GTA was always a pain in the butt with VBE, though I am not sure if that exactly fits your use case.
These are the DOS games that come to mind that all have some kind of VBE interactions:
Ascendancy
Star Wars Tie CD
One of the Warcrafts (I think Warcraft II)
Torin's Passage
Mortal Kombat Tril (like you said)
DiscWorld 2
Nascar 2
Constructor
GTA
Silent Hunter
Torin

This reminds me of Rob Muller's modified univbe.drv files: Re: VESA Fix Utility Listing (for old video cards)

Stiletto wrote on 2021-11-20, 05:49:

This reminds me of Rob Muller's modified univbe.drv files: Re: VESA Fix Utility Listing (for old video cards)

yes - prevention of detouring original VESA BIOS/dosbox code with old UniVBE code

my ultimate goal is to add this tiny hoax code to dosbox to always prevent the UniVBE loading

do you know a game that benfits directly from using Rob Muller's tool in dosbox?

llm wrote on 2021-11-20, 08:03:

yes - prevention of detouring original VESA BIOS/dosbox code with old UniVBE code

my ultimate goal is to add this tiny hoax code to dosbox to always prevent the UniVBE loading

do you know a game that benfits directly from using Rob Muller's tool in dosbox?

These modified files are "drivers" that uses the VESA VBE BIOS that is currently implemented on the video card which in your case it would be using the VESA implementation that is on DOSBox.

Games that comes with UVCONFIG.EXE and requires UNIVBE.DRV prior running them are the ones that would benefit from this in DOSBox.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-11-22, 05:30:

llm wrote on 2021-11-20, 08:03:

yes - prevention of detouring original VESA BIOS/dosbox code with old UniVBE code

my ultimate goal is to add this tiny hoax code to dosbox to always prevent the UniVBE loading

do you know a game that benfits directly from using Rob Muller's tool in dosbox?

These modified files are "drivers" that uses the VESA VBE BIOS that is currently implemented on the video card which in your case it would be using the VESA implementation that is on DOSBox.

Games that comes with UVCONFIG.EXE and requires UNIVBE.DRV prior running them are the ones that would benefit from this in DOSBox.

i know how the modified driver from Rob Muller work - im just missing games that directly benefit (can then run, better speed, better resolution) using them in DOSBOX as a comparison for my own tool behavior
- so at best games that really suffering from the internal loaded UniVBE driver

it try to come up with a solution for dosbox that do not involve chaging files or something - the TSR is just a testbed for the ideas that i want to integrate directly into dosbox in the end

small Update

what i've got so far:

NoUniVBE 0.3 TSR - currently behavior-near enough to the original UniVBE 5.3a so that the original UniVBE TSR think its already installed, even Options-On/Off setting works
first run installes the TSR, second run de-installes it

UVBCHECK - a tool that checks for VESA information and if UniVBE 5.3a is installed (checking the same Interrupts/Memory values as UniVBE 5.3a do)
just run under dos/dosbox with/without pre-loaded UniVBE (with > if you want to get the output in an editor...)

1UVBCHECK.EXE > out.txt

TODO:
NoUniVBE is missing the Int 2Fh detouring and some License Data to get accepted as a pre-loaded UniVBE in games that directly linking the UniVBE library (like Tilt!, Street Racer, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, ...)

Findings: using UniVBE 5.3a still bringst higher refersh rate for some games - even with the superior VESA implementation of dosbox - hope i can solve this mystery with my little fun project

both tools come with full source and built executeables

output of UVBCHECK.EXE

1Init signature: VBE2
2int 10h/ax=4F00h
3ax_reg: 0x004F
4bx_reg: 0x1234
5cx_reg: 0x4321
6dx_reg: 0x0000
7  Signature: VESA
8  VbeVersion: 0x0200
9  OemStringPtr: Universal VESA VBE 5.3a
10  Capabilities: 0x00000000
11  VideoModePtr: 0x000000A1
12  TotalMemory: 4096 KB
13---VBE2---
14  OemSoftwareRev: 0x0503
15  OemVendorNamePtr: SciTech Software
16  OemProductNamePtr: UniVBE(tm)
17  OemProductRevPtr: 5.3
18Found UniVBE #1
19int 10h/ax=4F0Fh
20ax_reg: 0x004F
21bx_reg: 0x0155
22cx_reg: 0x4321
23dx_reg: 0x01A5
24Found UniVBE #2
25Found UniVBE #3
26UniVBE is installed at 0x01A5:0x0155
27Info from installed TSR (298 bytes)
28------------------------------
29Video Card: S3 SuperVGA (Trio64) with 4 Mb
30RAM DAC: S3 Trio Internal 24 bit DAC
31Clock Chip: S3 Trio Internal Clock
32unknown1???
33CA D5 8F D3 A9 99 82 86  FF 9E B3 BA BB A2 A8 AD  |  ................ 
3400 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |  ................ 
3500 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |  ................ 
3600 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 CF CB  |  ................ 
37C7 C3 DF C6 DF D2 E9 9E  96 97 FC FB EA F1 8F 8B  |  ................ 
3885 83 00 35 33 4A 61 6E  20 32 34 20 31 39 39 37  |  ...53Jan 24 1997 
3900 00 00 00                                       |  .... 
40
41version/license type: 0x0005
42unknown2: 0x3B6A ???
43enabled: 0x0000 (ON)
44vbe2_support: 0x0000 (ON)
45native_mode_centering: 0x0000 (ON)
46lfb_support: 0x0000 (ON)
47vbe2_palette_functions: 0x0000 (ON)
48vbe2_32bit_interface: 0x0000 (ON)
49directx2_compatiblity_mode: 0x0000 (ON)
50int 10h vector: es:bx = 0x01A5:0x1276
51Found UniVBE #4: Signature found!
52int 2Fh vector: es:bx = 0x01A5:0x1338
53Found UniVBE #5: Is uninstallable

i still try to understand some data comming from the original UniVBE TSR (marked as unknown1??? in the above UVBCHECK output)

i think the two missing blocks of data are someway related to the license id or something (because they are also in the IO.IDX file that gets generated by the REGISTER.EXE) - or a crypted text - any idea?

I don't think I ever played a game that would absolutely require UNIVBE/SDD to operate. Some recommend using it, but will work fine without it in DOSBox, like Duke Nukem 3D. There isn't any performance increase to be expected from using NoUniVBE in such cases, right? I've just tried Duke3D with VESA 2.0 320x200 mode with and without NoUniVBE and using DNRATE to show frame rate ticker, and the pre-recorded demos showed identical values in either case.

MrFlibble wrote on 2021-12-02, 11:49:

I don't think I ever played a game that would absolutely require UNIVBE/SDD to operate. Some recommend using it, but will work fine without it in DOSBox, like Duke Nukem 3D. There isn't any performance increase to be expected from using NoUniVBE in such cases, right? I've just tried Duke3D with VESA 2.0 320x200 mode with and without NoUniVBE and using DNRATE to show frame rate ticker, and the pre-recorded demos showed identical values in either case.

my NoUniVBE is currently (im working on that) not able to inhibit in-game linked UniVBE loading, so it won't do anything if Duke comes with a internal UniVBE (i don't know)

UniVBE overloads the VESA feature of dosbox with its own - that "can" be a problem for performance or gaming quality - that is part of my ongoing investigation
my hope is to find a trivial concept to easily prevent all UniVBE interaction and have only pure dosbox VESA code active - maybe directly integrated in dosbox, so
that there is no need to do anything to get the best possible experience (but that is in the far future)

for example "Street Racer" comes with an internal linked UniVBE and pre-loading UniVBE 5.3a gives a doubled refresh rate - i want to understand the reason for such difference

its currently more or less a Pure Fun/Legacy TSR Coding/Reverse Engineering project that im touching time by time - not clear what the outcome will be 😀

With GTA i remember that -nounivbe command works just fine (i don't use any "nounivbe"mod)

1i still try to understand some data comming from the original UniVBE TSR (marked as unknown1??? in the above UVBCHECK output)

i've found it: the unknown bytes are the ciphered registered user and serial no

but the algorithm wasn't that hard to find/reverse 😀

1for (int i = strlen(text) - 1; i >= 0; --i)
2{
3  text_[i] ^= 0xff - (i << 2);
4}

1CA D5 8F D3 A9 99 82 86 FF 9E B3 BA BB A2 A8 AD

becomes "5.x Free Edition"

1CF CB C7 C3 DF C6 DF D2 E9 9E 96 97 FC FB EA F1 8F 8B 85 83 00

becomes "00000-816EAD30-20020"

NoUniVBE Update 0.4:

History:

10.1 fake UniVBE oem string, does not hose UNIVE.exe detection
20.2 fake special int 10h/4F0Fh function, now UNIVBE.exe think its already installed 
30.3 fake version - UNIVBE.exe ON|OFF VBE2|LFB|... option setting work  (i think they don't needed for anything)
40.4 replicate the TSR layout 100%, added int 2fh handler, exe instead of com executable

Street Racer accepts NoUniVBE as a valuable replacement and stops loading its linked UniVBE code 😀
(https://www.mobygames.com/game/street-racer)

visible difference:

• no UniVBE message while the game starts
• the game seems to run with a higher framerate (like with a pre-loaded UniVBE 5.3a)

Street Racer started normally (with linked UniVBE):

1VGA:h total 0.06355 (15.73kHz) blank(0.05084/0.06228) retrace(0.05402/0.06165)
2VGA:v total 28.53613 (35.04Hz) blank(25.86682/28.09124) retrace(26.18460/26.31171)
3VGA:Width 640, Height 400, fps 35.043296

Street Racer started with NoUniVBE:

1VGA:h total 0.03178 (31.47kHz) blank(0.02542/0.03114) retrace(0.02701/0.03082)
2VGA:v total 14.26806 (70.09Hz) blank(12.93341/14.04562) retrace(13.09230/13.15585)
3VGA:Width 640, Height 400, fps 70.086592

now on github: https://github.com/LowLevelMahn/NoUniVBE

llm wrote on 2021-12-02, 06:46:

first run installes the TSR, second run de-installes it

Most TSRs used /u command line parameter for uninstallation.

Azarien wrote on 2022-01-16, 16:44:

llm wrote on 2021-12-02, 06:46:

first run installes the TSR, second run de-installes it

Most TSRs used /u command line parameter for uninstallation.

Most TSR got more features so there is a need for some command line parameter

but you can add it if you can't live without 😀