Run All Old WC Games in DOSBox Walkthrough

Armada Memory Issue

Ok, I tried setting ems=false on my Linux install of dosbox 0.74 ... but it still says I don't have enough mem to install it! Loadfix -64 before install when launching only makes it say I have *less* memory!!!

The only thing I can think is that it's because I'm trying to install it from a hard disk folder, (tried mounting it as both a cd and a regular drive too) as this laptop doesn't have a floppy drive. Assistance, please?
 
Don't use "loadfix -64", instead try "loadfix -16" - it will "use up" less memory leaving you with more free, but fixing the bugs that loadfix solves :)
 
Armada Memory Issue

The Armada installer now says that I have only 406K, and that I still need 555K ... how do I force DOSBox to utilize the necessary memory; my system monitor tells me that it's only utilizing about 418K or so, but I have the other recommended settings right ...)
 
hmm, make sure you have ems set to false, and then just ignore that error (there should be a "continue anyway" option) - I think armada's memory manager (JEMM) see's things a little differently to other games ;)

If that still doesn't work, post your config file up :)

(alternatively, run the install in windows if you can :p)
 
Yesterday I had a sudden urge to play WC again, so I installed the newest DosBox, configured my paths and played.

Well, DosBox has changed since the last time I used it. It has become very good. WC1 worked with sound and all on the first try, really great.
But then I encountered that the game slows down based on how many ships are in the sector. But I don't think I should set the cycles too high because then a single enemy or two might be too fast... Or am I wrong? I played until Gimle 2 yesterday night and didn't test further. My setting is 16mb memory and 3600 cycles.

What do you use in the newer versions of DosBox?

*************************************************************

Also I tried something:
My Joystick is the "Logitech G940 Flight System", because I play a lot of simulations, and it has a nice config tool. So I created a profile that starts whenever DosBox is used, and mapped the Wing Commander Keys on my joystick. I know it is an overkill for playing Wing Commander, but it is fun and it enhances the gameplay for me because I play that many Simulations that I can't play well without descent controls anymore.
I mapped the keyboard buttons
A, G, W, T, L, Tab and the two fire buttons to the stick (I can't stand it when you have to press two buttons in order to fire a missile, and I always hated the afterburner in WC1 so back in the days I had one finger on tab all the time and fired missiles using the keyboard)

So far it works, but that's not enough for me: I will create scripts for the G940 profiler application to roll with my rudder pedals and have a throttle on the throttle stick. That should be possible in some way since you can design your axis manually by assigning keyboard scripts to them.
Maybe I can even build a script to have a simple sort of Force Feedback in those games, I haven't figured out the whole possibilities of the script language and the profiler yet, but somewhere I read that you can create simple FF effects that are fired when you press certain keys.

Also I will try a similar approach for some other old games.
I'll report back when I find out more.
 
Well, DosBox has changed since the last time I used it. It has become very good. WC1 worked with sound and all on the first try, really great.
But then I encountered that the game slows down based on how many ships are in the sector. But I don't think I should set the cycles too high because then a single enemy or two might be too fast... Or am I wrong? I played until Gimle 2 yesterday night and didn't test further. My setting is 16mb memory and 3600 cycles.

What do you use in the newer versions of DosBox?

I usually use:

core=dynamic
cputype=auto
cycles=auto

basically that way the cpu scales up when more load is taken - however, truth be told, wc1 was just like that, having a dynamically scaling cpu merely tries to compensate! (you can use the change cycles buttons in game to get a percentage of max speed too)
 
DOSBox automatically jumps to max cycles whenever I try and play Privateer (1 or 2). Oddly, the former lags much more than the latter.
 
Thx.
Does anyone know what causes the freezes I encountered in WC2?
When I defend the Concordia in the very first mission I have the problem that the game (and the whole DosBox it seems) freezes 3 seconds after the destruction of the last Sartha.
So basically WC2 is no-go at the moment which is a pity.

The good news is that my Joystick now works in Privateer and WC2, too. I had to change one setting in order to avoid the joystick constantly "drifting" in Privateer.
So apart from the problem that I don't know to play Privateer everything seems to work.
That's actually the first time that I play Privateer, because my first disk was missing in the version I had years ago. Now a buddy of mine found his old privateer disks and I immediately installed it. (including RF) So priv1 is new to me. I'm thrilled :)

Any tips what to do? Follow the storyline or what? Trading? I tried to shoot down a drayman but failed.^^ I'm a bit lost. I'm used to Wing Commander where somebody tells you what to do :D
 
Thx.
Does anyone know what causes the freezes I encountered in WC2?
When I defend the Concordia in the very first mission I have the problem that the game (and the whole DosBox it seems) freezes 3 seconds after the destruction of the last Sartha.
So basically WC2 is no-go at the moment which is a pity.

This sounds like a memmory issue. The loadfix command *should* fix it.
 
Wing Commander 3 Dosbox 0.74 perfect emulation.

Hi!

I believe I have found a way to run Wing Commander 3 DOS perfectly on Dosbox 0.74. By that I mean no stuttering in movies, no stuttering in flight (except the takeoff which is not pefectly smooth), and no broken audio whatsoever. I haven't though, tested it through the entire game, just the first few missions, and have also tried all the movies up to that point, and repeated that test several times, everything works perfectly.

Anyway, I've decided to make the dosbox.conf file from my copy of Dosbox 0.74 available to all. It is in the attachment. I've checked all possible sources and found nothing that would prohibit such a post. After all, Dosbox is open source in the end. Since the attachment system does not allow .conf files, I have renamed it to dosbox.conf.txt, but the best method of installation is to copy and paste the file over the entire configuration file you have in Notepad.

As you may see in the [autoexec] section of the dosbox.conf file, I have copied all the contents of the four WC3 discs into the D:\Data folder and mounted it as the e:\ CD-ROM. You may wish to change that to save disk space, but bear in mind that it is the fastest loading method.

The Wing Commander 3 Install folder is C:\Data\WC3. Feel free to change the install and CD-ROM folders, just don't change anything in other sections.

The test CPU is a Pentium D 915 2.8 GHz and it runs up to some 90000 cycles, but I have limited it to 75000. Still works great.

Please give some feedback on this as soon as possible. This could be the turning point in WC3 Dosbox emulation, but on the other hand, could be limited only to the test computer.

Thank you for your time.
 

Attachments

  • dosbox-0.74.conf.txt
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I've just come accross a solution that manually shifts from low to high cycles and vice versa for movies and flight. However, with the above solution, everything is automatic. No need for keycombos or cycle changes in game.

Seems like this is not as useful as I thought it would be... especially because it is sensitive and fine tuned and most likely, works only on selected machines, like mine.

Also my sincere apologies if I violated some rule I didn't know of by posting the dosbox.conf file above... should have consulted the Dosbox team.
 
no-one is going to be upset by you posting the .conf :D

basically, if you're using 90k cycles, you might want to change to cycles=max (since you are essentially doing that!

I always find it wierd when people give cycles numbers as in my experience, no two systems respond the same way at the same cycles count!

Still, finger's crossed it helps someone :D

Incidentally, if you have the gravis ultrasound driver disks (or, since gravis did release a slightly older set before they dissapeared, get them and install them) then the gus emulation is surprisingly faithfull and sounds great in wc3
 
I hope this is the correct place to post this. I've got a problem with Wing Commander II. I'm running it through dosbox, and everything seems to be working fine in general (speech, sound, other stuff), but when I save my game and exit dosbox, and then start the game again, the savefile is gone! Anyone know why this might be happening?
 
I hope this is the correct place to post this. I've got a problem with Wing Commander II. I'm running it through dosbox, and everything seems to be working fine in general (speech, sound, other stuff), but when I save my game and exit dosbox, and then start the game again, the savefile is gone! Anyone know why this might be happening?

It sounds like you're not mounting the harddrive correctly. Can you post what your mounting lines are and what path you're specifying to install the game? Also anything in your dosbox.conf file would be good to know.
 
Well hey, I mucked around with the mountings a bit, and now it works! Thanks for suggesting it!
 
Okay, got another question. Is Wing Commander II supposed to slow down and become choppy in some places? For instance, I'm trying to get through the third mission, but it seems like the fact that there are so many ships flying around makes the game very choppy, even though it runs smoothly in other situations. Is there some way to get around this?
 
it's not "supposed" to, but like wc1 it does, wc2 isn't so bad though, as it does have a frame limiter, so increase your cycles a bit, which should make it a bit smoother.

imagine 10000 cycles is a 286 and 20000 is a 486,

wc1 which is unlimited will run okay on the 286 until lots of enemies appear, but the 486 will make it run too fast (but okay when the enemies are near)

wc2 is limited, so it won't go above (for instance) 30 fps, which means it may run okay on the 286 except when lots of enemies are near, but on the 486 it still runs okay and now it's faster when the enemies are near.
 
How to load WC3 using DOSBOX on a Windows 64 PC

I loaded DOSBOX in order to run my old Wing Commander Series -- but when I try to copy the files to a directory I made on my Hard Drive it says WC3 is incompatible with 64 bit versions of Windows I tried WC 3 and IV and received the same warning anyone know how to fix this -- my e-mail address is boudreaujr@pcisys.net -- any help would be appriciated thanks Armand
 
Run Privateer 2 W95 version in Dosbox?

Hi,

I installed Privateer 2 through Windows 7 and then I dropped the dos version of the game executable into the C:\DARK folder (I own the Windows version so I had to get the dos exec from someone else to try Dosbox).

However, I can't run the game - even though I know this worked in the past (but back then someone had set this up for me.

Any ideas?

My errors: I mount the CD-ROM and the game directory but when I type "DARK" I get : "Stubb exec failed: dos4gw.exe No such file or directory."
 
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