Incline eXoDOS v6 — It's coming!

[Bester]

Launching some games is also slow, others not. "Screamer 2" takes 40 seconds from the console to appear, to displaying "Previous settings have been found." So it's just bat files doing some shit, without launching dosbox.

"Would you like to launch with these settings"? You hit "Y" and then wait additional 2 minutes before Dosbox launches.

 

[Bester]

The slowness was caused by Kaspersky, it's very curious about those scripts.

No auto-crt shaders in standard launcher still a problem.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm looking in the 'Media Pack', and I'm kinda scratching my head here.

In the DosMagazines-zipfile there a folder for Images>MS-DOS Magazines & Newsletters> that's ~1.5 Gb in size, but it mostly consists of images of game boxes taken from magazine ads. There's also a hefty section of images of CD-ROMs.

Not the data, mind you, the discs themselves. And most of them are magazine coverdiscs!

The rest are empty folders, mostly pertaining to images from digital distributors that are not there... yet.

This feels like a WIP-section for something down the line. No idea why it's being included now.

But far more interesting in the zipfile is the magazine collections. Every issue of PC Zone up to the end of 2000, most issues of PC Gamer (US) from 1994-1998 (including coverdiscs!), the QuestBusters-newsletter, the Big Blue Disk-, Gamebytes- and Interactive Entertainment 3D-collections, and more. But it's all so very American-centric, with only the biggest UK-titles getting a look in. I particularly lament the lack of PC Format, for example, which is a real shame because that started off in late 1991, well before most other PC-focused magazines.

While I hope this will be a section that gets expanded, care must be taken in this matter because the magazines are huge in size - a single issue in decent quality is easily 100Mb+ in size. The only thing taking up more space here are the coverdiscs themselves.

And this time there's more than just including the magazines for possible further reading. I'm spotting batch files linking to reviews, cheats and relevant articles for various games. Some kind and autistic soul spent a lot of time on that.

So unless you're collecting gaming mags and coverdiscs, I'm not certain the media pack is gonna do much for you. Once out of the zipfile it's 120 Gb in size, and lord knows what it'll be when it's 'unpacked'.

 

[deama]

Earthworm jim doesn't seem to work right. It comes up with earthworm jim 1 & 2, but there's no option to run 1, and also, when I try running 2, there's only music, no sound affects or voice.

Also, that tomb raider issue is broken again on v6.

 

[Bester]

there's only music, no sound affects or voice.

I launched through Alternate Launcher.bat and everything was okay.

It comes up with earthworm jim 1 & 2, but there's no option to run 1

It's just a cover art that says 1 & 2, in reality it's just 2. The real 1 is listed separately.

 

[deama]

there's only music, no sound affects or voice.

I launched through Alternate Launcher.bat and everything was okay.

It comes up with earthworm jim 1 & 2, but there's no option to run 1

It's just a cover art that says 1 & 2, in reality it's just 2. The real 1 is listed separately.

Ah, seems to work now for me after trying it again the next day.

 

[Rincewind]

Yeah the Media Pack is a new thing; expect it to evolve going forward. I'm yet to buy a new 2TB HDD and download the whole thing, but it's a tricky situation with the Media Pack. Clearly, including absolutely all DOS-era magazines and books and soundtracks would be insane and then it would be a 20TB "add-on". So it has to be a curated collection, including only the best content, and I think that's less controversial than one might think. E.g., Computer Gaming World and QuestBusters beats every English language European mag by a large margin (haven't read all, of course, but I see a trend there with EU PC mags). Then there are ton of non-English mags one would prefer for nostalgic reasons (like me some Hungarian mags) which is clearly out of scope as well. There are more EU guys than US guys in their team AFAIK, but at the very least it's a healthy mix, so the perceived US-centrism might be simply due to the big difference in quality (and let's face it, the majority of the best DOS era games are American made).

The collection will inevitably migrate to Staging as we achieve parity with the various legacy DOSBox builds they still use. Not many of such issues are left. Plus of course we have also exceeded these builds with many new features; this will only continue going forward. So with time Staging will be the main launch method, that's all I'm saying.

 

[Bester]

including absolutely all DOS-era magazines and books and soundtracks would be insane

Some of these magazines in the Media Pack go beyond 2000, which is absolutely unnecessary. I expressed an opinion on eXo's Discord that magazines past a certain date, say 1996-1997, didn't need to be included at all, if they don't have a single mention of a DOS game. Needless to say, it didn't go well.

PC World -> Dec 99
CGW -> Dec 98
InterAction -> Jan 99
PC Gamer -> Dec 98
PC World -> Dec 99
PC Zone -> Dec 2000

Last issue of CGW from Dec 98' features Half-Life, NBA Live 99 and MechWarrior 3 on the cover.
I remember running around the city trying to find any CD that would have DirectX 6.1a on it, because the version of Half-Life that the pirates were selling didn't ship it, and the game wasn't launching for anyone. This wasn't the DOS era anymore.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

InterAction is the official Sierra On-Line newsletter, and not a magazine like the others. The last issue was released in early '99, so no need to 'cut off' anything there.

I understand where you're going with the others, but it's a case where each magazine would have to be weighed individually by judging its content. There was at least one PC-centric magazine around in the late 1990s (can't recall the name of it right now) that didn't have its head up its ass, and actually remembered older PC-games, and would bring them up now and again. Their 'Top Games of All Time'-lists were actually well thought-out.

 

[Rincewind]

Some of these magazines in the Media Pack go beyond 2000, which is absolutely unnecessary. I expressed an opinion on eXo's Discord that magazines past a certain date, say 1996-1997, didn't need to be included at all, if they don't have a single mention of a DOS game. Needless to say, it didn't go well.

I prefer that actually rather than a too early cutoff point. Not sure if those magazines are complete, though, or they just chose a later cutoff point.

 

[Rincewind]

Winner of the v6 cover contest. Looks glorious, lots of RPG references.

 

[Alex]

I downloaded the basic torrent with the games but not the media. It looks nice and I am thankful for all the work that went into it. I am however having some little trouble I hoped you might help me with, Rincewind.

First, the very first game I tried to test, Ultima 8 (it was one of the first games I ever played on a PC) worked well out of the box. But when I tried to use some shaders, the keyboard would no longer work once in game. To be clear, it was still working when I selected which sound card to use, and the esc key at the very least still manages to skip the intro to the latest save. But once it is in there, none of the keys work anymore. Ultima 8 is mostly mouse oriented, but you still need to be able to bring the journal up by pressing esc if you want to save. Any idea what could be the issue here? I imagined it might be some incompatibility between the various conf files, but then it doesn't make sense it is still working when the game boots up. The keyboard works fine if I use the normal start rather than the custom shader thing. I tested the summoning and using shaders there didn't break the keyboard. Maybe it is a specific shader?

My other question is, what is a good shader to use? I am a bit lost among so many options. Edit: Also since this is kind of an obvious question, if you already answered it, apologies in advance.

 

[deama]

I downloaded the basic torrent with the games but not the media. It looks nice and I am thankful for all the work that went into it. I am however having some little trouble I hoped you might help me with, Rincewind.

First, the very first game I tried to test, Ultima 8 (it was one of the first games I ever played on a PC) worked well out of the box. But when I tried to use some shaders, the keyboard would no longer work once in game. To be clear, it was still working when I selected which sound card to use, and the esc key at the very least still manages to skip the intro to the latest save. But once it is in there, none of the keys work anymore. Ultima 8 is mostly mouse oriented, but you still need to be able to bring the journal up by pressing esc if you want to save. Any idea what could be the issue here? I imagined it might be some incompatibility between the various conf files, but then it doesn't make sense it is still working when the game boots up. The keyboard works fine if I use the normal start rather than the custom shader thing. I tested the summoning and using shaders there didn't break the keyboard. Maybe it is a specific shader?

My other question is, what is a good shader to use? I am a bit lost among so many options. Edit: Also since this is kind of an obvious question, if you already answered it, apologies in advance.

I just tried it, same issue, works fine if you don't select shaders, but if you do, keyboard doesn't seem to work, ESC in my case doesn't even work.

 

[Bester]

Yeah, same. Using dosbox-staging.

 

[Alex]

I tried messing a bit with the .conf files, thinking it was perhaps some incompatibility. Here is what I've found:

First, most are probably aware of this, but I wasn't, one important point is that while running U8 with shader options uses DOSBox staging, the normal run option doesn't. I've tried messing with the .conf files thinking the problem might be in some incompatibility, but that is definitely not it. After hiding the base .conf in exodos' staging v0.81.0a folder (so it would use my basic one in the appdata folder), I ran the ultima 8 from exodos and the same problem happened. Note that this version is a development build, but it is the one exodos uses to run U8 (at least) with shaders. In my old v0.79.0, the keyboard works fine, as it does with staging v0.80.1 included in the exodos instalation.

If this bug was already known and is being fixed, that is ok, but if this is new, here is some more info: the esc key, as I mentioned above, works enough to cut the intro, but no further than that. deama complained not even that worked for him. Today I remembered the whole problem someone had with Tomb Raider and realised I had a controller plugged to my computer. Hoping that might be it, I unplugged it, and when I did the esc key wouldn't cut the intro either. Finally, note that the keyboard works before running the game. I had to enter the ultima8 folder and type the program name to run it when using my own generic .conf.

Finally, if all the shaders work with the non development version of staging, I suspect it would be for the best to use it with the project. If you want I could try entering discord and reporting this to them myself.

 

[Rincewind]

Thank you Alex. I've managed to narrow the issue down, the original author will look at it shortly (see here https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/issues/3104). Please keep such regression reports coming, that's super valuable feedback. Needless to say, every complex software has regressions and we can't retest all 10k games after every single change—that's where community feedback comes in. If you let me know here, I will treat all RPGs and adventures as a matter of priority

We only roll forward a few months after a major release, so the fix will be part of the upcoming v0.81.0 build. eXoDOS v6 has the ability to push emulator updates, so nobody will need to wait for v7 or something for a Staging fix; updates & fixes will be continuously pushed to users when available. And yeah, they use our dev builds, simply because they wanted to release v6 before Staging v0.81.0. But the "alternate launcher" is kinda experimental. I *think* (but need to confirm) that they also use Staging for the normal launcher for some games, and those are 100% tested. But you can use Staging via the alternate launcher for any of their ~10k games, and they of course haven't retested every single game with Staging (yet).

Oh, and which shader do I recommend for DOS games? My adaptive auto-CRT shaders, of course Only DOSBox Staging makes it possible! as

EDIT: Confirmed, this is how Staging is used in eXoDOS v6:

1. Game uses Staging via the normal launch method — game is confirmed to work well with Staging by the eXo team.

2. Game uses some other fork via the normal launch method — you can still use Staging via the alternate launch method, and it's highly likely the game would work, but no guarantees as it's not specifically tested by the eXo team yet. In such cases, please report any issues to us the Staging team directly (but make sure you're indeed using Staging, not some other fork).

 

[Azdul]

MAME primarily covers arcade-machines, but has tried its hand at emulating other systems... mostly with little results. A full set of the latest MAME-releases totals over 3 Tb in size, but at least 2/3rds of that can be skipped if you focus on the arcades.

Another interesting option is something like MiSTer, which is a computer that emulates other computers and consoles, but at the hardware level. I don't understand the tech behind it all that well, but what I got from it is that it tries to set different circuits to emulate the circuit specifications of what these computers used. It seems like a really cool idea, but MiSTer itself doesn't have a very good DOS support, and getting it to support older computers is a whole lot of work as you need very detailed specifications for each electronic component of these machines.

When it comes to supporting DOS - MAME (once MESS and MAME became one project) and MiST / MiSTer use the same very low level approach. They arrive at working machine by simulating individual chips - and document the hardware on their way.

You can track long painful road to first fully working PC in this thread. MAME/MESS team research translates quite well to FPGA cores.

100% cycle accurate simulation of every logic gate of a machine is a goal - playable games are a side-effect. Even if it means decapping chip and using microscope to read Color PROM to prove that Bubble Bobble used slightly different shade of yellow. It's a lot of fun .

And for something completely different: Is there a way to force Dosbox Staging to stretch original 4:3 graphics to fill 16:9 screen ?

 

[Rincewind]

100% cycle accurate simulation of every logic gate of a machine is a goal - playable games are a side-effect.

Yeah, that is a must for arcade machines, consoles and home computers. Many of the sound chips used in arcade cabinets found their way into DOS sound cards. We took many sound chip emulation from the MAME project.

That's the Staging approach -- cycle accurate emulation where it matters (mostly only for sound devices), loose/high level emulation where it doesn't. Best of both worlds! And the PC architecture itself at the system level is loose with components not synced to a base clock as we previously discussed.

And for something completely different: Is there a way to force Dosbox Staging to stretch original 4:3 graphics to fill 16:9 screen ?

Nope. What's the use case?

 

[Azdul]

And for something completely different: Is there a way to force Dosbox Staging to stretch original 4:3 graphics to fill 16:9 screen ?

Nope. What's the use case?

I don't like black bars with full screen scrolling titles - either strategy or arcade ones. It suggests to me that I've reached the edge of the map.

Small text is often easier to read when letters get more width.

When it comes to 'authentic' experience - in many cases developers didn't care about aspect ratio when porting bitmap graphics between different platforms - so 320x200 VGA with 1.6 pixel aspect ratio shown on 4:3 screen sometimes isn't the original artist intention.

In short - I would like to have a choice.

 

[Rincewind]

And for something completely different: Is there a way to force Dosbox Staging to stretch original 4:3 graphics to fill 16:9 screen ?

Nope. What's the use case?

I don't like black bars with full screen scrolling titles - either strategy or arcade ones. It suggests to me that I've reached the edge of the map.

Small text is often easier to read when letters get more width.

When it comes to 'authentic' experience - in many cases developers didn't care about aspect ratio when porting bitmap graphics between different platforms - so 320x200 VGA with 1.6 pixel aspect ratio shown on 4:3 screen sometimes isn't the original artist intention.

In short - I would like to have a choice.

Regardless of whether I agree or disagree with what you wrote (personally, I disagree with most of it) I've been considering adding an `aspect = stretch` option that just stretches the output to the viewport size. So the window size, full screen dimensions, or the `viewport_resolution` size. Then people can screw up the aspect ratio to their liking But yeah, it has *some* utility in some cases... probably. And there's no harm if it's not the default and sufficiently hidden

I'm a guy who plays DOS games ported from the Amiga with the "correct" settings, so for example using square pixels with `aspect = off` if it was a PAL Amiga game, etc.

Then the authentic option is the authentic option; what people saw on the screen in the DOS days is *the* authentic experience.

Related: the OSD will be displayed as a side-panel, like on TVs. By default, there would be enough space for it even in fullscreen DOS titles when displayed on a widescreen flat panel. So with 16:9 stretch the OSD will hide the content, but whatever... that's how it works on TVs too.

 

[Lady Error]

ExoDOS seems useful if you want to preserve gaming history after a solar storm or Klaus Schwab wipe out the Internet. But 90% of the collection is total crap that I would never touch - much better to just selectively download the good stuff.

 

[Rincewind]

ExoDOS seems useful if you want to preserve gaming history after a solar storm or Klaus Schwab wipe out the Internet. But 90% of the collection is total crap that I would never touch - much better to just selectively download the good stuff.

Agreed, there's lots of bottom of the barrel stuff in there. It's also handy to download manuals for all DOS games for once and all.

Note they will soon launch the "lite" version which is just a few gigs of a base install, then you can get individual games one by one as needed. That's probably how most people will use it.

The individual game configs are rather good, e.g. 99% of people will use some suboptimal configs if left to their own devices (for example, most people have no idea that Gold Box games can be played with Tandy music and Sound Blaster sound effects for the best DOS experience). Figuring out all that stuff requires lots of research and experimentation per game. Plus yeah, the preservational aspect, especially the preservation of the collective knowledge about setting up DOS games properly is not to be underestimated. Also, abandonware sites come and go and bend over backwards to right-holders, etc. And GOG sucks.

Then it's super handy for emulator devs like myself to have all games at your fingertips, but I'm in the minority In general, I dislike mega-collections because I'm paralysed by choice and end up with just screwing around with a bunch of games for 5 minutes instead of picking just one...

 

[Lady Error]

Note they will soon launch the "lite" version which is just a few gigs of a base install, then you can get individual games one by one as needed. That's probably how most people will use it.

That sounds like a good alternative.

 

[Azdul]

SCUMMVM is trying to build a 'virtal machine' around a few good games and/or companies, instead of providing a huge dump of everything. Ideal for the casuals who just want to get at the biggest hits and such. Last time I checked, it was over 200 Gb in size.

Other options include, as Unkillable Cat mentioned, ScummVM. This one has a completely different approach, trying to reimplement the engine of each game they support. This can lead to implementations that are actually very different from the original, although as far as I know most ScummVM games are actually pretty faithful. Furthermore, you can end up with interesting new features, such as the ScummVM version of the Might and Magic game being able to use the mapping system and interface of M&M 4-5. One downside of this approach, of course, is that you only support a limited number of games, since you aren't recreating the DOS environment.

ScummVM has two big advantages:

• It runs games at correct speed. Some DOS titles require powerful CPU to not drop frames or play cutscenes correctly - but with too much CPU cycles animations are too fast, controls get wonky, AI or game logic craps out. Sometimes there is no single, correct 'cycles' setting for a given game that would make it 'perfect' while running under DosBox.
• It runs some DOS (and Amiga) titles on plethora of weird and wonderful platforms. If you have Atari ST, Pandora Handheld, Sparc with Solaris or Ouya - don't expect Dosbox Staging port anytime soon. ScummVM is a Godsend for people with exotic hardware fetish - or cheap handheld.

Biggest disadvantages:

• ScummVM draws the line at game logic implemented in compiled/assembly code. Heart of China or Betrayal At Krondor would be ideal to play on older or weaker non-DOS hardware - but would require basically implementing whole game logic from scratch inside ScummVM.
• Game needs to be an adventure or RPG.

I think they want to keep ScummVM code base maintenable - and keep 'single game specific' code at the minimum.

 

[Rincewind]

SCUMMVM is trying to build a 'virtal machine' around a few good games and/or companies, instead of providing a huge dump of everything. Ideal for the casuals who just want to get at the biggest hits and such. Last time I checked, it was over 200 Gb in size.

Other options include, as Unkillable Cat mentioned, ScummVM. This one has a completely different approach, trying to reimplement the engine of each game they support. This can lead to implementations that are actually very different from the original, although as far as I know most ScummVM games are actually pretty faithful. Furthermore, you can end up with interesting new features, such as the ScummVM version of the Might and Magic game being able to use the mapping system and interface of M&M 4-5. One downside of this approach, of course, is that you only support a limited number of games, since you aren't recreating the DOS environment.

ScummVM has two big advantages:

• It runs games at correct speed. Some DOS titles require powerful CPU to not drop frames or play cutscenes correctly - but with too much CPU cycles animations are too fast, controls get wonky, AI or game logic craps out. Sometimes there is no single, correct 'cycles' setting for a given game that would make it 'perfect' while running under DosBox.
• It runs some DOS (and Amiga) titles on plethora of weird and wonderful platforms. If you have Atari ST, Pandora Handheld, Sparc with Solaris or Ouya - don't expect Dosbox Staging port anytime soon. ScummVM is a Godsend for people with exotic hardware fetish - or cheap handheld.

Biggest disadvantages:

• ScummVM draws the line at game logic implemented in compiled/assembly code. Heart of China or Betrayal At Krondor would be ideal to play on older or weaker non-DOS hardware - but would require basically implementing whole game logic from scratch inside ScummVM.
• Game needs to be an adventure or RPG.

I think they want to keep ScummVM code base maintenable - and keep 'one game specific' code at the minimum.

Admittedly, they can do some cool things like playing Beneath the Steel Sky DOS version with both MT-32 music and speech. On real DOS, it's either/or.

Similar thing for Monkey Island 1, but there's a DOS patch to achieve the same thing.

Another kinda technically cool(ish) thing (but I detest it) is to play Sierra AGI games with a non-dithered 64-colour palette instead of the default 16-colour EGA palette plus checkerboard dither. Well, I hate it because it alters the feel of the graphics completely, but if you're into that, only ScummVM can do it.

Playing the FM Towns versions of LucasArts adventures in ScummVM is a no-brainer; that's probably the best / most frictionless way to play those FM Towns ports.

The Apple IIgs ports of Sierra AGI games is also a strong suit of ScummVM — no need to mess around with Apple IIgs emulators, and none of them support shaders.

But ScummVM is very PC / DOS focused otherwise, while it can run *some* Amiga versions of the supported games (not all of them), Amiga support it only so-so... I would always play any Amiga games in WinUAE. Same for C64 versions—just use VICE.

Well, this is not an advertisement for ScummVM, I just wanted to be fair to them. Of course, I personally always prefer Staging and stopped using ScummVM years ago (except for the FM Towns and Apple IIgs games).