Hi velvetmilk,

There must be something very peculiar about that game of yours if it runs that slow. Somewhere here on the forums, you should be able to find a link to a version of DOSBox with a built-in debugger. Perhaps you can use that to figure out what is going on, and what is causing such a slow frame rate?

If your game isn't big and isn't copyrighted (by you) you could attacht it here, so someone else could test it, but use a packer first (ZIP, RAR, ACE, etc).

velvetmilk did you increase the cycles? By default DOSBox runs @ 2500 cycles and this might be a bit too slow. You can increase the cycles by pressing CTRL-F12 while DOSBox runs. If it's still running to slow you can try to use the dynamic core. Have a look @ the dosbox configuration file to find out how to do so.

i have been seeing posts about this dos32a and i dloaded and installed the files. i was looking at their help but didn't come up with anything. i placed the dos32a.exe file in my root folder with my executable for the game (mmm.exe) and went to command prompt and typed:

c:\mmm>dos32a.exe mmm.exe (which i saw on a post on this forum) and it gave me amessage which said "file mmm.exe does not contain any vaid exec format"

DOS/32A is a 32-bit Protected Mode DOS Extender and it can only run LE or LX applications (i.e. applications compiled with WATCOM C/C++ using DOS 32-bit as target platform). It's supposed to be a replacement for DOS/4G(W).

Thanks everyone for your help. I did adjust the cycles (and frames) for the game in upwards of 150,000 cycles and it ran just as bad.

Attached is a .zip file with the game in it. It was something we did for a high school senior project so nothing is copyrighted or anything - no one would pay for it anyways 😉

If you get the game running at a good speed, let me know. I went on to be a 3D artist and am currently working on an open GL game independently so looking back this Wolf3D style game is well - rough - to say the least but as I mentioned I would like to have it as a playable keepsake.

Thanks again!

You may want to try Fabrice Bellard's Qemu

http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/

The latest accelerator module should make your code faster than the half of your processor speed (did that make any sense? well... above 450 MHz for your 900MHz Athlon.)

You must boot the emulator with a real DOS disk image (floppy or hdd).

Just tested it. You obviously used the normal core. When I run it under normal core it's really slow (just as you reported).
Anyways switching to dynamic core makes the game playable @ 38000 cycles.

It runs like crap on my Athlon XP 1800+, Dynamic core, 10000 cycles, frameskip 10 - My God, you better not earn a living by making games. 🤣 🤣 🤣

i did try different cores before i even posted on here because i read about it on this site - i did normal, dynamic , and the other one (i forget its name). and it ran like crap with all cores on mine. obviously if eL_pusher is having it run like crap on his Athlon 1800+ my 900 MHz doesn't stand a chance.
anyone else who tests it, please try to help me out!

(p.s. still don't understand how high end games run well and crappy DOS ones run like hell)

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

It runs like crap on my Athlon XP 1800+, Dynamic core, 10000 cycles, frameskip 10 - My God, you better not earn a living by making games. 🤣 🤣 🤣

well if you can only have 10.000 cycles at your athlon then the game is indeed horrible programmed with lot's of ioreads/weird timers/ selfmodifying code/lot's of mode switching.

if you programmed it in 1999 remember how fast the machines were then. it will be a while before dosbox emulates that speed. especially if it's bad programming.

well if you can only have 10.000 cycles at your athlon then the game is indeed horrible programmed with lot's of ioreads/weird timers/ selfmodifying code/lot's of mode switching.

i don't understand. i was able to put my cycles up as far as 150,000 and it kept going on my 900 MHz but it still ran like crap. i don't know why eL_puSHer only went up as high as 10,000 cycles. ASM said it was playble at 38,000 cycles but it was not playable on my machine at that speed.

900mhz is too slow for 38000 cycles.

so even if it says it's more cycles than that it really isn't is what i'm guessing here...

Increasing the cycles will help only up to the point when your cpu is maxed out. After that it will make things worse. So make sure you monitor CPU usage when increasing cycles...don't go above 95% or so...

so no one that tested it gave me an excellent answer - it is possible for me to run this game on my machine?

@ 900mhz with DosBox? NO.

Either try it under 2K/XP NTVDM, Virtual PC, VMWare, or real DOS.

DosFreak, are these other programs you're talking about and if so are they freeware?

2k/XP NTVDM : the DOS "emulation" built in Win 2000/XP
VirtualPC/VMWare: Commercial PC emualtors, with a virtualising core thus faster than DOSBox
real DOS... Well, you boot your computer with a DOS boot disk... I assume you guessed it 😉

this is the end time my post has bin deleted.....not funny....that or my isp is chashing the internet pages and im seeing the dated pages...dout it tho ....this is my 3nd post in here.......lets see what happens....in 45 min

old school dude wrote:

this is the end time my post has bin deleted.....not funny....that or my isp is chashing the internet pages and im seeing the dated pages...dout it tho ....this is my 3nd post in here.......lets see what happens....in 45 min

I have deleted two of your silly test posts OSD, since they where totally off-topic. What are you trying to prove?