dos version, vsync & triple buffer

[Tux]

The other topic for the dos version was overloaded, so here is a new one.

I had a quick look at triple buffer : it's disabled for vesa 1.2 and 2.0. You can only have it with vesa 3.0 and vbeaf apparently, which means univbe for me here, but even with univbe I can't get it.

Anyway it's something low level setup between allegro and the vesa bios of the card, the hacks have nothing to do with it finally... So it's very hard to get.

The funny thing about triple buffer is that it's very hard to enable, but there are functions in allegro to do it manually with as many pages as you want, to make double buffer for example, which should be much easier to enable. We'll see if you need this...

 

Now until now the vsync was only about palette in raine, to prevent colors distortion when changing palette at start, but it really calls vsync here too. There is a hack here too because at this time everything was good to win a few cycles so there is a super fast asm palette update function which is enabled by default, but which calls vsync too if you enabled "vsync palette" in the video options. You can choose the C function from allegro by setting "fast_set_pal" to 0 in raine.cfg, the comments say it's safe to leave it enabled on almost any system though.

 

Then there is the problem of color depths > 8. In this case the palette is not updated and vsync was called only sometimes !

Actually it was called only for pixel double or double width blits, for all the other blits with depth > 8 it was just ignored.

So I fixed that, now if vsync is enabled in video options and depth > 8 then a call is made after each blit to enable vsync.

 

So the problem is if you tested with bpp = 8 and you couldn't get a decent vsync. For info it's done when updating the palette, before the blit which is a little strange. If you have a problem here, I'll make a test with updating the palette after the blit.

 

So here is a new test build : http://raine.1emulation.com/archive/rained.7z

it has changes for vsync for depths > 8, + all the other fixes discussed in the other thread.

If you still have problems with vsync and bpp = 8, we'll need to make another test.

 

Finally notice that if you are sure that your video hardware has the right speed for this game, you can just disable "limit speed" and just enable "vsync palette", raine should sync only on video, but it's not a good idea since some games have a sync which is not precisely 60 fps.

 

Finally I have ran a recent raine on a tv yesterday and since it's france, it's 50 fps for tvs here by default. The funny thing is that raine is forced to 50fps, you see it when you enable the fps display, but you can't see any distortion on speed or anything else on screen... It just skips 1/6 of the pictures I guess, but it doesn't show at all ! Anyway it was very different from this dos setup, it was with the opengl driver...

Edited September 3, 2015 by Tux

[Turrican^]

Hi Emmanuel,

 

a long time ago, since version 0.19 I was a bug-reporter of Raine, one of the best badass emulator out there! So many memories with you, Antiriad, Haze, Katharsis... I'm so nostalgic recently

 

I still have all our IRC logs and some old website backups, but more important I still have my old working Arcade Cab (Pentium III) with alot of emulators within.

 

Yestarday I tought how would be to update Raine on the Cab (actually v0.43 installed), it still runs anything with pure DOS (with VESA doctor and SB128Pro).

 

What's actually the most stable and updated DOS build of Raine?

 

I've already read the thread about theelf testing 0.50.0, 0.50.8 and 0.6x.x, for what I understood actually the most fast and stable is 0.50.0, isn't it ? should I have to download it from the download page of Raine or have you any special build for dos users?

 

Thank you, Sir!

I'm so happy to discover you're still working on Raine! should I draw a new icon and logo for it?

[Tux]

Not sure, dos version has become increasingly difficult to test because the only way to test it on modern hardware is through dosbox (or dosemu which allows to run it at the real cpu speed instead of an emulated one), so it's not ideal to appreciate eventual speed changes, and there is no problem related to the emulated sound card in dos box too... !

Also I never had enough feedback, only 1 user in this forum to report about the dos version, and even in the previous one, posts about the dos version were more than rare. I remember one from India which made me happy though !

Neocd was never made dos compatible because having mp3 decoding in dos is messy, but you can have neogeo assuming you have enough ram for that, there are games which require more than 64 Mb of ram, and it's quite rare in dos !

So in short, you should test and see by yourself. If you can compile your own one then you have more options, you can choose to use seal or allegro for the sound, and you can choose for which cpu to compile (although it won't make a big difference since raine core is in asm... !).

I have added a few fixes recently while testing in dosbox : a crash in the about dialog if the history for the game was too long, happened with bublbobl for recent versions of history.dat, and another one if you had a recent cpu with a very long name (like "AMD Ryzen 7 2700 Eight-Core Processor", which is really the name of the cpu !). If you are interested by these and can't compile your own, I can make a very last dos binary !

[Turrican^]

Do not worry about the DOS version, I just asked in the case! I imagine that talking about DOS today, near to 2019, would be like talking about horse carriages with a car mechanic No worries mate, I think there're so few people in the world still touch the DOS.

 

just, time to time, if you want to make a stable/tested build (maybe with the help of theelf and the indian guy), just for fun, then I'll apprecciate. No worries for now, mate.

 

Yes, I read 'theelf' says that 0.50.0 works well. I'll stick with that.

 

About RAM, it's a particular speech, in the early 2000s, for cost reasons (PCs were not as cheap as today) and for speed, anyone created their own ArcadeCAB with DOS installed, and since it was to be used for emulators (Arcade/PSX/N64/Amiga/etc., which usually require a lot of ram, especially the heavier roms) many have upgraded their ram. My Pentium III has 64 MB of RAM (I remember I added more RAM later, may be 128 now)

 

You can also use Virtual PC 2012 to run Raine in a slow enviroment (for what I remember it runs under Win XP/Vista/7, but 8/10)

 

anyway thanks for the reply, you're always good, fast, and friendly, I hope you got a good job and you're ok. I took a look on the new forum, there are many trivial questions, I do not know where you find all that time and patience to reply to newbies, bug-reports, etc. I've always thought you're a good fella, it's a pleasure to hear you again. I'm missing so much the good old days, damn

 

good luck for the coming new year, Tux

Edited December 29, 2018 by Turrican^

[Tux]

Yeah as you say, maybe all this has aged too much now, 1998 till now it's been 20 years, and it was getting crazier and crazier to be alone on that, it was time to retire for sure !

Oh well don't worry also on your side, for me compiling the dos version is easy the tools are already installed, the hardest part is to upload it actually, the server here is quite troublesome !

For the job, no it's not ideal, far from that, but it's out of the subject anyway !

 

Anyway it was good talking to you, thanks !

[Turrican^]

Hi Tux, Happy year++;

 

 

Yes, I will say that Raine is definitely dead! It's time for you to retire!

 

First though, I would give Raine a last chance to bring it back to the popularity of long time ago. Raine is part of my life, I can not allow it to die so easily, it was One of the most famous emulator in the world (after Mame), but now it offers nothing more than other competitors, why would worth to use it anymore? I have some idea to revitalize it (quite easily to do), and I think I can help you with that.

 

can I send you a private message in this forum? You'll tell me what you think about that

[Tux]

A forum post to ask if you can send a pm ? what a waste !

Send your pm or post it publicly !

 

The big difference by the way between the long past where it was comparable to mame and recent years is simply that I was alone to try to keep it alive for way too long while mame team was getting bigger and bigger.

[Turrican^]

I asked you if I was allowed to send you a private message because in many forums is denied sending private messages to administrators, or at least sending a msg without having a public request/conversation (and a good motivation).

the big difference between MAME and Raine is You. The last time I was in contact for raine was in 2009, if I remember correctly it was on load rom-files within the rom-zips (it was through the file name, but if 'file not found': looking by CRC even if the filename is different). After 10 years I am back, and I find raine still developed by you! Incredible! if highlander was a developer, he would be You! Raine was supposed to die long time ago, if it's still alive, it's only your merit, I don't know if, in the MAME team, there's a developer with the same willpower like you, for sure if I was in your place I would have closed raine long ago, but you are the Master, I am the lamer

MAME is a big project, and many people work on it, it's true, but it's also true that a big project is not always a good thing!

Anyway, I just opened a new thread for Raine 0.64.16 Translation, Bugs, Features Req