Rob: With the latest code Tomb raider 3dfx running in Voodoo hardware emulation mode shows 30FPS on Windows (SDL1 & SDL2), and because of the increased speed there appears to be no sound issue when running on my Windows system any more. When you have time, could you please check what the FPS will be on your Linux system? Since I only run Linux through VM, which is slow anyway, I am unable to get the true FPS on Linux in such case.

Any way to use nGlide in DOSBox-X in Windows 9x games?

Sandi1987 wrote on 2021-02-06, 11:01:

Any way to use nGlide in DOSBox-X in Windows 9x games?

nGlide can be used with 32-bit Windows builds of DOSBox-X 0.83.10 for Windows 9x games. I hope the Wiki will be updated shortly for information about Win9x Glide passthrough.

Speaking of glide passthrough, I find it unbelievable that I cannot find any glide library for macOS to benefit from that on macOS version of DOSBox. This and the fact that Win9x do not behave well with dynamic core are the only reasons why I halted my tests on it and started to use UTM/QEMU. I do hope that one day these things get fixed so I can try again.

However my dad is still enjoying his DOSBox-X setup I made for him.

Bruninho wrote on 2021-02-06, 14:52:

Speaking of glide passthrough, I find it unbelievable that I cannot find any glide library for macOS to benefit from that on macOS version of DOSBox. This and the fact that Win9x do not behave well with dynamic core are the only reasons why I halted my tests on it and started to use UTM/QEMU. I do hope that one day these things get fixed so I can try again.

However my dad is still enjoying his DOSBox-X setup I made for him.

Not quite sure about glide library for macOS. OpenGlide may be a possible solution, or you may try Windows glide wrappers in macOS through Wine.

In DOSBox-X 0.83.10 (latest version) the dynamic core works fine with Win9x in most cases. There have been major updates in the dynamic core between 0.83.9 and 0.83.10 so that it can now be said as “reliable” for the most part.

Thanks, Wengier, I will give a look on it later and report back.

Wengier: I tried the Formula 1 playable Demo for Windows from Psygnosis:
https://archive.org/details/Formel1

I used the latest DOSBox-X running with core=dynamic_x86, cputype=pentium_mmx and glide=true on Linux.
OS running in DOSBox-X was Win98SE. I installed the latest glide driver package (3.01.00), and copied the glide2x.dll from the zip file you linked to c:\windows\system

Initially I ran the Demo directly, and experienced lots of glitches, even the 3dfx logo had problems, and I was unable to find a way to exit the demo and had to reset DOSBox-X.

But then I noticed that the folder of the demo had its own glide2x.dll file, so I removed that and restarted the game. But that crashed DOSBox-X with a segfault.

1LOG: Glide:Activated
2Segmentation fault (core dumped)

I also checked with core=normal but got the same crash.

Rob: I just tried the Formula 1 demo you mentioned too. If I use its own glide2x.dll file, then it won't even start (a small window quickly pops up and then closes). However, if I use the glide2x.dll file made specifically for Win9x, then the demo seems to play fine in Glide passthrough mode on my Windows system (tried with nGlide on 32-bit SDL1 and dgVoodoo on 64-bit SDL2). I could go play the demo game and then exit from it (according to the instructions). So the issue is either with the glide2x.dll file or the glide wrapper (OpenGlide) on your Linux system. Just to make sure the file glide2x.dll is indeed correct, I am uploading it as an attachment (I just put it in the game directory).

@Wengier: Is it what we were talking about (Glide library) ? https://sourceforge.net/projects/macglide/

Scrap that above. I tried out the latest version now. Good thing that I do not need to compile my own anymore with the patch for NE2000 work. Now that I've set it up to use the dynamic core, and now using the low level voodoo emulation, here's the results as follows:

FIFA 99: It ran the 3Dfx animation twice on loading. Quite strange. Albeit a bit slow, I was able to set up a friendly match to play. Then the screen froze before the kick off in a match. I couldn't alt tab to go back to Windows 98, I was forced to quit DOSBox-X.
FIFA 98: The screen froze during the intro movie before I could actually get into the game.

I'm attaching my configuration file as follows just in case you or jonathan can find anything I can tweak or improve or fix these things.

Where to copy glide2x.dll?

sandi1987 yes you need to set

[voodoo]
glide=true

And glide2x.dll should be in c:\windows\system or in the game directory. Make sure there is no other glide2x.dll present.

This of course assumes you have setup a glide wrapper on your host PC. If your using a 64bit version of DOSBox-X, then the glide wrapper also needs to be 64bit.

@Wengier I just checked and the glide2x.dll from your zip file, is the same as the one I used (checksum compare). I also tried it in the game directory, but got the same segfault.

But then I remembered that my default dosbox-x is the SDL2 version, and switched to the SDL1 build and it worked. Although not completely free of glitches.

I've tried tweaking my cfg file for WIN98SE instance to run FIFA 98 RTWC and FIFA 99, I've even tried using the one related on DOSBox-X wiki for installing Win 98. The results of previous 1st test with dynamic_x86 stands.

No matter what, both games crash with sound still going on unchanged. Is it faster? yes. The speed suggests that it is much more playable than normal core, where it is completely unplayable and has graphics artifacts.

For FIFA 99, game crashes at kick-off moment, and the commentary still goes on but all other sound (like chants, effects) are off. The graphics is frozen moments before I can kick-off. At first I thought that it could be sound related, but nope.
For FIFA 98 RTWC, game crashes everywhere no matter how far I can go. I tried disabling the sound, but it even crashed while I was trying to disable the sound. I didn't even get to the kick-off moment. The crash moment is aleatory: intro video, menu screen, before kick off moment...

I'll try to get both FIFA installs from my VMware instance to see if it's the game integrity, but I doubt it. Game runs fine with normal core, no crashes, albeit unplayable and slow as hell and with graphics artifacts.

Is it possible to play non-glide games with glide2x.dll from dgVoodoo?

I have problem. DOSBox-X always exit full screen when i run any game.

Bruninho wrote on 2021-02-06, 14:52:

Speaking of glide passthrough, I find it unbelievable that I cannot find any glide library for macOS to benefit from that on macOS version of DOSBox. This and the fact that Win9x do not behave well with dynamic core are the only reasons why I halted my tests on it and started to use UTM/QEMU. I do hope that one day these things get fixed so I can try again.

In the DOSBox ECE thread I have been commenting on my problems trying to get ECE to compile for the macOS, an element of which was figuring out if the OpenGlide libraries could be successfully built first, as they are a dependency. It was a bit tricky, but I managed to successfully compile it and produce the following output files in macOS 10.14.6:

/include/glide.h
/include/openglide/sdk2_3dfx.h
/include/openglide/sdk2_glide.h
/include/openglide/sdk2_glidesys.h
/include/openglide/sdk2_glideutl.h
/include/openglide/sdk2_sst1vid.h
/include/openglide/sdk2_unix.h
/lib/libglide.so.2
/lib/libglide2x.0.dylib
/lib/libglide2x.a
/lib/libglide2x.dylib
/lib/libglide2x.la

I have attached these files here, but I am not sure if they will actual work as intended. Perhaps someone can assist with testing them?

almeath wrote on 2021-02-08, 10:56:

In the DOSBox ECE thread I have been commenting on my problems trying to get ECE to compile for the macOS, an element of which w […]
Show full quote

Bruninho wrote on 2021-02-06, 14:52:

Speaking of glide passthrough, I find it unbelievable that I cannot find any glide library for macOS to benefit from that on macOS version of DOSBox. This and the fact that Win9x do not behave well with dynamic core are the only reasons why I halted my tests on it and started to use UTM/QEMU. I do hope that one day these things get fixed so I can try again.

In the DOSBox ECE thread I have been commenting on my problems trying to get ECE to compile for the macOS, an element of which was figuring out if the OpenGlide libraries could be successfully built first, as they are a dependency. It was a bit tricky, but I managed to successfully compile it and produce the following output files in macOS 10.14.6:

/include/glide.h
/include/openglide/sdk2_3dfx.h
/include/openglide/sdk2_glide.h
/include/openglide/sdk2_glidesys.h
/include/openglide/sdk2_glideutl.h
/include/openglide/sdk2_sst1vid.h
/include/openglide/sdk2_unix.h
/lib/libglide.so.2
/lib/libglide2x.0.dylib
/lib/libglide2x.a
/lib/libglide2x.dylib
/lib/libglide2x.la

I have attached these files here, but I am not sure if they will actual work as intended. Perhaps someone can assist with testing them?

Thanks, I will give it a look and report back later. I have to figure out how to set it up for FIFA 98 RTWC or 99 on Win 9X instance.

Bruninho wrote on 2021-02-08, 17:28:

Thanks, I will give it a look and report back later. I have to figure out how to set it up for FIFA 98 RTWC or 99 on Win 9X instance.

At the moment I think that only low level emulated (non-passthrough) Glide is supported in Win9x environments, in any version of DOSBox..

According to the new Wiki documentation, most recent DOSBox-X version can support Glide for Win 9x.

This mode requires DOSBox-X 0.83.5 or newer, and it only works for DOS games that use GLIDE2X.OVL. Or DOSBox-X 0.83.10 for Windows 9x games that use GLIDE2X.DLL.

However I don't know if FIFA 98 RTWC and FIFA 99 will work with that.

I found the reason why FIFA 98 RTWC and FIFA 99 was crashing with dynamic_x86 core: The sound emulation. By pure luck, when the game crashed this time, I was sent back to the desktop, I tried to restart FIFA 98 RTWC, and I was told it could not enable Sound Blaster Card (ingame). I tried to set up a match and I was finally able to play (although without any sound). Then I quit the game and tried FIFA 99, also no sound, I was able to get past the kick off for the match.

Probably with dynamic_x86 core, the cycles were the problem (I tried 60000, max, 100%, no luck for sound). I think the sound with dynamic core is unable to keep up with the "graphics speed" somehow.

I tried to use Glide High level emulation, I put the files almeath sent me on /usr/local include and lib folders, changed my dosbox conf to glide = true, apparently DOSBox-X log says he is able to use OpenGL to emulate voodoo, but I saw no noticeable speed difference. All these tests were done when both games failed to initialize sound hence why I was able to get past the kick-off for match.

With dynamic core and no sound, FIFA 98 RTWC and FIFA 99 were quite similar to VMware Fusion speeds when using my Windows XP virtual machine there. I think XP was faster and smoother, but DOSBox-X had a great improvement on dynamic core versus normal core for these games. I think we now need to find out what was the problem with the sound that caused the game crashes before kick-off moment.

Also, I was forced to play in windowed mode.

The sound issue sounds like a bug, please report it on the dosbox-x issues page on github.

As to the glide emulation, please make sure it was actually activated. The moment the game actually starts using glide pass-through the following message should appear in the log:

LOG: Glide:Activated

This is mentioned on the dosbox-x wiki, but for glide pass-through to work there are some pre-conditions.
- You need to have a glide wrapper installed on your host OS
- If your using OpenGlide, you must use the SDL1 version of dosbox-x (this is a limitation of OpenGlide)
- The glide wrapper and dosbox-x need to be the same architecture (e.g. both x86_64)
- You need to use the specially modified glide2x.ovl or glide2x.dll
- You need to set glide=true in the config file.

Regarding the full-screen issue, this is a known limitation when using 3dfx. See https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/issues/2238