VOGONS


First post, by Setsunaaa

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The website mentions only "minor updates from 0.70, SVGA fixes" For me those fixes enabled a huge load of games to be playable at SVGA.
You say "minor update", I say "vast improvement which was needed for a long time."

Battle Arena Toshiden works now in SVGA without graphical errors.
Older DOS-Demos work, like:
Alto Knalle, from FEB, 1997 (uses a 320x400 mode)
Arise, 1996 (uses 640x400 or 640x480)

Nice for testing, demo:
Countdown Project, 1995, do not activate "S3 accelerator", 640x400 = OK, 640x480 OK, 800x600 some flicker in some parts but OK, 1024x768 OK, 1280x1024 not supported by dosbox (duh!) 😀.

64K demo from 1999: GCUBE, works in 640x400/640x480/800x600 true color.
1024x768 true color seems to be still buggy, but 1024x768 high color and 256 color works.

For the performance: You say, minor, I say major again:

Instead of running with 25000 CPU cycles I can now run with 100000 CPU cycles by default, and go up to 166000 CPU cycles if the program likes it without sound stuttering, and frameskip is to 1 instead of 2 now.
This give me a feeling of something like Pentium 1 100 to Pentium 1 166 MHz speed, which is perfect for that old DOS stuff.

Machine ia an Athlon X2 939 4400+ 2,2 GHz (2,36 oc) WinXP.

Thank you for that version!

Setsuna

Reply 1 of 12, by h-a-l-9000

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Wow, a program besides Windows that can use the S3 accellerator.

1+1=10

Reply 2 of 12, by Setsunaaa

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A lot of DOS demos and games used that S3 acceleration thing by that time. Many didn't show it so openly tough, most did rather check what card is in the PC and activated it when it offered the functions.

Reply 3 of 12, by h-a-l-9000

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Was not so hard to fix it... is there a list with demos using the S3 accellerator?

1+1=10

Reply 4 of 12, by vasyl

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Hmm, I would like to see that as well. There are a couple of odd glitches in S3 accelerator emulation still and getting something else besides Win3 would help weeding those out.

Reply 5 of 12, by h-a-l-9000

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I've fixed a lot of these issues, these changes work well in Windows 95 too (XGA on it's own, the parts to make Win95 accept the S3 are not included).

Reply 7 of 12, by h-a-l-9000

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See this screenshot
download.php?id=4401
The task button and scrollbar bugs are fixed.

It does have some problems left...
32bpp does not look so good (after running Starcraft Demo it is ok though)
320*xxx modes are broken
Command prompt does not work with all bpp settings (this might be a DOSBox CPU bug though)

1+1=10

Reply 8 of 12, by abyss

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Sweet performance inprovements. Now i might be able to run tomb raider 1 with high detail without it being to slow. I have been running it with low detail.

Reply 10 of 12, by Setsunaaa

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I don't know other demos using S3 specific funtions out of my head. I just kept some nicer DOS demos over the years.

Joachim

Reply 11 of 12, by Setsunaaa

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Tomb Raider 1: Works in SVGA, in VGA I have to select somewhat 75000 CPU cycles, in SVGA I can go up to over 230000 cycles before I get sound problems. F1 switches between SVGA and VGA.
Now, what was the key combo to do that nice move...
Ah, instead of ctrl+up when hangin' around it was ctrl+shift+up.
Which leads to another question: Why is it in the default dosbox.conf that cycles up is 1000 but cycles down is 20 ???

I set both values to 3000 now, so either 2500 or 2000 for both up and down will feel good for most I guess. I will personally set both to 5000 soon I guess.

Joachim

Reply 12 of 12, by Xelasarg

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Excerpt from dosbox.conf:

# cycledown Setting it lower than 100 will be a percentage.

"What's a paladin?!"