Recalbox 7.0: DosBox Slow

[RetroVadus]

Previously in RB 6.1.1 with a raspberry pi 3B the games worked quite fine (for example: blood, judge dredd pinball, tyrian...) Now over RB7.0 and a more powerful raspberry 4 the games are not so fluid (no config was changed in DOS games)

In overall there is a drop in performance for all my games. Any solution? Neither is possible choose emulator for DOSBOX. Could be possible choose between previous version and the new?

[Bkg2k]

@RetroVadus We're investigating.

[Edu28]

and how does the games recognize you? because I make the .bat "file" .exe and it doesn't work for me, so the Recalbox team has commented that 7.0 has a bug and they already have the patch but they tell me that up to 7.0.1 nothing

[Bkg2k]

There is no "patch".

We've to release a fix version, so just be patient.

[RetroVadus]

@Edu28
For me the DOS games start correctly. I only copied the directory structure from RB6 to RB7. The next is how I have the structure of files and folders. Each game have his own configuration.

• "Directory With Game.dos"
  • dosbox.bat: here I set some brief configuration and launch the game. Btw now in RB7 is necessary write "exit" to close dosbox
  • dosbox.cfg: Contain the general config for the game in the same directory.
  • filemap.map: Custom keyboard mapped to buttons for this game only. (dosbox.cfg with line mapperfile=filemap.map)

@Bkg2k
A bit more of information. The only difference in the default configuration that I can see, is in this file: share_init\system\configs\dosbox\dosbox.conf
In RB 6.1.1 contain the line vsync=false, while that in RB7.0 figure vsync=true

After change the configuration to vsync=true, the games in general run better. For example; I did a test with pro pinball timeshock. I changed the resolution 800x600 to 1024x768 and now with the key vsync=true, the game is playable (previously very bad experience with vsync=false). Anyway, I feel that perhaps there are a loss of frames sometimes, but can be normal I think, not sure.

[lmerckx]

@RetroVadus What is your hardware?

For me, DosBox runs also at same speed on v7 than on v6.
But perhaps, the problem is due to RPI4.

[RetroVadus]

@lmerckx said in Recalbox 7.0: DosBox Slow:

@RetroVadus What is your hardware?

Raspberry pi 4 (1.2b) 4GB.

[lmerckx]

@RetroVadus Ok, great !

[Edu28]

I have an RPI 4, but in the dosbox readme.txt file I can't understand anything, the only thing I understand is the name of the executable.exe there is no tutorial to create the .bat correctly and it is very complicated for newbies because there is no information

[lmerckx]

@Edu28 Hmmm, are you sure: https://recalbox.gitbook.io/documentation/emulators/computosaures/dosbox

[Edu28]

I have downloaded a game and I still can't get the .bat that it includes to work is called play.bat I've renamed it to dosbox is this
@echo off
crack
@echo on

It does not recognize the game I have modified it like this:
@echo off
"c:"
crack.exe
exit
@echo on

He doesn't recognize it either, what am I doing wrong?
the "c:" is put in quotes because if I don't get an emoji from the page

[Edu28]

second try this is the dosbox.conf file of the game

[autoexec]

Lines in this section will be run at startup.

cd ..
cd ..
mount c .\games
#mount d .\games\lsl6\cd\ -t cdrom
#mount d e:\ -t cdrom
imgmount d ".\games\adark1\cd\alone in the dark trilogy cd 1.cue" -t cdrom
"c:"
cd adark1
INDARK
exit

according to the instructions in this link https://recalbox.gitbook.io/documentation/emulators/computosaures/dosbox

the dosbox.bat file should be like this:

imgmount d ".\games\adark1\cd\alone in the dark trilogy cd 1.cue" -t cdrom
"c:"
cd adark1
INDARK
exit

I've tried .pc and .dos still don't understand what I'm doing wrong

[RetroVadus]

Hi again! A bit more of info regarded to the title of this post.
After to change the key vsync to true in more games, not all the games worked correctly. For example, in the game Psycho Pinball the change was even worse. Changing this option can help in some cases but it is not the solution.

Hope this help a bit.

[Edu28]

the dosbox.conf of recalbox 7.0 is configured like this

Vsync = true

Because it does not work?

[RustyMG]

Dosbox on a Pi4, at the moment, will never perform better than on a Pi3 it seems. Others are also finding the exact same issue as yourself, and I found this :

"it's to do with the framebuffer video driver included in the sdl1 library used by dosbox. The PI4 has a different kind of driver (it's basically emulated on top of the DRM/KMS primary video plane) which doesn't support resolution changing, as in the previous PI models.

For the Pi3, the scaling might have worked with 2 methods - either the fbcon SDL1 driver did the scaling to a resolution supported by the framebuffer, or the scaling was done by using the SDL1 dispmanx driver (PI specific).

The former is not supported anymore on the Pi4 - the latter works, but it's not 100% behaving the same as on a Pi3."

Hope that helps.

[RetroVadus]

@RustyMG said in Recalbox 7.0: DosBox Slow:

Dosbox on a Pi4, at the moment, will never perform better than on a Pi3 it seems. Others are also finding the exact same issue as yourself, and I found this :...

Thank you for the information. Not very goood news
Maybe updating dosbox but not secure. Current version in RB is r4290 and the lastest is r4378.

[RetroVadus]

As another option more:
If there doesn't seem to be a good solution soon, take into consideration to add optionally the core dosbox-X. It is a more advanced and vitaminate version of dosbox.
https://dosbox-x.com/