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Master of MagicGog imrpovements with Dosbox?(18 posts)(18 posts)
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Posted April 24, 2010
Does gog actually make any programming changes to dosbox to improve performance? I've tried emulating this game myself with many variations to Dosbox conf and custom compilations and I could never get the Next turn speed on impossible difficulty with 4 computers to be bearable.
On my old high-end 486 days I never had to wait more than a fraction of a second on the most congested maps on next turn and I'd do anything to have those days back again on my modern PC.
I just don't really know what Gog does, and I hope they just don't slap the game together with Dosbox and be like pay us money, they claim to have a team of programmers, so hopefully they actually do some serious work on the emulation. They'll definitely have my money if they do.
I'm new to Gog so I haven't really seen what they can and can't do (Or what they are willing to try to do) to bring us these great classics in their original enjoyment.
Can anyone enlighten me on what to expect?
Posted April 25, 2010
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Hobson: Does gog actually make any programming changes to dosbox to improve performance? I've tried emulating this game myself with many variations to Dosbox conf and custom compilations and I could never get the Next turn speed on impossible difficulty with 4 computers to be bearable.
On my old high-end 486 days I never had to wait more than a fraction of a second on the most congested maps on next turn and I'd do anything to have those days back again on my modern PC.
I just don't really know what Gog does, and I hope they just don't slap the game together with Dosbox and be like pay us money, they claim to have a team of programmers, so hopefully they actually do some serious work on the emulation. They'll definitely have my money if they do.
I'm new to Gog so I haven't really seen what they can and can't do (Or what they are willing to try to do) to bring us these great classics in their original enjoyment.
Can anyone enlighten me on what to expect?

No, I don't think they change DOS Box, though they might be able to provide an optimized config file?
Either way if you can't get it to run well (core=dynamic, cycles=max, etc) you might want to search for answers and/or ask the question yourself on the DOS Box forum
Post edited April 25, 2010 by kalirion
Posted April 25, 2010
I've already been there and done all that was suggested as well as compiled some of my own modifications, there is no way I can see of to make this at a non-frustrating playable level.
It's a shame, I wish they could make like a VDMSound type thing for vista/7, no reason to emulate everything for Master of Magic. I'm not crafty enough to do that level of work.
Posted April 26, 2010
VDMSound only fixes the sound, assuming the rest of the game works, right? That wouldn't help 16 bit apps run on a 64 bit OS system in anyway.
Posted April 26, 2010
True, last time I tried VMDSound was with 32-bit win7 RC, and realized it didn't work past Windows XP. Good point.
Posted April 28, 2010
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Hobson: I've tried emulating this game myself with many variations to Dosbox conf and custom compilations and I could never get the Next turn speed on impossible difficulty with 4 computers to be bearable.

Can anyone comment on this now that it's out? Is the next turn speed on impossible difficulty reasonable?
Posted April 29, 2010
I don't see a difference between this and my own custom optimized Dosbox setups. It does seem faster than what I remember for a standard setup Dosbox though, so if you've never gone through the trouble of changing all the Dosbox settings this will seem faster to you, plus the manuals, spellbooks, and soundtrack are fun to have.
Posted April 29, 2010
Yeah, I bought it last night anyways and the performance seems great: 6 hours gone in a blink of an eye...
I have a big game going on impossible with 4 opponents and next turn speeds are close to instantaneous. I checked the task manager once and CPU utilization was under 10%.
Post edited April 29, 2010 by awitt
Posted May 04, 2010
Weirdly enough, seems to me next-turn times are longer on my phenom II then on the core duo. Though phenom should have been faster (much newer, better speed etc).
It could be due the better scaling I use there or just that I got a bigger map? Dunno... will have to delve a bit deeper.
Posted May 06, 2010
Maybe it's just the luck of my selection, but I do have over a dozen GOG games now, so ...
... anyway, what I was going to say was that I've never had any problems with GOG games on my Vista 64 system. I can tab in and out of them without a problem too. I just got X-COM from Stardock, and if I want to visit some other windows program (really helpful when you are keeping notes on what you're doing in the game) and then come back to the game, I can only get back in on a window that is a quarter the size of my modern high resolution screen. So you can go into windows and see it fine, but not back out of it. So, GOG has proven to do it better sometimes than others do.
Posted May 06, 2010
Try ALT+ENTER.
It's the Dosbox shortcut for toggling fullscreen mode. I don't know if there is a configuration change you can make to prevent switching to windowed mode after ALT+TABing, unfortunately. but my Dosbox using GOG titles do it too.
Posted May 26, 2010
This game went on sale right after I spent a Saturday getting this game to work in Dosbox (I have an original copy with books and all). To get this thing to work in dos box requires some experimenting and patience. I will say getting this game to work made me more verse with Dosbox.
Posted August 12, 2010
This may be a silly question, but is it possible to use the GOG version as is under DOS Box in Linux?
Posted August 12, 2010
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khelvan: This may be a silly question, but is it possible to use the GOG version as is under DOS Box in Linux?

Should be possible as long as you can somehow extract the files from the installer. All dos based GOG games should be usable this way. GOG installers are windows applications so you need to use wine or something to install/extract them.
Post edited August 12, 2010 by Petrell
Posted August 12, 2010
As a general rule, as long as you can run DosBox, you can run Dos games.
The practical does come down to compatibility, both of DosBox and the games with DosBox and possibly any "hardware hiccups". But, I see no reason why, if they came out with a Linux DosBox (or equivalent), you couldn't run Dos games in it.
Plus, of course, if DosBox runs on Wine, then that only adds another "compatibility layer" - How well DosBox runs on Wine.
Ideally, a program runs in an emulator without any direct or "knowing" interaction with the underlying hardware. Practically, I get game-breaking graphical glitches trying to run Daggerfall off a Windows 98 MS-DOS virtual floppy in Virtual PC 2007 and in VMWare, the full-screen option is often not a full-screen display.
(DosBox, on the other hand, runs it wonderfully. Simply yoink a configuration and shortcut values from one of your DosBox GoG games...But that's getting OT)
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Master of MagicGog imrpovements with Dosbox?(18 posts)(18 posts)
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