How to record a DOS game

2013-06-12 04:40:37 pm

I am thinking about running a classic game, zeliard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeliard It was released for NEC PC-8801 and then re-released for DOS. I read the rules, but I don't think I can follow the standard procedure. I don't even know what NEC is, so I would definitely run a DOS version, the one I always played. I don't have DOS or Windows. And I certainly don't want to install Windows and FRAPS, which is a closed-source blob. I know, it may seem somewhat inconsistent that I would reject some closed-source software, but would play the game, but there is a world of difference between running Windows 7 + FRAPS and running zeliard, a tiny DOS code, in a free and open-source hardware emulator.

I am sure, people bug you to let them use dosbox all the time, but just read me out, I think I can make a pretty good case.

Quote:

Emulators commonly allow for recording games frame-by-frame and then playing back the input at normal speed. Also, most emulators and virtualization programs have minor inaccuracies in timing and slowdown that inhibit accurate comparisons between runs.

I believe I can solve both problems by making 2 recordings in parallel: with a camcorder of me playing the game, and with dosbox to capture the high-res run. The time can be kept by a stop-watch visible in the camcorder movie. I really don't see how this is any worse than installing Windows (where zeliard would be emulated anyway) and FRAPS (which is nothing but voodoo for the purposes of verification, being closed-source). dosbox emulates hardware, so using it is no different than using a random IBM PC clone.

Quote:

Finally, it is generally illegal in most countries to obtain ROMs.

I don't see how this has any relation to the legitimacy of a run. Running a game illegally in a state with oppressive censorship laws is heroic, if anything. Anyway, it doesn't apply in my case, since it's a DOS game and not a ROM.

Please let me know what you think. May be there are some options I didn't think about. And thanks a bunch for hours upon hours of stellar entertainment thumbsup

Thread title:

I am thinking about running a classic game, zeliard. [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeliard[/url] It was released for NEC PC-8801 and then re-released for DOS. I read the rules, but I don't think I can follow the standard procedure. I don't even know what NEC is, so I would definitely run a DOS version, the one I always played. I don't have DOS or Windows. And I certainly don't want to install Windows and FRAPS, which is a closed-source blob. I know, it may seem somewhat inconsistent that I would reject some closed-source software, but would play the game, but there is a world of difference between running Windows 7 + FRAPS and running zeliard, a tiny DOS code, in a free and open-source hardware emulator.

I am sure, people bug you to let them use dosbox all the time, but just read me out, I think I can make a pretty good case.

[quote]Emulators commonly allow for recording games frame-by-frame and then playing back the input at normal speed. Also, most emulators and virtualization programs have minor inaccuracies in timing and slowdown that inhibit accurate comparisons between runs.[/quote]

I believe I can solve both problems by making 2 recordings in parallel: with a camcorder of me playing the game, and with dosbox to capture the high-res run. The time can be kept by a stop-watch visible in the camcorder movie. I really don't see how this is any worse than installing Windows (where zeliard would be emulated anyway) and FRAPS (which is nothing but voodoo for the purposes of verification, being closed-source). dosbox emulates hardware, so using it is no different than using a random IBM PC clone.

[quote]Finally, it is generally illegal in most countries to obtain ROMs.[/quote]

I don't see how this has any relation to the legitimacy of a run. Running a game illegally in a state with oppressive censorship laws is heroic, if anything. Anyway, it doesn't apply in my case, since it's a DOS game and not a ROM.

Please let me know what you think. May be there are some options I didn't think about. And thanks a bunch for hours upon hours of stellar entertainment :thumbsup:

moooh

2013-06-13 12:01:41 pm

Exoray

It generally makes thing more difficult when you stick to principles that work against you, although in this case it won't really matter since FRAPS wouldn't be able to capture a DOS game in full screen anyways.

You recording with a camcorder would unfortunately not solve all of the issues that you quote. The tiny inaccuracies are most of the time not visible to the eye and it would be very difficult for someone wanting to compete with the run to accurately be able to compare times.

In order to record a DOS game proper your best bet is to get a PC that can run DOS and something that can actually record the vga output. If I remember correctly the tricky part is getting the audio. There should be a thread around for proper DOS recording somewhere in the tech board, try a search there if you are interested in doing it the proper way. Even then, there's always the question of proper CPU cycles and other things that might affect game speed...

Another way it to find a GOG release or a Steam release of the game. They bundle a DOSbox version that is configured properly for the game in question which ensures fair competition. We accept runs for games on any of these two versions granted that the default bundled DOS-settings aren't changed.

When it comes to ROMs being mostly illegal the question is less about legitimacy and more about fairness. We simply can't tell someone that they have to get a ROM for a game if they want to compete with a run on site.

I hope you'll find the answers that you need. If there's no gog-release yet you can always bug them about it Smiley

It generally makes thing more difficult when you stick to principles that work against you, although in this case it won't really matter since FRAPS wouldn't be able to capture a DOS game in full screen anyways.

You recording with a camcorder would unfortunately not solve all of the issues that you quote. The tiny inaccuracies are most of the time not visible to the eye and it would be very difficult for someone wanting to compete with the run to accurately be able to compare times.

In order to record a DOS game proper your best bet is to get a PC that can run DOS and something that can actually record the vga output. If I remember correctly the tricky part is getting the audio. There should be a thread around for proper DOS recording somewhere in the tech board, try a search there if you are interested in doing it the proper way. Even then, there's always the question of proper CPU cycles and other things that might affect game speed...

Another way it to find a GOG release or a Steam release of the game. They bundle a DOSbox version that is configured properly for the game in question which ensures fair competition. We accept runs for games on any of these two versions granted that the default bundled DOS-settings aren't changed.

When it comes to ROMs being mostly illegal the question is less about legitimacy and more about fairness. We simply can't tell someone that they have to get a ROM for a game if they want to compete with a run on site.

I hope you'll find the answers that you need. If there's no gog-release yet you can always bug them about it :)

Sir VG

2013-06-13 12:09:09 pm

Fucking Weeaboo

Quote:

I don't even know what NEC is

NEC = Nippon Electric Company. It's basically a brand name, like IBM. The PC-8801 is just a very old computer that was made in the early 80s.

And you can certainly run the game in an emulator, but only for casual purposes. moooh I think perfectly explained the issues with submitting stuff to the site.

Since you state you don't have Windows, I'm assuming you either have a Mac or Linux. You could install something like VMWare and run an emulation of an old Windows version (like Windows 98), then install the game in there. I don't know how well it will work, but in theory it should work as well as if you installed it on a natural PC running Windows.

Alko

2013-06-13 12:33:09 pm

Caution: This user contains Kana ^_^

I don't think, that'll work. You would have a computer emulation a system (e.g. Win98) which doesn't look all too different from emulating the DOS itself.

Also chunkylover, I just have to disagree with your definition of heroic. Rule-breaking per se is definitely not heroic. Rule breaking may count as heroic, if you are following a rule of higher rank which disagrees with the broken rule: Like it is heroic to break the law not to lie, if the lie leads to saving a human's life. I don't see the higher good that you are defending by acquiring and playing illegal versions of games.

ShadowWraith

2013-06-13 01:38:08 pm

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Alko: Virtualising != Emulating. The two are fundamentally different.

presjpolk

Edit history:

presjpolk: 2013-06-13 01:53:04 pm

presjpolk: 2013-06-13 01:50:41 pm

2013-06-13 01:50:21 pm

HELLO!

Quote from ShadowWraith:

Alko: Virtualising != Emulating. The two are fundamentally different.

The line between emulating and virtualizing is a blurry one. Even when you don't technically emulate the CPU, you're still emulating appendant hardware.

So I'm probably not the only one unclear on just where the line is here, for SDA.

nate

2013-06-13 02:12:03 pm

for sda it's a definition based on the spirit of community cooperation and competition. if you have your own little emulated world where you get a time, who cares? post it on your youtube or something. but if you want to challenge yourself and others to top what has come before, then sda is the place. some kind of stability in the game's performance, the way the game functions, is necessary to achieve a fair playing field. "emulation" and "virtualization," whatever those may be, are factors in this requirement. is it an official emulator, easy to acquire and get running, and to guarantee identical performance to other users of the emulator? then it's sda-friendly. otherwise, better keep looking.

ais523

2013-06-16 09:07:02 pm

Would FreeDOS be allowed? That can run from a floppy disk (so you wouldn't need to install it), and works on most modern computers directly on the hardware.

Yagamoth

2013-06-17 02:04:04 am

INTJ

I wonder - about the spirit of competition thing. I mean, it's not particularly competitive when only the people with the specific equipment can compete, is it?

I understand the sentiment of wanting the runs to be as legitimate as possible for various reasons, and for that the optimal approach is to use original hardware. The problem I see with DOS games is, there is no real "original hardware". I remember playing some DOS games years ago, where a friend of my father and my father both had PCs and exchanged games - even back then I remember a lot of games running differently on different PCs. I mean - the difference in speed was significant enough for my 5 year old me noticing the difference. I assume it has something to do with the "CPU cycles", but that's not something I know a lot about.

On another not, it's actually not only DOS games that suffer from that issue - a lot of games around here that ran on Windows ~95 or 98 had a similar issue after we upgraded our PC. Hoping for them to get onto gog is most certainly not an option, since I'm reasonably sure a good chunk of those were never released outside of german speaking countries, since they were never translated.

Again, I understand the sentiment of wanting the runs to be as legitimate as possible - not the smallest reasons are being able to be competitive, being able to verify it and being able to handle the workload for the SDA staff which would be created if every single game would get it's own treatment. But I also wonder whether a set of "specific dosbox configurations" could be reasonable, where it's defined which game should use which one.
But I guess, then again we would dip into the emulation category, where different OS run the emulation differently even if the configurations are technically the same.. Which brings me into a full circle, where - specifically for DOS games - can't guarantee the games to run the same on different 'legit' machines?

Please note - I mind either way how it's handled, but these are things I felt like are worth pointing out Smiley

I wonder - about the spirit of competition thing. I mean, it's not particularly competitive when only the people with the specific equipment can compete, is it?

I understand the sentiment of wanting the runs to be as legitimate as possible for various reasons, and for that the optimal approach is to use original hardware. The problem I see with DOS games is, there is no real "original hardware". I remember playing some DOS games years ago, where a friend of my father and my father both had PCs and exchanged games - even back then I remember a lot of games running differently on different PCs. I mean - the difference in speed was significant enough for my 5 year old me noticing the difference. I assume it has something to do with the "CPU cycles", but that's not something I know a lot about.

On another not, it's actually not only DOS games that suffer from that issue - a lot of games around here that ran on Windows ~95 or 98 had a similar issue after we upgraded our PC. Hoping for them to get onto gog is most certainly not an option, since I'm reasonably sure a good chunk of those were never released outside of german speaking countries, since they were never translated.

Again, I understand the sentiment of wanting the runs to be as legitimate as possible - not the smallest reasons are being able to be competitive, being able to verify it and being able to handle the workload for the SDA staff which would be created if every single game would get it's own treatment. But I also wonder whether a set of "specific dosbox configurations" could be reasonable, where it's defined which game should use which one.
But I guess, then again we would dip into the emulation category, where different OS run the emulation differently even if the configurations are technically the same.. Which brings me into a full circle, where - specifically for DOS games - can't guarantee the games to run the same on different 'legit' machines?

Please note - I mind either way how it's handled, but these are things I felt like are worth pointing out :)

ShadowWraith

2013-06-17 04:41:48 am

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ais512: How faithful to the original DOS is FreeDOS? That's an interesting question.

presjpolk

2013-06-17 04:49:01 am

HELLO!

Heh, DOS compatibility.

What's actually more important than the DOS layer is the BIOS. Not all BIOSes are created equal. That's where Yagamoth is right: there was no one piece of hardware in the DOS era. Lots and lots of people ran clones, which were 'good enough' but not 100% compatible.

Melodia

2013-06-17 11:58:38 am

And it seems silly to not allow DosBox unless it's 'officially' with the game. The GoG version of KQVI is exactly the same as the DOS CD-Rom version -- it seems rediculous to force someone to buy it again (same version no less) if they already have it just to be able to run it on here.

ais523

2013-06-19 08:38:03 am

Quote from ShadowWraith:

ais512: How faithful to the original DOS is FreeDOS? That's an interesting question.

As far as I can tell, they're aiming to replicate MS-DOS as accurately as they can (partly for the purpose of running old DOS games), but aren't quite there yet (e.g. Windows 3.1 only runs partially, when theoretically it should run perfectly).

Part of the problem here is that there were multiple DOS versions around even at the time (MS-DOS and PC-DOS being two of the major ones), and games would be written to run on any of them. I know TASvideos doesn't allow console verifications for DOS on the basis that they don't believe that it's possible to define what an official console would be. SDA would likely have to come up with a definition as to what counts as a genuine DOS system in order to be able to choose which runs are allowed and which ones aren't.

(DOSbox is rather more problematic because it has a bunch of options like slowdown, emulator-style. Admittedly, this is needed for many old games because they timed things in CPU cycles rather than seconds, meaning that the speed of the game depends on the speed of the computer; this is not an ideal situation for speedrunning at all because the game didn't run consistently even when released.)

[quote="ShadowWraith"]ais512: How faithful to the original DOS is FreeDOS? That's an interesting question.[/quote]
As far as I can tell, they're aiming to replicate MS-DOS as accurately as they can (partly for the purpose of running old DOS games), but aren't quite there yet (e.g. Windows 3.1 only runs partially, when theoretically it should run perfectly).

Part of the problem here is that there were multiple DOS versions around even at the time (MS-DOS and PC-DOS being two of the major ones), and games would be written to run on any of them. I know TASvideos doesn't allow console verifications for DOS on the basis that they don't believe that it's possible to define what an official console would be. SDA would likely have to come up with a definition as to what counts as a genuine DOS system in order to be able to choose which runs are allowed and which ones aren't.

(DOSbox is rather more problematic because it has a bunch of options like slowdown, emulator-style. Admittedly, this is needed for many old games because they timed things in CPU cycles rather than seconds, meaning that the speed of the game depends on the speed of the computer; this is not an ideal situation for speedrunning at all because the game didn't run consistently even when released.)

Blubbler

2013-06-19 08:42:13 am

Quote:

(DOSbox is rather more problematic because it has a bunch of options like slowdown, emulator-style. Admittedly, this is needed for many old games because they timed things in CPU cycles rather than seconds, meaning that the speed of the game depends on the speed of the computer; this is not an ideal situation for speedrunning at all because the game didn't run consistently even when released.)

This seems more like a problem with the game itself rather han DOSbox. What stops someone from building a super fast PC that runs DOS?

Onin

2013-06-19 10:14:05 am

Common sense, I'd guess Cheesy

Here's another issue: GOG's DOS-based games don't always work properly. Playing Gabriel Knight on their configured DOSbox would get me stuck on one specific puzzle where you have a few seconds to go into the police station before the officer comes back and kicks you out. Because of too fast CPU cycles, like Ais mentioned, that time window was far too small to be possible. I had to go into the DOSbox and limit the cycles in order to get past.

In other words, the clause that GOG's DOSbox is allowed if you leave it unedited makes some games unplayable. That's a problem.

nate

2013-06-19 10:28:43 am

that's not sda's problem or yours. that's gog's problem. email them about it and they should fix it.

honorableJay

2013-06-19 11:11:18 am

The Dork Knight himself.

Maybe we need a thread for approved DOS games with the appropriate version of Dosbox and config settings, along with officially released games that have issues.

Just a side note, should we allow people to change the render mode from overlay to opengl to allow for Fraps recording?

NMS

2013-06-19 02:41:23 pm

I like that idea. After all, these issues are hardly exclusive to DOS games. We often allow changing config files for graphics or compatibility reasons, and even some modern releases are uncompletable without unofficial patches (last I checked this was true for the Steam release of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter).

sledge

2013-06-19 06:09:45 pm

I'm sure you can find an old computer in the trash good enough to run DOS games. Just add a VGA and PC audio capture device to your setup and you're good to go.

chunkylover496

2013-06-19 08:29:39 pm

Thanks everyone, I was kind of expecting to get yelled at, but actually everyone was very helpful. I hope some progress can be made towards making dosbox an official option. Like ais523 said, there were other DOSes even during the dawn of Micro$oft (I actually used DRDOS for a while), and so discriminating against dosbox on emulation grounds doesn't seem fair. It runs Window$ 3.11 OK, and I am yet to see a classic game it can't run faithfully, so what does it matter if it emulates?

Quote from sledge:

I'm sure you can find an old computer in the trash good enough to run DOS games. Just add a VGA and PC audio capture device to your setup and you're good to go.

The question is, why? What in that video will prove that it's DOS running in hardware? And making this setup is actually more pain than it seems. Certainly more pain than simply recording a video in DOSBOX, or even doing a double-recording with a camcorder which I proposed in the first post.

Of course, I don't really understand the verification process, so that may be a problem, but I still hope that by the time I run Zeliard (in the next 20 years), these issues will be settled happy

Thanks everyone, I was kind of expecting to get yelled at, but actually everyone was very helpful. I hope some progress can be made towards making dosbox an official option. Like  ais523 said, there were other DOSes even during the dawn of Micro$oft (I actually used DRDOS for a while), and so discriminating against dosbox on emulation grounds doesn't seem fair. It runs Window$ 3.11 OK, and I am yet to see a classic game it can't run faithfully, so what does it matter if it emulates?

[quote="sledge"]I'm sure you can find an old computer in the trash good enough to run DOS games. Just add a VGA and PC audio capture device to your setup and you're good to go.[/quote]
The question is, why? What in that video will prove that it's DOS running in hardware? And making this setup is actually more pain than it seems. Certainly more pain than simply recording a video in DOSBOX, or even doing a double-recording with a camcorder which I proposed in the first post.

Of course, I don't really understand the verification process, so that may be a problem, but I still hope that by the time I run Zeliard (in the next 20 years), these issues will be settled :happy:

ais523

2013-06-20 07:00:14 am

I've verified for SDA before (and likely will again, when a run for a game I'm familiar enough with is submitted), and there are often clues that someone's been cheating, when they have. (I haven't verified any of those for SDA, but sometimes you get a thread on TASvideos where something is accused of being an unlabeled TAS, and there are several things you can do to check.)

The most likely criticism for a DOSBox run would be "that game's running at the wrong speed", which has been seen to happen in claimed world records on YouTube. With DOS games, sadly, it's often hard to determine what the right speed is.

(For what it's worth, I'm TASing a DOS game for TASvideos, and they work around the problem with rules on how fast the emulated system is allowed to be. You can't really do that without an emulator, though, because it's unlikely that people woul happen to own exactly the right model of old computer. There's an added complication in my case because the game requires a DOS extender to run, and there are multiple DOS extenders in existence; the choice is easy for TASvideos because only one of them is emulated accurately, but SDA doesn't have that problem.)

IIRC, the main reason emulators are banned is to prevent undetectable cheating (in particular, splicing using savestates is undetectable in many emulators); perhaps an exception could be made for DOSBox because it doesn't actually have working savestates.

I've verified for SDA before (and likely will again, when a run for a game I'm familiar enough with is submitted), and there are often clues that someone's been cheating, when they have. (I haven't verified any of those for SDA, but sometimes you get a thread on TASvideos where something is accused of being an unlabeled TAS, and there are several things you can do to check.)

The most likely criticism for a DOSBox run would be "that game's running at the wrong speed", which has been seen to happen in claimed world records on YouTube. With DOS games, sadly, it's often hard to determine what the right speed is.

(For what it's worth, I'm TASing a DOS game for TASvideos, and they work around the problem with rules on how fast the emulated system is allowed to be. You can't really do that without an emulator, though, because it's unlikely that people woul happen to own exactly the right model of old computer. There's an added complication in my case because the game requires a DOS extender to run, and there are multiple DOS extenders in existence; the choice is easy for TASvideos because only one of them is emulated accurately, but SDA doesn't have that problem.)

IIRC, the main reason emulators are banned is to prevent undetectable cheating (in particular, splicing using savestates is undetectable in many emulators); perhaps an exception could be made for DOSBox because it doesn't actually have working savestates.

chunkylover496

2013-06-20 11:28:49 am

Fun fact about Zeliard, the game allows to switch play-speed with a keyboard shortcut, with 0 being almost frame-by-frame, and 9 so fast, it's only useful for running around town or recovering life in a safe corner.

General Vagueness

2013-06-27 09:26:27 am

Faster than the speed of love

Quote from nate:

that's not sda's problem or yours. that's gog's problem. email them about it and they should fix it.

It is his problem if he wants to submit a run of that game and doesn't have the correct old hardware, which, as mentioned, might not actually be correct, and would require additional hardware to actually be recorded. Why should someone be required to talk to a third party and hope they resolve the issue when they could fix it in 10 seconds? I understand that SDA probably doesn't want to go through every old game and decide what precise settings are allowed because it would take a long time and people would still complain and argue, but if you hold to that standard of fairness that closely (and I commend SDA for striving for fairness like it does), then I think the only alternative is to not accept any games with gameplay dependent on processor speed.

presjpolk

2013-06-27 09:34:13 am

HELLO!

That would basically rule out a great many games. Which is not unreasonable, but that's what life was like in the DOS era.

Onin

2013-06-27 09:37:33 am

Makes me wonder. How would SDA treat a game like Rosenkreuzstiltskin, which is intended to run at 60fps but can be unlocked to 65fps and thereby obviously run a lot faster? Seems like the exact same ruling should apply to DOS games.