Release Dosbox

[zapman]

I found out the cause of the problems with nub-input in dosbox. See this post in the appropriate thread.



I also came across a thought while playing around with the dosbox config: on the dosbox wiki it sais that the rendering part of the dosbox is a very cpu intensive part of the dos emulation. The logfile posted in dosBoxFE tells me that the svga_s3 mode is used which seems to be a (at least) high res capable mode. Do we lose any cpu time here because we are running a mode that we actually aren't really needing? There is also a vgaonly mode that was introduced with dosbox 0.73 (called just vga mode in older dosbox versions) that seems to be more suitable for our needs:

vgaonly (previously vga) is VGA (Video Graphics Array): IBM's graphics system introduced with the PS/2. True VGA supports 16 colors at 640x480 resolution, or 256 colors at 320x200 resolution (and not 256 colors at 640x480, even though many people think it does). VGA colors are chosen from a palette of 262,144 colors (not 16.7 million) because VGA uses 6 bits to specify each color, instead of the 8 that is the standard today [copied from http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Dosbox.conf]

The dosbox frontend doesn't allow to set this mode because it was plainly not available until recently. I tried to manually edit the config file and see if it makes a difference but the logfile doesn't say anything about the vga-mode as soon as I set 'vgaonly' instead of 'vga'. Now I'm puzzled if I did something wrong or if it plainly doesn't make any difference, performance wise...

Could someone else have a look as well pls?

 

[Esn]

I wrote a very simple guide to using DOSBox here, in case anyone finds it confusing:
http://pandorawiki.org/DOSBox

I tried Keen 4 with the default config in dboxfe (changed cycles to "max" to improve speed), and it seems to have some slowdowns even at 700Mhz.

Would it be possible, please, to set A, B, X and Y to the default DOS game action keys (Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Space)? It's really awkward to play anything at all, otherwise.

I actually did try to reassign the keys within DOSBox (see the wiki page), but it seems that the A/B/X/Y buttons are already assigned to something else. So that when I try to use the pogo stick in Keen4 by pressing "X", Keen also wants to run to the left at the same time.

Is it possible to delete those other functions for those buttons?

EDIT: Also, when I start up Jazz Jackrabbit CD, Jazz is always running to the left. Prometheus says that he solved it by "re-copying the files"... that's just weird... why would that work?

 

[Esn]

Well, I fixed some problems, but am having a bunch of others.

To assign proper key mappings, I found the mapper.txt file in pandora/appdata/dosbox/.dboxfe/ and edited it. That seems to be the easiest way (and the only way, now that the keymapper in dboxfe has stopped showing up for me, for some reason). If anyone wants to do the same (the only way to make this emulator useful, really):

key 278 is A
key 279 is B
key 280 is Y
key 281 is X
key 303 is L-shoulder
key 305 is R-shoulder

Now for the other problems...

This emulator is not fun to use even with EGA games from the early 1990s. Even games like Keen 4-6 and Bio Menace don't run fullspeed at 900Mhz, but have small but frequent skips in the gameplay and music. If there was a good auto-frameskip, they would be very playable, but there isn't (frameskip 1 doesn't improve matters). I'm sure there must be some bottleneck here. Maybe that vga-only setting that was mentioned above, or something else... anyone have suggestions?

In Star Control 2, the music in the intro doesn't sound right; one of the audio channels sounds like it's slow.

A lot of the game folders I copied over from my PC seem to be write-protected, which means I can't save games and a bunch of other problems. I have no idea how to undo this; the file managers on the Pandora (both the default and Xfe) won't let me. Xfe says: "chmod in [...] failed: operation not permitted".

 

[Prometheus]

^ Esn, I've run the Keen games with none of the issues you've described, at a lower clock speed than that (none of the Pandoras I've had could clock to 900MHz), and with no frameskip. I don't have my Pandora to hand right now, but have you tried tweaking the various doodads in DOSBoxFE? I know from experience that some of them can make quite a difference.

 

[Esn]

^ Esn, I've run the Keen games with none of the issues you've described, at a lower clock speed than that (none of the Pandoras I've had could clock to 900MHz), and with no frameskip. I don't have my Pandora to hand right now, but have you tried tweaking the various doodads in DOSBoxFE? I know from experience that some of them can make quite a difference.

Sure, I'd love to know what settings to change...any hints?

 

[Prometheus]

I'm trying to remember off of the top of my head (my Pandora's LCD cable snuffed it, so it's not here with me ), but wasn't there something about which core to use, and the number of cycles, and suchlike? I had to do some trial-and-error tweaking of those with a few games at one point, and those made a difference.

 

[slaanesh]

I love DosBox for the Pandora - my fave emulator.

I have found that mouse emulation using the nubs isn't quite right?

For example running Harpoon, the mouse seems have incorrect bounding box limits? ie. you can't access the entire screen with the mouse cursor.
My own port of DosBox 0.74 port on the Nanonote/A320, I can access then entire screen with my mouse pointer, however using the nubs on the Pandora I cannot.

 

[Esn]

If anyone would like an easy way to map keys, see my post here... basically, just download this mapper.txt file and replace the one in the pandora\appdata\dosbox\.dboxfe directory. You'll get:

A (key 278)=lctrl
B (key 279)=rshift
Y (key 280)=space
X (key 281)=lalt
L (key 303)=rshift
R (key 305)=lalt

Regarding speed, I found this tip from last July: "Replace DOS4GW with DOS/32A extender (Not working for some games...for example, later Sierra Games like Larry 7 or Gabriel Knight 2). Every little bit helps."

I'd love to try, but I have no idea how I'd do that. How do I use it as a replacement? Where do I put it? Ok, I found some instructions here, but since I don't have any games which have that file in the game folder, this looks like it's kinda complicated to do, all with command-line... I'm not great with command lines, I was a user of Norton Commander in the DOS days...

Also another thing, anyone know how I can get the ~ symbol in DOSBox?

 

[mrdremel]

^ Esn, I've run the Keen games with none of the issues you've described, at a lower clock speed than that (none of the Pandoras I've had could clock to 900MHz), and with no frameskip. I don't have my Pandora to hand right now, but have you tried tweaking the various doodads in DOSBoxFE? I know from experience that some of them can make quite a difference.

Sure, I'd love to know what settings to change...any hints?

Also, disable all of the hardware emulation you don't need for a game(Gravis Ultrasound for instance). Everything that has to be emulated eats away speed.

I can run Keen4, full speed at the stock 500 Mhz. Just disable everything you don't need. That's why it's so great to have the front-end with profiles.

 

[Esn]

Also, disable all of the hardware emulation you don't need for a game(Gravis Ultrasound for instance). Everything that has to be emulated eats away speed.

I can run Keen4, full speed at the stock 500 Mhz. Just disable everything you don't need. That's why it's so great to have the front-end with profiles.

Could you please upload your .conf file for Keen4? (you could even upload it directly to the Pandora wiki... the compatibility list could use some conf file links ) Is that 500Mhz in Xfce, or in Minimenu?

I did try disabling some things after finding the tutorial "How to Improve Dosbox Performance in Eight Simple Steps". I think that helped a bit... I also tried changing "vga" to "ega", but that seems to have made it slower.

By the way, Netkeen (new multiplayer Commander Keen, video of what it plays like over here) seems to work on the Pandora, if a bit slow sometimes.

P.S. Question: Does Gravis Ultrasound work, or do I need to download these drivers here? I notice that Star Control 2 is one of the games that supports it (supposed to have better sound quality...)

 

[Geca]

My tests with DOSBOX at default 500 mhz:


I've tested DIV GAMES STUDIO 2 and it work and compile games!!!
The perfomance is aceptable.

http://img200.imageshack.us/i/imag1557.jpg/

http://img683.imageshack.us/i/imag1554.jpg/

But the DIV2 games don't have the same luck, they run at 1,2 frames per second, they are not playable of course...

http://img713.imageshack.us/i/imag1540.jpg/

http://img607.imageshack.us/i/imag1560v.jpg/

 

[Esn]

Seriously, Keen 5 is pretty much unplayable for me at 500-600Mhz, so either I have extremely high standards, or I'm doing something wrong. If anyone feels that they got the last 3 Keen games working perfectly at that speed, I'd really appreciate it if you could upload your .conf file somewhere so I could see what you did.

 

[Esn]

I've added a "known bugs and how to fix them" section to the wiki article on DOSBox:
http://pandorawiki.org/DOSBox#Known_bugs_and_how_to_fix_them

I encourage anyone to contribute if they find any more.

 

[Esn]

Prometheus reported a while back that DOSBox used to run much faster in either HotFix 3 or 4. (link) Anyone know why that might be the case?

 

[skeezix]

I am surprised. Should be no slowdowns, esp for SDL apps.

We are looking into a couple oddities that seem to have popped up (but make no sense why), so who knows..

jeff

 

[ldaneels]

I am drooling over the prospect of playing Might & Magic III & Amberstar, but I cannot get the emu to find the game directories. I have followed to the letter the instructions on the Pandora Wiki, but no dice...
One thing that bugs me is that it says that DboxFE is included with the download, but I only have dosbox.pnd.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[ldaneels]

hmmm, still no luck. I can't seem to type ':' in dosbox (works fine in other apps).
Here is what I did:
- created the dos folder in the root of my SD card, put the MM3 folder in it
- launched dosbox
- type 'mount c /media/mmcblk0p1/dos'
At that point it says drive C already mounted with local directory games/ (when I launch dosbox, it autotypes mount c games).
Any idea how to go around this (unmount the drive, change the autotype string, locate the local directory games,...).
Also, how can you type ':' in dosbox ?
Any idea where I could get the package with dboxfe ?
Thanks in advance

 

[zapman]

hmmm, still no luck. I can't seem to type ':' in dosbox (works fine in other apps).
Here is what I did:
- created the dos folder in the root of my SD card, put the MM3 folder in it
- launched dosbox
- type 'mount c /media/mmcblk0p1/dos'
At that point it says drive C already mounted with local directory games/ (when I launch dosbox, it autotypes mount c games).
Any idea how to go around this (unmount the drive, change the autotype string, locate the local directory games,...).
Also, how can you type ':' in dosbox ?
Any idea where I could get the package with dboxfe ?
Thanks in advance

typing : in the dos command line doesn't really work well so it's best to use the gui front end and set the drive parameters there. get it from http://dl.openhandhe....cgi?0,0,0,0,72 for example. more details on dosbox can be found here.

EDIT: for playing Amberstar, I would advise you to use the Amiga version instead!! It's got nicer graphics, better music and the emulator runs _fullscreen_ (I don't mind the stretching with RPGs) with 100% speed! What a wonderful game that was
Get UAE4all from repo.openpandora.org

 

[ldaneels]

ok, I must be missing something, but the frontend is not included in the download (there is only dosbox.pnd). Or maybe it is already included, but I don't know how to launch it...
Could you point me to a link that includes the frontend ?
Thanks for all the help.

 

[Pickle]

ok, I must be missing something, but the frontend is not included in the download (there is only dosbox.pnd). Or maybe it is already included, but I don't know how to launch it...
Could you point me to a link that includes the frontend ?
Thanks for all the help.

Both the frontend dboxfe and dosbox are in the dosbox.pnd. No matter if your using minimenu or xfce there should be 2 menu items loaded, look for the dosbox icon.