPS).

Crusader: No Remorse
DaggerFall
Dungeon Keeper

 

[WizardStan]

Quest for Glory! Also a scumm game, but I don't think scumvm can run it well.

QfG (or Hero's Quest at the time) is a Sierra SCI game. FreeSCI should be able to play it, and ScummVM has very limited implementation of the SCI engine. It may or may not work. Probably not.
The remake used the superior AGI engine which is also someone supported by ScummVM, but probably not enough for QfG.

 

[relapse808]

Quest for Glory! Also a scumm game, but I don't think scumvm can run it well.

QfG (or Hero's Quest at the time) is a Sierra SCI game. FreeSCI should be able to play it, and ScummVM has very limited implementation of the SCI engine. It may or may not work. Probably not.
The remake used the superior AGI engine which is also someone supported by ScummVM, but probably not enough for QfG.

I think QFG1 is supported by new the SCUMMVM. The only games so far I really want to play that cannot be done via the new SCUMMVM is Quest for Glory 4 and the Gabriel Knight series. I may be wrong.

I also noticed someone said Privateer. I thought there was a open source version of privateer with updated graphics? Can this possibly be ported?

 

[British]

Hellollo and welcome!

I (and many other) prefer a bit of a grave dig to old threads rather than countless threads about the same thing so your good to go on that.

Running games in dosbox is not the same thing as porting a game. Porting generally refers to recompiling source code. So this is indeed a good place to post the dos games your excited to play.

there is a native ultima engine that should also interest you found here:
http://www.gp32x.de...14-for-pandora/

Also check out this thread to see what people are doing with dosbox:
http://www.gp32x.de...successes-here/

Aye, that's that very Exult thread that kinda made me thinking about other Ultima episodes and begging/hoping for either a port or some Dosbox stuff, and thus starting to post.

I do use Dosbox a bit, and have retails for quite a few Ultima, though I am yet to mix both.
Dosbox being a environment running other things (the games, for the matter at hand), as long as Dosbox is working in any other given environment, shouldn't like about *all* the programs running in Dosbox be able to run anywhere Dosbox is usable (or maybe then there's some processor specific compilation that comes into play, so to speak) ? :whistle:

But then again, that kind of discussion should probably be taken elsewhere :rolleyes:

 

[Prometheus]

I'm not entirely sure if you're alluding to piracy there, but if you are, as I'm sure you know, it is not welcome here. (Please do pardon me if I've misunderstood your wording, however! )

As for all programs DOSBox can run being runnable anywhere DOSBox is available, it's more complicated than that. It's an emulator, so due to the fact that the Pandora is not as powerful as all those beefy x86-based machines with a bazillion bahooieflops and all that junk, you're not going to be able to run absolutely everything. Currently, the upper limit that I've personally found is that some stuff that ran on a 486 will run well on the Pandora's port of DOSBox - the most intensive title I own and have run on it is Jazz Jackrabbit.

 

[British]

Woot, piracy ? :blink:

If the part that made you tick starts with "re" and ends with "tail", that was just me trying to imply that I have all those old boxes home, which I'm not half-proud of, even though I actually never played U7, for instance.
That's the "ZOMG I want that !" syndrome, that often result in stuff taking dust.

Regarding Dosbox, I suppose there's not many possibilities for the regular end-user to "improve" something so that it could run some program better (provided it's not too recent) ?
Or is it all in the hands of the Dosbox maintainer(s) (which makes more sense to me, but you never know) ?

 

[Prometheus]

Woot, piracy ? :blink:

If the part that made you tick starts with "re" and ends with "tail", that was just me trying to imply that I have all those old boxes home, which I'm not half-proud of, even though I actually never played U7, for instance.
That's the "ZOMG I want that !" syndrome, that often result in stuff taking dust.

Oh, no no no - I took the retail part as intended. I actually misunderstood the two sentences "or maybe then there's some processor specific compilation that comes into play, so to speak) ? :whistle:" and "But then again, that kind of discussion should probably be taken elsewhere :rolleyes: ". Again, please pardon me - I've evidently completely misunderstood! Sorry about that. (I guess it happens to everybody once in a while. )

And goodness, don't get me started on "I want that!" syndrome. I might have to take pictures of my collection... :lol:

Regarding Dosbox, I suppose there's not many possibilities for the regular end-user to "improve" something so that it could run some program better (provided it's not too recent) ?
Or is it all in the hands of the Dosbox maintainer(s) (which makes more sense to me, but you never know) ?

Well, in immediate terms the front-end packed with the PND offers some options for tweaking the cycles and whatnot, but I've no doubt that you know that part already.

The source code is available from the DOSBox homepage, too, but that's out of the realms of my understanding!

 

[crade]

I think QFG1 is supported by new the SCUMMVM. The only games so far I really want to play that cannot be done via the new SCUMMVM is Quest for Glory 4 and the Gabriel Knight series. I may be wrong.

I'l have to look into it while I'm waiting for the Pandora to come. I just picked up the anthology and am partway through QFG1 on my desktop. I am already picturing playing it (and/or the second one) on the pandora!
I don't really like the "superior" AGI engine games as much though.

 

[MonkeyChops]

on the dev side there is talk of adding hardware acceleration for the pandora port of dosbox.

on the user side you can tweak settings and overclock but thats about it.

you can use your desktop version of dosbox and set the cycles between 3000-5000, to get an idea of what it will be like on the pandora.

 

[Prometheus]

^ This. But bear in mind that 5000 is probably excessive. I found that 3000 gave the best approximations, personally.

 

[WizardStan]

on the dev side there is talk of adding hardware acceleration for the pandora port of dosbox.

The music code could especially use it, I think. Unless they've changed it, the FM synthesizer emulator (adlib music card mostly, but also available in Sound Blaster) is very heavy on floating point. I saw a 15% decrease in CPU usage when I disabled the sound.

 

[MUMBL35]

^ This. But bear in mind that 5000 is probably excessive. I found that 3000 gave the best approximations, personally.

I've got a question on the cpu cycles. I was testing arena and its almost playable. I was fooling around with the cycles and the games seems to run better if I set cycles to something like 16000 than if I set it to max or auto. The pandora is running at 830 mhz. I didn't do any lengthy testing, but is the 16000 making the game less stable or something? I remeber the number 3000 or 5000 being used for speed. Are those suggested for 500 mhz?