Solved Confused Over Dos Games

[Dragu]

@voljega
"The game should then work exactly the same if it is in /recalbox/share/pc/WackyWhe.pc or /recalbox/share/pc/Race/WackyWhe.pc"

Dosbox awaits the game directory .pc in /recalbox/share/roms/dos/ xxxxx.pc
So, I am not sure that you can change this. I never tried (you will ) if you put the game start in the autoexec section of dosbox.cfg and nothing in dosbox.bat, if this works. But I can try this out. My experience, if nothing in dosbox.bat, he enter the dosbox prompt.

[Dragu]

I just tried it out, it dont work for me with game start in dosbox.cfg (local .conv) and empty dosbox.bat.

[voljega]

@dragu "Dosbox awaits the game directory .pc in /recalbox/share/roms/dos/ xxxxx.pc"

Dosbox or EmulationStation ?

And regarding handling of relative path in dosbox.cfg and dosbox.bat, is dosbox start directory the same as inside xxx.pc or /recalbox/share/dos ?

[Dragu]

Important in all this, ES mount as local game directory. I suppose that it is ES.
If you mount a virtual CD-ROM, in dosbox.cfg Autoexec section it's about
imgmount d "/recalbox/share/roms/dos/abcd.pc/abcd.DAT" -t iso
But anyway, who cares ?

[voljega]

@dragu who cares ? me

according to this post, it should be perfectly possible to use relative path in dosbox.bat at least :
https://forum.recalbox.com/topic/9178/aide-avec-le-ms-dos

so if is mounted by default on local directory, it might also be used in dosbox.cfg AutoExec part I'll have to test

"My experience, if nothing in dosbox.bat, he enter the dosbox prompt."

Is it an interactive dos prompt ? it might come handy for testing and debugging.

I checked configgen and see nothing which could prevent the use of subdirectories, I will check es_systems.cfg

[voljega]

@dragu managed to make anything work relatively by moving the whole [AutoExec] code to dosbox.bat :

imgmount d .\cd\wackywheels.iso -t cdrom
c: 
cd WACKY
WW.EXE

so that's it

But just creating a Race folder and putting WackyWhe.pc into it makes ES crash at boot ! and thus Recalbox doesn't start... @substring ?

On a further notice the game seems to allow the use of joystick but i wasn't able to change to it and only A button seems to work. I didn't use any map file
EDIT : doesn't work in Windows either so let's say it's a bug, i'll try with Tyrian

But one strange thing is that on Recalbox, game isn't displayed on original ratio (4/3) nor fullscreen, it's between the two with borders but a little bit scretched on the horizontal ? Did you notice that ?

[Substring]

@voljega I plead not guilty your honor ...
No idea, hardly ever tried dosbox, not time to check for now

[Dragu]

@voljega
With my games, for the moment nothing scretched. Also because of your crash at boot. There may be some things to adapt in local dosbox.cfg. Do you looked inside my dosbox.cfg of the above link ? Memory could be a problem. I changed it from dosbox.conf.
And CD Wacky ? Should it not be CD Wacky.pc ?

[voljega]

@dragu The crash at boot is only because of the presence of a *.pc folder into another subfolder (instead of plain /recalbox/share/roms/dos) it doesn't crash as soon as i remove the *.pc folder from the subfolder and leave it at /recalbox/share/roms/dos

Now with original dosbox.conf file of the game, even without the autoexec part, yes it crashes and I had to use your file (the lba one you gave me a while ago wihtout the autoexec part off course), i don't know why but comparing them there are several differences
yours : https://pastebin.com/NFM7uX51
mine : https://pastebin.com/2sGm8u6X

at least output=overlay instead of texture raises a warning in dosbox when launched from command line

"And CD Wacky ? Should it not be CD Wacky.pc ?"
No because when in dosbox.bat . is already setted into the game folder, just like , here WackyWhe.pc
so imgmount d .\cd\wackywheels.iso -t cdrom directly mount the iso located there /recalbox/share/roms/dos/WackyWe.pc/cd/wackywheels.iso
And there is a message regarding the mounting at the beginning (after the dosbox orange green) which show that the path is indeed the good one like "Mounted d on /recalbox/share/roms/dos/WackyWe.pc/cd/wackywheels.iso"
and cd WACKY goes from /recalbox/share/roms/dos/WackyWe.pc to /recalbox/share/roms/dos/WackyWe.pc/WACKY folder where ww.exe is located
at the root of my game folder i only have the cfg file and the bat file

Now for ratio comparison we can clearly see the difference especially on the Apogee Moon in the logo which is clearly not round but elliptic on Recalbox : (up real 4/3 dosbox on windows, down something between 4/3 and 16/9 dosbox on recalbox)
https://imgur.com/a/YbdSe

This is again with your dosbox.cfg (but i have a same result on another game without any dosbox.cfg in game folder), the vertical black bars on both side should be twice as wide

OK your file had just aspect=false with aspect=true I get the correct 4/3
I assumed you got your file from the dosbox root folder and this is more or less the one used by default so this might be a bug for 4.1

[voljega]

@voljega Tested Tyrian, joystick works but there is a deadzone problem, the ship goes toward the right by itself, is that configurable in the mapper file ?

By the way, @dragu do you have a sample mapper file ?

[voljega]

@substring ah ah ok, so @rockaddicted maybe ?

In the dosbox rom folder, just creating a subfolder Race folder inside and putting WackyWhe.pc game folder into it (that's /recalbox/share/roms/race/WackyWhe.pc) makes ES crash at boot ! and thus Recalbox doesn't even start...

I assume this is a bug in ES ? Maybe this is also the case for scummvm ?

[Dragu]

@voljega said in Confused Over Dos Games:

?

@voljega
On the moon, you are right. By the way, if you look from the side....
Just kidding, thanks.
For the mapperfile, you can create by yourself. Just Ctrl+F1 in started game. The mapper is really good. But sometimes I make adaption with edit in the files.
Duke Nukem is now hudger as before, but looks a little like the Donald.

[voljega]

@dragu ahah yeah there is a little resemblance.

Cool for the mapperfile thank you I will try it

I tried ultima underworld too, works fine.

By the way, any way to display the fps counter inside DosBox ?

[Dragu]

@voljega
I don't think so, we are not in Steam
I was starting to make DN Manhattan working, but before Windows95 should be ready. There I have still some problems. Time will bring the answer. Seems pervert to run windows in Recalbox, but some early games require 95.

[voljega]

@dragu Perverted I don't know but that would be a feat.

I also plan to try later to convert some games From ExoWin3.1 collection which run under Dosbox

[Dragu]

@voljega

I read the aspect story back in the dosbox Wiki, as I found that it has only an effect on some games.
"
aspect = true | false
Do aspect correction. It only affects non-square pixel modes like VGA Mode 13h, which has a resolution of 320x200 pixels and is used by many DOS games (DOOM, etc). Recommended as such games were designed for 4:3 displays, and without aspect correction will look distorted and not as the developer intended.
Default is false.
"
So, if you have 640x480 or bigger resolution, no need.

[voljega]

@dragu cool to know but then better leave it to true as it will no effect on games with bigger resolution ?

[Dragu]

@voljega
I am not sure, because it is also written :

aspect: Do aspect correction, if your output method doesn't support scaling this can slow things down!.

So, it seems to have perhaps negative effect on speed. This could be an issue in more recent games.

[rockaddicted]

@voljega said in Confused Over Dos Games:

@substring ah ah ok, so @rockaddicted maybe ?

Sorry dude I didn't have time to test this emulator, can't help you.

[voljega]

@rockaddicted It's not related to the emulator, more an Emulation Station problem regarding how it shows folder as a menu item.

Any way, i'll file a bug when 4.1 is released and when there will be a new bug tracking system