VOGONS


First post, by Kazuar

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Hello everybody,

i'm new here on this board, and i really want to play the "old-school" games again 😉
well, i have a problem with on of these games (as mentioned in the subject)
according to the guidelines made by Snover, that's how it is:

1. Motherboard is an ASUS P4T
2. CPU is a Pentium 4 with 1800 MHz, not overclocked or otherwise modified
3. My Computer got 1024MB DDRAM
4. Video card is an ATI Radeon 9600 with 256MB RAM
5. Soundcard is an Aureon 5.1 Fun Wave
6. OS is WinXP Prof
7. The Game is "Space Marines" by Software 2000, v1.00
8. Now the problem... well, its difficult to describe, it seem there is a problem drawing the graphics, looks like the cursor is "corrupting" the squares around him. additionally, text is drawn at the wrong locations, and scrolling in the game creates graphical mess. I'll add screenshots 😀
9. The Problem occurs at the moment the cursor is moved / text is drawn / on scrolling
10. The emulated sound card is sound blaster 16, as in the dosbox.cfg
11. Not sure what you want to know. emulated machine is vga, and i tried all output modes. changing aspect correction doesn't fix the problem too.
12. i use DosBox 0.65 without changes/modifications (beside modifying the .cfg)
13. so, and here is what i attemted to fix it on my own:

a) fullscreen on/off doesn't do anything
b) neither does usage of univbe
c) nothing else right now, besides the config changes mentioned at 11.

thanks for reading and of course for your help, if any 😉
btw, please excuse my english, it is bad because it's not my native language

Kazuar

Attachments

  • smarines_000.png
    Filename
    smarines_000.png
    File size
    140.3 KiB
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    3046 views
    File comment
    the "corruption" shows the mousepath
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception
  • smarines_001.png
    Filename
    smarines_001.png
    File size
    66.32 KiB
    Views
    3046 views
    File comment
    this one shows the text on its wrong place
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception
  • smarines_002.png
    Filename
    smarines_002.png
    File size
    66.1 KiB
    Views
    3046 views
    File comment
    the scrolling issue. intresting: click on the options button in game, and you're back in dos, with an "error at figure energy" message
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 1 of 23, by MiniMax

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Hmm. I don't know what is causing this. Please download and try one of following experimental/development versions of DOSBox:

DOSBox SVN Builds

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Reply 2 of 23, by eL_PuSHeR

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Congratulations on a post well made, Kazuar.

And, WELCOME TO THE FORUMS.

Regarding your problem. What is your output=XXXX setting for DOSBox? Tried different settings?

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Reply 3 of 23, by Kazuar

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thanks for your help 😀

@el_pusher: right now my output is directdraw, but changing this value doesn't fix the problem

@minimax: i'll try these, thanks for the link. i'll report back via edit

edit: the cvs builds don't fix the problem 🙁

Kazuar

Reply 4 of 23, by wd

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There seems to be a patch for the game, yet no description what it does
(see www.patches-scrolls.de for example).

Does the game have a setup/install.exe? If so look around if there's something
about svga/vesa/vga compatibility to change, maybe even a commandline
switch.
univbe might help as well.

Reply 5 of 23, by Kazuar

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no, the game has no graphical options, and the only commandline arguments are for "skip intro" and "start without sound/music" 🙁
univbe doesn't fix anything on this problem.
and yes, i know, i must run it before the game. i wrote it into the autoexec, that should do it 😁
trying that much without even changing anything on the problem is, how shall i put it..? unrewarding

Kazuar

Edit: http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/comp_list.php?showID=3131 shows that it should work with dosbox and univbe, so i think the problem is hardware/driver related. i'm uprading video drivers, and i'll report back.

Edit2: driver updated, no change at all, beside an annoying new tray 😒
Any ideas left?

Last edited by Kazuar on 2006-11-11, 15:37. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 6 of 23, by wd

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Well then play keen or something 😉
Didn't find that game yet, so can't tell what's wrong. One option to try
might be msdos/freedos under dosbox, but that'd require even more
possibly unrewarding stuff.

Reply 9 of 23, by Kazuar

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though i didn't tried this now, i think this won't work.
i tried the game on a win98-system (from my grandmother 😁 ),
but the graphical errors are still there, even if i restart the pc in dosmode 🙁
so the problem is the game itself..... maybe the files are corrupt or something, for i know i played this game as this win98-computer where mine.... (is that correct english ?!)
bad thing. well, it was worth a try, thanks everybody for your help.
these space marines defected by being defect 😉

Kazuar

Reply 10 of 23, by wd

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Either something with your installation/cds/floppies is broken,
or the it's picky about the graphics card. Maybe somebody else
has this game as well and can test it under dosbox (or on an
old pc).

Reply 11 of 23, by Kazuar

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i know, maybe i'm annoying, but i read the game's readme (i seldom read these readme's if there are in an .exe format, so don't hit me). however, this readme describes this problem, and according to it, the problem is not a scratched cd, but it's really about univbe. i installed it, and i'm starting it every time i try to get this game running. maybe my video card is not vesa compatible... is there any workaround? because, dosbox is emulating a video card, isn't it? the univbe version i use should be fine, because it was on the game's cd, but upgrading should also do no harm 🤣

Reply 12 of 23, by wd

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Could you post that part of the readme, please?

Univbe provides VESA, dosbox already emulates VESA (1.2 and 2.0) but
sometimes univbe works better as it disables some modes.
Yet on that win98 pc you could try to find a different vesa driver that is
specific to the graphics card you have in that pc. Might/might not work
better than univbe.

Reply 13 of 23, by Kazuar

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yes, i can, but the text is in german

Der Mauszeiger scheint farbige Klötze vor sich her zu schieben? Dann ist entweder die Grafikkarte nicht voll VESA-kompatibel, oder es muß ein VESA-Treiber geladen werden. Ein solcher Treiber liegt normalerweise der Grafikkarte bei; informieren Sie sich im Handbuch. Ist der Treiber nicht vorhanden oder nutzlos, können Sie den mitgelieferten Shareware-Treiber probieren. Sie finden ihn im Verzeichnis \UNIVBE der Heft-CD. Starten Sie darin INSTALL.EXE und befolgen Sie die Bildschirmanweisungen. Bitte haben Sie Verständnis dafr, daß wir dieses als Service mitgelieferte Zusatztool nicht dokumentieren können. Eine ausführliche Anleitung finden Sie in der Datei README.TXT im UNIVBE-Verzeichnis. Normalerweise sollte es genügen, nach der Installation UNIVBE zu starten, bevor Sie SPACE MARINES aufrufen.

it roughly says that, if the cursor seems to drag some coloured blocks around, the video card isn't fully vesa-compatible, or you have to load a vesa-driver, then blah blah about how to find a driver on the cd.
i reinstalled the game, and searched the forums today. found something intresting. the install.exe says, after its done are you're back to dos, that you have to enable "vesa 2.0 standard for 32-bit". is it right that dosbox cant emulate this?

Reply 14 of 23, by wd

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Dosbox emulates the vesa2.0 standard quite completely, especially the
entry points to the pmode interface (guess that's what they mean by
32bit access) is implemented.
I was hoping to find something about whether the bug is specific to some
graphics cards or not, but that's not in the text. You might want to try
a dosbox build that includes vasyl's svga chipset patch (ykhwongs cvs
build should have it), there you can try different chipsets to see if the
game works better with one of them.

Reply 15 of 23, by Kazuar

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i have no idea why, but it works now. okay, it's a bit slow, but that doesn't matter, its turn-based anyway 😁
im very happy i can finally play this game now, only cycle/frameskip settings are to do. Thanks to everyone for your help, especially wd. the chipset is still s3, maybe it's because i checked all options in uvconfig 😁
the problem is fixed, i think the topic can be closed and its subject tagged with an *solved* or something. maybe a kind moderator will do this? 😀

Kazuar

Reply 16 of 23, by eL_PuSHeR

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Done. Anyway, I feel it's better to keep this thread open. Maybe some further testing should be needed.

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Reply 17 of 23, by MiniMax

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Kazuar wrote:

i have no idea why, but it works now.
<snip>
😁 the problem is fixed, i think the topic can be closed and its subject tagged with an *solved* or something. maybe a kind moderator will do this? 😀

Solved and solved... Since you don't know exactly how and why, I will hardly call it solved, more like disappeared.

It would be much better if you could scratch the directories where you installed the game, redo the installation, and retrace your steps. And come back here with a short, consisce description of how to get the graphics to work.

Wrt. changing the subject, that is something you can do for yourself since you can always edit your own posts, including the subject.

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Reply 18 of 23, by Kazuar

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Well, allright then, i'll try...
Note: i used ykhwong's CVS. maybe it runs under original dosbox, or not. i don't know. i don't wan't to change too many things, because im happy this game runs, and i don't want to ruin it again 😉

1.) First, you must obviously install the Game. You can do this from Dosbox or not, BUT: The game scans for its CD, and it want's the drive letter you installed it from.
2.) If you haven't already, get Univbe.
3.) now the config.... i increased videoram=xxx to 4096 in the dosbox.cfg...
4.) start the uvconfig in your univbe directory
5.) configure your emulated video card. check "disable vbe 2.0 extensions"
6.) start univbe.
7.) start the game 😀
8.) ignore the odd fact that the game told you to activate these vbe 2.0 extensions as you installed it earlier.

and vóila, the error is away 😁
and some other screenshots to prove 😉

Attachments

  • smarines_005.png
    Filename
    smarines_005.png
    File size
    51.95 KiB
    Views
    2849 views
    File comment
    now garbage shown on scrolling. now we can kick some robo-terminator-mech-thingies butt
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception
  • smarines_004.png
    Filename
    smarines_004.png
    File size
    65.93 KiB
    Views
    2849 views
    File comment
    the text again, now on its correct place
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception
  • smarines_003.png
    Filename
    smarines_003.png
    File size
    142.52 KiB
    Views
    2849 views
    File comment
    no annoying blocks. they're gone for good.
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 19 of 23, by MiniMax

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Thanks Kazuar.

DOSBox 60 seconds guide | How to ask questions
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