Raine + DOS = bad sound

[keropi]

I am using a SB16 that has an OPL3 chip - it's not OPL2 but it should work, right?

Snow Bros doesn't want to work for me with either YM3812 options, same as music in Bubble Bobble. (tested bubble with 0.51 music does work there)

 

I also have a suggestion regarding the "Change Game" option. It's really slow as it scans every time the roms as far as I can see. Could an option for a manual scan be added? That way a pre-saved list would be saved/read , making things faster. Ofcourse you'll have to manually refresh the list but it's better than waiting 45secs each time...

 

edit:

also hitting P in any game to pause it crashes raine and dumps me back to DOS

 

edit2:

"Battle Bakraid unlimited version" does a weird thing - I get a scrolling list with offsets that keeps counting like this:

offset 300331

offset 300332

....

offset 300401

and so on...

 

edit3:

"Blood Bros" has no sound at all, mixer says "no stream allocated". Sound works in other games ofcourse.

 

edit4:

Tried "Bonze's Adventure" the game has too loud sounds when all other games I tried are too silent... is there a global mixer setting or something?

 

edit5:

Cabal has some wrong screen colors, each time a bullet destroys a wall a player can hide the sfx playing is very strange...

 

 

edit6:

"Cookie and Bibi" loads fine but crashes the emulator when I press play.

Edited August 29, 2015 by keropi

[Tux]

Oh la la it starts to be too much for me, I am not interested in loosing too much time on the dos version, really.

What I can say : bubble bobble music works perfectly here, even using this same dos version in dosbox, so I won't try to understand what you did wrong. It's related to the ym3812 obviously, you should use "emulated ym3812" here.

Messages in bbakraid : it's because I use printfs as debuging in linux because the output is separated from the screen there, same thing for windows. I'll remove the messages anyway they are not useful anymore. There are a few games with some forgotten printfs which were not removed, it's a wonder they were not reported earlier, it shows almost nobody uses this dos version nowdays.

sb16 & ym3812 : read old posts on that (in this same thread !), it doesn't work with sb16.

pause crashing : probably because ot seal, it's some very old code resurrected and I didn't test everything, I'll take a look at this one.

bloodbro : no sound, very old game, never had sound.

bonzeadv : sound correct in linux and windows, maybe too loud in dos using seal, but there it's more about fine tuning and I won't try to do any fine tuning for now.

cabal : no idea, no interest.

cookbib : works fine here, except it's very slow in dosbox, normal speed in dosemu. Don't know why it's so slow in dosbox, might take a look later.

 

For now weather too hot again, it should be better in 2 days... !

[keropi]

I see, didn't knew about the SB16 ym3812 issue. Emulated doesn't work either.

 

DOSBox is not the same as a real DOS pc, things that run OK in DOSbox crash on real hardware and vice versa... As I understand there is no real interest to fix the DOS version if the "bug" is too serious, is there a point to continue in posting what I find?

It seems that 0.51 behaves better in my case, even the game list shows in 2-3 seconds instead of 30+ .... maybe new sound/video libs have their problems too , is there a chance you stick to older ones?

Edited August 29, 2015 by keropi

[theelf]

Tux have interest in fix dos version, if not, he will not be here answering us, and doing new dos builds

 

Thats don't mean he want to lost a lot of time in a build that is pretty clear, is not have much interest from people

 

 

Is a miracle in fact, he is answering us, lost time in builds, and do something that 90% of developers of emus stop long time ago, supporting DOS

 

 

My congratulations

 

 

 

 

Keropi, about your problem, let me test some stuff, and i will go back with some answers, because i have a Pentium 1 setup too to test, but i dont use much

 

Anyways, in my Pentium 200mmx, i get fullspeed in CPS1 games with raine, constant 60fps, you need to check your machine, is slower than mine for what i see

 

 

 

 

 

Hehe, poor windows 10 user !

I guess it's for work, I thought companies had learnt the hard way to wait a bit before adopting new windows versions, but not all of them apparently !

Anyway...

 

On my side I resurrected my ps2 lately, to play again an old game that I liked very much, but it's heavily moded now, it reads its games from the network, from a samba partiton (windows share if you prefer) formated using zfs... ! I took quite a while to have everything working again, but it's working fine now !

 

Your new build (exe alone) : http://raine.1emulation.com/archive/rained.7z

It's just allegro recompiled inside without the hacks for vesa, so vsync should work, but I don't know if it will be slower.

 

No idea about the code you are referring, afaik, I was never able to enable triple buffer without these hacks and it seems they were broken at a point when upgrading allegro, and since there was poor testing at that time and poor maintaining of these hacks, it can't be fixed anymore. Antiriad wrote them originally, but I am sure he has forgotten everything now ! And since he is never on the forums anyway, you can't ask him. I send his mail by pm if you want to try your luck, but it's very unlikely to work !

 

 

Hi tux, sorry the delay again to answer

 

I dont work for any company, i have a small video game business, i import retro videogames from japan to europe, and when i go to fairs or convenctions, most of the time people that live in the place, give me some laptop to use, because i dont like to travel with mine (i lost two)

 

Oh yes, still windows 10 is too inmature, better to wait, but anyways, im used to windows XP explorer (NT4, 2000), i really dont like Vista, 7, 8+ explorer... i will continue using XP until i can, and maybe one day, i will decide if i continue with windows, or switch to other OS

 

 

 

 

About PS2, i have a small PS2 slim+ Free Mc + external hard disk, very nice setup, but i dont use much... i dont like 3D games much, and the 2D compilations most of time are better on emulators in PC...

 

But some neogeo compilations are so good in PS2. In my website I made a list of how to fix most of them to use proper 240p , sadly is in spanish, sorry

 

For example you can fix nice compilations, like Last Blade, to use 240p instead of ugly 480i. Of course, you need a CRT, but even in TFT, 240p is much better than interlaced signal, if your new TV accept 240p

 

http://www.akihabara-online.com/Foro/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=920

 

 

 

 

Ok, back to raine, first, thanks to build, but is not working, vsync in 16bpp modes are still broken. I dont need much, but i think it will be nice for people with more powerfull computers, that want to play in 16 bits mode

 

About my problem with tearing, i found a nice vesa modeline, that *almost* fix the problem in CPS1/2 games

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I use 360x212, because my 14" CRT cant do 120hz in 384x224, i only can do 118hz, and this is not enough, then i decide to letterbox a little, and reach a solid 119.20hz

 

 

 

With this modeline in 8bpp or 16bpp, i get a almost free flickerig

 

 

I left the pictures in the weird case someone have interest

 

 

 

 

Thanks for all

Edited August 29, 2015 by theelf

[Tux]

Ok... !

1st keropi : I removed all the forgotten printfs, so you won't get messages anymore, and I had a look at cookbib, actually there was indeed a very small buffer overflow (reading, not even writing, this dos setup si very sensitive !). Since it was a 1 byte buffer overflow it was never found so far because modern systems count only in 32 bits boundaries.

Anyway I fixed it, cookbib should work again for you. I still don't know what slows it down in dosbox though, but anyway...

Anyway no new binary for now, you'll have to wait a bit.

EDIT : almost forgot : I took a look at this mpxplay player, quite an impressive player for dos for sure ! Now it's based on open watcom, so I am not sure the code is portable to what I have now, but it's impressive at least. It's probably too different to be used here, but maybe it's worth another look later... (when it's less hot !).

EDIT 2 : Also forgot : about the buffering of the game list to speed things up when loading a game : it was done a long time ago in the current windows/linux version but this code is gui specific so it was not back ported to dos of course ! There is a work-around though : just use the command line to run a game, like : raine bublbobl !

If you have enough motivation to backport this code to dos, you are welcome to, I am in need of some help here !

 

For your bublbobl problem : you are the kind of person who made me to remove the option about emulated ym3812 in the 1st place ! Try to think for some time before posting or I might remove this again ! This option affects the sound initialization of the game driver, which means you won't hear any change if you change it during game play. You need to enable ym3812 emulation, then quit, then restart the emu, load bublbobl, play. See the posts of theelf about where it works.

 

theelf : about the ps2 : exact same setup here except that I use the network instead of an external hd. It's mainly for ps2 games though, not for emulation, I didn't even know you could force 240p on a ps2, I might look into this one day !

I am using the network because the dvd drive of the ps2 is the 1st thing dying when it ages and it was giving me bad signs so it's better this way. Plus you get the virtual memory card too, which is convenient ! There are a few "monumental" video games there if you ask me, I am in a persona 3 fes run again, I might not finish it this time, but I found a translated walkthrough from japenese on how to get all the social links in just 1 run, so it's interesting... ! By the way I wonder how these guys from Japan spend their time now, there are way less interesting games currently... anyway !

 

Your job seems very interesting ! I read a post on slashdot today about a mathematician who is now 77 years old and who says he never worked in his whole life, he just played. It's because his definition of "playing" is not the same as the one most people use, he is seen as a genious by most. But still, it's an excellent way to live your life... Actually in an ideal world everybody should do the same I guess... yeah we are very very far from an ideal world !

Anyway I think I would have liked this kind of job too !

 

For the vsync still broken : I feared that, I never experimented how it worked in allegro and on my setup I can play most games without any flicker or almost, at least nothing noticeable, so I don't care. So fixing this will be harder.

It's a little strange that you need such a complex video mode to go flicker free or almost...

Anyway if it works for now, that's good.

I might take another look at the issue when the weather becomes more friendly again...

At least it means that for now I should re-enable the hacks for the vesa driver in the next builds...

Edited August 29, 2015 by Tux

[keropi]

@Tux

Good to see that some bugs are getting fixed, nice.

 

Regarding the game list, in 0.51 it's fast with the same amount of games. The latest version you posted is really slow with the same amount of games. I haven't tested any other versions except 0.51 and the very latest you posted in this thread.

Infact I just measured it:

- very last binary you posted here takes 48seconds to load a 12 game list - HDD constantly works

- 0.51 with 162 games takes 1.5-2secs to display the list

 

 

Regarding the ym3812 , before starting labeling "people like me" it would be a good idea to do a self-check:

a. you don't provide documentation

b. you don't provide any message in the emu saying that changing this option requires an emu restart

c. you don't provide constant emu behavior: changing output Hz requires a game reload , changing YM3812 option requires an emulator reload

 

I can understand that writing docs now is boring but at least a message at the sound options shouldn't be that hard.

 

 

@theelf

I find it really hard to understand why your 200mmx gives you +20fps in CPS1 games . I assume you did try in-game and not just menus/intros right? Because these are 60fps for me as well. The only way I can get 60fps in-game is if I don't use a sound driver (SILENCE sound driver selected).

 

Please download the benchmark suite posted here: http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=37844 and post your results here.

In said thread there are also submitted results on google docs from many other users, my results are more-or-less the same as what other people submitted with 200/233mmx setups so it's not a case that I use some really crappy mobo that is slow... it would be interesting to see what results you get in games, the whole benchmark process is automated and settings are the same among anyone that runs it.

 

edit:

regarding the speed of the game list:

I have an identical setup to my 233mmx pc (same mobo/bios version/ bios settings/vga/soundcard/ram/dos setup) but with a 200mhz mmx cpu.

So I took the latest raine setup (same as 233mhz one) and run it on the 200mhz pc. List loading is the same as 0.51: fast and no HDD working all the time. Could it be a timing issue of some sorts because of the extra +33mhz?

The 233mhz pc is faster in emulation as expected but 20x slower when it comes to load the game list. If there are any info I can provide that help solve this I'll gladly provide them.

Edited August 30, 2015 by keropi

[Tux]

@Tux

Regarding the game list, in 0.51 it's fast with the same amount of games. The latest version you posted is really slow with the same amount of games. I haven't tested any other versions except 0.51 and the very latest you posted in this thread.

Infact I just measured it:

- very last binary you posted here takes 48seconds to load a 12 game list - HDD constantly works

- 0.51 with 162 games takes 1.5-2secs to display the list

If it's so slow it means you don't use any disk cache like smartdrv which is insane.

And by the way 0.64 has more than 1000 games when 0.51 has 700 games, that's about 50% more.

 

Regarding the ym3812 , before starting labeling "people like me" it would be a good idea to do a self-check:

a. you don't provide documentation

Yeah, you want to write a doc ? Because I am lacking help around here...

 

b. you don't provide any message in the emu saying that changing this option requires an emu restart

Because this allegro gui for dos is insane, the less is done with it, the better. Already posted about that, at lenght.

 

c. you don't provide constant emu behavior: changing output Hz requires a game reload , changing YM3812 option requires an emulator reload

 

Yeah the world is harsh... !

I can understand that writing docs now is boring but at least a message at the sound options shouldn't be that hard.

It takes only a few seconds thinking to find this out. It's just about trying it, seeing it doesn't work, then realizing it works for others, so trying to do it differently.

A few seconds only, and it avoids posting useless things here.

 

edit:

 

regarding the speed of the game list:

I have an identical setup to my 233mmx pc (same mobo/bios version/ bios settings/vga/soundcard/ram/dos setup) but with a 200mhz mmx cpu.

So I took the latest raine setup (same as 233mhz one) and run it on the 200mhz pc. List loading is the same as 0.51: fast and no HDD working all the time. Could it be a timing issue of some sorts because of the extra +33mhz?

The 233mhz pc is faster in emulation as expected but 20x slower when it comes to load the game list. If there are any info I can provide that help solve this I'll gladly provide them.

Again disk cache issue. The list is relatively fast if reading only from hdd, even on a 200-233 MHz, although that would be slower of course !

[keropi]

I don't know how allegro for DOS works and why it is coded (or you) that you can change output hz with a simple game reload but when you need to enable ym3812 it needs a whole emu reload.

When testing and one sees that HZ change happens with a game reload then one assumes that a lesser option like ym3812 will work this way. Apparently not - that's an insane logic.

Well not gonna bother more with it, it is what it is.

 

As for the game list speed you seem to completely ignore what I wrote: that the same raine setup with the same 12 roms (actually the same directory zipped and transferred) on the 200mmx machine takes 2 seconds to load - and that is without any disk caching , the HDD led hadrly works on the 200mhz machine whereas on the 233mhz one it catches fire.

 

So you have a 200mhz pc that is slower in emulation and way faster in loading the game list and a 233mhz pc that is really slow in loading the list but faster in emulation.

And I will mention once again that 200mhz and 233mhz machines only have different the cpu speed - components are same between them.

So could there maybe be a bug or a routine that crashes on the 233mhz machine and it needs to repeat many times until it works?

 

But I did try with 8MB cache, 233mmx machine now loads the 12 game list in 39.5 sec.

 

I will also like to point out that I am trying to provide genuine feedback here and not start a flamewar. If I didn't like raine/dos I wouldn't waste time testing stuff and reporting them here.

 

edit:

I forgot to mention that a 12 game list and a 189 game list need the same 39.5 seconds to load on the 233mhz machine with 8mb disk cache.

 

edit2:

Dangun Feveron crashes the emu on load. One time it crashed before the game starts after pressing "Play Game" and another after the copyright screen.

Fever SOS crashes after copyright screen.

 

edit3:

Donkey Kong crashes the sound engine , the game info panel reports "Sound: Sound Blastrer;00kHz" . Running it from the command like with "raine dkong" does the same thing.

Frogger , Galaxian (Namco set 1) and Galaxian Part X do the same. I can see a message in the top left corner saying "Emulator init failed"

 

edit4:

last one for today, Jumpinf Pop has gfx glitches that stay throughout the game

 

 

Also what kind of snapshots work in raine now? I have tried pcx files according to the old docs (130x76 for horizontal games,

and 70x120 for vertical games) but I don't see them in gui. Is the feature disabled? changed? Path is correct in raine.cfg btw

Edited August 30, 2015 by keropi

[Tux]

What I can say is that 0.64 also added .7z support, which means that it also searches for the 7z version of the game which takes more time.

Also even if you have 16 games only, it searches for all the games it knows to build the list of available games, so 1000 games to search and for each a directory version, a zip and a 7z version, searched in all rom directories defined.

Now I won't look into this matter any further, if you want to try to improve the source on this side, you are welcome. It makes absolutely no sense for me to try to fix a gui issue on a 200 or 233 MHz today (+ it's not something easy to improve). And I don't care if 0.51 worked better for you, use it if you prefer, but in this case don't expect any update, nor any neo support.

EDIT : by the way, I shouldn't have to tell you this because if you still use a dos system in 2015, you are supposed to know a minimum about how it works, but if your hd is continually reading while raine builds its game list it means your disk cache doesn't work at all ! It doesn't write anything to disk while doing so, just scanning the rom directories it knows. So it just needs a few kb to cache these directories that's all. If you see your disk reading it means the directories are not cached, which shouldn't happen.

 

I just fixed the pause, it's not related to seal finally it's just that the normal version uses a new pause which is not broken by returning to the gui (to allow to test shaders while remaining in pause), which was incompatible with the dos version. So it's fixed in dos too now, and the 2 versions share more code.

 

For the rest, I am starting to get tired of all of this, don't post anymore, I won't do anything anymore on the dos version for now.

When I started this it was fun, it isn't anymore.

Find an editor and a compiler if you want to work on this !

 

Weather is still too hot to get annoyed by this kind of stuff !

 

(I looked into the dfeveron issue though, it seems to be a compiler issue since the crash happens only on optimized builds. Well it doesn't happen in linux nor windows, and compiler issues are really hard to fix especially in dos. So for now I just stop here).

 

Have fun fixing the bugs you found, the source is opened after all !

Edited August 31, 2015 by Tux

[keropi]

I just wish you would write all that crap 2-3 days ago so I wouldn't have to put up with your insulting replies - I thought that maybe it's how you write but it turns out things are much worse.

You respond like I demand you to fix anything ASAP (not the case, a sane person can see that) and you just assume because your buggy port does not run it's somehow the user's fault and his lack of knowledge.

What's really worse is that you don't really read the problems reported : it's either you can't understand or you don't want to understand. That is apparent by the same "disk cache advice" over and over again like a broken record, if you actually read what I report you'd stop mentioning that.

 

It seems pointing out stuff that don't work just triggers you (at least 50% of them since for the other 50% you say you found the cause), I don't want to do that to you so rest assure you won't hear from me again.

 

...just don't act surprised again in the future why noone reported bugs to you , it is apparent from this thread why nobody does that , your attitude really does not help. I'm signing off for another 6 years or so, feel free to write some more insults or maybe a rant how you offer a free thing and people are ungrateful - whatever suits you best.

Edited August 31, 2015 by keropi

[silvertrix]

I have FX 9590 and GTX 650 and I have always 60 fps fullspeed and games running as like hell. Keropi stop send your annoying posts and don't waste TUX time anymore. ok. Buy new pc and your problems will be resolved.