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sound skipping in rama

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First post, by hippy dave

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hi,
i'm trying to run the sierra game, rama, on my macbook (leopard) using dosbox 0.72 via boxer 0.85.
the game installed fine and runs ok but there are occasional audio skips when playing fmv. i tried configuring the game to load data files from the pretend c: drive rather than the pretend cd, and i tried setting dosbox's cpu cycles to max, neither of which helped, but i haven't messed with too many other settings yet.
any ideas? thanks! 😎

Reply 1 of 3, by tsampikos

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I played Rama a while ago and i remember that the sound was choppy and the quality was not the best one especially during the full motion video scenes.The game runs ok though.it could possibly be a DOSBox compatibility issue. I tried different sound settings without any success.But generaly the sound was at 70% good, whithout having any negative affect (for me at least) in the game.

Reply 2 of 3, by Vigil

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Have you tried increasing the frame-skip? This setting skips every n frames, which can smooth out stuttering graphics and sound if the emulator otherwise can't keep up. In Boxer 0.85 you can raise and lower this setting with Cmd-Opt-Up and Cmd-Opt-Down, and the game will remember your settings next time.

Reply 3 of 3, by gamrrant

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Vigil is right, the frameskip=1 is what fixed this choppy FMV issue in RAMA dosbox installation under my Windows 7 64bit.

------ Extra data: -------
Here in case it helps others who land here, is what worked for me to get RAMA to run nicely under dosbox (0.74) - noting only what I changed from dosbox defaults:

[sdl]
fullresolution=1366x768 .............(whatever is the actual dpi screensize)
windowresolution=1366x768 .............(whatever is the actual dpi screensize)
output=ddraw
autolock=false .............(prevents mouse-trapping inside window)

On this 1366x768 pc, windowresolution= at 1024x768 and at full size clips the bottom edge of the gamescreen in windowed mode, but only a little bit which doesn't interfere with the game's bottom controls and inventory. 900x700 gave a medium-large window that can be moved around and didn't clip anything off, but I like having as big a window as possible, as long as I can see everything. This game has a sort of "frame" surrounding it, and the bottom edge of the frame doesn't contain any control buttons. Don't mind a teeny bit of bottom "frame" cut off, as long as all playing area & controls are fully displayed.

[render]
frameskip=1 .............(removed choppiness from character FMV's/videos)
aspect=true .............(prevents distortion of original image when enlarging)
scaler=normal2x .............(image very clear, don't seem to need advmame or hq or anything, left this at default.)

The sound section has soundblaster 16 (sb16), also in that section 220, 7, 1,5. which are probably defaults.

There are no special autoexec lines at bottom.
I don't remember if I had to write or edit the ramados.bat file, which contains:

@echo off
cd C:\sierra\ramados
@if exist vesadrv.bat call vesadrv.bat
C:\sierra\ramados\sier C:\sierra\ramados\resource.cfg
cd ..

I use a dosbox.conf file for each game, so I can tweak as needed without messing up my other retro games that run under dosbox.

I used the LaunchBox dosbox front end gui, because it has many very handy features, best dosbox front end of the several I tried fooling with. It contains 0.74 at the time I downloaded it. When you install your game disk, LaunchBox has option to make image so you don't have to load tray to play, including multidisc games (use Alt-F4 to swap images) - this accommodates my friend's physical disability of being one-handed & only able to move 2 fingers on the one hand.