DOS game support - just needs a little VGA love?
Hey, that CGA video support patch today from Peter Dons Tychsen, http://winehq.org/pipermail/wine-patches/2008-October/063417.html reminded me there's an old downloadable DOS game my wife likes to dig out every now and then. I tried it today and discovered that what's stopping it is support for a VGA feature, so I filed a bug: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15688 There are three other similar bugs, some with patches: http://bugs.winehq.org/buglist.cgi?product=Wine&component=dos&long_desc_type... Getting old DOS games working might be pretty easy at this point if, like this game, they just need a little VGA love. Let's encourage newcomers to contribute in this area... it'd be fun to see those classic games running in wine. I added an entry to http://wiki.winehq.org/SummerOfCode for this, in case nobody does it before summer. - Dan
Hi, Perhaps support for more VGA features can increase compatibility of DOS software on 32-bit hardware. 64-bit users won't be able to run most dos programs as there is no vm86 support when using a 64-bit kernel. In the end we need x86 emulation.. Roderick
Hey, that CGA video support patch today from Peter Dons Tychsen, http://winehq.org/pipermail/wine-patches/2008-October/063417.html reminded me there's an old downloadable DOS game my wife likes to dig out every now and then. I tried it today and discovered that what's stopping it is support for a VGA feature, so I filed a bug: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15688 There are three other similar bugs, some with patches: http://bugs.winehq.org/buglist.cgi?product=Wine&component=dos&long_desc_type... Getting old DOS games working might be pretty easy at this point if, like this game, they just need a little VGA love. Let's encourage newcomers to contribute in this area... it'd be fun to see those classic games running in wine.
I added an entry to http://wiki.winehq.org/SummerOfCode for this, in case nobody does it before summer. - Dan
-- GMX startet ShortView.de. Hier findest Du Leute mit Deinen Interessen! Jetzt dabei sein: http://www.shortview.de/wasistshortview.php?mc=sv_ext_mf(a)gmx
Perhaps support for more VGA features can increase compatibility of DOS software on 32-bit hardware. 64-bit users won't be able to run most dos programs as there is no vm86 support when using a 64-bit kernel. In the end we need x86 emulation.. Dosemu (not dosbox) works nice here on my 64 bit linux distro. How are they doing that? Afaics dosemu uses vm86 instead of a full-blown CPU emulation.
Am Montag, den 20.10.2008, 12:36 +0200 schrieb Stefan Dösinger:
Dosemu (not dosbox) works nice here on my 64 bit linux distro. How are they doing that? Afaics dosemu uses vm86 instead of a full-blown CPU emulation. Dosemu has a hybrid approach. On x86, vm86 is used. On systems lacking vm86 (that is most notably x64), full-blown CPU emulation (either interpreting or a JIT compiler) is used instead. 32 bit protected mode programs can run natively on x86 and x64, but emulation is also available as an option in protected mode.
Regards, Michael Karcher (who already fixed some bugs in dosemu's cpu emulatiopn code)
On Sun, 2008-10-19 at 20:56 -0700, Dan Kegel wrote:
Hey, that CGA video support patch today from Peter Dons Tychsen, http://winehq.org/pipermail/wine-patches/2008-October/063417.html reminded me there's an old downloadable DOS game my wife likes to dig out every now and then. I tried it today and discovered that what's stopping it is support for a VGA feature, so I filed a bug: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15688 There are three other similar bugs, some with patches: http://bugs.winehq.org/buglist.cgi?product=Wine&component=dos&long_desc_type... Getting old DOS games working might be pretty easy at this point if, like this game, they just need a little VGA love. Let's encourage newcomers to contribute in this area... it'd be fun to see those classic games running in wine.
I added an entry to http://wiki.winehq.org/SummerOfCode for this, in case nobody does it before summer. - Dan
Hey D. Yes. This is exactly what i was thinking. And there is lots of material to start on, and the old DOS environment is quite well documented via various projects and documents scattered over the net. My biggest problem right now is to get keyboard input working, as there is an annoying bug (or something) in the exception system (see my mail called "winedos interrupts getting lost"). That needs to get fixed for any games to work. I think its some kind of problem with ntdll. I would love to see support for games like "paratrooper" and "police quest". Thanks, /pedro
On Monday 20 October 2008 02:14:41 pm Jochen Theodorou wrote:
don't they work in DOS-Box?
I know Daggerfall doesn't work all that great in DOSBox (it's a heavy effort in tweaking to get the videos to play at the right speed, and that usually causes the game to play like crap, and vice-versa..). Getting it, and the needed tools (vdmsound(?) and speedset and such) working in Wine would be great.
Jochen wrote:
I would love to see support for games like "paratrooper" and "police quest".
don't they work in DOS-Box?
We would like to get to the point where users don't have to wonder which tool to use to run .exe's with. i.e. it would be nice if we could just map .exe's to Wine in the desktop. Anything that gets us closer to that, especially if it's easy, is a good thing.
Don't forget the .com files.... those wonderful real-mode 64K wonders... I noticed that the distros do not map .com files to wine. They probably should. /p On Mon, 2008-10-20 at 16:18 -0700, Dan Kegel wrote:
Jochen wrote:
I would love to see support for games like "paratrooper" and "police quest".
don't they work in DOS-Box?
We would like to get to the point where users don't have to wonder which tool to use to run .exe's with. i.e. it would be nice if we could just map .exe's to Wine in the desktop. Anything that gets us closer to that, especially if it's easy, is a good thing.
participants (7)
-
Chris Robinson -
Dan Kegel -
Jochen Theodorou -
Michael Karcher -
Peter Dons Tychsen -
Roderick Colenbrander -
Stefan Dösinger