Emulation (Dosbox) Run for a Turn Based Strategy

2009-01-22 12:32:36 pm

I normally don't keep defaults, but I do love SDA!

Good morning runners.

With the announcement of Stardock's Elemental: War of Magic, a quais sequel to Master of Magic (my favorite game of all time), I broke out my old copy (I still have the CD from 1995) and loaded up Dosbox to get some new games in.

I desperately want to run and post this game for SDA, but being a dos game from 95, I know of no way to get it to run on any system from this decade other than emulation.

Perhaps the run could be submitted under the clear heading of "Emulation"? This would allow for all sorts of old DOS games to be run and challenged.

With MoM, being a turn based, single player game, any speed up/slow down mechanisms would be irrelevant as victory is measured in turns from the start . Also, dos box displays the CPU and Frameskip info on the menu of non-full screened executions.

The one thing that couldn't be assured of is save states, but:
a) i don't think Dosbox natively supports save states
and
b) I could easily save every turn anyway in a TBS game.

Any way you think this run could possibly be submitted under these conditions?

Thread title:

Good morning runners.

With the announcement of Stardock's Elemental: War of Magic, a quais sequel to Master of Magic (my favorite game of all time), I broke out my old copy (I still have the CD from 1995) and loaded up Dosbox to get some new games in.

I desperately want to run and post this game for SDA, but being a dos game from 95, I know of no way to get it to run on any system from this decade other than emulation.

Perhaps the run could be submitted under the clear heading of "Emulation"?  This would allow for all sorts of old DOS games to be run and challenged.

With MoM, being a turn based, single player game, any speed up/slow down mechanisms would be irrelevant as victory is measured in turns from the start .  Also, dos box displays the CPU and Frameskip info on the menu of non-full screened executions.

The one thing that couldn't be assured of is save states, but:
a) i don't think Dosbox natively supports save states
and
b) I could easily save every turn anyway in a TBS game.

Any way you think this run could possibly be submitted under these conditions?

MatrixTN

2009-01-22 12:38:05 pm

You got a deletion wish?

Emulators aren't permitted, so no.

drrob

2009-01-22 02:42:59 pm

I normally don't keep defaults, but I do love SDA!

From the DosBox FAQ:

SAVING

Q: Does DosBox have a feature to save the current state? (I want the ability to save if the game does not have the option)

A: No. DosBox currently does not have this option. It may be included sometime in the future however....don't expect it...in fact don't even think about it.
If you really need this feature then use Vmware/Microsoft Virtual PC.

So, if DosBox can't save state, and CPU and Frameskip can be monitored and verified, what's the roadblock for DosBox runs?

ShadowWraith

2009-01-22 03:07:09 pm

.

Quote from drrob:

From the DosBox FAQ:

SAVING

Q: Does DosBox have a feature to save the current state? (I want the ability to save if the game does not have the option)

A: No. DosBox currently does not have this option. It may be included sometime in the future however....don't expect it...in fact don't even think about it.
If you really need this feature then use Vmware/Microsoft Virtual PC.

So, if DosBox can't save state, and CPU and Frameskip can be monitored and verified, what's the roadblock for DosBox runs?

1.) It's an emulator. Emulation isn't always accurate to how the game would behave.
2.) There's a version of DOSBox created by Bisqwit which has savestates, frame advance and frameskip.

Siyko

2009-01-22 03:15:32 pm

I used to be athiest until I realized I was God.

Quote from drrob:

From the DosBox FAQ:

SAVING

Q: Does DosBox have a feature to save the current state? (I want the ability to save if the game does not have the option)

A: No. DosBox currently does not have this option. It may be included sometime in the future however....don't expect it...in fact don't even think about it.
If you really need this feature then use Vmware/Microsoft Virtual PC.

So, if DosBox can't save state, and CPU and Frameskip can be monitored and verified, what's the roadblock for DosBox runs?

A lack of cheating is only a small issue of unofficial emulators. One of the biggest issues is compatibility. With an unofficial emulator, it's never certain that it is 100% true to the game or original system. It might have speed issues, cutscene issues, sound issues, etc. Not only does this make for an 'unofficial-looking' video of the game, but it can bring in issues when comparing two different runs, one on an emulator, one not.

The common counter to this is "but this game is emulated perfectly", which it may be. The problem is that you're putting the onus on the verifiers to make sure that your emulator is indeed 100% faithful to the original system. That's the job of software development and QA, not speedrun verifiers.

In the realm of unofficial emulators, they range from very rough to very good, but it is not easy to draw a line and say "this is allowed, this is not". The line was chosen at when emulators are officially supported by the developers (wii virtual console for instance). It may not encompass all 100% faithful emulators, but the line has to be drawn somewhere.

[quote="drrob"]
From the DosBox FAQ:

SAVING

Q: Does DosBox have a feature to save the current state? (I want the ability to save if the game does not have the option)

A: No. DosBox currently does not have this option. It may be included sometime in the future however....don't expect it...in fact don't even think about it. 
If you really need this feature then use Vmware/Microsoft Virtual PC.

So, if DosBox can't save state, and CPU and Frameskip can be monitored and verified, what's the roadblock for DosBox runs?

[/quote]

A lack of cheating is only a small issue of unofficial emulators. One of the biggest issues is compatibility. With an unofficial emulator, it's never certain that it is 100% true to the game or original system. It might have speed issues, cutscene issues, sound issues, etc. Not only does this make for an 'unofficial-looking' video of the game, but it can bring in issues when comparing two different runs, one on an emulator, one not.

The common counter to this is "but this game is emulated perfectly", which it may be. The problem is that you're putting the onus on the verifiers to make sure that your emulator is indeed 100% faithful to the original system. That's the job of software development and QA, not speedrun verifiers.

In the realm of unofficial emulators, they range from very rough to very good, but it is not easy to draw a line and say "this is allowed, this is not". The line was chosen at when emulators are officially supported by the developers (wii virtual console for instance). It may not encompass all 100% faithful emulators, but the line has to be drawn somewhere.

Nihilus

2009-02-20 12:02:29 am

DOSbox now ships with all DOS games purchased off of Steam, preconfigured. Is that official enough yet? It's pretty lame to ban something because it can POTENTIALLY contain cheating, since last I checked, every video game ever made can potentially be cheated in some way.

Lag.Com

2009-02-20 01:24:07 am

sda loyalist

Unfortunately it's not that simple. I bought the X-COM series on Steam and the usual file-verification code simply does not run for the games; I freely used XCOMUTIL etc. to make the game harder / put in more items, blah blah blah. Though this is a problem with PC games in general, you can also edit the dosbox.conf file to change the game's cycles, play in slow-mo and all the other stuff that makes emulators a problem for verifying.

Nihilus

2009-02-20 01:56:52 am

Quote from Lag.Com:

Unfortunately it's not that simple. I bought the X-COM series on Steam and the usual file-verification code simply does not run for the games; I freely used XCOMUTIL etc. to make the game harder / put in more items, blah blah blah. Though this is a problem with PC games in general, you can also edit the dosbox.conf file to change the game's cycles, play in slow-mo and all the other stuff that makes emulators a problem for verifying.

Yet there are still PC runs on this site. Anything can be cheated, and any cheating can be undetectable if the person doing it knows their shit. I just think it's wrong to ASSUME it will be cheated simply because it's possible to do so. Have a little more faith in people, eh?

rolandoftheeld

2009-02-20 08:38:51 am

Nihilus has a very good point. It's just as easy to to tweak Quake or Half Life game performance through the consoles, affecting things like gravity to give a tiny bit more jump height or something like that. Or what if someone actually playing on DOS were to tax their CPU intentionally to slow down performance? Who's to say some runners aren't using a few undetectable scripts, or a sneaky mod job no one will catch?

As a community, we already trust that the runners are not using underhanded tactics like this, mostly because if we didn't, we'd never get any PC runs on the site. It makes no sense not to extend the same trust to DOSBox.

Lag.Com

2009-02-20 04:21:34 pm

sda loyalist

Um. Although I brought up the general PC game editing thing, there are still very clear reasons why DOSBox is not allowed, whether it is distributed on Steam or not.

tycho102

2009-02-20 08:32:08 pm

Some people think they can outsmart me.

Quote from Lag.Com:

there are still very clear reasons why DOSBox is not allowed, whether it is distributed on Steam or not.

You know Lag, maybe it's time to come up with a different STATid for dosbox'd games.

I'm just saying that there are a shitload of old games out that are getting more difficult -- if not outright impossible -- to put together a system capable of actually playing them under Dos 6.22, using QEMU to free up 622KB of lower memory. Maybe it could be "Speed Demos Archive - Emulated", in a completely different category.

The verification requirements could be much higher. Maybe you'd have to have more verifiers. Maybe you'd base your verification requirements on the feedback quality of the verifiers, with responses like "good run, no cheating" would count for 1/20th of a verifier.

I personally pull up the games I have verified. If you have 20 bastards pulling up dosbox, following the route for Xcom, at least a few of those bastards are going to be able to get reasonably equivalent results.

[quote="Lag.Com"]
there are still very clear reasons why DOSBox is not allowed, whether it is distributed on Steam or not.
[/quote]

You know Lag, maybe it's time to come up with a different STATid for dosbox'd games.

I'm just saying that there are a shitload of old games out that are getting more difficult -- if not outright [b][i]impossible[/i][/b] -- to put together a system capable of actually playing them under Dos 6.22, using QEMU to free up 622KB of lower memory. Maybe it could be "Speed Demos Archive - Emulated", in a completely different category.

The verification requirements could be much higher. Maybe you'd have to have more verifiers. Maybe you'd base your verification requirements on the [b][i]feedback quality[/i][/b] of the verifiers, with responses like "good run, no cheating" would count for 1/20th of a verifier.

I personally pull up the games I have verified. If you have 20 bastards pulling up dosbox, following the route for Xcom, at least a few of those bastards are going to be able to get reasonably equivalent results.

nate

2009-02-21 12:49:37 am

sounds like a new site waiting to happen.

Enhasa

2009-02-25 09:40:26 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

I really really wish that was this site. DOS runs would be the most exciting new system for me. We can't just allow dosbox now though, it's really out of the control of any of us.

Don't some people say they can run some of these games in Windows? That's just an emulator, but it's official.

There should be DOS recording solutions, just nobody has officially gone through with them yet.

gia

2009-02-25 10:38:10 pm

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=20045&sid=3972dee89b136eeb0f0ebc1be01d7aa6

that sounds like the solution, split video then record with pc? or vhs/dvd?

Lag.Com

2009-02-26 01:55:17 am

sda loyalist

The ones I see are:
- VDMSound to fix sound issues, otherwise (most) Windows emulates most DOS games fine, except for the ones that don't have speed limitations
- an actual DOS PC
and
- any way of outputting video through some video out thing on your card

Or possibly
- Microsoft Virtual PC with DOS 6.x or whatever installed on it and screen-capturing the Virtual PC window

And yeah, I am all for DOS games appearing on the site, but seeing as I've thrown in my lot against DOSBox before, may as well follow through. Maybe I should start DOSRuns.com seeing as I crave so much power right Enhasa wink nudge

drrob

2009-02-26 08:12:50 am

I normally don't keep defaults, but I do love SDA!

I'm glad to see my old thread still stirs some passion Grin

Here's an example of what i'm talking about

http://files.filefront.com/exampleavi/;13370835;/fileinfo.html

my cup and frameskip stats are at the top, CPU is set to max (bad practice, takes too much CPU and actually slows your system down, but this is only a demo and the bottom 1/2 of the screen wasn't selected. Oops).

As you can see around 20 seconds, I alter my frameskip from 0 to 1 to 2.

Because the bar is viewable at all times, any potential cheating can be spotted by verifiers.

and for a segmented run, you can request they record from the start of the dos launch.

I think as long as it is clear this is under an EMULATION category and it would be difficult or impossible to otherwise record the game (ie old dos or C64 games, not a rom of Sonic 3) it think it should garner some serious discussion.

ExplodingCabbage

2009-02-27 02:37:51 pm

One thought from an ignorant cabbage; lots of DOS games, when I run them in DOSBOX or Windows, have no frame limiter / speed limiter and run as fast as the CPU can handle. Do they do this when run in DOS as well? If so, these games (and there are many) are simply not valid to have runs put on SDA, ever, which is sad.

Lag.Com

2009-02-27 02:49:00 pm

sda loyalist

Uh, well, DOSBox can limit their speed as much as you like. Windows normally can't, though there are lots of programs to slow your PC/just one program down, like mo'slo etc.

Enhasa

2009-03-03 10:12:05 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Quote from Lag.Com:

Maybe I should start DOSRuns.com seeing as I crave so much power right Enhasa wink nudge

That's SDA power, not some other site nobody cares about (freewareruns.com, sadly). Anyway, dosruns.com would be awesome, just like freewareruns.com is. Well, like it would be if there was more content. The content that is already there is great though, not complaining.

eV1Te

2009-03-23 11:24:58 am

You could install VMware Server (for one example), which is free and allows you to create an virtual computer where you can install everything from dos to vista and select the appropriate virtual hardware for the operating system you use.

Since neither the game or the operating system is emulated (only the hardware) this would be legal?

- You need to download VMvare server (which is free)
- Find some old dos diskettes or load an diskette image (found on the internet) into the virtual diskette drive and install dos into it
- Install the game from your original CD/diskette

VMware or any virtual computer software (Virtual PC is microsofts version, but I'm not sure it supports dos) have problems with 3D graphics, but old 2D games are fine.

ColonelFatso

2009-03-24 02:08:22 pm

You'd have to find a way to throttle your virtual CPU down too. I've played around with VMWare a bit, couldn't find any way to severely underclock the cpu in the way that dos games would need.

BUT this is moot anyway, because VMWare has savestates