Dosbox versions available in retropie

niculinux

So just for the average joe's knowledge sake, the dosbox builds avaiable for our beloved retropie are:

dosbox
lr-dosbox
lr-dosbox-pure
dosbox-sdl2

1st and 2nd are quite slow but know controller out of the box;

with the 3d one i got the best experience out of the box, but in some games is somewhat slow;

with the 4th it runs very smooth but the controller is not recognized using the generic linux gamepad driver, maybe i should use sdl2 driver in the retroarch input menu, or map it using the built in mapper by pressing ctrl + F1. I guess i my configure the dosbix pure usin the dosbox.conf file shipped with it? And please...where is its path?

Currently, a dosbox-x build is not avaiable in retopie repositories, am i right?

jamrom2

@niculinux I'll just pass along my experiences with all of the above...

#1 worked really good, but now that it's been moved up to SDL2 build, dump it. The SDL2 version is the default now. So that's one gone..

#2. I tried this when it first came out, dumped it. The performance was terrible on a Pi3b+.

#3. Best so far. It runs great and runs everything I toss at it. Sure, it's a PIA to get setup and running with the config files and all that, but once it's done, it's great. I run everything on it (from an early-mid 90's collection of DOS games) with almost no performance issues. Downside is getting out of it back to main menu, and controller setup can be troublesome on certain games. No overlays or shaders which really sucks.

#4. Works great on many games as long as you don't use shaders...which is why I would have used this in the first place. Easy to setup the games to just one click and work. Controller setup seems good, I've had minor issues here an there. Works great with ES as far as using 1 zip/dosz file and off you go. Easy in/out of the game back to menu...but still could be tweaked to just dump out of Retroarch completely. If you turn on shaders for games like Aces of the Deep, or Red Baron era of games... the performance suffers and audio is broken-up.

Keeping in mind #4 is not really finished. It's kind of an "install and use at your own risk" right now, and I hope will continue further development. Configuring controls is like you found out... hit or miss. I haven't figured it out yet on every game I have. Some games you have to go into the game and turn on the joystick (many of the Dynamix titles). So try that, and also run the setup.exe if avail... you might have to use that as well for joystick support.

niculinux

@jamrom2 thanks! I tryed only one game with the sdl2, operation carnage:

but it crashed after some times using the key combo ALT + RETURN (which activates windowed mode) but i dino not tryed again because i wanted a more out of the box experience because i don't wanna mess around with the built in keymapper >.< since i'm an occasiona gamer and don't have much time to experiment .... :,(

Edit: sorry, a "bouns" question: may i set cpu cycle in lr-dosbox-pure? Apparently seems not, it's not mentioned in the project page...

jamrom2

@niculinux aparently not as it's all done automatically.

I haven't played around with the config files...if there are any... because I have yet to find them. I'm still testing and coverting my other games to the new format. Really... zipping and moving them over to the PC rom folder.

Lolonois

If you are familiar with dosbox and conf files you may consider dosbox-staging. At some point in time it will be in the RetroPie-Setup, but for now you can try the pending addition like this:

SSH to your pi:

cd ~/RetroPie-Setup
git fetch origin pull/3322/head:PR_3322
git checkout PR_3322
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh dosbox-staging # wait for compile/install to finish
git checkout master

Primary config is in /home/pi/.config/dosbox/dosbox-staging.conf. Can be overloaded with config values per game if you use a .conf file for launching your game. However, the defaults work very well for my pick of games (YMMV).

You can read about it's benefits here: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/pull/3322

niculinux

@lolonois thanks!!
Actually im a very occasional gamer, along being a newbie so eventially gonna eventually wait until it will show up in retropie repositories, though seems very promising :)

Oh i have found how to adjust cpu cicles, it's all done in the retroparch ingame menu after all it'a libretro port, silly me!

The option is to be found in the "options" screen, but it allows only to choose from presets loke 286 386, pentim and some more im sorry i cannot provide a screenshot right now :(

jamrom2

@lolonois This sounds promising. I gave up on any other version of DosBox other than the "native" version. The Libretro versions don't give the performance on many of the games I want to run.

Hopefully this new venture will fix that. I like using the shaders and overlays for that authentic look. But not at the cost of performance.

mitu

@jamrom2 said in Dosbox versions avaiable in retropie:

Hopefully this new venture will fix that. I like using the shaders and overlays for that authentic look. But not at the cost of performance.

Both dosbox (standalone) and dosbox-staging support shaders. See https://github.com/tyrells/dosbox-svn-shaders. Most of RetroArch's CRT shaders are already part of the mentioned repository.

jamrom2

@mitu have you played around with the staging version at all? Hows the performance on a Pi3+b?

I'm finding I'm messing around with all the emulators more than I'm playing them lately. More often switching back to what I had.

I'll give this one a try some time as well.

mitu

@jamrom2 said in Dosbox versions avaiable in retropie:

@mitu have you played around with the staging version at all? Hows the performance on a Pi3+b?

Only on the Pi4 - but I think @nemo93 (that authors the PR to add it to RetroPie) tested on the Pi3 and reported it's running fine. See https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/25041/dosbox-official-thread/.

niculinux

I've sadly seen that some games are terribly sluggish and unplayable in retropie dosbox such as 1997 freeware game assault trooper in dosbox purre if i set a very high cicle emulation a messahe in screen appears tellin me it's overloaded, so some games might require more powerful hardware?

Game footage

:P

mitu

@niculinux Please - no links to sites with games/copyrighted material for download/play.

niculinux

@mitu ok post edited, link removed at once

jamrom2

@mitu Thanks as always. I'll check it out.

niculinux

In the meantime, hope someday we might get package versions of dosbox staging and disbox-X too, these seems to be eqally cool projects.