Dosbox

[dr.no]

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/ (OpenSource)

It emulates a 386/468 and thus is able to run a LOT of the good old DOS games. The specs of the GP32 will surely be high enough for most of the games and the only GP32-specific thing to add would be a GUI and a per-game button-setting-thingy. It is fine C-Code and looks like a perfect port for the GP32.

Why had noone ported this yet?

 

[ColinR]

Very good question.

 

[Sonic-NKT]

this was asked often before...
and yes it would be possible but faaaaaaaaaaaaar to slow.. you need atlest a 500 mhz machine to get anything playable..

 

[shotaway]

i asked this about a week ago.....

i heard no valied reason not to port a cut down version with no sound...
also to speed it up you could use a arm core....
i don't code myself so don't even know if this is possible...but if some-one with the skill's would look over the sorce code and find someway of getting it to run....
that would be so cool.....

 

[Dark_TB]

And what about keyboard?

 

[pip]

Because it would be a much better idea to port pocketdos, since it is made for handheld machines with an ARM processor.

 

[dr.no]

Because it would be a much better idea to port pocketdos, since it is made for handheld machines with an ARM processor.

But that one isn't OpenSource - it isn't even Freeware, so I see no chance in a port of this one. In addition, it natively runs on WinCE.

And what about keyboard?

You would have to insert some sort of menu to launch the .exe of a game and a per-game mapping of the buttons to keyboard-keys.

this was asked often before...
and yes it would be possible but faaaaaaaaaaaaar to slow.. you need atlest a 500 mhz machine to get anything playable..

I did not know this as this was my first post and it seems asif the older threads are being deleted for some reason. :/
But I also did not expect that you would need a 500Mhz-Machine to emulate a 486. How would a 486 compare to a SNES, for example? Why is it that much harder to emulate?

 

[shotaway]

i found the thread i started on the subject....read it here....
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=7696&hl=

it's all tech stuff from coder's i think...

 

[dr.no]

i found the thread i started on the subject....read it here....
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=7696&hl=

it's all tech stuff from coder's i think...

Thanks, this convinced me. Okay, so no DOS for GP32 yet.

But what else then could be ported to GP32? There is nothing left, I think. :/

 

[no_skill]

straight ports (source available):

duke nukem 3d (source is available)
descent 1
quake 1
quake 2 (with stripped down enginge / models)


rewrites:
cannonfodder 1,2 (must have)
metal slug
commando (i'll do that somewhen)
...

 

[mr.mirko]

straight ports (source available):

duke nukem 3d (source is available)
descent 1
quake 1
quake 2 (with stripped down enginge / models)


rewrites:
cannonfodder 1,2 (must have)
metal slug
commando (i'll do that somewhen)
...

duke nukem 3d (source is available)
descent 1
quake 1
quake 2 (with stripped down enginge / models)

couse the gp32 arm9tdmi cpu lacks of a floating point co processor,
every "real" 3D game will suffer in 2-3fps... And this is unplayable...

Nobody wants to waste time in porting "never working" software ...

 

[croolis]

regarding dos ports, i thought we were speaking about emulating an 8088/8086 class CPU .. most classic PC games *do* run on that hardware (now *who* wants to run them is a totally different question). Most of the games had better versions on Atari ST anyway. I do think emulating an 8088 machine would be feasable given the GP32's vastly superior specification. Emulating an 80486 is a totally different question (speed-wise, ie).

just my 2c worth

 

[raven]

regarding dos ports, i thought we were speaking about emulating an 8088/8086 class CPU .. most classic PC games *do* run on that hardware (now *who* wants to run them is a totally different question). Most of the games had better versions on Atari ST anyway. I do think emulating an 8088 machine would be feasable given the GP32's vastly superior specification. Emulating an 80486 is a totally different question (speed-wise, ie).

just my 2c worth

But you are not just emulating a cpu. You also need to emulate a graphics and a soundcard. Once that is done you still need to run dos plus the software you would want to use. It's just not that simple.

 

[Efompor]

duke nukem 3d (source is available)
descent 1
quake 1
quake 2 (with stripped down enginge / models)

couse the gp32 arm9tdmi cpu lacks of a floating point co processor,
every "real" 3D game will suffer in 2-3fps... And this is unplayable...

Nobody wants to waste time in porting "never working" software ...

Duke3d could work (it's like doom), and descent works ok for not being nearly optomised. The guy abandoned the Descent project. The problem is there are just too many controls, the GP32 doesnt have enough buttons. It's one thing to be switching between control modes on osnes9xgp, another to be changing from "look" controls to "move and fire controls" in an FPS.

What I really want is a port of the Stratagus open source strategy game engine. Mainly just because you can play warcraft II on it like you can play doom wads on GPdoom

 

[papapopalung]

so what about the acorn emulator mentioned in that other thread? is that more feasible?

 

[khephren]

so what about the acorn emulator mentioned in that other thread? is that more feasible?

Yeah, the Acorn Risc PC range from the Archimdes up sported a lot of PC/Amiga ports in it's early days, and good 3D stuff later on.

The bonus with this would be: It's very simple architecture with an arm CPU.
-you would not need to emulate the CPU, so good chance of full speed.

drNo- The snes was a 16bit 3.58MHZ machine (with custom hardware)
The 486 was 32bit 25MHZ that's a big difference.

Also, as for there being nothing left to port, there are a ton of open source games/apps that could be ported, +a decent stab at mame, Amiga, Acorn RISC, GBA (who knows!), SAM coupe (the super spectrum)... quite a lot!

Mirko- The pocket PC version of Quake on which the GP version was based was in plain C, with floats, ran at about 2-3FPS. However, the most recent pocketPC version (source freely available) has all the floats converted, and has a lot of ARM asm speedups, it's just that no one has got round to porting it over yet.

Same goes for other PC ports, unless floats are taken out in the original port, or by one of our coders- it will indeed run like a dog...But seeing the pocket PC fraternity have a habbit of taking floats out of their EMU's, there is hope (as they are pretty much all ARM based, to some degree)