In case anyone missed it (I did, until tonight), a new version of DOSBox was released a week ago. And, to my surprise, Build games seem to work quite well in it. I've tried Blood, Redneck Rampage, WWII GI, NAM, TekWar, and Powerslave, on both my laptop and my sister's desktop. All the games worked perfectly, or at least damn near perfectly, on DOSBox's default setting.
I don't know if it'll work for everyone, just that it's sure as hell working for me. Try it for yourself. Maybe it will work for you too, and you won't have to do any technical acrobatics to get the games to work anymore (no offense to the deathmask dude, of course).
Edited by riffraff1138 at
Maren at
Re: Build games seem to work in the new DOSBox.
I hardly get 12fps in Blood with this piece of trash, whereas SoundFX 2000 + cli2nop + nolfb can run it at full speed on my 2.0ghz.
I see an improvement over the previous release, but it's still pretty much useless for the build games.
TX at
Piece of trash? Funny, you don't usually seem to say such stupid things. :/
Maren at
I'm really sorry and I take it back. I got a borderline irritating phone call just 2 mins before I wrote that. I do, however, stand for my word about DosBox and the build games.
riffraff1138 at
Well damn. Like I said, they work for me. Obviously, not all computers are going to work the same. But neither my or my sister's computer is exactly high-end, and the games work fine on both. On the previous version of DOSBox, Redneck Rampage would run at less than 1 fps on my computer, and not all the sprites would even show up. Now it runs just a tad slow, but otherwise perfectly.
Results not typical, your results will vary, I guess. :-[
TX at
Actually, riffraff, your results are quite typical for the newest version of DOSbox. People have had a lot of luck getting Build games to work smoothly with it.
leileilol at
Know why?
They never read the readme to learn how to increase cycles or change the core. 0.70 defaulting to new "auto" core and "auto" cycles seems to make every user discover "HEY WOW IT CAN FINALLY RUN DOOM NOW!" and etc. I'm surprised today's new generation 'dos gamers' lack some degree in problem solving and thinks every game put on a questionable site is legally officially freeware (or, what many pass off crap as with the term "abandonware")
Build games have worked since 0.61 (as with every other protected mode game)
Edited by leileilol at
TX at
Did you mean to say that you're not surprised? The way your post is worded now, it looks as if you're expressing shock that many computer users these days are stupid. ;) It's almost hard to believe that companies once made money selling products which couldn't be used without "typing" things into a "console" or "terminal," let alone the stuff that required a specific boot disk or config.sys/autoexec.bat modifications.
Maren at
leileilol said at
Know why?
They never read the readme to learn how to increase cycles
You don't have to read the readme for that, it's already in the welcome message. Blindly increasing cycles didn't help much, actually, it could make everything slower. You had to extensively test every change done to them in order to find a decent balance between the limitations of your CPU and the power required to run the game without problems at a decent speed, and many times you would end up with either very low framerate or choppy sound.
leileilol said at
Build games have worked since 0.61 (as with every other protected mode game)
You could run Windows 95 on a 386DX, but was it really worth it?.
yuriks at
The new DOSBox version is loads better. I can now run Tyrian full speed, whereas before it either stuttered or ran slowly, and on Medium detail. Now it runs full speed on Paentium. =D
Rekrul at
leileilol said at
Know why?
They never read the readme to learn how to increase cycles or change the core. 0.70 defaulting to new "auto" core and "auto" cycles seems to make every user discover "HEY WOW IT CAN FINALLY RUN DOOM NOW!" and etc.
The problem is that DOSBox was designed using the *nix philosophy that programs can be powerful OR they can be easy to use, but they can never be both. If DOSBox were designed with a modern interface where people could easily change the settings via menus, they would be more inclined to try different ones. Even if DOSBox just presented a text menu for the settings right in the window, it would be an improvement.
The fact is that while DOSBox emulates a DOS system, there's really no valid reason to force users to type obscure commands in orer to change settings.
TX said at
Did you mean to say that you're not surprised? The way your post is worded now, it looks as if you're expressing shock that many computer users these days are stupid. ;) It's almost hard to believe that companies once made money selling products which couldn't be used without "typing" things into a "console" or "terminal," let alone the stuff that required a specific boot disk or config.sys/autoexec.bat modifications.
My first computer was a C64 and it's hard for me to believe that companies once made money selling software for a system that couldn't run anything "out of the box" and required users to have detailed knowledge of their system to get even the simplest programs running.
Actually, looking bad at the sickly colors provided by CGA, it's a wonder that people actually went through the effort required to get the games to work.
Skeksis at
leileilol said at
Know why?
They never read the readme to learn how to increase cycles or change the core. 0.70 defaulting to new "auto" core and "auto" cycles seems to make every user discover "HEY WOW IT CAN FINALLY RUN DOOM NOW!" and etc. I'm surprised today's new generation 'dos gamers' lack some degree in problem solving and thinks every game put on a questionable site is legally officially freeware (or, what many pass off crap as with the term "abandonware")
Build games have worked since 0.61 (as with every other protected mode game)
I stuffed around with those features ad nauseam and never saw the same sort of speed as the new version is putting out.
JustAnotherBuildFan at
I know that this is an old message thread and all, but I figured I'd chirp in a bit after the recent release of DOSBox 0.71.
Every one of my build games plays extremely well in this version except for the Shadow Warrior 1.0 Shareware version and the Shadow Warrior 1.1 Shareware version. It just crashes immediately and will not play at all, even if I try to bypass the initial screens and launch directly into a game map. :'(
nullpoint at
Have you tried the newly released 0.72?
JustAnotherBuildFan at
nullpoint said at
Have you tried the newly released 0.72?
I just tried 0.72; unfortunately there is no change. Every single Build game plays fine with the exception of the 1.0 and 1.1 shareware versions of Shadow Warrior. They always produce the follwing errors in the console window:
Illegal read from f1000060, CS:IP 180: 1f0869 Illegal read from f1000061, CS:IP 180: 1f0869 Illegal read from f1000062, CS:IP 180: 1f0869 Illegal read from f1000063, CS:IP 180: 1f0869 Illegal read from f1000130, CS:IP 180: 1f0830 Illegal read from f1000131, CS:IP 180: 1f0830 Illegal read from f1000132, CS:IP 180: 1f0830 Illegal read from f1000133, CS:IP 180: 1f0830 Illegal read from f1000110, CS:IP 180: 1f083f Illegal read from f1000111, CS:IP 180: 1f083f
Has anyone else been able to get these versions to work under DOSBox at all?