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DOSBox ECE (for Windows & Linux)

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Reply 1140 of 1550, by PoulpSquad

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Qbix wrote on 2020-10-01, 19:54:

can you attach a configfile with that problem ? As I can't reproduce it at my place. (using the non-ECE code)

Hello Qbix,

I think I found something new about this issue.

If I set the speed in the config file and run a game "manually" from the command line everything is fine.

If I set the speed in the config file and run the game through a batch file, it fails.

Please find my current config file and the batch in question.

Edit:

Could it be that the % symbol gets somehow eaten up? Maybe DOSBox considers it part of a variable and it doesn't get parsed the way I intended it to be?

Edit 2:

Yup, that was it. Using cycles=auto 5000 90%% instead of cycles=auto 5000 90% did the trick.

Thanks for reading this and sorry for the clutter!

Attachments

  • Filename
    DOOM.TXT
    File size
    44 Bytes
    Downloads
    135 downloads
    File license
    Public domain
  • Filename
    DOSBox-ECE.conf
    File size
    22.9 KiB
    Downloads
    104 downloads
    File license
    Public domain

Reply 1141 of 1550, by Qbix

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Mmm in the batch file. That is indeed a real possbility. Got to think about that and do some tests with batch files to see IF and how that can be improved.

Thanks for getting back and figuring out the root cause

Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!

Reply 1142 of 1550, by Yesterplay80

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That's a totally normal behaviour when running batch files: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14509652/ … d-in-a-cmd-file

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The percent sign is used in batch files to represent command line parameters: %1, %2, ... […]
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The percent sign is used in batch files to represent command line parameters: %1, %2, ...

Two percent signs with any characters in between them are interpreted as a variable:

echo %myvar%
Two percent signs without anything in between (in a batch file) are treated like a single percent sign in a command (not a batch file): %%f

My full-featured DOSBox SVN builds for Windows & Linux: Vanilla DOSBox and DOSBox ECE (Google Drive Mirror)

Reply 1143 of 1550, by Delfino Furioso

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Skoynay wrote on 2020-10-01, 08:26:

I think MT32 emulation can be offloaded to a separate thread, from my Dosbox ECE conf :

mt32.thread=true
mt32.thread: MT-32 rendering in separate thread

anybody tried activating this?
is thread offloading mature enough to be safely enabled by default or should it be evaluated in game-by-game basis?

Reply 1144 of 1550, by PoulpSquad

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Hello,

I am having a bit of trouble making SCVA work with DOSBox ECE.

I got the latest version of Sound Canvas VA running with Midi Player 5.7, both x64, but DOSBox refuses to use it.

Mixer /listmidi shows Microsoft GS Synth as 0 and Sound Canvas VA as 1, but when I select SCVA with midiconfig=1, DOSBox says win32 cannot work with 1, and selects mt32 as MIDI device.

Trying a GM game results in no MIDI data being passed throug loopMIDI, and it sounds definitely wrong, since I suspect it's being processed by MUNT and not SCVA.

I've tried with a real SC-55 connected to my PC through a UM-ONE, and same thing happens. Mixer /listmidi shows 0: Microsoft GS Synth thingy, and 1: UM-ONE.

Selecting UM-ONE with midiconfig=1 results in mididevice to be set as mt32, and no data gets to the SC-55 (led on UM-ONE remains off).

It's very strange, because just this morning I was using my SC-55 without any trouble.

What can be going wrong? Why can't win32 work with anything else than Microsoft GS soft synth all of a sudden?

Thanks for your time

PS: I just tried deleting my config file and using default options. Now trying to select either UM-ONE or SCVA results in DOSBox complaining about not finding mt32 control ROMs, and using Fluidsynth as MIDI device, even though no soundfonts are loaded.

Reply 1145 of 1550, by Crimson_Zero

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PoulpSquad wrote on 2020-10-13, 20:51:
Hello, […]
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Hello,

I am having a bit of trouble making SCVA work with DOSBox ECE.

I got the latest version of Sound Canvas VA running with Midi Player 5.7, both x64, but DOSBox refuses to use it.
....

Well I use Sound Canvas VA with DOSBox ECE with no issues in Windows 10 64 bit. I prefer the older and likely not available anymore 32 bit version, but I just retested with the x64 to be sure.

So I use a trio of programs. Falcosoft Midi Player 5.7 x64, loopMIDI and CoolSoft MIDIMapper.

loopMIDI is set to create a MIDI port which can be named anything.
CoolSoft MIDIMapper is configured to set the created loopMIDI port as the WIndows default
For Falcosoft Midi Player:
Midi Out is set to Bass(SoundFonts/Vsti)
Midi In is set to "Active", Channel is "Don't Follow", and Input Port is the created loopMIDI port.

With this setup you don't need to change anything in the default DOSBox ECE .conf file, it'll automatically use device 0 which is now the loopMIDI port.

Hopefully this works for your setup too!

As a final note (and you likely already know this), once configured you can save different Falcosoft Midi Player presets for ease of use when switching to different Sounfonts, Munt and even the different SCVA Modes. i.e. SC-55, SC-88, SC-88 Pro, SC-8820 (May have to save VSTi plugin File for this, been awhile since I set it up on my end).

EDIT:
Just noticed you said you had it working before. By any chance did you install something new in between it working and not? Ran into an issue a few months ago where someone had lost Sound in DOSBox due to the fact that "SDL_AUDIODRIVER"=directsound had been added to Windows Environment Variables. This could also be something similar

Reply 1146 of 1550, by PoulpSquad

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Hello Crimson_Zero,

First of all thank you very much for your help, I appreciate it!

I have given up trying to make it work, so I spent a couple of hours restoring my system from a set of hard drive images I did a couple of weeks ago.

I am just finished updating everything, and sure enough, now the latest version of DOSBox ECE works great with SC VA+loopMIDI+MidiPlayer 5.

The only thing I can remember for sure, is that at some point I removed the UM-ONE, and when I plugged it back in, Windows wouldn't install its drivers.

I suspect this somehow broke something, but I can't figure out how my system lost the ability to open anything with MIDI device win32.

Anyway, I'm going to finish updating this system, and hopefully I'll be able to do another image with dd before I break something xD

Thanks again for your help!

Reply 1147 of 1550, by ferropop

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Hello, I'm sorry if this is a noob question but any help is appreciated!

1. Downloaded https://dosboxece.yesterplay.net/downlo ... (Linux).7z and extracted.
2. When running

sudo ./dosbox

I get the following error:

./dosbox: error while loading shared libraries: libasound.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Any ideas? Linux Mint 19.1

Thank you!

Reply 1148 of 1550, by 7F20

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ferropop wrote on 2020-10-15, 15:30:
Hello, I'm sorry if this is a noob question but any help is appreciated! […]
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Hello, I'm sorry if this is a noob question but any help is appreciated!

1. Downloaded https://dosboxece.yesterplay.net/downlo ... (Linux).7z and extracted.
2. When running

sudo ./dosbox

I get the following error:

./dosbox: error while loading shared libraries: libasound.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Any ideas? Linux Mint 19.1

Thank you!

This is just a guess, but I've had issue running dosbox as "sudo" in linux. I don't understand why, but it behaves differently. I think for some reason that running it as "sudo" makes the software point to the wrong place or something. This also happens to me with RetroArch.

Again, I'm not really knowledgeable about the way lniux filesystems and permissions work, it's always confused me a little bit. However, I can say for certain that when I use "sudo" for certain programs, I get entirely different results than if I just install the program and run it normally. I would like to know why myself as I am only guessing that it's changing file paths.

Reply 1150 of 1550, by ferropop

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In case this helps anyone, I figured it out. One by one added the packages it complained about, but added :i386 to each one. Seems like the whole thing was relying on 32bit packages. Seems to work now!

Reply 1151 of 1550, by PoulpSquad

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Hello,

I'm having the exact same problem with MIDI as yesterday.

For whatever reason, DOSBox ECE refuses to open Roland SC VA with device win32.
I'm at a loss about why this is happening. I double-checked everything I can image. SC VA is loaded in MidiPlayer, loopMIDI is running with the correct MIDI port, MIDIMapper is set to use SC VA as device 0, DOSBox is set to use MIDI device win32 and midiconfig is = to 0.
Everything was working fine after I restored a hard drive image I had, but just now trying to play a game I noticed the message "MIDI: Can't open device:win32 with config:0", and "MIDI: Opened device:mt32".

There must be another way than restoring hard drive images everyday (that's a 4 hours process in my case)... Any help about how to pinpoint the cause of this behabiour would be very welcome and greatly appreciated!

As usual thank you for your time reading this.

Reply 1152 of 1550, by 7F20

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Delfino Furioso wrote on 2020-10-15, 18:43:

why would someone need to run dosbox as root?

I don't know why this other person was doing it, but I remember a time in the beginning of the raspberry pi software development that you needed to hand install
a lot of packages to get things like dosbox to work, especially if you wanted extra features that require external programs (like munt for example).

The issue comes when one of the programs has a dependency in a library like pip3 or something that installs things differently for root than it does for user. When that stuff happens, you can get trapped in a hole where you have to launch everything as sudo so your filesystem is all pointing to the right place and stuff.

But that was only for the first few years or so, now it's all easy and just "apt-get install."

Reply 1153 of 1550, by overload86

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PoulpSquad wrote on 2020-10-15, 23:02:

For whatever reason, DOSBox ECE refuses to open Roland SC VA with device win32.
I'm at a loss about why this is happening. I double-checked everything I can image. SC VA is loaded in MidiPlayer, loopMIDI is running with the correct MIDI port, MIDIMapper is set to use SC VA as device 0, DOSBox is set to use MIDI device win32 and midiconfig is = to 0.

Is there any reason you are holding on to SCVA? I had similar problems and now just use the build in fluidsynth with an SC-55 soundfont... That works every time, doesn't need me to start extra programs beforehand and at least to my ears sound just as good.

Reply 1154 of 1550, by PoulpSquad

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Is there any reason you are holding on to SCVA? I had similar problems and now just use the build in fluidsynth with an SC-55 soundfont... That works every time, doesn't need me to start extra programs beforehand and at least to my ears sound just as good.

At least 3 that I can think of. A) It would be admitting defeat, which I'm not ready to do right now. B) Because I already own it, so I might as well use it. C) Because it's the closest thing I got to a real SC-55.

The problem is not specific to SC VA, I can't even use a real SC-55 connected through an UM-ONE. Apparently the problem lies with the Windows interface (the win32 thing, which I assume is the Windows API to access MIDI devices).

What I find strange, is that all this was working fine and is now broken.

Reply 1155 of 1550, by _Rob

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ferropop wrote on 2020-10-15, 15:30:
Hello, I'm sorry if this is a noob question but any help is appreciated! […]
Show full quote

Hello, I'm sorry if this is a noob question but any help is appreciated!

1. Downloaded https://dosboxece.yesterplay.net/downlo ... (Linux).7z and extracted.
2. When running

sudo ./dosbox

I get the following error:

./dosbox: error while loading shared libraries: libasound.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Any ideas? Linux Mint 19.1

Thank you!

It is looking for the 32bit version of libasound.so.2, since the provided DOSBox ECE builds are 32bit only.
Please ensure you have the 32bit alsa-lib package installed (may be called slightly differently on Linux Mint, but that is the name on Fedora).

Reply 1156 of 1550, by PoulpSquad

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Hey all,

Another day, another issue, this time with the game Rayman.

On the latest version of ECE the game runs fine at first, I can navigate and change stuff in the menus, but when I start a new game, the game crashes, and takes with it my whole system.
Mouse cursor is frozen in place, there is a buzzing sound (last note played I guess), CTRL+ESC/ALT+Enter/ALT+Tab/CTRL+ALT+DEL do nothing, and pressing the power button turns off the PC immediately instead of initiating a graceful shutdown.
There are no errors in Windows logs.

I thought I'd leave this here in case someone wants to give it a whirl. I'll attach my config file.

DOSBox ECE 4380 running on Windows 10 x64
MSI 170A Gaming M7
i7 7700K 4.2 GHz
32 GB RAM
2x MSI GTX 1070 GAMING X
Sound Blaster X AE-5

Thanks for your time and goodnight!

Attachments

  • Filename
    dosbox-ECE.conf
    File size
    23.25 KiB
    Downloads
    90 downloads
    File license
    Public domain

Reply 1157 of 1550, by Yesterplay80

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I'm beginning to think that the issue is more likely your PC and its installation than DOSBox (ECE). At least I can run Rayman just fine with r4380.

Rayman with DOSBox ECE r4830.JPG
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Rayman with DOSBox ECE r4830.JPG
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My full-featured DOSBox SVN builds for Windows & Linux: Vanilla DOSBox and DOSBox ECE (Google Drive Mirror)

Reply 1158 of 1550, by PoulpSquad

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You are right YP, it was my configuration.

I just found what is wrong, SLI is messing things up with DOSBox. Euro Truck Simulator 2 exhibits the same problem.
Removing one video card, deleting video drivers with DDU, and installing the most recent drivers fixed the issue.
It is 100% replicable, thanks God. Adding the second video card immediately causes DOSBox to fail at the game selection screen.

Sorry for blaming DOSBox. If anything, it is helping me out in sorting problems I never knew I had^^

Thanks for your screenshot and good job on ECE, it has become even better than a real retro PC by far!

Reply 1159 of 1550, by 7F20

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PoulpSquad wrote on 2020-10-22, 17:22:

SLI is messing things up with DOSBox.

That doesn't surprise me. Nvidia seems to be downplaying SLI. It's only going to be available on the 3090 in the new generation, so who knows what's going to happen to driver support. And let's face it, driver support for multi-gpu setups has never been that good to begin with.