DosBox performance issues

GameShell
1

Hi, I played a bit with my gameshell lately and I love it! But, I have some issues with DosBox. Most games such as Doom, Heretic, Hexen works great with Chocolate-Doom and such but some smaller releases like Nitemare 3D or the Catacomb series are extremely slow or glitchy despite being smaller games than Doom 2 for example.

In short, everything played with the Chocolate engine work great but as soon as I have to use DosBox directly it sucks. Is there other peoples out there that have the same issues? Is there a “special” version of DosBox to use or is the one installed through “sudo apt-get”, the only version to use?

Sorry for my english.
Thanks

2

you should try dosbox-sdl2

3

Hi, thanks for your answer.
Do I need to compile it manually or is there a repo?

4

hi there -

Chocolate Doom is a source port and runs natively on the CPI

DosBox is an emulator, so Doom (for DOS) “runs” on a virtual x86 CPU. This will always be (a lot) slower than native code - especially in a little box like CPI, with frugal RAM and CPU speed.

I would say running DosBox in CPI is possible… but other than for bragging rights, it might be more trouble than it’s worth.

5

compile it.
dosbox-sdl2 runs smoothly on Raspberry Pi 3, so it should do on GameShell.

6

I have compiled dosbox-sdl2 an hour ago, I will post my experience in the next few days after I try some more games with it.

7

Ok so I tried some games on dosbox-sdl2
The results are a bit sad but some games are running better with it.

Rise of the Triad: Almost no improvement, playable but slooooow.
Star Wars Dark Forces: Lucky if I get 10 FPS
Catacomb 3D, Catacomb Abyss: Way better
Nitemare 3D: Still glitchy but very playable
Blood: Unplayable
Blake Stone: Slow
Corridor 7: Slow

So I believe that there is some slight improvement but nothing too crazy.

8

i was planning to try dosbox with GS today …guess i wont since most games are running slow :slight_smile:

9

You should try it. Many games works but there will be lots of disappointment.
More people trying means more chances to find solutions…

10

Do we have a list of games that work flawlessly ? I kinda need the incentive in order to spend the time with this.

11

There are some like Nitemare 3D, Catacomb 3D, Terror of the Catacomb, Wolfenstein 3D…
But you sill have to experiment yourself.

12

DOSBOX SVN seems to be more stable for games like Rise of The Triad or SW Dark Forces but I can’t compile it. I always get errors. Also, there is a dosbox_svn_libretro.so but I can’t reconfigure the mapping and it does not seems to use the RetroArch mapping at all.

Is there a way to force a .so core to use the mapping from another source?
ex.I have mapping for dosbox-sdl2 and I want the dosbox_svn_libretro.so to use it

Or does someone still have the working version of dosbox_svn_libretro.so referenced in the post below:

13

I’ve been using the DOSBOX core in RetroArch without a problem after upgrading to OS v0.3 and using Lima GPU driver.

14

DOSBox-SVN does use RetroArch mapping.
I made the core.

15

do you use os 0.3 and lima driver?

16

Can you share your core, I might be using another source because here I have no controls at all.
And yes I am on OS v0.3, and I tried Lima.

17

I haven’t built one for CPI.

19

Can you share a link to your source then so I can try to compile it?
Also there was a link, in another post, pointing to the core but the link is down, do you still have the file?ref

20

Which core are you using?
Would you be willing to try Rise of The Triad and Star Wars Dark Forces and report how it went?

21

I found your source on Github, I will try to compile it.

UPDATE: Compiling went smoothly. Ill try it and report back.