Hi there, does anyone know a good way to set up dosbox so that when you increase the resolution in the game you don't get lag?

Don't use DOSBox...use DXX-Rebirth. (it's a source port). Read the FAQ here on this board and you can find links to it :)

Also to answer your other thread...Rebirth has the option to enable Vsync.

Is there a way to get it to work with the vanilla version of the game though?

Rebirth works with the vanilla version of both D1 and D2. Install the game then install Rebirth.

If you want vsync in DOSBox then I think you need to use one of the SVN versions as they have additional features that the official DOSBox release doesn't yet have.

Ah thanks for the help.

Can you just copy the svn files into the directory or is it more involved.

Just download a new SVN DOSBox to replace the DOSBox that you currently have. Well, depending on how you have your DOSBox set up that is. I personally have a DOSBox for each DOS game so that I can make them all fully portable. Others use a single DOSBox instance shared for all games.

Here is one of the SVN DOSBox sites.
http://ykhwong.x-y.net/

What I meant was can you just copy over the SVN files to the gog dosbox thing?

I've never tried doing that, but what I would do is delete the GOG DOSBox files (but keep the conf files somewhere as you'll want to look at them later.

Then I'd extract the SVN DOSBox to where the old GOG one was.

Next you'll want to check out the default .conf file that the SVN build generates. I can't remember if there is one in the archive, but if you run it then it will generate one (in your User\AppData folder I think). There is also a command you can enter into DOSBox to create a .conf file within the DOSBox folder but I can't remember it at the moment. DOSBox wiki should have the info. But anyway, yes, in the new SVN DOSBox .conf file it should list all the new settings such as 3DFX, VSync and others. Add those lines to GOG's .conf files for the game and then put them back where they were.


Sorry that my details are a little bit vague in places, but I don't actually have the GOG version (yet, anyway) as I've been playing the Shareware version of Descent (which I only set up yesterday), so I don't know the location of DOSBox and the .conf files for the GOG version of Descent 1+2.

I'm actually considering using DXX-Rebirth myself, for the better graphics, fixes, addons, etc. The first shareware level played fine and kept the feeling of the original.

As far as using DOSBox I'm not sure. I'm sorry I can't be of much use :/

But just to explain a little bit better what Rebirth is...it's a source port that uses the original game data but fixes a bunch of the old bugs and adds a bunch of things that were needed (like multiplayer over tcp/ip). But the developer of Rebirth, zico, is committed to keeping the game as original as possible. :)

Just a thought, but if the game is showing graphical tearing within DOSBox, then doesn't that imply that DOSBox is just running too fast so generating more frames than can be displayed? If that is the case, wouldn't lowering the cycles stop the tearing?

Also, if the DOSBox setup is running too fast then this can affect the physics in the game giving greater damage caused by collisions and enemy fire, and affect homing missiles turn speed. I've just tried out DXX-Rebirth again and it really does work very well.

Also, the original is VERY FPS-dependent. Rebirth has done its best to remove those dependencies, so that anything above like 20FPS will run like the original should :)

I now have Descent 1+2 from GOG and I've had a look at the provided .conf file. It uses 50000 cycles, so really quite high. My machine seems to run the Shareware version fine at 30000 cycles. There is the possibility that you may need to lower the cycles, but that's where DOSBox varies for each machine, as some machines are faster than others. That said, my machine is getting on a little now (E8500 3.16GHz dual core).