Virtualization Software and DOSBox allowed for old games

2013-08-20 04:36:28 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

Probably better to discuss settings here: https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/official_dosbox_settings_discussion_topic.html

Some questions I had when looking at those settings honorableJay. Why did you choose to use a fixed full screen resolution instead of original? Is that just for example? Would you always record in windowed mode or full screen?

honorableJay

Edit history:

honorableJay: 2013-08-20 05:32:34 pm

2013-08-20 05:28:54 pm

The Dork Knight himself.

Well I prefer to use the scalers when I play on DosBox, and if you use the original resolution some of the scalers don't work. Plus using that fixed resolution (which matches my desktop) makes switching between fullscreen/windowed mode faster/cleaner. The other issue I've had (not sure if this is cleaned up or I just have the wrong settings, haven't really played with DosBox in about a year) is using the original resolution makes the game a tiny little box in the center of my screen.

As for recording, I'd probably record in windowed mode so I can run WSplit on the side. My ideal resolution for recording would be a multiple of the original. Opengl/surface/ddraw/etc probably won't affect how I record (very unorthodox method, too long for this topic) but I can see others having issues properly recording. Since a lot of games ran at resolutions of 320x240 (or in that area) it would be hard to record a run if the video had to be in that resolution while recording.

I kept my question here because the other topic is designed around tweaking DosBox's cpu settings to get games to run as native in speed as possible. I was thinking that advanced video tweaking would be more of a general rule for all games since they don't need to be tweaked to get a game to run (probably exceptions though).

Well I prefer to use the scalers when I play on DosBox, and if you use the original resolution some of the scalers don't work. Plus using that fixed resolution (which matches my desktop) makes switching between fullscreen/windowed mode faster/cleaner. The other issue I've had (not sure if this is cleaned up or I just have the wrong settings, haven't really played with DosBox in about a year) is using the original resolution makes the game a tiny little box in the center of my screen.

As for recording, I'd probably record in windowed mode so I can run WSplit on the side. My ideal resolution for recording would be a multiple of the original. Opengl/surface/ddraw/etc probably won't affect how I record (very unorthodox method, too long for this topic) but I can see others having issues properly recording. Since a lot of games ran at resolutions of 320x240 (or in that area) it would be hard to record a run if the video had to be in that resolution while recording.

I kept my question here because the other topic is designed around tweaking DosBox's cpu settings to get games to run as native in speed as possible. I was thinking that advanced video tweaking would be more of a general rule for all games since they don't need to be tweaked to get a game to run (probably exceptions though).

MMAN

2013-08-20 06:36:08 pm

Dosbox GOG releases I've played come with a configuration program/launcher that lets you change the most popular graphical settings (renderer, resolution, Vsync etc) so I guess that's an "officially" endorsed way to change settings. I don't know about other releases though.

Mr. Kelly R. Flewin

2013-08-20 09:51:55 pm

Learning to Stream

Wow... this was entirely unexpected but totally awesome to hear! I know many a person will be tickled Pink that they can finally make with the magic.

I think this is a very level headed and reasonable plan.

Now if only politicians could conduct their affairs like this..

oasiz

Edit history:

oasiz: 2013-08-21 02:49:32 am

2013-08-21 02:38:27 am

Iha paska

Quote from Yagamoth:

Also on a more related note: Should there be a specific definition of what "old" or "95/98" windows-era means? As far as I can tell it's mostly irrelevant, since it should make no difference.

I think the most common issue is 16-bit/32-bit program hybrids from the 9x era, there is no clear definition on this as some programs kept using 16bit installers for a long time even if the game itself was 32bit. A lot of this stuff works on XP but some are really hard to get running if not impossible. If it's not "old" then it usually means that it's fully 32bit and can be run natively on windows already, rendering a VM useless Smiley

Quote from honorableJay:

As for recording, I'd probably record in windowed mode so I can run WSplit on the side. My ideal resolution for recording would be a multiple of the original. Opengl/surface/ddraw/etc probably won't affect how I record (very unorthodox method, too long for this topic) but I can see others having issues properly recording. Since a lot of games ran at resolutions of 320x240 (or in that area) it would be hard to record a run if the video had to be in that resolution while recording.

If I understood correctly, this is simpler than you think, once you start a video dump then doxbox will simply dump what the program renders at.

Also comes with a downside... you will potentially end up with 50+ files on games that like switching resolutions around a lot!
You can easily resize them afterwards to 4:3 though.. maybe anri or such could use an option that supports this on the fly?
I mean.. stretching to 640x480 (or other 4:3) is what is needed anyway. Encoding a nice dosbox video could be mostly automated.
Letterboxing is another option but that doesn't preserve pixel art "as it was meant to be"

[quote="Yagamoth"]
Also on a more related note: Should there be a specific definition of what "old" or "95/98" windows-era means? As far as I can tell it's mostly irrelevant, since it should make no difference.[/quote]

I think the most common issue is 16-bit/32-bit program hybrids from the 9x era, there is no clear definition on this as some programs kept using 16bit installers for a long time even if the game itself was 32bit. A lot of this stuff works on XP but some are really hard to get running if not impossible. If it's not "old" then it usually means that it's fully 32bit and can be run natively on windows already, rendering a VM useless :)

[quote="honorableJay"]
As for recording, I'd probably record in windowed mode so I can run WSplit on the side. My ideal resolution for recording would be a multiple of the original. Opengl/surface/ddraw/etc probably won't affect how I record (very unorthodox method, too long for this topic) but I can see others having issues properly recording. Since a lot of games ran at resolutions of 320x240 (or in that area) it would be hard to record a run if the video had to be in that resolution while recording.[/quote]

If I understood correctly, this is simpler than you think, once you start a video dump then doxbox will simply dump what the program renders at.

Also comes with a downside... you will potentially end up with 50+ files on games that like switching resolutions around a lot!
You can easily resize them afterwards to 4:3 though.. maybe anri or such could use an option that supports this on the fly?
I mean.. stretching to 640x480 (or other 4:3) is what is needed anyway. Encoding a nice dosbox video could be mostly automated.
Letterboxing is another option but that doesn't preserve pixel art "as it was meant to be"

Warepire

2013-08-21 04:20:00 am

Heavy Metal Powered

Quote from oasiz:

Quote from Yagamoth:

Also on a more related note: Should there be a specific definition of what "old" or "95/98" windows-era means? As far as I can tell it's mostly irrelevant, since it should make no difference.

I think the most common issue is 16-bit/32-bit program hybrids from the 9x era, there is no clear definition on this as some programs kept using 16bit installers for a long time even if the game itself was 32bit. A lot of this stuff works on XP but some are really hard to get running if not impossible. If it's not "old" then it usually means that it's fully 32bit and can be run natively on windows already, rendering a VM useless Smiley

Actually, some games still will be favorable to run in a VM unless you want to set up a dualboot, because even if the game boots and runs fine, it crashes a lot due to a too new version of DirectX, and you really don't want to roll back the DirectX version to a pre-XP DirectX on your main installation. Tiberian Sun comes to mind, using DirectX 8 or newer makes the game crash if a beam/wave weapon fires to a target that is offscreen.

This actually spawns a question regarding the rules, would a VM be allowed for these special cases or is a dualboot installation mandatory where the computer is set up natively to run the game?

[quote="oasiz"][quote="Yagamoth"]
Also on a more related note: Should there be a specific definition of what "old" or "95/98" windows-era means? As far as I can tell it's mostly irrelevant, since it should make no difference.[/quote]

I think the most common issue is 16-bit/32-bit program hybrids from the 9x era, there is no clear definition on this as some programs kept using 16bit installers for a long time even if the game itself was 32bit. A lot of this stuff works on XP but some are really hard to get running if not impossible. If it's not "old" then it usually means that it's fully 32bit and can be run natively on windows already, rendering a VM useless :)[/quote]
Actually, some games still will be favorable to run in a VM unless you want to set up a dualboot, because even if the game boots and runs fine, it crashes a lot due to a too new version of DirectX, and you really don't want to roll back the DirectX version to a pre-XP DirectX on your main installation. Tiberian Sun comes to mind, using DirectX 8 or newer makes the game crash if a beam/wave weapon fires to a target that is offscreen.

This actually spawns a question regarding the rules, would a VM be allowed for these special cases or is a dualboot installation mandatory where the computer is set up natively to run the game?

Daddi

2013-08-21 07:59:22 am

Great step towards more and more speedruns. I like the decision and think the rules are okay.

nate

2013-08-21 08:48:40 am

Quote from oasiz:

Also comes with a downside... you will potentially end up with 50+ files on games that like switching resolutions around a lot!
You can easily resize them afterwards to 4:3 though.. maybe anri or such could use an option that supports this on the fly?
I mean.. stretching to 640x480 (or other 4:3) is what is needed anyway. Encoding a nice dosbox video could be mostly automated.
Letterboxing is another option but that doesn't preserve pixel art "as it was meant to be"

yua does all this right now. snow had already said he wouldn't be updating anri anymore and unfortunately i think i killed whatever will may have remained when i announced yua.

but, on the bright side, yua.

LotBlind

2013-08-21 12:22:40 pm

Quote from RoboSparkle:

Ok, time to start working on my Supaplex ILs

Quote from garik16:

Need to look into this for an eventual TIE Fighter run.

Quote from Chaos7040:

I speed-run Rise of the Triad, and I'd be happy to teach others.

Guys, come see me after dark sometime! I'm going to have ALL of your babies even though I'm not sure how that's going to work...

tenfoLd

2013-08-23 04:47:27 pm

This makes me want to start working on an "Ancient Empires" run.

Which as evidenced in this very very old thread was Radix's first ever PC game! :
https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/ancient_empires.html

Phoenix3568

2013-08-24 12:34:57 am

Procrastination Nation!

I have a question:

Many DOS games these days have lost their copyright protection and now are on the internet. However, this has caused some discrepancy of the legitimacy of the software.

For example, in the 2nd installment of jill there is a level known as Heck. Now in some versions the devils take MANY hits to destroy (the jill megapack containing all 3 episodes has this version). However, in another version (that I got off the internet) the devils get killed in one shot. Is there any way to verify the integrity of the game as well as to which version is being played?

Thank you.

Sir VG

2013-08-24 12:53:46 am

Fucking Weeaboo

Quote from Phoenix3568:

I have a question:

Many DOS games these days have lost their copyright protection and now are on the internet. However, this has caused some discrepancy of the legitimacy of the software.

For example, in the 2nd installment of jill there is a level known as Heck. Now in some versions the devils take MANY hits to destroy (the jill megapack containing all 3 episodes has this version). However, in another version (that I got off the internet) the devils get killed in one shot. Is there any way to verify the integrity of the game as well as to which version is being played?

Thank you.

Outside of having a legit disk or knowing somebody who does, that's the only way. There may be multiple versions where they did change things like that though.

presjpolk

2013-08-24 01:44:13 am

HELLO!

Seems to me that's what verification is for. If someone has a dodgy copy of a game then it may not pass verification.

LotBlind

2013-08-24 10:53:59 am

Quote from presjpolk:

Seems to me that's what verification is for. If someone has a dodgy copy of a game then it may not pass verification.

...which is also why you might wanna bring that up when you first create the topic for the game.

presjpolk

2013-08-24 12:30:06 pm

HELLO!

True. Discussing the game with others will prevent unfortunate situations.

Northern

2013-08-24 03:41:10 pm

Has anyone had much luck streaming Dosbox with OBS? I tried once with basically the default settings and it came out looking horrible so I went back to XSplit. I'm assuming it would come out better if a person knew which settings to tweak.

DJGrenola

Edit history:

DJGrenola: 2013-08-26 02:04:43 am

DJGrenola: 2013-08-26 02:04:30 am

2013-08-26 01:55:39 am

guffaw

Quote from nate:

Quote from oasiz:

Also comes with a downside... you will potentially end up with 50+ files on games that like switching resolutions around a lot!
You can easily resize them afterwards to 4:3 though.. maybe anri or such could use an option that supports this on the fly?
I mean.. stretching to 640x480 (or other 4:3) is what is needed anyway. Encoding a nice dosbox video could be mostly automated.
Letterboxing is another option but that doesn't preserve pixel art "as it was meant to be"

yua does all this right now. snow had already said he wouldn't be updating anri anymore and unfortunately i think i killed whatever will may have remained when i announced yua.

but, on the bright side, yua.

so I'm just going to mention that a lot of DOS games, although displayed as 4:3 by means of rectangular pixels, aren't actually 4:3 natively. anything using VGA mode 13h shouldn't have square pixels since that mode ran at 320x200 and not 320x240. abrash's mode X was 320x240 though and a lot of later games did use that.

there are also wacky hybrid modes like 256x256 that some games used.

[quote="nate"][quote="oasiz"]Also comes with a downside... you will potentially end up with 50+ files on games that like switching resolutions around a lot!
You can easily resize them afterwards to 4:3 though.. maybe anri or such could use an option that supports this on the fly?
I mean.. stretching to 640x480 (or other 4:3) is what is needed anyway. Encoding a nice dosbox video could be mostly automated.
Letterboxing is another option but that doesn't preserve pixel art "as it was meant to be"[/quote]
yua does all this right now. snow had already said he wouldn't be updating anri anymore and unfortunately i think i killed whatever will may have remained when i announced yua.

but, on the bright side, yua.[/quote]

so I'm just going to mention that a lot of DOS games, although displayed as 4:3 by means of rectangular pixels, aren't actually 4:3 natively. anything using VGA mode 13h shouldn't have square pixels since that mode ran at 320x200 and not 320x240. abrash's mode X was 320x240 though and a lot of later games did use that.

there are also wacky hybrid modes like 256x256 that some games used.

nate

2013-08-26 08:17:33 am

can't say i ever expected my decision to ignore aspect ratio when scaling to the highest common dimensions would result in explicitly desired behavior ... nice.

Maut

2013-08-26 01:33:01 pm

Prince of Persia Speedrunner

Quote from Northern:

Has anyone had much luck streaming Dosbox with OBS? I tried once with basically the default settings and it came out looking horrible so I went back to XSplit. I'm assuming it would come out better if a person knew which settings to tweak.

I haven't tried it yet and OBS can be fidgety at times. With Xsplit it's simple because you can grab the screen region rather easily which is nice. I'll test it out later tonight or tomorrow and see what works.

honorableJay

Edit history:

honorableJay: 2013-08-26 05:16:57 pm

2013-08-26 04:47:13 pm

The Dork Knight himself.

You have any saved footage we can see? Would help figure it out.

If I had to take a guess, try running dosbox in windowed mode, set the renderer to opengl, and use Window Capture for OBS. That might fix it if you were using Game Capture since the default option is a surface overlay renderer.

RoboSparkle

2013-08-26 05:04:41 pm

Magical. Flying. Bathtub

I streamed Beneath a Steel Sky on DosBox with OBS and it looked fine iirc. Although I wasn't the one watching it and the footage is gone now. If you need more footage then I can put a sample stream together for you, just let me know.

Thinkshooter

Edit history:

Thinkshooter: 2013-09-01 05:57:41 pm

2013-09-01 05:56:09 pm

Runs: FCP, FC3, XWA, HD1-2, KotOR1-2

This is great news.

I have a fairly complete strategy guide for the DOS version of X-Wing if anyone's interested.

Both X-Wing and Tie Fighter have nicer 640x480 Win95 versions too. But AFAIK you can only fly your craft using a mouse in the DOS version, which can be a major boost in dogfights.

mysoft

2013-09-04 01:57:09 am

wohoooooo now my Titus the Fox speed run will finally become a reality Cheesy

djcj

2013-11-23 08:25:26 pm

In past afaik Wine used to be not allowed for running Windows games. But since Wine has a great support for old Windows programs, especially 16 bit apps, it could be a good option for old 90's Windows games.

Also, I wonder if Wine would now be allowed for modern games too, since it doesn't emulate the system but uses a compatibility layer. It's the same for running Linux binaries in FreeBSD.
Though it shouldn't matter much since it shouldn't be too hard to get the native OS to let the games run there.

Bigmanjapan

Edit history:

Bigmanjapan: 2014-10-02 05:13:19 am

Bigmanjapan: 2014-10-02 05:12:53 am

2014-10-01 07:14:39 pm

The Legend of Kyrandia 2 was rereleased by GOG with ScummVM as an emulator. ScummVM is easy to capture via OBS when in fullscreen mode.
Is it still prohibited to use ScummVM even if its a part of official GOG pack? Or should I switch to DOSBox instead?