To elaborate on it: the "shaking" happens only on horizontal motion. Probably something to do with the EGA pages being interleaved. The status area will move with the background (which it shouldn't) until a certain threshold (8 pixels) is reached. Then, it jumps to the other end, repeating this.

It also happens in Apogee's pretty much identical "Secret Agent".

Sounds like they were probably using an obscure feature of the EGA hardware that DOSBox doesn't currently know about.

I forgot about those two games 😀

Yes, the hud shaking is a problem in crystal caves.
but I also want to report an even bigger problem: the red border around the game does not exists in dosbox.
it annoys me greatly, particularly because the red border is supposed to change color after you picked up all crystals.
so you have to guess when you picked up all crystals.
it annoys me more than the shaking hud because the hud is still readable when it's shaking 😀

EDIT: if you guys fix something, will it also be fixed in the next version of dosbox then? I don't know it is my first post here, avatar just pointed me to this thread.

also, the fact that the red border is missing made me paranoid, now I can't enjoy games in dosbox anymore, because maybe I'm missing a border around a game? 😁

Welcome cerb, don't worry it will be fixed eventually. Get the CVS once it is. 🤑

Any fix that is fixed (heh) will be included in the DosBox CVS (Basically the ongoing development of DosBox), at some future distant date (Duke Nukem Forever release probably), the official DosBox version will be released using the latest CVS (well not the latest since we'll go through a beta testing process but late enough).

I'll defenitely do that! 😀
I'm also interested in an explanation why the border is missing, just out of interest so if the reply is too long, no one has to reply... 😁

DosFreak wrote:

Any fix that is fixed (heh) will be included in the DosBox CVS (Basically the ongoing development of DosBox), at some future distant date (Duke Nukem Forever release probably), the official DosBox version will be released using the latest CVS (well not the latest since we'll go through a beta testing process but late enough).

heh, also from the 3DR forums like me and avatar? 😀

I read the 3DR forums alot but refuse to participate in the madness. You guys are crazy. 😉

You should. Its great fun over there! 😁 I suppose you might have seen that thread where I defended dosbox then... 😊

I'm not in any hurry for dosbox 0.64 since the CVS is good enough. Its also a better way to get changes and updates faster.

DosFreak wrote:

I read the 3DR forums alot but refuse to participate in the madness. You guys are crazy. 😉

then you have seen me posting there!
*runs*

http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/showfla … 0&page=0#921098

heh.

Yeah, we should put a disclaimer or something about specific games in the DosBox readme or a popup or something in DosBox.

DosFreak wrote:

http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/showfla … 0&page=0#921098

screw that! here is the real deal: 😎
http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/showfla … &gonew=1#UNREAD

DosFreak wrote:

Yeah, we should put a disclaimer or something about specific games in the DosBox readme or a popup or something in DosBox.

what do you mean by this? so it pops up a screen: YOU ARE PLAYING CRYSTAL CAVES IT MALFUNCTIONS!! when you try to play it? 😀

Actually, MAME does that.

About the border: I don't know the game, but I guess you're talking about that part of the screen that wasn't really part of the image. It was well-known (and big, and often used) on the C64 but exists on a VGA screen as well: a thin area around the actual image that cannot be drawn to. All a VGA card could do was to display that area in a certain color (usually black, so people rarely notice it).

DOSBox doesn't emulate it, and hence can't draw it. There must be about 2 programs in the world using it. Drawing it would mean problems: a 640x480 screen would suddenly need 660x500 pixels (assuming we add a 10-pixel border on each side). In windowed mode that could be possible (although not terribly elegant, given that 99.9% of all programs don't use it anyways), but it could mean real problems in full screen mode. Most cards can't show that resolution, and windows probably doesn't allow using the native border. Non-windows systems very definitely don't allow that.

It's a valid issue, but I really wonder if our great DOSBox fathers deem it useful enough, given that it doesn't actually break a game, and it applies to a really small number of games anyways.

Actually it does break the game! Frenkel of 3dr let me know something I had forgotten. In Crystal Caves once you get all the crystals the border changes from red to green to notify you (only warning given) and without it there isn't any way to tell. 😳

So the shaking HUD is only half of the issue. I assume this game has to resize itself to the screen because it showed up fine in dos....this is kind of odd.

EDIT - Nevermind false alarm...I just tried the game without dosbox in windows xp and the border was still missing. ( 😳 ) This means its not really dosbox's fault. Also it does say "You've collected the last crystal!" when you get them all so its not that bad (although I can't remember if it does it more than once...)

Would it be possible to do something like implementing a 1 pixel thick border around the visible edges of the screen that is alpha blended with whatever's already there?

Another possibility would be to only support this feature in windowed mode, which should allow arbitrarily-sized game windows.

It does the "you've collected the last crystal" box only once.

Kippesoep wrote:

It does the "you've collected the last crystal" box only once.

I was afraid of that.... 😢

Shaking hud is not due to an "obscure feature." There is missing logic in VGA_DrawPart in vga_draw.cpp. This code:

1		if (vga.draw.split_line==vga.draw.lines_done) {
2			vga.draw.address=0;vga.draw.panning=0;
3			vga.draw.address_line=0;
4		}

is incomplete, it should be:

1		if (vga.draw.split_line==vga.draw.lines_done) {
2			vga.draw.address=0;
3			if(vga.attr.mode_control&0x20)
4				vga.draw.panning=0;
5			vga.draw.address_line=0;
6		}

Panning should be reset only if PPM bit (Pixel Panning Mode) is set in Mode Control. Source: http://www.osdever.net/FreeVGA/vga/crtcreg.htm#18. Corresponding patch has been uploaded to SourceForge.