[voda]

Hi guys,

I am glad to inform you that today I got the first game running (supremacy). It works quite well
if screen resolution is 320x256 (like the game above) even on 200 MHz. It is still far from release,
and now it got quite hectic on work, so the progress will be slow until September (I can see some
free time comming).
This was incredibly complex application to port, starting from porting the code itself, then implementing
missing libraries (<vector>, <list> and <string>, for those who know something about c++), replacing
SDL with my own code. I was so close to quit so many times, and if I am not so stubborn, I would do it.
There are many problems to solve, like hard reset sometimes needed after first run, it locks up if higher
resolution screen is requested (above 640xwhatever).
On my device I can use pageup/pagedown and left/right to scroll screen (dos text shell uses 640x480 by
default, so part of the screen is not visible), and any other button is mapped to left mouse.

It needs UDMH to run (prefefined 6 MB RAM is set, no GUI to change that yet).
I will keep you updated on the progress, and some volunteers for testing it would be appreciated.

My e-mail is still the same sinisamarovic@yahoo.com

Voda.

[vibri2001]

I would be happy to help you test this. I will have to look around for some DOS games. Do they need to be in a particular format, .zip or normal folder structure? Please let me know what you need from me.

It's great to see that some people still won't give up on our beloved Zodiac.

This post has been edited by vibri2001: 25 August 2006 - 05:07 PM

[jollyrancher]

Sounds great! I've used dosbox and have some classic games. If you want more testers my email is jollyrancher@earthlink.net

[Dekaritae]

I'd be happy to help test, if I can. I have a spare Zodiac1 with UDMH that I use for testing; that is, I don't mind hard resetting it when crashes occur. My contact is dekaritae@gmail.com

[slaanesh]

Dos Box on the Zod sounds great! I'd love to play the DOS version of Civilization 1 on the go amongst others.

[SHoe]

Cool - I knew DOS emu could be done! Kudos for all of your work on this!

[damien]

i would like to test it to if you dont mind... i am a mod in a pocket pc and palm gaming forum and have a huge list of games that i allready testet on n0p´s dosbox for pocket pc...

feel free to drop me a line under damien at pocketplayers dot de

[voda]

damien, on Aug 30 2006, 11:50 PM, said:

i would like to test it to if you dont mind... i am a mod in a pocket pc and palm gaming forum and have a huge list of games that i allready testet on n0p´s dosbox for pocket pc...

feel free to drop me a line under damien at pocketplayers dot de

What about the speed on pocket PC? Is it stable?

[astroraptor]

Hi, I too would like to test if you haven't your hands full yet with testers. Can I suggest forcing the command prompt to 40x25 instead of 80x25 so that it can fit the screen? That might make it all fit into a 320x320 screen and a 480x320 screen as well. Personally, I don't think that it would be usable on any device with a lower resolution than 320x240, but I'm sure you know that already. Anyway, keep up the great work, you have my congratulations. I'll definately keep an eye out on this project.

[voda]

astroraptor, on Aug 31 2006, 04:21 PM, said:

Hi, I too would like to test if you haven't your hands full yet with testers. Can I suggest forcing the command prompt to 40x25 instead of 80x25 so that it can fit the screen? That might make it all fit into a 320x320 screen and a 480x320 screen as well. Personally, I don't think that it would be usable on any device with a lower resolution than 320x240, but I'm sure you know that already. Anyway, keep up the great work, you have my congratulations. I'll definately keep an eye out on this project.

Unfortunately forcing 40*25 would still only show a part of the screen, since 80x25 characters screen is
showed in 640x480. That means that 40*25 would occupy 320*480, and while it would show all of the
screen on zodiac (landscape mode), on hires devices it would still be needed to scroll.

[astroraptor]

voda, on Aug 31 2006, 10:59 AM, said:

Unfortunately forcing 40*25 would still only show a part of the screen, since 80x25 characters screen is
showed in 640x480. That means that 40*25 would occupy 320*480, and while it would show all of the
screen on zodiac (landscape mode), on hires devices it would still be needed to scroll.

Check this out:

Quote

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_mode

According to that, if you set the command prompt to 40x25 with 8x8 character size it'll be equivalent to a 320x200 screen resolution. Not sure if this is true in most cases.

[damien]

voda, on Aug 31 2006, 07:49 AM, said:

What about the speed on pocket PC? Is it stable?

If a game runs it runs fine. You can win a FPS or two if you fiddle with the cycles and when you mess them up to much you can make it crash that way. Playing Speed is okay. I testet it on Pocket PC´s with 400 Mhz and all Games i tested worked fine without sound, on my Dell with 624 Mhz i can play most of the ones from my list with sound as well.

As soon as a game is using that dos4gw extender its slow as a snail uphill, and of course 3D Games like Duke and stuff are out of question as well. The only decent running 3D Games i found was the old Castle Master and Eternam. Mainly i tested Adventures and Roleplaying Games, but a few Action titles as well. This is the list of Games i tested more or less successfully on Pocket PC so far, maybe you give me a chance to test some on palm as well.

Alone In The Dark 1
Alone In The Dark 2
Alone In The Dark 3 (Very Slow)
Bard's Tale, The: Tales of the Unknown
Bard's Tale II, The: The Destiny Knight
Bard's Tale III, The: The Thief of Fate
Battle Chess
Battle Isle 1
Battle Isle 2 (Slow with some effects, otherwise playable)
Biing
Body Blows (Works sometimes, crashes on one Fighter, maybe my Game is corrupted)
Bundesliga Manager Hattrick
Crime Wave (Very Slow)
Defender Of The Crown
Dungeon Master 1
Epic Pinball
Eternam
Eye Of The Beholder 1
Eye Of The Beholder 2
Eye Of The Beholder 3 (Slow, but playable)
Defender Of The Crown (EGA)
DiscWorld 1
Freddy Pharkas
Future Wars
Grand Theft Auto 1 (worked first time, now crashes after title)
It Came From The Desert (crashes sometimes)
Jagged Alliance (Long loading times)
Karateka
Kings Quest 1
Kings Quest 2
Kings Quest 3
Kings Quest 4
Kings Quest 5
Kings Quest 6
Lands Of Lore
Leather Goddesses Of Phobos 2
Legend Of Kyrandia 1
Legend Of Kyrandia 2
Leisure Suit Larry 1
Leisure Suit Larry 1 (VGA)
Leisure Suit Larry 2
Leisure Suit Larry 3
Leisure Suit Larry 5
Leisure Suit Larry 6
Leisure Suit Larry 7
Lemmings
Mad TV
North & South
Nuclear War
Pirates!
Pirates! Gold
Police Quest 1
Police Quest 2
Police Quest 3
Prince Of Persia 1
Prince Of Persia 2
Quest For Glory 1
Quest For Glory 2
Quest For Glory 3
Space Quest 1
Space Quest 2
Space Quest 3
Space Quest 4
Space Quest 5
Stunts
Veil Of Darkness
WarCraft 1 (Very Slow)
WarCraft 2 (lVery Slow)

This is just a list to show what games i tried on a 624 Mhz Pocket PC, those games are not tested on a Zodiac or any other Palm (yet) ;-)

[Tinnus]

Oohhh that sounds nice, it would be so much fun being able to play Larry 5 & 6 on the go

[voda]

Wow, that's a long list. And you are right about dos4gw, it is bloody slow. Hey, I even tried arena. It has
about 0.2 fps. But guys, on 200 Mhz you will be very limited in games with decent fps. Such games would
be adventures, so I guess Leisure suit Larry would run O.K.

About the current status of palmdosbox:

1. No sound yet.
2. I managed to avoid hard reset after each run. Soft is still mandatory because "exit" in palmdosbox
results in illegal instruction. I guess I still have a memory leak.

3. Input from keyboard works nice. Still no stylus input, didn't work on that yet. Sollution like virtual
keyboard (like in PalmUAE) is not possible because of the screen are in use.

4. Games that I tried to run:

Warcraft - works
Warlords 2 - doesn't work. That's a shame, but I will make it working sooner or later (my favourite)
Arena - works (slow like hell on 400 MHz)
Supremacy - works
Masters of magic - not working simply because it needs plenty of dynamic RAM for file caching.
the crash occures when the RAM is exhausted.
Panzer general - working, but very slow (uses 640x480 in dos4gw).
Dune 2 - works

5. Conclusion : Games that use 320xwhatever mode (not under dos4gw) COULD be playable.

I will go on a business trip in a week or two, so there will be plenty of spare time for coding. They say that
Ireland is very expensive, so I have to have something to occupy my time, and not to wonder around and
waste money on alcochol or cigarettes. And since I will be there a few months, I might even start working
on some other project (when I finish palmdosbox).

[damien]

Sounds good still...

If you want i can try all my Sierra Adventures on your DosBox and post the results here. The newer ones should be perfect for testing since they dont require a keyboard, and they also should be "modern" enough to be a challange for dosbox on 200Mhz. I dont have any other Palms to test on unfortunately...