The Dosbox / Ibm Pc Information Thread

[BadAstronaut]

I am almost done with configs for Jones in the Fast Lane by Sierra. This game works very well on the GP2X, and the emulation even allows for Ad Lib audio. It is still a bit jumpy and far from perfect, but is nevertheless some sound and music
So what would you guys rather have for this release, sound and music that is not quite perfect, or a very minor speed increase and no sounds at all? There is always the in-game menu to turn music and sound off if you're not enjoying it.

I found that this game works well with a low CPU cycle - I imagine this frees up some of the GP2X's CPU power to process the audio, which is probably why I am getting better quality audio on this game than with Quest For Glory 3, which is considerably more demanding than Jones in the Fast Lane. Is there anyone reading this with a good technical knowledge of how the current version of DOSBox works on the GP2X? Am I right in believing that reducing CPU cycles will generally result in better sound quality?


UPDATE:
OK, I have just uploaded config files for Jones in the Fast Lane to the file archive:

Here's a working config for the excellent 'life simulator' from Sierra. This runs VGA graphics with Ad-Lib sound almost perfectly at 266mhz. The music could be better, but I have mapped the volume keys to let you turn the music/sound on and off.

Other than that, enjoy this great game, which allows up to four players at once (so you basically have a four person hot-seat multiplayer board game in your hands!)

Just read the included text file for installation notes and other information.

 

[A_Llama]

I mainly wanted to play master of orion in dosbox but it was extremely slow when I tried it... Would it not be possible on a GP2X?

 

[Hitnrun]

I mainly wanted to play master of orion in dosbox but it was extremely slow when I tried it... Would it not be possible on a GP2X?

You managed to run MOO on GP2X? Care to share your configuration files? I tried it but was not successfull...

 

[fusion_power]

christo930 dont you know theres interpeters to the keen series?

http://www.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,20,1190



AFAIK no Support for KEEN 4 and above. I'm waiting with DosBox on the GP2X until the config of this program is more easy (good frontend) and until Keen 4 runs full Speed. Please wake me up when this happens.

 

[christo930]

christo930 dont you know theres interpeters to the keen series?

http://www.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,20,1190



AFAIK no Support for KEEN 4 and above. I'm waiting with DosBox on the GP2X until the config of this program is more easy (good frontend) and until Keen 4 runs full Speed. Please wake me up when this happens.


Keen 1,2 and 3 are in a different ballpark than 4. The keen Trilogy starting with 4 is probably one of the, if the not the best platformer for the pc. It has great graphics, excellent control, lots of little extras, hidden levels lots of stuff to find, great worlds, great enemy's and a really cool hero. Sound could be better, but its not bad. Music is nothing memorable, but it doesn't get on your nerves ether. The is game really shows what can be done with EGA graphics (and it looks even better on a true EGA monitor). While EGA is only 16 color, it's true 16 colors, meaning that any pixel can be any of the 16 colors. Most of the 16 color 8 bits could only have 2 or 4 color sprites and no more than 4 colors in any 8x8 grid, that's why EGA looks so much better than other 16 color systems like C64 and Atari 8 bit. I just hope if they ever release a new keen, that it's not in 3d.

Cosmo is good, not in the same class with keen, but very good.

Duke Nukem (The first EGA trilogy) is a really good shooting platformer, probably the best in early pc platform type shooters.

Another good platformer for the pc is Superfrog! There is an Amiga version (works with an A500 so it probably works on the emulator).

Jazz Jackrabbit (interpretor available for gp2x) really good platformer, I would highly recommend it.

 

[BadAstronaut]

Update:
I have added configs for The Adventures of Willy Beamish. Grab them from here.

The game works very well with the GP2X controls, and I am going to work on Rise of the Dragon and Heart of China next, as these are all very similar games and the control scheme seems to work very well.

Incidentally, the controls and interface remind me a bit of how the Manhunter games worked, and I think that getting those to work under DOSBox with GP2X controls might work very well. I just can't remember if the Manhunter games required words or numbers to be typed in at any point, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

 

[jjplano]

badastronaut, have you try any game that uses the mouse for control on the gp2x dosbox?

i try today the incredible machine (first release) and the game starts, you get to see the sierra logo (with the little blue creature walking at full speed), and when you have to see the game presentation screen it exits

i noticed on the windows dosbox that something weird happend on that transition, like the resolution changes or something like that, but im not really sure if the error its because of that transition between the two screens or because of the mouse

can you give it a try?

 

[Hitnrun]

badastronaut, have you try any game that uses the mouse for control on the gp2x dosbox?

i try today the incredible machine (first release) and the game starts, you get to see the sierra logo (with the little blue creature walking at full speed), and when you have to see the game presentation screen it exits

i noticed on the windows dosbox that something weird happend on that transition, like the resolution changes or something like that, but im not really sure if the error its because of that transition between the two screens or because of the mouse

can you give it a try?

You managed to run TIM on DosBox? Which dosbox version are you guys using, I cannot run anything you are running!

 

[jjplano]

im using the bOingball version available on the archive

but i had only tried 3 games so far on the gp2x, the only one wich at least start is TIM

i think that we have to make a list of the different version here too, so we can try the games on all of them (there is a possibility that a game works on one and not on the others)

wich others are available? i read that pickle is making a really good job on his version (mouse control and other stuff) but he hasnt upload anything yet, right?

 

[Pickle]

wich others are available? i read that pickle is making a really good job on his version (mouse control and other stuff) but he hasnt upload anything yet, right?

Its not looking good.
I havnt been able to get a version that will run with both the touchpad support and mapper support. All the versions I made I cant get to run on my gp2x, plus none of Boing's vesions are running. I always get the same error.
BadAstronaut was able to run some of the builds I made with touchpad to I know it can be done. I havnt gotten any help on the error im getting and I cant continue until I get that solved. Ive tried everything I could think of.

 

[jjplano]

thats too bad pickle

i wish i could help, but i dont really have a clue at that deep

the dreffects version doesnt work at all, at least the boing one tries to start the games or something

whats very frustrating is that the two games he supplies works (alone in the dark and tyrian), but i cant make simpler games to even start

hope you can advance on yours, i dont think im gonna keep trying on this one any more

badastronaut, you are making all the possible config combinations to make a game start or do you have a way to know what to put on the .conf file for every single one? (mem, cpu cycles, etc)

 

[BadAstronaut]

Hello everyone.

Sorry for the quiet over the last few weeks - I am doing my Masters at university and had a few other priorities so I could not be as involved on the DOSBox side of things as I would like. Pickle has been hard at work on some new builds incorporating touchscreen support and a few tweaks here and there, and things are looking really good. We might be as far as we can get on DOSBox on GP2X unless the whole thing is either rewritten, or dynamic recompilation can be sorted out (I think - am I right here Pickle?).

Anyway, there are a few things left to do (specifically, getting the touchscreen support in DOSBox to be as accurate as in, say, SCUMMVM, but the good news is that nearly every SCI 2 game by Sierra (read: VGA with mouse input) will soon be fully playable. A number of people have spoken about being keen to play these games in SCUMMVM, but that is looking unlikely given politics and certain other reasons. Anyway, we can be happy with the fact that we can now play these classics on the GP2X. There are a number of these that I never completed when they first came out (Conquests of the Longbow and Quest for Glory 3 come to mind) and I am very stoked to be getting the chance to do that from the comfort of my own couch/bed/floor/garden. Thanks Pickle, for all the hard work.

Any chance we can assign, say, the L or R button so that when it is held down, and we click the touchscreen, it acts as a right click, and when the touchscreen is clicked without it, it acts as a left click?

 

[Pickle]

Here's the latest with dosbox and its good.
Hitnrun who has been testing was able to debug and anaylze the dosbox code and come up with some fixes to the dosbox code that fixes the touchscreen support.
I expect to have the final version ready to go within the week/weekend.

Any more performance would be creating a neccessary changes for dynarec. Ive looked at it and its not really hard, but one would have to know ARM and X86 asm to do it.

 

[Hitnrun]

I am helping Pickle with the touchscreen programming part, DOS mouse programming is a pain in the a**, so it took some time to figure it out (which I still didn't completly).

In my tests, I managed to make touchscreen works perfectly in all 320x200 and 320x240 games, perfect in some (SimCity2000) and almost perfect in others (TIM) in 640x400 and 640x480 games, but on other different resolutions it randomly works or don't work correctly, still need to debug a little more.

What I didn't managed to make work is mouse dragging, if I hold the cursos on the touchscreen the emulation almost stops (gets very slow), so only single clicking is working, no dragging.

I didn't messed with anything beside that, so compatibility should be the same as before (e.g: all games I tested works!).

Here is a list of games I tested (the fps I give is just an estimate):

- 2nd reality demo - works somewhat slow, but works (~8 fps)
- alley cat - works perfectly
- Master of Orion, works, little lagging sound, touchscreen works perfectly, but crashes when a game is about to start
- Alone in the Dark 1 - works, slow video and lagging sound (~8 fps)
- Cobra Mission - works, touchscreen perfect, video good speed, audio little lag (~15fps)
- Dune 2 - works, touchscreen perfect, video good speed, audio little lag (~15fps)
- Epic Pinball - works, video a little slow, audio totally broken (~20fps, but with several slowdowns)
- Gabriel Knight - works, touchscreen perfect, video a little slow, audio not too bad, with a little overclocking should be good (~15fps)
- World Circuit F1GP - works, touchscreen perfect, but too slow to play
- Gran Prix Circuit - works, video speed good (in game should be good with overclock), sound perfect (pc speaker) (~15fps)
- Heroes of Might and Magic 1 - works, touchscreen works good on the first top half of the screen, not so good on the bottom half
- Lemmings - works, very good video speed, sound effects work good, but mouse cursor don't go to some parts of the screen (dosbox desktop seems to have the same problem)
- Life and Death - works perfectly, mouse, video, and audio (~25fps)
- Pinball Fantasies - video works perfect, playable speed, sound almost perfect (a little slow), should be good with a little overclock (~25fps)
- Railroad Tycoon - works, video speed perfect, audio (pc speaker) almost good, mouse perfect
- SimCity 2000 - works, video is slow (640x480 resolution), audio lags a lot, but touchscreen is incredible perfect, even me can't believe it
- Settlers 2 - works, but didn't test it too much
- Stunts - works, video slow in game, audio a little lagging, touchscreen perfect (~10fps)
- The Incredible Machine - works, good video speed, audio a little lagging, mouse handling perfect on the top half of the screen, almost in the bottom part. Looks like it does some strange things with the mouse (~12fps)
- XCOM1 - works, touchscreen perfect, but didn't test it too much

 

[Pickle]

The dragging still could be a SDL issue, at least DJwillis (SDL maintainer) confirmedthat it doesnt work for SCUMMVM either.

 

[Hitnrun]

I downloaded the touchscreen sample from the file archive, and with it mouse dragging works, I modified it to use SDL, and with SDL it doesn't, so it probably is a problem with SDL.

 

[fusion_power]

Wow, Sim City 2000 works? This sounds very interesting. I have just a F-100 without Touchscreen but maybe this game is some kind of playable with Stick to? :lol: ...hmm.... but maybe I better wait for the Pandora and a DosBox version for the new Device. I think on Pandora, the Dosbox could be a "little bit" faster than on GP2X right?

 

[jjplano]

very nice guys!

really appreciate all the work you're doing

 

[Pickle]

Wow, Sim City 2000 works? This sounds very interesting. I have just a F-100 without Touchscreen but maybe this game is some kind of playable with Stick to? :lol: ...hmm.... but maybe I better wait for the Pandora and a DosBox version for the new Device. I think on Pandora, the Dosbox could be a "little bit" faster than on GP2X right?

At least 3x as fast. The stick could be hacked to move the mouse cursor, i would have to think about it if theres a good way to do it, right now it could mess things up as the stick already is tied to keyboard presses.

 

[trooper]

QUOTE
- Settlers 2 - works, but didn't test it too much


:blink:

</Faints/>

May have to get me a GP2x F200.

Trooper