Post Your Dosbox Successes Here

[Loonie]

Does the Pandora version of DOSBox support Roland MT-32 emulation? Does it slow things down at all?

--Zero

Please don't derail the thread, we're talking about bunnies.

 

[Mloren]

Does anyone know if Raptor: Call of Shadows works?
What about Tyrian?

 

[fusion_power]

Does anyone know if Raptor: Call of Shadows works?
What about Tyrian?

Good game! I've playet it alot ages ago in good old DOS-times. There were not many Shooters for the PC at this time.

 

[silver]

if anyone could make a video of the demo "second reality" by Future Crew, it would ease my pain waiting for my pandora

@ macsimus Sorry but I don't have a camera, the demo works full speed at 850MHZ

Anything that requires a 486 is almost certainly out as well.

Second Reality definitely needed a 486 to run full speed back in the day. So perhaps OC'd Pandora matches a low end 486 in Dosbox at the moment - although it probably depends on game in question - stronger at some things, worse in others...

 

[socket]

Does anyone know if Raptor: Call of Shadows works?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FPFXKybDMQ

I can't recall... this is either at 500 or 600 MHz. Runs pretty well. I will have a go with it now... Lunch break!

 

[Ze_ro]

Does the Pandora version of DOSBox support Roland MT-32 emulation? Does it slow things down at all?

Anyone know? My understanding is that DOSBox supports MT-32 emulation, but "official" releases disable it since you need ROMS from a commercial device... If it's not included, any chance it can be enabled in the next version?

What about Tyrian?

There's an open source version of Tyrian out there, and it's already been ported to the GP2X... I'm sure someone will port it to the Pandora sooner or later. Probably better off waiting for that.

--Zero

 

[masterdetox]

Had a quick play on UFO and it seems to work well. Touchscreen seems to work OK at 500Mhz but it goes a bit odd at 750Mhz so I had to use the nubs instead The zooming in and out of intercepts is jerky but tactical games seem to work fine.

Also the first Dune works great as well at 500

 

[ZoxFox]

I have seen that, i did not try many things to optimize the speed yet.

so are you confident we´ll have warcraft2 running with fullspeed one day?
and is it easy to figure out where the power limit of the pandora is by reference to the hardware requirements? or does it differ from each game?

 

[Pickle]

I have seen that, i did not try many things to optimize the speed yet.

so are you confident we´ll have warcraft2 running with fullspeed one day?
and is it easy to figure out where the power limit of the pandora is by reference to the hardware requirements? or does it differ from each game?

well, I know a bit more since then. I doubt wc2 will ever be fullspeed, some small maps are playable.
Each game can be different, but usually games from a certain time period are similar. We can play anything requireing a 386/low 486

 

[Khan]

Mmmm...now that we are on subject...Pickle, do you think blitting could be optimized for high-resolution games via hardware acceleration (framebuffer or OpenGL wrapper)? IIRC Dosbox supports OpenGL rendering.

PD: Sorry if I sound too noobish

 

[SeriouslyMike]

Quick question: does Pandora have any frontend for the DosBox, like DBFE or DosShell?

 

[Pleng]

Yes

 

[Pickle]

Mmmm...now that we are on subject...Pickle, do you think blitting could be optimized for high-resolution games via hardware acceleration (framebuffer or OpenGL wrapper)? IIRC Dosbox supports OpenGL rendering.

Dont think we can use the current opengl as it is used, but it is something that could improve performance, not sure how much. The easiest way might be when/if dosbox switches to SDL 1.3

 

[Khan]

Glad to know there´s still some hope. Thanks mate!

 

[SeriouslyMike]

How fast can Pandora emulate a DOS PC (on average)? There are various figures given here - do games really vary that much in performance?

 

[WizardStan]

How fast can Pandora emulate a DOS PC (on average)? There are various figures given here - do games really vary that much in performance?

About 5000 cycles in DosBox. More or less. (Exophase steps in with a "not all cycles are created equal" comment )
It doesn't map perfectly to an x86 speed, but a reasonably estimate would be a 386/33 right now. But it's just an estimate. There are some games that required a 486 that'll run fine, and some that required a 386 that'll slow to a crawl. If you want to know if it'll work on the Pandora, try running it in DosBox on your PC at 5000 cycles, that'd give you a good idea of how well it'll work.

 

[nihilon]

I came across a homebrew DOS emulator for the Nintendo DS (It's called 'DSx86')that was supposed to run Master of Orion and other games at very playable speeds. Its still being worked on it seems. Latest version was released on 6/13/10. Seems to be fairly well along and solid.

Here's the link to the developer's page: http://dsx86.patrickaalto.com/

And a link to the compatibility listing on the same page: http://dsx86compatibility.pbworks.com/Compatibility-List

My point in mentioning this is that perhaps more could be emulated if a few short cuts were taken. i.e. Don't try for 'complete' emulation, only what the game requires, lower resolutions, etc.

I just think its damned impressive that he's gotten as much up and running on the lowly DS as he has!

**EDIT: Wow...DOS Might & Magic 4 & 5...on the DS..someone loan him a Pandora ASAP. **

 

[SeriouslyMike]

How fast can Pandora emulate a DOS PC (on average)? There are various figures given here - do games really vary that much in performance?

About 5000 cycles in DosBox. More or less. (Exophase steps in with a "not all cycles are created equal" comment )
It doesn't map perfectly to an x86 speed, but a reasonably estimate would be a 386/33 right now. But it's just an estimate. There are some games that required a 486 that'll run fine, and some that required a 386 that'll slow to a crawl. If you want to know if it'll work on the Pandora, try running it in DosBox on your PC at 5000 cycles, that'd give you a good idea of how well it'll work.

Five thousand cycles? Kinda lousy, I had to run some games (Syndicate and/or XCOM) faster than that, though I'll have to check again.

 

[WizardStan]

Five thousand cycles? Kinda lousy, I had to run some games (Syndicate and/or XCOM) faster than that, though I'll have to check again.

This is also lacking a proper recompiler, keep in mind. There's always some room for improvement.

 

[lokiase]

hejhej.
found some time to test a bunch of games:
all tested on the latest dosbox (6/6/2010) with 4000 cycles and pandora clocked to 801.
keyboard always worked and the sound in most of the games also.
i did not take much time to configure anything --> just copied the files and fired them up.

here they come:

battle isle 2 - worked well - played first map - touchscreen and nubs did an excellent job

ultima underworld 1,2 - both worked well - intro of UW2 without stuttering or anything, but without a mouse it´s quite exhausting to play

fantasy general - worked well - played first map - touchscreen and nubs worked very well

system shock 1 - worked but to slow even at low details...sadly

might and magic 4/5 (world of xeen) - excellent, absolutely playable

might and magic 3 - the same for the third part -> excellent

lands of lore - intro worked but after selecting a character the game crashed. might have to try that another time.

elders scrolls arena - too slow. but it was in a way playable but only if you´re a die hard enthusiastic

elder scrolls daggerfall - installation processed finished but afterwards it didn´t want to start, cause of some cd problems. will look into that later.

the same goes for heroes of might and magic 1 - dos version always wanted the cd and I had no time to find out how to cope with it.

and a BIG THANKS goes to pickle for all your work on the dosbox
reeeaaaaaaaaly appreciated!!!!