As recently announced, DOSBox is generally accepted for SDA submissions for all games that don't run on modern PCs. Any rereleases sold through GOG or Steam tend to have optimized settings pre-selected, and if there's no reason to mess with those, please don't. A good example is Alone in the Dark (1992), which defaults to settings that make the game run reasonably smoothly without making it too difficult to control. Still, in some cases (such as Time Gate) a different setting makes more sense.
For other titles, the default settings when you just download DOSBox itself work for a lot of games, but are not optimized for individual titles or may lead to playback issues. This topic is designed as a central discussion space for DOSBox settings, both for just playing the games and most importantly recording them for SDA.
For games that run too fast at default or max cycles settings a reasonable value needs to be agreed on by people familiar with the game. If game run speed is not affected by the cycles settings past a sufficiently low setting, "max" is suggested as it tends to reduce load times and thus increases entertainment when watching the run (E.g. Commander Keen). Clear load times, as between levels, will still be cut from SDA timing as per the usual timing rules for PC games. If there are lots of shorter loading times (lag) throughout the game, a fixed setting needs to be used instead for consistency between runners, given lag frames are not removed from timing.
Using the dynamic core makes things about 3-4 times more efficient without giving an unfair advantage to anyone, though you may want to test that on several systems to be sure.
Some old games run faster with sound disabled. Games that have an audio option are recommended to be ran with sound on, even if it slows the game down a little bit. Whether the sounds can be left off or not is a case-by-case decision so make sure to confirm it first before submitting.
Note that while this is the official discussion topic for DOSBox settings, approval of settings in here are not necessarily binding for the verification process. The final say always lies with the verifiers for any given run submitted.
For the time being, this topic will be maintained by Xarthok as he has a lot of experience with running DOS games on DOSBox.
The new unofficial person in charge of this topic is tigrou, who has written this post below for a detailed breakdown of how DOSBox settings affect game speeds and fairness of competition. If you have any input or differing opinions, ask away.
For other titles, the default settings when you just download DOSBox itself work for a lot of games, but are not optimized for individual titles or may lead to playback issues. This topic is designed as a central discussion space for DOSBox settings, both for just playing the games and most importantly recording them for SDA.
For games that run too fast at default or max cycles settings a reasonable value needs to be agreed on by people familiar with the game. If game run speed is not affected by the cycles settings past a sufficiently low setting, "max" is suggested as it tends to reduce load times and thus increases entertainment when watching the run (E.g. Commander Keen). Clear load times, as between levels, will still be cut from SDA timing as per the usual timing rules for PC games. If there are lots of shorter loading times (lag) throughout the game, a fixed setting needs to be used instead for consistency between runners, given lag frames are not removed from timing.
Using the dynamic core makes things about 3-4 times more efficient without giving an unfair advantage to anyone, though you may want to test that on several systems to be sure.
Some old games run faster with sound disabled. Games that have an audio option are recommended to be ran with sound on, even if it slows the game down a little bit. Whether the sounds can be left off or not is a case-by-case decision so make sure to confirm it first before submitting.
Note that while this is the official discussion topic for DOSBox settings, approval of settings in here are not necessarily binding for the verification process. The final say always lies with the verifiers for any given run submitted.
The new unofficial person in charge of this topic is tigrou, who has written this post below for a detailed breakdown of how DOSBox settings affect game speeds and fairness of competition. If you have any input or differing opinions, ask away.
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