It seems that games made on the Build engine don't run well in Dosbox.
Particularly Witchaven.
My problem is that it's way too slow. I try speeding up the cycles and slowing them down but it doesn't seem to do anything.
use 0.72
Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!
It helped a little, but it's still not even playable.
What's your computer?
1+1=10
it's playable here
hint: dosbox isn't targeted to run on pentium 2s
long live PCem
FUCK "AI"
My computer is a Mac G4
buy a new computer. that's way too old.
Yes, it’s my fault.
Are you sure getting a new computer is going to help increase the speed of Witchaven in Dosbox (which is a 486 emulator anyway)?
No, getting an older computer will obviously make the game faster in DosBox. Say an Apple II?
wrote:Are you sure getting a new computer is going to help increase the speed of Witchaven in Dosbox (which is a 486 emulator anyway)?
Instead of a snarky reply, I'll give you actual information, as you appear legitimately confused.
Yes, buying a faster computer can substantially increase the speed of your emulated game. There are two factors working against you:
1) The G4 Macs were all fairly slow compared to more modern processors in terms of absolute CPU power/memory performance
2) The G4 is a PowerPC architecture, which means it has to do substantial extra work when emulating a PC (Intel architecture). To make a long story short, the way the PowerPC organizes data in memory is opposite of that for an Intel proc, and the PPC doesn't speak the same "language" of opcodes the Intel processors do.
The good news is, even if you really want to stick with Mac, modern Macintoshes are made with Intel processors (that are quite a bit faster than your G4).
Although the 486 the game originally ran on is very slow comparitively, the amount of work required to emulate it is extremely high - think 10x-100x as hard - thus, the processor running the emulation can very much affect the speed of the game.
For comparison, my very modern Intel machine, which has a top end CPU and graphics system, performs about as well as a Pentium III in best case scenarios using DosBox. This is to be expected and in fact is fantastic performance on the part of DosBox itself.
-Frob
Instead of a snarky reply, i'll tell you that the reason why intel-based macs
are better suited for dosbox than ppc-based ones is because of the recompiler.
