Incline eXoDOS v6 — It's coming!

[deama]

So I just tried exoDos with dungeon keeper, works well.

I then tried with tomb raider, and whilst it starts, I get stuck in this infinite rotating main menu wheel thing, if I press and hold left arrow key it stops, but won't let me "select" an option in the menu, if I release, just continues spinning...

Any ideas?

 

[Bester]

I posted your bug on their discord since you can't go there for ideological reasons.

 

[Haba]

Hnnngh, plebs.

https://www.tosecdev.org/tosec-naming-convention

 

[Bester]

deama

 

[deama]

deama

No, no joystick, just a mouse + keyboard, though I guess maybe the keyboard and mouse are kinda exotic? Cause the mouse is made out of carbon fiber, and the keyboard uses magnetic switches or something like that.
Here's a video what happens for me:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZC8zhTcSQLFJ9WXRsB2fMcgCYBTXyK5O/view?usp=sharing

When it stops I press and hold the left arrow key, but no button works at that point, and if I release it, it goes back spinning.
I tried different versions, like the 3dfx one, still same issue though.

 

[Bester]

Disconnect your keyboard for a sec when it's cycling. See if it stops. If you reconnect it and it starts cycling again, I'd say it's keyboard related.
You can also open some keyboard checker to see what key presses your OS detects when it happens: https://keyboardchecker.com/
If it doesn't stop cycling when the keyboard is disconnected, disconnect your mouse.

 

[deama]

Disconnect your keyboard for a sec when it's cycling. See if it stops. If you reconnect it and it starts cycling again, I'd say it's keyboard related.
You can also open some keyboard checker to see what key presses your OS detects when it happens: https://keyboardchecker.com/
If it doesn't stop cycling when the keyboard is disconnected, disconnect your mouse.

Nah, doesn't work, unplugged both keyboard and mouse just as cinematic started, after it finished it was still spinning.

 

[Naraya]

I think the only problem I might have with eXoDOS is the tendency to use the CD-ROM versions of games, which is not always the best route, imo. Two words: SimCity CD. And I'm afraid to check out any CD version (?) of Martian Memorandum since even just the floppy disk version with the voice acting and digitized video of one of the developers doing a french guy with a beret gave me a near fatal cringe attack

Both floppy and CD versions are included for many games. In general, when there are significant differences between the original floppy release and the later CD release, they include both. That's the goal.

Couple of examples that come to mind that include both: Darkseed (after I pointed out only the CD release is included), System Shock, Goblins series, Alone in the Dark, Monkey Island.

For games where there are distinct EGA and VGA versions, and the EGA version is culturally significant, they of course include both, e.g., for the LucasArts adventures. Then for Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken, both the original (160x200, similar to the C64 originals) and the later enhanced versions are included (320x200). It's a very comprehensive collection!

Moreover, they aim to include versions that have the files for all graphics adapters. E.g., if game supports Hercules, CGA, EGA, Tandy, and VGA (common for games almost right up until the mid 90s), many "abandonware" versions miss some of the files. For example, VGA and EGA is there, but they didn't bother to include Hercules and CGA. This is important for preservation purposes and yes, they try to include all the files (I report cases when some are missing).

Have those CRT filters you added to staging been added to eXoDOS 6? Or when will they be added in? 7 maybe?

Yes, my zero-config, automatic CRT shaders will be part of eXoDOS 6. However, not *all* games in their collection use Staging. Re-testing 8000+ games with Staging would be a monumental task. So it will be a gradual adoption over the next releases. They give each individual game a thorough testing; "starts up" is not good enough.

From what I gather, they're not yet available in Staging or ExoDos. ExoDos 6 should come out "soon" and will have them, which I understand as within a month. As for Staging - no idea when their next version comes out next time, but I see they release updates a couple times a year, so could be months.

Yeah, eXoDOS v6 will come out in a couple of months. More importantly, in v6 they figured out a way to push updates to the clients. So from v6 onwards, you get continuous updates (if you wish to get that, they're not forced) which could include Staging updates, fixes, more games being converted to Staging, and so on.

For Staging, a release will come out this year, at least that's the plan. Currently, the critical path is me I'll be ready with my outstanding regression fixes & bugfixes in a month or so, then I want to have a mininum one month regression testing cycle. But two months would be better. During these periods, the team and community members churn through 400-500 games and test them for regressions—time consuming, but the only way.

But you can try the new CRT shaders *right now*! Just download the latest dev build from here. They're enabled by default, and like I said, completely zero-config! I recommend the MSYS2 build for Windows users:
https://dosbox-staging.github.io/downloads/development-builds/

If someone is interested in the details about the massive video emulation related improvements, here are some of my big-ticket items. I write very comprehensive descriptions and explanations, so there's lots of technical info there and also screenshots.

https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/pull/2777
https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/pull/2819
https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/pull/2654
https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/pull/2503

Hopefully by "soon" it'll be this or early next year.

Does anyone know if dungeon keeper 1 is on the list for ExoDos? Or will be on v6?

Dungeon Keeper has been part of eXoDOS for a while. It's definitely in v5 already and it's working fine.

You are doing God's work, my friend. And these ticket descriptions are great read. One thing I love about staging is its awesome documentation!

 

[Rincewind]

I then tried with tomb raider, and whilst it starts, I get stuck in this infinite rotating main menu wheel thing, if I press and hold left arrow key it stops, but won't let me "select" an option in the menu, if I release, just continues spinning...

Any ideas?

I had this problem with Tomb Raider. It's a protected mode late 90s DOS game; for these games, DOSBox auto-switches to "max" cycles mode, which will run CPU emulation as fast as your host machine allows it.

Some games and programs start behaving erratically when the CPU emulation is *too fast*. So the automatic "max" cycles setting is a little bit evil; the same game can work fine on your machine and misbehave on your friend's machine that is faster. Probably the game will misbehave on real hardware too that has a much faster CPU than what you could get at the end of the 90s.

Also, "max" cycles can starve other parts of the emulation, e.g. it can introduce sound stutters.

I always recommend using manual cycles settings, the *lowest* manually set cycles setting that runs the game well enough. So in this case "cycles = 200000" or "cycles = 300000" should do the job (if playing in SVGA mode, 640x480 from memory; for 320x200 "cycles=150000" should be plenty, that would emulate an MMX 200, roughly). I remember in my case that got rid of the spinning (I think it was the TR demo, not the retail version, but probably the exact same code in in the menu screen).

Let me know how it goes!

 

[deama]

I then tried with tomb raider, and whilst it starts, I get stuck in this infinite rotating main menu wheel thing, if I press and hold left arrow key it stops, but won't let me "select" an option in the menu, if I release, just continues spinning...

Any ideas?

I had this problem with Tomb Raider. It's a protected mode late 90s DOS game; for these games, DOSBox auto-switches to "max" cycles mode, which will run CPU emulation as fast as your host machine allows it.

Some games and programs start behaving erratically when the CPU emulation is *too fast*. So the automatic "max" cycles setting is a little bit evil; the same game can work fine on your machine and misbehave on your friend's machine that is faster. Probably the game will misbehave on real hardware too that has a much faster CPU than what you could get at the end of the 90s.

Also, "max" cycles can starve other parts of the emulation, e.g. it can introduce sound stutters.

I always recommend using manual cycles settings, the *lowest* manually set cycles setting that runs the game well enough. So in this case "cycles = 200000" or "cycles = 300000" should do the job (if playing in SVGA mode, 640x480 from memory; for 320x200 "cycles=150000" should be plenty, that would emulate an MMX 200, roughly). I remember in my case that got rid of the spinning (I think it was the TR demo, not the retail version, but probably the exact same code in in the menu screen).

Let me know how it goes!

So, it sort of works, I have to slow it down to just 6%, but even at that it still sometime spasses out, it's not really playable for a platformer.
When I get into a game, she's a bit spassy, at 6% she sometimes moves around at her own volition when I press a button.
At 11% she's basically pressing all the movement buttons.


I also tried 1% but that's too slow.
Is there no way to play this without taking a dump on the CPU? I do want to play this at high fps at least.

 

[Bester]

Exo instantly got butthurt and started gaslighting me that the problem is with me, not with dosbox.

 

[Bester]

fantastic bug report management

 

[deama]

fantastic bug report management

Xeon? I got a 7950x3dv, clocked to the max, and tuned to the freaking moon!

I personally take offense to that comment, never have I ever in my life plugged a controller into my computer!

 

[Bester]

He then flipped out, posted a bunch of links where people had the menu spin due to a plugged controlled, started writing in caps and banned me from the bug report thread.

 

[deama]

He then flipped out, posted a bunch of links where people had the menu spin due to a plugged controlled, started writing in caps and banned me from the bug report thread. xD

Holy shit! Was that the main guy for the project or just one of the higher ups?

 

[Bester]

It's the main guy, rofls.

 

[grimace]

More importantly, in v6 they figured out a way to push updates to the clients. So from v6 onwards, you get continuous updates

Thank you.

 

[Rincewind]

Well, that's poor form from eXo Well, I apologise in his name for the inconvenience. Dunno, maybe he's stressed about v6. He also had a motorcycle accident last week, maybe a bit more touchy than usual. He's usually respectful with me (but brief).

deama You did not try what I said, I did not say set cycles to a *percentage*, but to use fixed, exact cycles values. The two are different. Can you try `cycles = 300000` in your config? It goes into the `[dosbox]` section. That should give you good performance in 640x480.

 

[Rincewind]

Ok deama, I downloaded Tomb Raider Gold from eXoDOS v5 and tried it with Staging. 640x480 SVGA rendering works perfectly smoothly with the below settings:

[cpu]
cycles = 300000

If your *single core* (!) performance is not high enough, you might need to lower that a bit to 250000 or 200000. Do not change the cycles setting during the game as it confuses this particular game and Lara might start running/turning automatically. This is a peculiarity of how the game was coded and how that interacts with the CPU emulation, there's not much to do about it.

Also do *not* use max cycles settings with this game in DOSBox Staging. With max cycles, yeah I'm getting the controller issues too. And I don't have any controllers connected, I'm on a laptop.

In eXo's defence, if he says the game runs correctly using the *bundled* DOSBox version from eXoDOS, probably he's right. And he's right in saying that these games have been tested by many people on different setups. He uses like 10 or more different DOSBox variants in total, so probably the version/fork he uses with Tomb Raider is fine with max cycles. It gets complicated, let's not even go there; the TL;DR is the above settings will give you perfect results with DOSBox Staging.

 

[Rincewind]

In other news, eXo has a new video about my new auto-CRT shaders and explains the whole thing better than I could. Also note that the difference between no shader / CRT shader is much greater in real life; the YouTube compression blurs the finer details of the CRT shaded output.

 

[deama]

Ok deama, I downloaded Tomb Raider Gold from eXoDOS v5 and tried it with Staging. 640x480 SVGA rendering works perfectly smoothly with the below settings:

[cpu]
cycles = 300000

If your *single core* (!) performance is not high enough, you might need to lower that a bit to 250000 or 200000. Do not change the cycles setting during the game as it confuses this particular game and Lara might start running/turning automatically. This is a peculiarity of how the game was coded and how that interacts with the CPU emulation, there's not much to do about it.

Also do *not* use max cycles settings with this game in DOSBox Staging. With max cycles, yeah I'm getting the controller issues too. And I don't have any controllers connected, I'm on a laptop.

In eXo's defence, if he says the game runs correctly using the *bundled* DOSBox version from eXoDOS, probably he's right. And he's right in saying that these games have been tested by many people on different setups. He uses like 10 or more different DOSBox variants in total, so probably the version/fork he uses with Tomb Raider is fine with max cycles. It gets complicated, let's not even go there; the TL;DR is the above settings will give you perfect results with DOSBox Staging.

Yeah that works, thanks.
It was max cycles by default, I didn't touch the conf files or nothin.

 

[Tweed]

He then flipped out, posted a bunch of links where people had the menu spin due to a plugged controlled, started writing in caps and banned me from the bug report thread.

Bit a nut, isn't he?

 

[Naraya]

He then flipped out, posted a bunch of links where people had the menu spin due to a plugged controlled, started writing in caps and banned me from the bug report thread.

Bit a nut, isn't he?

Eh, it's somewhat understandable as he probably has to deal with "AKSHUALLY" people every day Sometimes you just flip out.

 

[Rincewind]

Eh, it's somewhat understandable as he probably has to deal with "AKSHUALLY" people every day Sometimes you just flip out.

Yes, he's a pretty cool dude. Sometimes harsh, but fair. And everybody has a bad day sometime.

 

[mastroego]

I for one am extremely annoyed by this kind of bannings.