DOSBox Speed...

[Fatman2001]

Hey guys,


Quick question, how do you or what is the best way of speeding up DOSBox?


As 90% of the games I play or even try to run seem to struggle, not something I've come to expect from Pandora so I'm sure it's just something I'm doing wrong. A good example of a game I'd really like to get going at a good speed via DOSBox is C&C: Red Alert.


Any help would be appreciated, as always!

 

[Pickle]

Hey guys,


Quick question, how do you or what is the best way of speeding up DOSBox?


As 90% of the games I play or even try to run seem to struggle, not something I've come to expect from Pandora so I'm sure it's just something I'm doing wrong. A good example of a game I'd really like to get going at a good speed via DOSBox is C&C: Red Alert.


Any help would be appreciated, as always!

Set cycles to max and overclock

 

[Morn]

Red Alert Requires at least Pentium. On Pandora we are somewhere around 386.


Anyway my universal tip for dosbox is to run some system monitor (on Pandora You can use conky) and increase cycles in DOSBox until CPU load reaches 90%.

 

[MrLemonyFresh]

Speaking of making dosbox more effeciant, is it possible to give it more memory? atm everything is running with 16mb, and i want to take it up to see if blood will run (no pun intended) I tried creating a config file but dosbox seems to ignore it and happily go on loading with 16mb of memory.

 

[DoubleDash]

If you are really desperate for a taste of C&C: Red Alert then you could run it at full speed with proper gaming controls via the PS1 emulator version and game.


Yeahh, I know this is "cheating"

 

[Fatman2001]

Thanks DoubléDash, great suggestion...though for me the PSX version of Red Alert wasn't the best version of the game particularly in terms of AI anyway! I will be sure to give this a good in the mean time though


Is anyone likely to pickup OpenRedAlert again? Thanks to Mega GP Mania and his efforts, this certainly has potential and could be a great way for us to play the PC version of the game more natively and optimised for the Pandora. How difficult would it be to work on and develop this further myself? I would like to contribute something to this community but at the same time not steal the well deserved kudos from Mega GP Mania.

 

[konqithedragon]

Speaking of making dosbox more effeciant, is it possible to give it more memory? atm everything is running with 16mb, and i want to take it up to see if blood will run (no pun intended) I tried creating a config file but dosbox seems to ignore it and happily go on loading with 16mb of memory.

what happens when you edit the main dosbox config file and change memsize to another number?

 

[bismuthdrummer]

DosBox performance


DosBox/Pandora compatibility


Start with the CPU and system settings, trying out different values. Usually max cycles works well, but some older games may require fixed cycles or they'll run too fast. My guess is that the games you're trying to run will want max, if they're struggling.


Try running DosBox and your games on a 'big' PC to tweak the settings. Get a feel for what works well, then transfer the config to the Pandora and tweak. There are some DOS games that are simply too heavy for even the Pandora, surprisingly. Emulation isn't easy.


Beyond that, you can try sacrificing some a la frameskip and sound. Edge up the frameskip a bit to see if that eases the load. Also try lowering the sound rate and blocksize, or disable sound altogether. These may help the game run more smoothly, although the sound and graphical quality will be lower or nonexistent.

 

[MrLemonyFresh]

No worries, i already figured it out, but damn... blood runs slow. At one point i was lucky enough to have a still frame shot of the bottom of the cript with the midi music playing in the background XD lucky me. Wish god damn atari would do something about the source code, there's the alpha source code released but it's really not good enough. There's a quake engine adaption, but i think it's only for darkplaces and like many remake projects it's ended with multiplayer short of even the first campaign.

 

[MarioPandio]

A PC version of Red Alert (rather than PSX) is already ported for use outside of DosBox. It isn't that stable according to that thread but the engine PND (on Repo), links to the data files as its freeware and instructions to get it running are in that link, aswell as some video. http://www.gp32x.de...23-openredalert





There's more discussion here http://boards.openpa...d-conquer-port/ aswell.





Edit : my bad, I see Fatman2001 already brought up OpenRedAlert.