VOGONS


First post, by tetrapilotomator

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Hello out there,

I installed Command & Conquer: Red Alert on my DOSBox, played it for a week or so, had a network session with a fried yesterday and today found that the game has no map textures anymore. My soldiers are walking on a black screen and leaving a trace of theier own texture when walking. After a minute or so playing, the game crashes (crashlog: see below). It happenes everytime and in every game mode.

I allready copied my friends REDALERT.mix to my directory, reinstalled the game and run it with the two diffrent game CDs (mounted as .iso). So I think it's a DOSBox Problem.

I've tried in the DOSBox.config

output=overlay

and

output=surface

both didn't work.

And yes, I allready searched the web for this probelm: Two people had it, but it was never answered. So maybe we could solve it once and forever? My fried and I would be very happy.

Here some Information

  • RedAlert v.1.04
    DOSBox 0.72
    MacOS 10.4.11 (Tiger)

My DOSBox.config looks like this:

[sdl]
fullscreen=false
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=original
windowresolution=original
output=overlay
autolock=true
sensitivity=100
waitonerror=true
priority=higher,normal
mapperfile=mapper.txt
usescancodes=true

[dosbox]
language=
machine=vga
captures=capture
memsize=16

[render]
frameskip=0
aspect=false
scaler=normal2x

[cpu]
core=auto
cycles=auto
cycleup=500
cycledown=20

[mixer]
mpu401=intelligent
device=default
config=

[sblaster]
sbtype=sb16
sbbase=220
irq=7
dma=1
hdma=5
mixer=true
oplmode=auto
oplrate=22050

[gus]
gus=true
gusrate=22050
gusbase=240
irq1=5
irq2=5
dma1=3
dma2=3
ultradir=C:\ULTRASND

[speaker]
pcspeaker=true
pcrate=22050
tandy=auto
tandyrate=22050
Show last 32 lines
disney=true

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

[serial]
serial1=dummy
serial2=dummy
serial3=disabled
serial4=disabled

[dos]
xms=true
ems=true
umb=true
keyboardlayout=none

[ipx]
ipx=true

[autoexec]
keyb gr
mount c ~/Cephalopod
imgmount d ~/Cephalopod/RedAlert/iso/CD1_ALLIED_DISC.ISO -t iso
ipxnet startserver 3001
c:
cd WESTWOOD/REDALERT

Attachments

  • crash.jpg
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    crash.jpg
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    File comment
    Crashlog
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 6 of 28, by tetrapilotomator

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I allready tried "surface" (see above), "opengl" doesn`t work. (red alert obviously is no openGL game...)

What I'm wondering most, is that it worked perfectly before for more then a week. The only thing I changed, is that I've plugged a mouse into my laptop (didn't mention that before... but how should the mouse produce a graphic problem!?)

Reply 10 of 28, by tetrapilotomator

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It is posted above, in the opening thread.

So, here is what I've thought about:

The menu works, so its not a general graphic problem.

The problem seems to be unknown from the game running on real DOS machines, otherwise someone should have posted something on any forum (it's a very popular game).

I think, there is a problem on refreshing the textures properbly, because of the "tails" of the soldiers. So, what part of DOSBox is resposible for drawing textures on the screen? Does the computer write anything in this part by itself, making the problem appear without user interaction?

(I'll be on work for the next couple of hours...)

Reply 12 of 28, by franpa

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If you can't use OpenGL then please post your computer specs and what drivers you are using if any. This setting controls how DOSBox displays things and is independant of what games think is happening so games will always assume they are running in DOS which doesn't support OpenGL (not well at least)

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Reply 14 of 28, by DosFreak

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tetrapilotomator wrote:

The problem seems to be unknown from the game running on real DOS machines, otherwise someone should have posted something on any forum (it's a very popular game).

Just because a problem doesn't show up in Google doesn't mean it's not a problem with the game.

Red Alert is a Windows & a DOS game. Considering the original game C&C 95 came in a version that was WIDELY available without any DOS executables on the CD it's pretty safe to assume that most Red Alert players didn't even bother with the DOS version and just played the Windows version of the game.

Of course then we'd just be assuming and you know what people say about that, then again it's a pretty safe assumption.

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Reply 15 of 28, by robertmo

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i am almost sure it is a problem with memsize=16
and he changed it in the wrong way.

i have missing textures in carmageddon with memsize=16
and i think i recall such a problem with some c&c game, i think it also was memsize as i remember i was able to solve it.

Reply 16 of 28, by tetrapilotomator

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DosFreak wrote:

Just because a problem doesn't show up in Google doesn't mean it's not a problem with the game.

True. Anyway I believe its a DOSBox problem.

About the .config: I foregot to let DOSBox write a new config, so it used to use the old one.

Now It's using the new one it just wrote for me by using

CONFIG -writeconf dosbox.conf

(It didn't create one by itself at the first startup)

and now RedAlert doest even start anymore. 😖

I'm going to go through all this carefully again next weekend, will have a look on this memsize-entry (thx for the tipp), read the wiki and so on... Thanks for your help, I will post an update when I figured out anything.

Reply 19 of 28, by Espinator

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I see this thread isn't exactly brimming with activity, but I have this same problem and still cannot find a solution (including all of the above). I'm a bit of a noob so any help with this would be greatly appreciated! 😀

These are the rigs of the times, me boys.