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Running Games and Apps.

DosBox AGA

Colin R

Posts 2
08 Nov 2018 22:00


Hi all, NovaCoder has returned to his DosBox AGA port, and recent builds are being tested out.  Vampire was brought up, so I was wondering could someone with the Gold 3.0 Alpha core possibly test it out pretty please!

EXTERNAL LINK 
Thanks.


Sean Sk

Posts 488
08 Nov 2018 22:53


Mike Nurney said he may try it out this weekend so I'm sure he will post something on his Youtube channel when he has had a chance.


Markus B

Posts 209
09 Nov 2018 11:26


DosBox is open source?
How fast is it compared to PC Task?


Roy Gillotti

Posts 517
09 Nov 2018 11:50


Markus B wrote:

DosBox is open source?
  How fast is it compared to PC Task?

I would think without serious tweaks it would be considerable slower, but I never tried it.


Mr Niding

Posts 459
09 Nov 2018 12:51


Arti commented on EAB;

"With 2pipe , AMMX in DosBox and DDR3 enabled we could have this playable."


Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
09 Nov 2018 16:36


Roy Gillotti wrote:

Markus B wrote:

  DosBox is open source?
  How fast is it compared to PC Task?
 

  I would think without serious tweaks it would be considerable slower, but I never tried it.

Quite slower, but as presented, yet, is developed and can be optimized.But brings far more then PC TASK



Nova Coder

Posts 27
11 Feb 2019 01:06


Has anyone tested the new RTG release of DOSBox on Vampire yet?
 
  For a Vampire, try 1000-3000 cycles on the simple core


Artur Jarosik
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 94
11 Feb 2019 11:44


I made test on V4 x14
 
  EXTERNAL LINK   

    Some notes:
    You can't inc/decrease cycles in-game because it's set to F11 and F12.
    It can be changed in emulator key-mapper but Save button doesn't work.
    Editing key-mapper file doesn't work too.
    Would be good to see current cycles on title bar, instead of "Program: <name here> "
   
   


Nova Coder

Posts 27
11 Feb 2019 22:57


Artur Jarosik wrote:

  I made test on V4 x14
   
    EXTERNAL LINK     
 
      Some notes:
      You can't inc/decrease cycles in-game because it's set to F11 and F12.
      It can be changed in emulator key-mapper but Save button doesn't work.
      Editing key-mapper file doesn't work too.
      Would be good to see current cycles on title bar, instead of "Program: <name here> "
     
     
 

 
  Thanks for testing, that's actually pretty good!
 
  How many cycles did you try?
 
  A point and click adventure game like day of the tentacle would be better as not as fast moving.
 
  You should only need about 2000 cycles to run DOTT, if you set the cycles too high for your CPU it will slow down (less is more!)

You can set the cycles in the configuration file.

I'll see if I can change those button mapping for setting the cycles using the function keys.


Daniel Kovacs

Posts 35
13 Feb 2019 18:07


PC Task is certainly faster, but this one is usable and I like how you can point to a folder as your hard drive from within the emulator.


Franco BRONDA

Posts 9
15 Feb 2019 15:34


I tested the RTG version on Vampire 500 V2+ 2.11 trying to play "Day of Tentacle" but is very very very slow.
I do not know if there can be improvements recompiling the program using the special instructions of the 68080 if there is a compiler that allows it.



Roy Gillotti

Posts 517
15 Feb 2019 16:15


Franco BRONDA wrote:

I tested the RTG version on Vampire 500 V2+ 2.11 trying to play "Day of Tentacle" but is very very very slow.

Well for Day of The Tentacle, ScummVM is likely the better choice.


Nova Coder

Posts 27
15 Feb 2019 21:38


Franco BRONDA wrote:

I tested the RTG version on Vampire 500 V2+ 2.11 trying to play "Day of Tentacle" but is very very very slow.
  I do not know if there can be improvements recompiling the program using the special instructions of the 68080 if there is a compiler that allows it.
 

How many cycles did you set in the configuration file?

You should try 2000 and then 3000, the number of cycles is critical.  Too many cycles will actually slow it down!



Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
17 Feb 2019 06:38


I think running DOS-Games is a cool feature.
 
Maybe you can help me better understand DOSBOX limits.
 
a) Is it right that the X86 emulation run pure "interpreter"
and does not support JIT?
 
b) How much time is spend for GFX display update?
E.g. Screen copy and endian conversion?

Screen update could maybe made faster by
a) not copy screen but swap pointers, and run display in native PC-mode.


Nova Coder

Posts 27
17 Feb 2019 07:17


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

I think running DOS-Games is a cool feature.
 
  Maybe you can help me better understand DOSBOX limits.
 
  a) Is it right that the X86 emulation run pure "interpreter"
  and does not support JIT?
 
  b) How much time is spend for GFX display update?
  E.g. Screen copy and endian conversion?
 
 
  Screen update could maybe made faster by
  a) not copy screen but swap pointers, and run display in native PC-mode.

Hi Gunner,

I'm afraid almost none of the time is spent rendering the screen for a VGA game, almost the entire CPU time is spent on the X86 CPU emulation.  The X86 CPU emulation is just a massive CASE statement with multiple branches and GOTO statements (it's a complete nightmare). 

No, my 68K does not contain a JIT which is why it is so slow.

I did spend some time working with Matt Hey to try and develop our own JIT but we gave up when we found out that nobody has successfully written a DOSBox JIT on any other platform apart from X86.

I'm not developing this port any longer after my next minor release (just to fix up the mouse).  I've included the source code on AmiNet for anybody else who is feeling brave ;)




Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
17 Feb 2019 08:14


Nova Coder wrote:

The X86 CPU emulation is just a massive CASE statement with multiple branches and GOTO statements (it's a complete nightmare). 

I see.
Depends how its translated.
Using the 1st byte of the Opcode as index
to a big table of routines could be a reasonable fast approach.

What are you working next?

I found this to be a nice game.
EXTERNAL LINK 
It runs on Vampire but it seems performance is wasted somewhere.
So there is room for improvement - I think it could run fully smooth after fixing this.


Nova Coder

Posts 27
05 Mar 2019 02:02


New RTG/AGA versions on Aminet with timing fixes which may make them perform slightly better.  I've also added joystick support, tested with Commander Keen 4 using my PS4 controller ;)

The amount of cycles is now displayed in window mode if you change increase or decrease them using the function keys.


Artur Jarosik
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 94
05 Mar 2019 13:51


Cool, now I know that best cycle value is 1300.
CPU set to auto.

posts 18