SolVBE 1.3b has been released, including small additions. In order to develop SolVBE futher, I need some test cases; if you have some DOS application that should, in theory, run under SolVBE, but it doesn't, I'd like to know about it. If you do find some such software, please about it either here or in the SolVBE project 'help' forum at sourceforge.
http://iki.fi/sol - my schtuphh
I'll see if I can run some tests tonight.
Odd, I decided to test some games like Wolfenstein 3D, Kens' Labyrinth and the solvbe window popped up.
Checking the log it tried to map an unknown port and it also recognized vga modes. Would it be possible
to get non-vesa games to work in solvbe?
NTVDM is pegged at 100% throughout all games.
Games that work
BLOOD works
Descent 2 demo works
Descent
works
Nascar Racing
SimCity 2000
Games that do not work
Daggerfall Installation
Screen is corrupted
Nothing in solvbe.log
Big Red Racing
Game crashes back to command prompt with
Exception 0Dh (general protection fault)
Extreme Assault demo
Crashes Solvbe
Knights of Xentar
graphics corruption
Need for Speed
Blue screen, game freezes.
One Must Fall 2097
Crashes solvbe. Crashes back to command line
Wacky Wheels
Black Screen
Wolf3d
Black screen
Destruction Derby
Black screen...continues to load.
Duke Nukem 3D
Takes forever to load.
Gabriel Knight
Takes forever to load
Ken's Labyrinth
Checking the log it tried to map an unknown port and it also recognized vga modes. Would it be possible to get non-vesa games to work in solvbe?
13h (320x200x256) mode should work as is ('dune' for instance, works), and there's some primitive support code for tweak modes, although I haven't done much testing on that end (tweak modes are a pain as they aren't all too well documented, and there's many ways to get the same tweak mode).
Most games that don't work with solvbe now will probably never work, but for other than video problems. Nevertheless, I need the test cases to see what I can do. =)[/quote]
http://iki.fi/sol - my schtuphh
Looked at wolf3d. It appears to initialize some kind of tweak mode, and then waits for retrace forever.
Strangely enough, it checks for retrace approximately once per millisecond, eg. not in a very tight busy loop, as I would have expected.
With other applications that have "hung" at vertical retrace, it has been enough to, for instance, report vrc on/vrc off every second time the application queries for retrace status. Not so for mr. wolf.
My guess is that the tweak mode setup expects some values from the video chip when it reads the registers, but isn't getting anything sensible, as I haven't implemented full vga emulation (and I probably won't even try).
Anyway, interesting.
Wolf3d does work just fine under winxp though, but I guess it would be nice(r) to get it working in a window as well.
http://iki.fi/sol - my schtuphh
Yeah, not much point in bothering. Those who really want to play those games in a window can use DosBox anyway.
