VOGONS


Gorilla the old time pal

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First post, by aeronix

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Hello,
Fortunately this game runs in XP. The fast speed (especially the banana spin) and also the projectile is UNMATCHED by DOSBox. I have tried enhancing the cycles (infact it slows down as it goes higher , increased the frameskip) but to no avail. Am I missing any detail , I do not know. This game I ran in the XP machine itself via DOSBOX.
In XP mode it calls via ntvdm.exe whose memory is relatively low at 1.00mb (might be as a windows process) but CPU shoots up to 50% during the THROW/TRANSIT of banana.The only drawback is , in XP I do not get the sound which is available in DOSbox.
Game attached

Reply 1 of 21, by h-a-l-9000

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On a real hardware 486 it is even slower than in DOSBox.

1+1=10

Reply 2 of 21, by aeronix

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h-a-l-9000 wrote:

On a real hardware 486 it is even slower than in DOSBox.

I could not quiet connect this 🙄 .When this game (essentially retro) runs in XP , does it use any other feature that is normally not available to DOS box.
Or is it the present limitation of config sets within DOS box? The increase in cycles primarily is to step up the speed of game... Right? Perhaps I am not hitting the correct config..

Reply 3 of 21, by h-a-l-9000

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I could not connect what your actual problem is.

1+1=10

Reply 4 of 21, by aeronix

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h-a-l-9000 wrote:

I could not connect what your actual problem is.

The game apparently does not run to its full speed in DOS box.

Reply 6 of 21, by aeronix

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Qbix wrote:

get a faster computer ?

Ha ha 🤣 . I already have..

Reply 7 of 21, by Qbix

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core=dynamic
cycles=max

if it is still too slow, than your computer is not fast enough to run an emulated machine, running gorilla

Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!

Reply 8 of 21, by h-a-l-9000

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Or it runs too fast with ntvdm in the first place.

1+1=10

Reply 9 of 21, by aeronix

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Adjusted the settings. But the speed remains as it is ....

Reply 10 of 21, by idspispopd

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Did you try VDMSound?

Reply 11 of 21, by aeronix

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idspispopd wrote:

Did you try VDMSound?

Did that speeden things for you? And how is it adjusted?

Reply 12 of 21, by idspispopd

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VDMSound should give you sound when you just run the game directly under XP, assuming the game supports one of the emulated sound cards.
When I start the game in XP I get some sound. (PC speaker, not through sound card. Maybe that is the problem? Do you normally hear PC speaker output on your computer?)

It seems we are talking about this game?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillas_(video_game)
http://www.mobygames.com/game/ms-dos-5-included-games
In that case it will only use PC speaker, no sound card, so forget about VDMSound.
The game is from 1991 so it is probably intended to run on a 286 or 386. (The fastest CPU available at that time would be an early 486.) The tech specs on Mobygames even say that a 8086 would be enough to run the game.
You should probably use much lower cycles. Maybe the game is not meant to run as fast as you think.

Reply 13 of 21, by aeronix

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idspispopd wrote:

VDMSound should..........
.........The game is from 1991 so it is probably intended to run on a 286 or 386. (The fastest CPU available at that time would be an early 486.) The tech specs on Mobygames even say that a 8086 would be enough to run the game.
You should probably use much lower cycles. Maybe the game is not meant to run as fast as you think.

Yes perhaps. But for curiosity's sake what can be presumed as a Benchmark? Perhaps it is a fact that XP ntvdm runs the game fast but in the future DOS Box could try to provide for what is the best of technology/innovation to the past working environment. That DOS Box itself has given a feature for increasing cycles to speeden the game is to let the user decide for himself. Well in the future might be.....

Reply 14 of 21, by h-a-l-9000

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Try Alt+F12 while the banana flies

1+1=10

Reply 15 of 21, by robertmo

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it looks the faster the machine is the slower game works
so it is enough to use cycles=300
the more cycles the slower game works 😀
on real machines too:
on phenom in pure dos game is almost frozen
on 386 it is like dosbox cycles 3000
on 286 it is like dosbox cycles 300

Reply 16 of 21, by idspispopd

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If you are really interested you could take the source code and work from there:
http://hem.passagen.se/hedsen/prg/games/gorilla.bas
The game tries to calibrate its speed, and you can also change the speed constant.

QBasic should be included with MS-DOS 5.0 like the game itself.
The exe you attached seems to be compiled with QuickBasic (QBasic is just an interpreter) so it might behave different.

Or you could just use one of the online versions linked from the Wikipedia article.

Reply 17 of 21, by aeronix

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Thanks to all those replies.
@robertmo
Now , setting the cycles to 300 , makes the banana spin and travel incredibly like a missile , equivalent to the one in the ntvdm which I reported. But the flipside is the Buildings , lights and the Gorilla load slowly. So I eventually got a speed of 1000 cycles at which the buildings load fast and banana spin is quiet Ok. Huh! Beyond 1000 I tried 1250 cycles which started slowing things..

@idspispopd
Setting the cycles helped. Are the game codes freely available? As I suspected earlier there was some settings which needed to be adjusted.

@h-a-l-9000
What is the functionality of Alt f12 , though it works very fast and almost hits the end of the graphics loading procedure as soon as pressing.[/i]

Reply 18 of 21, by robertmo

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you can start the game with cycles 300 and rise them later to whatever you want. game detects the speed only at initialization 😀

Reply 19 of 21, by aeronix

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robertmo wrote:

you can start the game with cycles 300 and rise them later to whatever you want. game detects the speed only at initialization 😀

Even with the auto setting on , DOS box does not automatically raise the cycles unless it is told , I believe. So with the 300 cycles , the buildings etc load slowly , which is slightly better at 1000 cycles.

Surprisingly increase in cycles seem to load static graphics fast but impairs the dynamic graphics.