OMG! VirtualBox is open source. That opens up all sorts of possibilities.

Is it easier to make Glidos work with it than say, DosBox?

I guess if he's worried about 9x+ OS guest support in a VM then yes.

Actually, it's a difficult choice. I did have TR sort of working with a Glidos/DosBox combination. I just needed to find a way to get DosBox to react to key-press Windows messages when other than the active window. I never got to discover whether that was a detail of DosBox or SDL.

Oh, and Descent II only got as far as displaying one triangle. I at first thought that was a deadlock during commuinication between Glidos and the game, but using overlapped IO didn't help.

Tried VirtualBox hosting FreeDos. Very easy to set up, and TR1 (software graphics) worked, but not very well. It ran too fast, presumably because the control of the PIT via IO ports isn't implemented.

And given that it was trying to run flat out, it didn't run that fast. In fact, when I ran it without HIMEM, and with audio, it ran slow.

I tried DOSBox with Glidos again, and - other than the problems I've mentioned - TR1 runs beautifully. I think DOSBox has to be the way forward. I'm going to look into how many of the other Glidos games run ok. I had some problems with DII, but didn't find the cause. If most of the games work, I just have to sort out the problem piping keyboard input from Glidos to DOSBox. Both DOSBox and SDL being open source, it can't be impossible.

Well you've got the entire of community of VOGONS behind ya so if you need any help we are at your disposal!

Thanks mate. That's really good to know.

Sorted! 😀

Mostly that is. I eventually found a horrible horrible hack to the SDL library to make DOSBox accept key-press windows messages when not the active window. I thought that was good enough to warrant a release and worry about the games that didn't work later, but strangely most now work. Descent II doesn't and Redguard works only in windowed mode, but mostly everything else does - even Blood. Some of the games are very slow to load but they seem to play pretty smoothly, on my system at least.

The new version and the altered DOSBox is now available from the Glidos website.

Awesome!!!

Thank you so much Paul for this releease and the time you've put into it. I've been patiently waiting for this for a long time 😀 I went to the website today to check things out and I saw the bit about 64bit OS support and I had to rub my eyes a couple of times as I wasn't sure I was reading it correctly.

Anyways I gave it an initial run on my Windows 7 x64 and things seem to work very well. I'll have a play around with it for awhile and post my experiences shortly.

Thanks heaps!!

Well, I've had some time to check things out, and my experiences with this version of Glidos primarily relate to Tomb Raider as I don't own the other games that Glidos supports.

I've been running it on Windows 7 x64 with an Intel C2D 6400 and Geforce 8800GTS 512 using latest drivers. I own the original boxed version of TR and installed it using the preconfigured archive of Tomb Raider for Glidos in the Audio Packs section of the Glidos website. Display settings were 1280x1024, Direct 3D, Forced texture smoothing and Fullscreen. Audio has been set to Play MP3 tracks.

As far as graphics, speed and playability, it's as every bit as good as it would have been if running on a 32 bit OS. It runs beautifully in full screen with the only exception being the FMV sequences which seem to switch to window mode and refuse to play in full screen.

In-game sounds work as well but the MP3 music won't play at all nor any of the audio tracks from the CD itself.

The joypads are causing the quirkiest problems overall.

I normally like to play TR with my PS2 pad connected to the PC via the Super Dual Box (model PC013 on the Mayflash website). Normally I dont map the joypad in-game (I leave the control settings at their keyboard defaults), but instead I use the JoyToKey program to map the joypad to the keyboard defaults (in the past I was having issues with the game not recognizing the controller). When I run TR in this version the joypad causes the menu to spin uncontrollably. If I go to the control options the selection box also moves up and down as well, so it seems all axis's are going crazy. If i give the d-pad a quick flick around with my thumb in all directions then it seems to stop.

Once that is done I can play the game perfectly normal with the exception of the MP3 tracks not playing. If I've overlooked any settings I should have made, please let me know.

Just as a side note, I thought I might have been able to get around the joypad issue by disabling DOSBox's detection of them by adding the line "joysticktype=none" in dosbox.conf but it didn't seem to have any effect.

Fantastic stuff Paul!

adding the line joysticktype=none isn't enough. you need the section header as well [joystick] that is

Great. Thanks for the feedback.

sean_skroht wrote:

It runs beautifully in full screen with the only exception being the FMV sequences which seem to switch to window mode and refuse to play in full screen.

In-game sounds work as well but the MP3 music won't play at all nor any of the audio tracks from the CD itself.

Yes, both those are known problems. I need to get VESA and Redbook channelled through Glidos again. It needs to be done a little differently with DOSBox, but I believe I have a plan.

The joypads are causing the quirkiest problems overall.

That one I don't currently know how to fix. Will need some thought.

Qbix wrote:

adding the line joysticktype=none isn't enough. you need the section header as well [joystick] that is

I wouldn't even set joysticktype=none

I'd rather go set timed=false instead

in the end your .conf shall have to read:

[joystick] joysticktype=auto timed=false autofire=false swap34=false buttonwrap=true […]
Show full quote

[joystick]
joysticktype=auto
timed=false
autofire=false
swap34=false
buttonwrap=true

gidierre wrote:

I wouldn't even set joysticktype=none […]
Show full quote

Qbix wrote:

adding the line joysticktype=none isn't enough. you need the section header as well [joystick] that is

I wouldn't even set joysticktype=none

I'd rather go set timed=false instead

in the end your .conf shall have to read:

[joystick] joysticktype=auto timed=false autofire=false swap34=false buttonwrap=true […]
Show full quote

[joystick]
joysticktype=auto
timed=false
autofire=false
swap34=false
buttonwrap=true

Thanx Qbix and gidierre for those tips. Those suggestions worked of course. I completely forgot about the section header being necessary.

I can't speak for everyone else, but I have 64-bit Windows (from before vista came out.) Everything is fine with that OS, but IE-64 had a ton of problems. The first thing I did was make the default browser EI-32.