[DOSBox] official thread

[ecto]

Hi,

has anyone successfully tried getting Frontier: First Encounters (Elite 3) to run?
There is a shareware version online to try it out. Dosbox SVN and Stagingboth crash, when I press a button in the startup screen. Apparently dosbox pure crashes, too.

I can run the game with the exact same files from my desktop Windows pc, so it's probably related to the platform?

[jamrom2]

so after playing with all the versions of each module... I'm finding that none of this is an exact science with getting any of this to work.

• Lr-dosbox-pure looks fantastic, easy to install games (no config files) and has a great "retroarch based menu", but jeeze... it's nearly impossible to get one controller configuration to work on every game. Plus it keeps adding a *.save file which I can't figure out how to re-direct to another location to save to.

• Dosbox-Staging - for whatever reason that four hours of tweaking couldn't find... the keyboard doesn't work, neither can I get the shader to display. Like every DOS game from back in the day, it must be tweaked per game. Not a big deal, it's kind-of expected.. but since the keyboard dosn't work, what's the point.

• Dosbox-SDL2 - same as above. And I can see when it loads, it's loading the correct version in the blue DosBox "autoexec" load screen. It's loading SVN and having the exact issues Staging is, although the .conf has no info other than display and autoexec.

• DosBox (the baseline version)- everything works in it, but the screen never displays is true 4:3 so it looks odd. Other than that, everything seems to work without much tweaking required.

So in conculsion... this is a lot of work and I don't see anything working. It's like starting 10 projects at once, and not completing any of them.

[ecto]

@jamrom2 said in [DOSbox] official thread:

so after playing with all the versions of each module... I'm finding that none of this is an exact science with getting any of this to work.
[...]
So in conculsion... this is a lot of work and I don't see anything working. It's like starting 10 projects at once, and not completing any of them.

Hmm, that's really sad to hear. I, too, had many problems with different DOS games (see two posts up...), but then - it was always like then back in the glorious MS-DOS days. But unlike you, I usually hadn't had problems with the emulators themselves...
The non-working keyboard is strange. Just to be sure: you don't use XINIT:now, do you? Because that was the only time my keyboard wasn't working with Dosbox.

Here are some things you could test (with no guarantee of success ;) ):

• does the keyboard work when you start Dosbox without any game? (using +Start Dosbox.sh). What does the log say?
• maybe you can start Dosbox directly from the shell and see what it does/says?
• there are only a few settings for the keyboard in the dosbox.conffile. Like keyboardlayoutor usescancodes. Can you have a look at them? Maybe change them? Afaik, usescancodes doesn't work with Retropie, but you never know...
• What keyboard do you have? Can you try another one?

Then a general tip for setting up the games (and be sure, that it's not Dosbox'es fault when something doesn't work): Do you have Dosbox set up on a pc maybe? When I'm fiddling with my games, I usually install them on my Windows machine (with a similar setup like drive names etc.) and when everything works , I just transfer the game to my Retropie. GOG games are usually pretty good with that: just install them and transfer the right folder over. Done.

And the streched vew of Dosbox-SVN is probably due to dispmanx, I would guess. That is expected but can be changed later, when everything else works!

[jamrom2]

@ecto Well... guess what... I finally found the culprit to all my issues with these emulators...

my old mapper file from dosbox. I've been pulling over the file for several builds not realizing what effect it would have on my build. Here's how I found it.

I took out another microSD card, created a "short build" with the newest RP 4.7.1 and updated the script to .12. Pulled down DOSBox, DOSBox-SDL2 and lr-dosbox-pure. Behold... they all worked. Keyboard was working.

The lightening struck and there it was... my own doing.. as usual. I reverted back to my build, changed all the mapping statements back to default and it works great. I now have SDL2, Staging and DOSBox working with full keyboard support!

I'm not going to think what could have changed in the mapper file, but I'm sure something did as mine is over 5 years old.

Now on to getting the shader parameters I have setup in lr-dosbox-pure into Staging. I was able to tweak the "crt-pi-curvature" to a point that it gives the look of an early 90's Computer monitor. It has that soft "crystalline" look to it that makes the pixels dithered and faded. Unlike the CRT filter that gives the harshness of an arcade CRT.

At any rate... wow was this a massive learning experience. Lessons learned...

• ask a ton of questions... lol.
• this forum, as usual, is amazing!
• make sure you dump ALL old files and start new.
• it's always user error. lol.

Thanks a mil for all your help, and @nemo93 as well. I've been sticking around a lot to give as much help to others as I can, especially with the lr-atari800/5200 and Daphnie/Singe setups. I can add this one to the list as well.

Best,

JamR

[ecto]

@jamrom2 Congrats and happy DOS gaming! Now there are tons of great games right aroud the corner!

[jamrom2]

@ecto said in [DOSbox] official thread:

@jamrom2 Congrats and happy DOS gaming! Now there are tons of great games right aroud the corner!

Thank you and @nemo93 ! Got any favorites you want to share?

I'm big on flight simming and WWII games...so mine are straight forward.

Red Baron & Red Baron II
Aces Over Europe
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe
Syndicate
System Shock
Team Yankee
A-10 Tank Killer

Just to name a short list

[VictimRLSH]

@jamrom2 Were there DOS versions of Beach Head and Beach Head II? Those were really fun WWII games on the C64.

[jamrom2]

@victimrlsh from what I know, A800 and C64 only. I always check mobygames.com to look for any crazy variants.

Those were great games. Spent hours playing them both.

[jamrom2]

@ecto hi. I ran into an odd video problem I thought I'd run by you to see of you ever experienced this.

I was using lr-dosbox-pure. All was good, but I was having issues with getting the joystick to be recognized on a few games. I jumped into the Retroarch menu and fiddle with the options for the controllers. Closed the menu with no auto save. Reopened, and now I get a massive black box covering 3/4 of my screen that I can't remove.

I tried a few other games, same thing. I dumped the retroarch.cfg and rebuilt it. It worked for a few games then it came back.

Deleted everything and reloaded the emulator, same thing.

Any thoughts.

Rhanns6

[ecto]

No, sorry. I've not tried dosbox-pure so I can't comment on that. :(
Have you looked at the github page of pure? Maybe someone else had the same issue?
I've had some strange behaviour with other lr cores when AI translation was triggered when I entered the RA menu. But your description soumds different then that. Sorry

[nemo93]

@jamrom2 congrats for finding the issue and for fixing it!! Nicely done and I hope you'll get plenty of fun actually playing the games rather than configuring the emulators :-) I'm afraid I'm not a flight sim or ww2 kind of guy but feel free to report performance or anything related to the DOSbox "cores" you're testing/playing with. That would be of much help for everyone. Thanks!

[jamrom2]

@nemo93 Everything is working good. Sure, there is some tweaking for the games to work with the joystick, but for the most part, everythinghas been plug'n play.

The only issue I am still having i sgetting the shader to display, Is it only for a Pi4? I have a Pi3b+. Here is my runcommand.log with the non-essential stuff edited out.

The shader I am using is from that list you posted. It's zfast_crt.glsl. I've played with a ton of the settings, but still cannot get the shader to display as you can see in the log.

pc
dosbox-staging
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/aoe.conf
Not an lr-atari800 system.
Parameters:
Executing: bash /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/+Start\ DOSBox-Staging.sh "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/aoe.conf"
dosbox-staging version 0.77.0

CONFIG: Loading primary file /home/pi/.config/dosbox/dosbox-staging.conf
CONFIG: Loading additional file /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/aoe.conf
MAIN: Disabling resizable window, because it's not compatible with selected render.glshader
MAIN: Use 'sharp' or 'none' to keep resizable window.
OPENGL: Pixel buffer object extension: missing
MAIN: Draw resolution: 640x480, pixel aspect ratio: 1.00
SDL:OPENGL: No support for texturesize of 1024, falling back to surface
MOUNT: Path '/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/dos' found
MAIN: Draw resolution: 640x400, pixel aspect ratio: 1.20
SDL:OPENGL: No support for texturesize of 1024, falling back to surface
MAIN: Draw resolution: 320x200, double-width, double-height, pixel aspect ratio: 1.20
SDL:OPENGL: No support for texturesize of 512, falling back to surface
MAIN: Draw resolution: 320x200, double-width, double-height, pixel aspect ratio: 1.20
SDL:OPENGL: No support for texturesize of 512, falling back to surface
SDL: released the mouse

Here is the section of my "aoe.conf" file for Aces Over Europe. All I keep getting are business card sized boxes no matter what I set "output=" to other than texturenb.

[sdl]
fullscreen = true
display = 0
fullresolution = desktop
windowresolution = original
output = opengl

[dosbox]
machine = vesa_nolfb
memsize = 16

[render]
frameskip = 0
aspect = true
monochrome_palette = white
scaler = none
glshader = /opt/retropie/configs.hdmi/pc/shaders/crt/zfast_crt.glsl

Thanks again for the help. If I can't get it to work, I can live without... or wait till I get a Pi4.

JamR

[nemo93]

@jamrom2 OpenGL support on Pi3 is partial. Could be the reason why shaders can't be properly rendered on that device. I don't like to say that but could be better to wait to get your hands on a Pi4 (+ it will also give you a boost in performance). The only output properly working on Pis whenever you run from a console/frontend (not with XINIT or desktop) is output = texture indeed - or anything with texture in it.

Have fun and if you got anything about performance, tweaks or tricks on best way to configure a game or emulator (not only Staging) please share.

[jamrom2]

@ecto I posted the issue on the github, so hopefully it can be found and sorted.

We'll see what happens. Thanks!

[jamrom2]

@nemo93 after much trial and error, I agree... it's more about the Pi3b+. I know the builds for Retropie are different, so maybe something in the Pi3 build is turned off that would allow the use of the shaders.

Thanks for the help. I'll post issues and resolutions as I come across them.

Mostly it's the controller settings in the lr-pure fork that I'm having issues with. It's a lot of trial and error to get it right.

JamR

[mitu]

@jamrom2 said in [DOSbox] official thread:

@nemo93 after much trial and error, I agree... it's more about the Pi3b+. I know the builds for Retropie are different, so maybe something in the Pi3 build is turned off that would allow the use of the shaders.

There's nothing disabled, it's just that the Pi3 doesn't support OpenGL without an experimental driver. Have you tried setting your texture renderer to OpenGLES ?

[jamrom2]

@mitu Hi. Yes, I tried that as well. The only way to run DosBox Staging at full-screen is to keep it at texture or texturenb. I tried all the rest, and the result is a business card size display box.

I also added "XINIT:bash /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/+Start\ DOSBox-Staging.sh %ROM%" to my emulators.cfg to see if that would give me the full screen, but it knocks out the keyboard and runs Staging as a slide show.

I'm ok with how it is. I'm going to eventually upgrade to a Pi4. I'm happy just being able to play all these old DOS games again! I had my setup all wrong and now it's completely sorted.

Best,

JamR

[ecto]

@nemo93 I have just stubled upon a potetially intersting thing:

I found that I have the DOS version of MDK buried in the MacOS installer of the GOG version. (Thanks to Aoyama Blue Mountain of the GOG forums).

I have installed MDK on my Retropie and it has an interesting benchmark test build-in:
It claims that benchmark values of 44 are on par with a Pentium 90 and a value of 65 relate to a Pentium 166.

Now I have tried Dosbox_SVN and - of course - Staging with that. Mind, that I'm using full KMS and Dosbox runs with XINIT and cycles=auto.

Here are some results:

• Without XINIT, I can't get it to run with Staging, as it claims that I have a 486 which is supposedly too slow.

• With Staging running with XINIT I get a value of 35-39 depending of the setting of outputand texture_renderer.

• Dosbox_SVN gets a whooping 57(!)

That means that I can emulate something like a P60 with Staging, while Dosbox_SVN can get better than a P90. This matches with my observations, I suppose. Sadly SVN still looks washed out (due to no pixel perfect scaling) and has no support for shaders (that don't have any great impact on the Benchmark of Staging).

At some point in the near future I will try some fixed cycles with Staging, and see if I can get anything out of that.

[nemo93]

@ecto thanks again for testing further. Indeed MDK is a quite fantastic benchmark given it comes with a perf analysis tool (at the start and then in the Options/Settings menu). I've used extensively that game to test and measure performance. It's a CPU intensive game which doesn't run fullspeed even when using the "special" Staging branch. With it I'm able to get close to a P90 and even above as it's possible to add more cycles but then game won't be playable at all. Below my specific settings for that game (everything else is default/standard):

[dosbox]
machine = svga_s3
[cpu]
cycles  = 100000

Feel free to report any further finding. Very helpful.

[nemo93]

Dosbox Staging is now part of the Retropie Project!

Thanks to Retropie maintainers and to the "Staging" developers which are constantly improving the emulator as well as the community around it.

If you're unsure of which version of Dosbox to pick I'd say give each version a try starting with "SVN" (to have a basis for comparison). Then if you prefer the comfort of Retroarch then "Pure" and/or "Core" might be interesting for you. If you're looking for plenty of features and functionalities "X" is a good option. "Staging" is a bit a mix of everything with focus on gaming, code cleaning to modern standard and features like pixel-perfect, very accurate sound emulation (ie Gravis Ultrasound), etc.

Please feel free to test, report and do not hesitate to participate. We'll all benefit from the exchanges. This in order to (re)play some good oldies which - for some - haven't aged at all :-)

Also Dosbox Staging 0.77 (stable) has now been released. Please see the full changelog here.