Dosbox

[gruso]

So you're happily Jazz Jackrabbitting now?

 

[Viking]

So you're happily Jazz Jackrabbitting now?

It works, kinda. It got minor bugs that I think can be easely fixed like there's no music. And he always walks towards, so that's a bigger problem. I can't go back

 

[milkshake]

why are you using dosbox to play jazz jackrabbit? there is an engine for the pandora you can use that is specifically fot that game look in the file archive. you just need to put the game files into the appdata directory.

 

[Prometheus]

why are you using dosbox to play jazz jackrabbit? there is an engine for the pandora you can use that is specifically fot that game look in the file archive. you just need to put the game files into the appdata directory.

He, like myself, is probably using DOSBox for it because OpenJazz does not yet fully support Jazz Jackrabbit properly.

 

[Viking]

why are you using dosbox to play jazz jackrabbit? there is an engine for the pandora you can use that is specifically fot that game look in the file archive. you just need to put the game files into the appdata directory.

He, like myself, is probably using DOSBox for it because OpenJazz does not yet fully support Jazz Jackrabbit properly.

And I, didn't know about this engine


But I've having problems running Jazz Jackrabbit properly in DOSbox. He always walks forward, can't go the other way

 

[Poem58]

Sorry to go slightly off topic, but I cannot remember what the max cycles will be for DOSBox on the Pandora. By now there's probably a number for standard and overclocked. I need to know so I can test games now that I have it set up on the PC.


I'm hoping 4000 is possible as Epic's Extreme Pinball runs decent at that cycle setting and is my current DOS favorite of old. Any help is appreciated.

 

[Viking]

Sorry to go slightly off topic, but I cannot remember what the max cycles will be for DOSBox on the Pandora. By now there's probably a number for standard and overclocked. I need to know so I can test games now that I have it set up on the PC.


I'm hoping 4000 is possible as Epic's Extreme Pinball runs decent at that cycle setting and is my current DOS favorite of old. Any help is appreciated.

I think max cycle was 850, so it would match the overclocking

 

[WizardStan]

Cycles is not the same as clock.


The current estimate is around 5000 cycles, if I recall. Not sure if that's stock speed or overclocked though. I just set mine on auto and let it suck up as much CPU as it thinks it can.

 

[Thraka]

Where should we post issues with the port? I have some problems with games and the keyboard mapper is too big to see on the pandora screen.

 

[Black Hood]

Not sure if this is the best thread to post in, but I just ran into a issue with dboxfe (I assume).


I've been using dboxfe and dosbox for a week or so playing World of Xeen (which runs great, by the way, and I'm really enjoying it) but today when I went to start up using the default config in dboxfe, dosbox runs and I get a Z: instead of C:


I haven't changed anything in the config; I haven't ejected my sd cards or really done anything except run Xeen; I've exited Xeen in game and then exited dosbox by typing exit everytime. No hard reboots or anything.


Any idea why dosbox would stop giving me a C: and give a Z: instead?


I figure I'll try removing all the existing files and re-download the pnd and see what happens, unless someone can give me a better idea.


Thanks!

 

[Prometheus]

I figure I'll try removing all the existing files and re-download the pnd and see what happens, unless someone can give me a better idea.

I encountered this last week, and all I had to do was open Thunar (the file-manager), navigate to /pandora/appdata/dosbox on the SD Card where the PND is in use, press CTRL and the "H" key to view hidden files, and delete the configuration files for DOSBox and DOSBoxFE which were revealed by doing this. Running it again after that showed that everything was back to normal. However, I'm not sure why it happened in the first place.

 

[Black Hood]

Thanks Prometheus, deleting those hidden files worked. Quite mysterious.

 

[Neelix]

I encountered this last week, and all I had to do was open Thunar (the file-manager), navigate to /pandora/appdata/dosbox on the SD Card where the PND is in use, press CTRL and the "H" key to view hidden files, and delete the configuration files for DOSBox and DOSBoxFE which were revealed by doing this. Running it again after that showed that everything was back to normal. However, I'm not sure why it happened in the first place.

Never having encountered this issue I can't be sure, but based on this description I suspect that something in either dosbox or dosboxfe tried to delete a file which is present in the PND.


Union file systems work by mounting the base image as read only, (the PND) then mounting an overlay as read/write (the appdata folder) to make it seem like you are writing to the same area.


So what happens if you try to delete a file in the read only section? Since they can't actually be deleted they are masked by a hidden file.


When you remove the hidden file from the overlay the files are no longer hidden and hey presto the program can see them again.


But again... thats only a guess.

 

[Esn]

I wrote a DOSBox tutorial a while ago on the Pandorawiki. It may help with basic issues. I do wish people would use the original DOSbox discussion thread over on GP32x, though, as all these threads pretty much guarantee that the relevant info will be hard to find. (the official discussion thread for almost any program is listed in the wiki software lists; see my signature)


I have the same problem with Jazz cd. The reason I'd prefer not to use Openjazz instead is because I don't find the controls quite accurate (jumping in particular... though it comes close)

 

[Black Hood]

Esn, I read your tutorial when I was getting started with setting Dosbox up, it was very helpful. Thanks for writing it up.

 

[Viking]

I've not been able to play Jazz Jackrabbit yet Can't go backwards and it's a bit laggy.. Is there any specific conf. I have to do?

 

[Prometheus]

I believe I've finally figured out how my previous fix for running Jazz Jackrabbit CD using DOSBox worked! The Jazz-walking-left problem re-occurred for me when I received my new Pandora. I hadn't used DOSBox in a while, and I had had to re-load the contents of my SD Card since the last time I'd used DOSBox, so it was like starting afresh. I have just this minute had time to test my fix. Now I can outline it properly. (Esn, I know you asked about this on the other forum, so I hope you see this - I know why re-copying my files worked, now.)


Whilst I do not know what causes it, I now know that trying to load Jazz from a folder that was set up on another machine (in this case, my main computer, which runs Xubuntu) seems to result in the problem with Jazz automatically walking to the left. Just now, I re-copied the files afresh (which I described on the other forum, previously), and, here's the important bit: I ran the setup program on the Pandora. This seems to have solved the issue for me, although I don't know exactly why that would be. Please let me know if it works for you guys.


@Viking specifically, if it helps you out at all, my settings for Jazz are as follows: In DOSBoxFE, I set the Core to "Full", and set the Cycles to "Auto". In Jazz Jackrabbit's setup program, I set the sound card to SoundBlaster Clone, and set the music quality to Medium - this will be the only option you'll get in the setup program. After saving and exiting from here, I set up the following in the game itself: I set the detail to Low, and set the animation setting to No Colour Animation. There is a key to press to bring down the level of detail in the special stages, too, but that can only be done whilst in a special stage, and I can't remember what that key is right now (it's one of the F1-F12 keys, though, if I'm remembering rightly). I find that if I set my Pandora to 850MHz (that's the highest my Pandora can go at stock voltage - I don't overvolt it) with these settings, it runs full speed much of the time, although it does slow down sometimes.


I hope this helps a bit.

 

[Esn]

Thanks Prometheus. I've added a "known bugs and how to fix them" section to the wiki article on DOSBox:


http://pandorawiki.org/DOSBox


I encourage anyone to contribute if they've found any more.


Personally, though, I've always found that "max" cycles gives me much better speed than "auto"