VOGONS


First post, by ibm5155

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Hey guys, could you test my engine that I'm working on?

The results that I want is from people using MS-DOS or windows 9X running on a 386 486 or Pentium I.

What I want is to know how much fps this test game is doing on such old processors (it shows the fps on screen and when you close it also makes a file called BENCH.txt that shows the fps for each render time)
So it would be nice if send me the 3DBENCH file or say the fps that you're seeing on screen.
And if you're going to test and repply, pls send your testing cpu and frequency 😁 (and other infos if you want to share)
Here is the test .exe file: http://www.mediafire.com/file/2xkqb8u1kqx0ucz … eroid_TEST3.zip

Notes:
-DO not press the OPTIONS menu.;
-The menu may take some time to show.
-to close the game press ctrl+c (and to reset the text mode write mode 80 25)
-Yes the controls are a bit weird.

system requirements:
-VGA car with at least 64kb vram.
-640KB RAM or more installed ( I belive the game only uses 300 or 400KB).

ty for testing 😁

Here are some videos from the test game:
WIndows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atRMo71Xgzk
MS-DOS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM290KveStY

Last edited by ibm5155 on 2017-09-20, 18:38. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 1 of 12, by Jo22

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Hi, I tried to open the link and got a 404 error, sorry. 🙁

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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 4 of 12, by cj_reha

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What happens if you press the options menu? 😉

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Reply 5 of 12, by konc

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386DX/40, 128KB cache, CL5424. I'm experiencing... well, is there such a thing as "underflow"? 😀 OK seriously, I see no craft like in the video and the fps is obviously wrong

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Reply 6 of 12, by ibm5155

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cj_reha wrote:

What happens if you press the options menu? 😉

It's not implemented so it'll enter into an endless loop.

@konc Your system has a FPU? that may be the cause about why the craft is not on screen and the fps being weird.

In this case I added another .exe file for people without fpu called (astnofpu), it's slower than the version with a fpu but it should work
https://www.mediafire.com/file/2xkqb8u1kqx0uc … eroid_TEST3.zip

Reply 7 of 12, by Ampera

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Tried on an Am486-DX4-100-SV8B (120 Mhz achieved using a FSB overclock to 40mhz) on an EXP-4045 VLB system. Graphics are a 2MB Diamond Multimedia Stealth SE with a Trio32 and I have 32MB of system memory, 8k of Write-Back L1 cache, and 256k of L2 cache.

I have not had any problems with compatibility on any game before, but for whatever reason the game had wrong colours for right about everything, and ran at a nearly unplayable framerate (The counter was not visible due to the background being white). It looked nothing like the YouTube video. It was transferred from my modern PC to my 486 via USB floppy, although I did notice some head knocking on both drives (the USB and 486's drive) so it's possible that the floppy was bad and corrupted the graphics somehow. I will grab a new one and try again, but I honestly doubt it. Will report back.

UPDATE:

The floppy was fine, and it copied alright to what I could see. I tried a second floppy, and even tried running the game directly off floppy, no luck. I have no clue why it would be doing this. The only thing I can think of is that since it's obviously using some sort of strange text mode (otherwise it wouldn't change the mode over) the special ISO codepage I am using (basically a different DOS font) may be messing with that. I'll try to disable it temporarily so it runs normally. I am using PC-DOS 2000

UPDATE 2:

Nope, no luck to that either. I disabled my ISO codepage, and used the default MDA one, and it still ended up like that. No clue why. Let me try it on DOSBox to see if my copy is just borked somehow.

UPDATE 3:

DOSBox runs it. At 2-4FPS. It's probably just DOSBox being DOSBox, but the colours were fine.

Reply 8 of 12, by ibm5155

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Hmm so I'll indeed need to load a new palette when the game start, for now I'm Just using what's inside the default vga palette colors and in a special test I also suffered from strange colors (It was related to some msdos software that for some reason changed the default colors from the vga so the black color was white in that case)...

So I managed to install the game on PcEm, using an 386SX 25MHz gave 4FPS, 5FPS for a 386SX 33MHz and 25fps for a 486DX2 66MHz

It's not going to be a smooth game for now in older hardwares I belive it's because of the engine is rendering near 300 objects every frame, so I'll try to improve the render part even more.

Reply 9 of 12, by Deksor

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Here's how it looks on some of my computers.

First is how it runs on my 1GHz pentium 3 running windows 98. I know you didn't ask for it, but it serves me as a reference.

IMG_20170920_200429.jpg
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775 views
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Fair use/fair dealing exception

The game is more or less fine. There is just a little issue with the spacebar, it acts oddly. Sometimes when I press it, nothing happens and other times it's fine. Also when I hold it, first it doesn't do anything and then it keeps shooting.

Another problem that is related on how the game looks on CRT though it might be due to the fact that I shot these photos while it was night outside, but the CRT makes a lot of ghosting due to the mix of bright/dark colors and so it's not pleasant to look at (the photo made by my crappy smartphone represents quite well the ghosting effect it makes).

edit : I just looked to the youtube video again and prehaps it runs a little too fast on the P3 which increases the ghosting effect and is probably the cause of control issues

The gpu is a radeon 9550

Now here's how it "runs" on my 386SX25

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IMG_20170920_200409.jpg
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775 views
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception

The heck is this ? 🤣 The menu was fine (although it took ages to load. First the background appeared after 10s and then it took probably over a minute to display the menu)

The rest of the config is : 8MB of RAM, MS-DOS 6.22 with Himem.sys and emm386 loaded (with the NOEMS parameter) and an ISA cirrus logic CL-5424

Then is my 486DX33

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IMG_20170920_200420.jpg
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775 views
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The same thing again. The config is quite similar to the 386 except that the GPU is now a cirrus logic CL-5426 (VLB ?)

And finally my 5x86 :

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679.09 KiB
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775 views
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception
IMG_20170920_200718.jpg
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IMG_20170920_200718.jpg
File size
822.51 KiB
Views
775 views
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception

Something's wrong the palette here and the same bullshit appears in place of sprites ^^

This computer has 24MB of ram, it runs DOS 6.22, hasn't emm386 loaded at the moment and it's GPU is an old S3 from 1994-1995

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 10 of 12, by ibm5155

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rofl, well, the "<!>" only shows when the image file was not found.
the menu stuff is inside the main .exe file and the rest of the art is inside of the others sub folders, so some mess may happened during the copy of the game.
Hmm, so indeed some software (or maybe its the default of some gpus) tend to change the first color in the vga pallete, I'll so use another type of black :B (maybe the ones near the 255 range)...

198FPS on a pentium 3 1GHz wow, here on a pentium MMX 266 plays the game at 130fps.
The problem with the keys is that I'm not using a way of reading games that are good for games, so I'll need to play with the keyboard registers to read the keys in a proper way for games.

Reply 11 of 12, by Deksor

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The framerate got over 260FPS at some point IIRC.

I'll check if I copied the game properly on the HDD or not.

BTW, maybe you could make a single texture file holding every single texture of the game, that would make the game's directory a bit less "messy" ^^

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 12 of 12, by konc

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ibm5155 wrote:

@konc Your system has a FPU? that may be the cause about why the craft is not on screen and the fps being weird.

In this case I added another .exe file for people without fpu called (astnofpu), it's slower than the version with a fpu but it should work
https://www.mediafire.com/file/2xkqb8u1kqx0uc … eroid_TEST3.zip

No, but you never mentioned in the reqs that it should 😉
btw have a look at those folder names, some are longer than the 8.3 format and get truncated when running on OSes that don't support LFN

I get a solid 7 FPS with the nofpu executable, but consider that there are no projectiles or explosions on the screen (since folder names got truncated)