VESA 1.2 and 8bit are supported. No other VESA modes are.

DosFreak wrote:

VESA 1.2 and 8bit are supported. No other VESA modes are.

I thought you said only "VESA 1.2" is supported, but how come all the 8-bit "VESA2" modes in ZSNES work? It's only the 16-bit modes that don't work. Also, would 16-bit VESA be implemented in the future?

DOSBOX supports VESA 2. Though I thing that there are sometimes problems with detection in some games (sometimes just VESA 1.2 is detected).
16 bit modes: probably not difficult to implement, but developers argue that they would be too slow...

Mirek

in the game D (Acclaim 1996) say your page thats he needs 16-Bit graphics, which DosBOX doesn't support (yet?) 😉

Well ¿When will have 16-bit graphics support, dosbox?
is not necessary to specify time, just if it is left much or short time

P.D: excuse for my english

> DOSBOX supports VESA 2. Though I thing that there are
> sometimes problems with detection in some games
> (sometimes just VESA 1.2 is detected).

There's a bug in the version returned by dosbox, it should
ALWAYS return vesa2.0 (currently dosbox only returns 2.0
when VBE2 is placed in the buffer, see int10_vesa.cpp fct
VESA_GetSVGAInformation()).
The devs have a different opinion, but if you can spot
some games maybe they'll check it again.

> When will have 16-bit graphics support, dosbox?
> is not necessary to specify time, just if it is left much or short time

I suppose this is a long-term thing, if they'll implement it
at all...

wd

VGA resolution is a bit not suffisient. sopport for VESA 800x600 is i need!

run univbe

Ooops.. he did it again 😀

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func … 551&atid=467234

SDD Univbe 5.3a should enable 800x600 to work properly in DosBox. At least it did with me for VBETest and BUILD games. (8bit of course)

The link in my previous post leads to `moe`'s 16 bit vesa patch.. 😀

It needs a cvs build of SDL in order to run.

I'm a bit afraid that people will use 16 bit vesa support and then complain that dosbox is so slow while they should have used 8 bit vesa support.

The patch won't make it to CVS any time soon, anyway, unless you plan to distribute DOSBox with a pre release SDL 1.3.

I assume it would be possible to turn off 16 bit modes through a config option, and to set it off by default, with a comment above explaining that 16 bit modes are n? times slower than 8 bit ones, and that very few games use it.

If people still use it, and complain it's slow, screw them 😀

256 SVGA is already extremely slow, expect 16-bit SVGA to be much slower.

Actually, 16-bit mode isn't that much slower than 8-bit mode. True, there's twice as much data to move around compared to the same-resolution 8 bit mode, but people running a 16-bit desktop might even see a faster dosbox.

I really wonder what programs would give you the choice between 8- and 16-bit mode and be performance critical. Windows 3.1 might be a candidate, but are there any games that give you the choice?

Qbix wrote:

I'm a bit afraid that people will use 16 bit vesa support and then complain that dosbox is so slow while they should have used 8 bit vesa support.

Qbix, where have you been, say, the past two years? People are always complaining DOSbox is too slow! 😀 Adding 16-bit support won't make it worse, I bet. Alternatively, you could put a disclaimer in the DOSbox installation that says that using 16-bit mode is at the user's own risk 😀.

JAL

I am glad to hear about the patch with VESA 16-bit mode support (thanks Moe) and I agree with jal that possible complaints should not prevent having this feature in DOSBox. If there is a mode choice, people can choose what suits them best. And if the game needs only higher mode I think it is better to have it working even without excellent performance than "missing mode, good bye" notice on the start. Moe, could you please add also 15-bit mode support? I remember that some programs did not work in DOSBox without it.

Let's see when/how/if the great Guardians of the Code accept my patch, then I can do that. I don't want to create code that doesn't meet their expectations about quality 😀

`Moe` wrote:

Let's see when/how/if the great Guardians of the Code accept my patch, then I can do that.

Thanks for reply. I hope that the great Guardians of the Code will finally accept higher VESA modes into the realms of DOSBox and your work will be appreciated. 😉

Speed: not every game using 16 bit VESA needs much speed. Some time ago I saw one toolkit for making adventure games (I can't remember now its name...). It uses normally Windows engine, but it has a DOS version as well which is usable in DOSBOX (as long as the game uses 8 bit colors...).
I remember one Mac user wanting to use the DOS version of the engine in DOSBOX, but failing because the game required 16 bit colors...
Beeing an adventure game, DOSBOX speed would have probably been enough for it...

Mirek