[DOSBox Pure 1.0 Preview 1] Feedback

[nemo93]

Hello, I've been toying around for some time with Pure and I'm quite impressed by how easy it is to run Win9x games. No issue to install the OS whatsoever; all with a simple and clear interface. Amazing work!

I decided to give Pure another try following the recent update which brings "OpenGL passthrough" yet this time I decided to get serious about testing: I'm using Win98SE "base images" with or without (latest) 3DFX driver installed and assign one image per game to prevent any issues. I also create a dedicated .opt file per game to turn on/off some options.

Below a quick feedback after testing roughly a 100 games (all Windows 98 compatible) where most run flawlessly. Unsure how to provide the info - I put everything in that ticket in no specific order yet I could create separate ones if asked. Thanks a lot!!

Securom/Safedisc

Those DRM's are giving me a hard time (ie. Carmageddon 2, Heart of Darkness, Prince of Persia 3D, Warzone 2100). Some "cracks" are available but not always. I wonder if there's a way to implement/support .sbi the same way other Cores do? I've stumbled upon some of these Subchannel files recently (ie. for Heart of Darkness) and I wonder if these could help.

Note: Diablo 2 doesn't run (either crash with a message about fog.dll or does nothing, just stays on desktop) no matter what I do and even if after installing the latest patch which is supposed to remove any DRM.

DVD

I got an old Baldur's Gate 2 DVD and seems like DVD is not supported (despite Win98 having a driver for such hardware).

Sound crackling/stuttering

Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy is working nicely yet with awful sound crackling, right from the Main Menu. Same goes with Deus EX, Dungeon Keeper 2 or Anachronox. The "video emulation" itself is flawless. Changing the emulated CPU or speed doesn't change anything.

OpenGL passthrough

Ground Control and Prince of Persia 3D can't display Main menu (intro videos play fine) just a white line on top of the screen. I can hear the Menu is "here" just not displayed. Switching 3DFX emulation to "software" instead of "opengl" fixes the situation with big impact on performance/visual quality.

Video glitches/artifacts

• Anachronox/Daikatana: glitches can be seen in-game. Hard to explain (and even harder to capture) as "lines" appears at random on the image. Games are running fine though and are playable (despite the sound stuttering).
• Homeworld/Dungeon Keeper 2: Main menu glitches with artifacts all over the screen. No problem noted once in-game though.

Misc

• Sin: can move with arrow keys in the Main menu (must rely on the FX keys)
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein: does work only with 8mb 3DFX other Main menu gets garbled
• Beast & Bumpkins: game runs, gets to the 1st loading screen before stopping there to a black screen > random. Apparently no DRM on that game to explain this.
• Red Faction: doesn't run - throws an error message about some DirectX 8 files (despite having DX8 installed from the game CD). Same with DX9c.

Requests

• CHD support: to save some disk space and to get things tidy - would be appreciated.
• Windows98SE: to have a way to shutdown emulation/Retroarch automatically on Windows Shut down. Today you must do Start > Shut Down and hit Esc twice to close RA.
• File transfer: to have an easier way to transfer files (ie. patches) from the host system to the Windows98 image.

My gear (all drivers/apps to the latest version):
Microsoft Windows 10 Family 64 bit (build 10.0.19045)
Gigabyte X570S AORUS MASTER Default string (BIOS F6D)
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core 3,70 GHz AM4 (AMD64 Family 25 Model 33 Stepping 0)
32 GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti

[PoloniumRain]

Great info :)

Many of your findings were already mentioned in #519 which is basically the same type of thread. It's nice to have my findings confirmed though. That thread has become very long, but here's some of the stuff from it that i can actually remember...

Diablo 2 was got working with 3dfx but you have to use a specific patch version. I've also tried literally every patch version available and only that version will work if you follow the instructions in those 2 posts.

I got an old Baldur's Gate 2 DVD and seems like DVD is not supported (despite Win98 having a driver for such hardware).

No DOSBox variant supports DVD's yet (as far as i know).

Ground Control and Prince of Persia 3D can't display Main menu (intro videos play fine) just a white line on top of the screen

OpenGL resolution scaling at higher levels can cause a black screen to appear when using shaders, while the sound continues to play. There's also a similar problem with some games not showing the menus or loading screens (empty black or white screen but it has sound), like the race loading screen in Re-Volt. I'd guess you have one of these issues. There were quite a few other problems with menu screens and similar stuff.

The Deus Ex sound stuttering/crackling is known about (bottom of that post). I think the standard Sound Blaster emulation for DOSBox in general just isn't that great. It's always had these kind of issues. I also had very similar problems with PCem with the Sound Blaster, and using a PCI 128 sound card fixed it, but DOSBox Pure doesn't support that card.

Anachronox/Daikatana: glitches can be seen in-game. Hard to explain (and even harder to capture) as "lines" appears at random on the image

Do the lines look like these? Although that problem was fixed for those games and many others at least.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein: does work only with 8mb 3DFX other Main menu gets garbled

Does it work in another DOSBox variant or PCem/86Box? RtCW was released in late 2001 so it could be the Windows drivers or the game just doesn't support the Voodoo 1.

[nemo93]

My apologies for double-posting and thanks a lot for sharing.

Should I simply close that one off given most issues are already being looked at/known?

1. Diablo 2: I do confirm 1.05b works nicely! Interesting...
2. Ground Control: changing scaling doesn't change anything (I tried all values as well as changing for 4MB 3DFX).
3. RTCW: game works fine in fact with those settings - it was just FYI only. I haven't tried with any other forks/variants.
4. sbi: do you think that would help "dodging" those nasty DRMs?
5. Daikatana: I've made a recording where you can hopefully see what I meant - for sure the "lines" differ from yours.

daikatana-241231-123832.mp4

[Allanon41]

@PoloniumRain I wonder why patches after 1.05b for Diablo 2 don't work. What is changed in fog.dll?

[Torinde]

No DOSBox variant supports DVD's yet (as far as i know).

https://dosbox-x.com/wiki/#Guide:Managing-image-files-in-DOSBox‐X#_cd_rom_or_dvd_images