Author Topic: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine  (Read 65104 times)

Pete

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Re: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine
« Reply #15 on: February 04, 2019, 04:51:14 pm »
Hi Martin

I think you are now at the point where I was a few years ago.

No, DTA does not produce sound in DOS - unless using the included player, dosapp.exe, to play a wav file.

My solution was to simply drop DOS/Win16 - ie do not install - in favour of Dosbox. As I only run the occasional dos game and no win16 apps at all this works fine for me.


Regards

Pete

Martin Iturbide

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Re: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine
« Reply #16 on: February 04, 2019, 05:20:17 pm »
Thanks for the reply Pete

I will stop to squeeze out DOS-OS/2 and put focus on DOSBox to run DOS games.
And I will also test Win-OS/2 further with some Win16 games, since DTA seems to be working there.

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Martin Iturbide
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Dave Yeo

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Re: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine
« Reply #17 on: February 04, 2019, 10:17:48 pm »
There really wasn't many Win 3.1 games as it was crap for gaming and so easy to switch to DOS.

xynixme

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Re: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine
« Reply #18 on: February 05, 2019, 12:44:15 am »
put focus on DOSBox to run DOS
IOW: download DOSBox for Windows to play your legacy games, get used to its inferior video performance, and don't try another OS. We've got both, with support for cheap 80386 hardware. Albeit our DOS tends to be mute, which doesn't support the unique selling point.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine
« Reply #19 on: February 06, 2019, 05:03:47 pm »
Hi.

Now I will change a little bit the subject, but focus on the ArcaOS gaming machine. Now I'm trying some OS/2 games that uses SDL, Qt, etc and I found some issues.

1) There are some games that depends on SNAP (SDDHELP$), is there any trick to make them run on a non SNAP installed machine? or it would be better to recompile that games.
Example: Barrage.

2) I think there are some conflicts with the SDL libraries and some games. I need to test that futher. Any suggestions about SDL at the moment?

Are these ones the last runtime ported?
- SDL-1.2.15-20160303.zip
- SDL2-2.0.4-20160225.zip

Regards

« Last Edit: February 06, 2019, 05:15:46 pm by Martin Iturbide »
Martin Iturbide
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Pete

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Re: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine
« Reply #20 on: February 06, 2019, 08:15:54 pm »
Hi Martin

I would guess that if any app relies on SNAP (SDDHELP$) it would need reworking and compiling to run on a non-SNAP installed system.

I have very few sdl based games and they seem to come packaged with whichever version of sdl dlls they require - must admit to not having played any for a while so no idea at the moment if there could be problems with the sdl 1.2.15-5 30/06/2016 currently installed. This build of sdl is available via ANPM - I think it was installed during ArcaOS installation.

I  think you are going to have to do a little experimentation to decide which sdl you need installed.


Regards

Pete



Martin Iturbide

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Re: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine
« Reply #21 on: February 06, 2019, 11:13:07 pm »
Hi

I'm still confused with the Netlabs RPM repository since it has "SDL" and "sdl" packages. Common sense makes me choose "SDL" (uppercase) since it has version 1.2.15-5.  SDL package contains "SDL12.DLL" and "SDL120.DLL".

There is "SDL_ttf" package that contains "SDLttf.dll" and "SDL_t200.DLL". But I can not find a package that contains SDL2, SDL2MIX, SDL2IMG, SDL2TTF, SDLMIXER, SDLIMAGE, SDLNET, SDLSOUND and also FSLIB.DLL (which I guess it is part of SDL).

Can someone confirm or deny if the files I'm listing are on the netlabs RPM?

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Martin Iturbide
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Dave Yeo

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Re: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine
« Reply #22 on: February 07, 2019, 12:27:38 am »
They're not, and yes, the uppercase SDL is the latest. Personally, I don't have it installed as there are so many conflicts, it is best just to use the ones that came with the individual programs.
I believe you can add SDDHELP.SYS to your system with no bad affects, not sure if it will do anything without SNAP installed.
Ideally everything should be rebuilt against the latest SDL and/or SDL2 packages.

ivan

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Re: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine
« Reply #23 on: February 07, 2019, 12:49:06 am »
Martin, I think you need to look on hobbes for the full SDL package.  If you search for sdl you will also find several games that use sdl there as well. 

I have all the dll you mention but I got them from hobbes about 2 years ago.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine
« Reply #24 on: February 07, 2019, 02:07:29 pm »
Hi

Thanks for the advice. I want to use the latest version of the SDL libraries (and any other libraries). I'm creating a list of on which games I'm experiencing limitations and issues to discuss.

For the moment the most common issues on "Native" OS/2 games are: 
1) The first limitation are the games that depends on the SDDHELP$ driver.
- Work Around: Install SNAP.
- Elegant solution: Try to recompile the game to remove the SDDHELP$ dependency.
2) Some SDL games still depends on older SDL12.DLL and does not work with the latest version of the SDL on hobbes. (SDL-1.2.15-20160303.zip).
- Work Around: Use the older SDL12 and FSLIB on those games. 
- Elegant Solution: Try to recompile those games with the latest SDL libraries.

About the SDL libraries I still need to compare the version on the netlabs RPM DLL's with to the latest "SDL-1.2.15-20160303.zip" to see if I'm experiencing some DLL version confusion.
I'm going to try to remove the rpm version of SDL as Dave suggest.

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Martin Iturbide
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Dave Yeo

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Re: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine
« Reply #25 on: February 07, 2019, 09:37:38 pm »
Another thing to consider, which is probably the cause of some incompatibilities is which compiler things were built with.
SDL is usually built with OpenWatcom and needs certain flags to use the same calling convention as GCC. I believe older versions used the wrong calling convention for GCC compatibility. Likewise some games are compiled with OpenWatcom and calling convention can come into it.
There is a GCC compiled version of SDL floating around, originally from bauxite.jp if I'm remembering correctly.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine
« Reply #26 on: February 09, 2019, 02:23:32 pm »
Hi

I'm concert about the FSLib, which according to what I'm reading is a "library to be able to use fullscreen-switchable windows on OS/2. The library uses the Scitech SNAP GA API, so it needs Scitech SNAP installed to be able to use it."

If we take out SNAP out of the equation, is there a FSLib alternative for full screen SDL games?

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Martin Iturbide
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Martin Iturbide

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Re: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine
« Reply #27 on: February 09, 2019, 05:06:38 pm »
Hi

Just checking out the SDL subject deeply.

There are several SDL games that depends on an older SDL12.DLL to run. Like for example: Amoebax

Old version:                  SDL12.DLL    11-05-08  8:21a       188,402
SDL-1.2.15-20160303.zip:   SDL12.DLL     3-03-16  3:03p       278,457

Internally the old SDL12.DLL has a dependency of the FSLIB.DLL, while the one included on "SDL-1.2.15-20160303.zip" does not has that dependency.

1) Is there a way to run  Amoebax with the newer SDL12.DLL ? (without recompiling it) ?

2) I would say that it is better for new SDL ported games to use the newer SDL and forget about FSLIB, but maybe I'm not looking at the complete picture. Are we missing some functionality if we ditch the use of FSLIB ?

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Martin Iturbide
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Dave Yeo

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Re: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine
« Reply #28 on: February 09, 2019, 05:52:12 pm »
Hi Martin. In theory forwarder DLLs could be written to bridge between the old and newer SDL libraries but it would be simpler to just recompile as the source should be available. Due to differences in calling conventions and who knows what else, forwarder DLL might no be simple and all these games are open source.
Without fslib, we only get a pseudo full screen like if you press F11 in the browser, the xcentre still displays. Still not bad. Try something like lbreakout2 where under the graphics you can choose full screen. I find it easier to play in a window.
Tried using SDHELP with Panorama
Code: [Select]
F:\games\Lopan>lopan.exe
[SNAP_Initialize] : Initializing...
[SNAP_ThreadFunc] : Starting...
[SNAP_ThreadFunc] : Calling DosSetPriority!
[SNAP_ThreadFunc] : Calling WinInitialize!
[SNAP_ThreadFunc] : Calling WinCreateMsgQueue!
[SNAP_ThreadFunc] : Calling GA_loadDriver!
[SNAP_ThreadFunc] : Could not load graphics driver!
[SNAP_Initialize] : SNAP-Thread could not initialize itself!
[FSLib_Initialize] : Could not initialize SNAP!
[os2fslib_CreateDevice] : Could not initialize FSLib!
Couldn't initialize SDL: No available video device

I don't know if Panorama could be expanded to use true full screen, I'd guess so but I doubt the developers have the time/interest in doing it.

xynixme

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Re: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine
« Reply #29 on: February 09, 2019, 08:10:04 pm »
There are several SDL games that depends on an older SDL12.DLL to run.
Regarding old versions I recently considered a SDL DLL directory tree (due to disk full-errors) for each version of e.g. FSLIB.DLL, but then you'd still have to manage LIBPATHs, it's an own "standard", and the gain would be about 10 MiB.

i don't know why compiling of apps/games (and/or the DLLs) is excluded as an option. If the apps/games and DLLs are frozen, then I may give that directory tree for old SDL DLLs a try. But only to gain about 10 MiB.

I've got 16 FSLIB.DLL candidates, and 36 SDL*.DLL candidates. Excluding the NetLabs-ones. I cannot recall any significant SDL-related issue with older, frozen apps/games which would require a SDL update, but YMMV.

If you wouldn't have excluded recompiling, then you could have contacted the author(s). A recent DLL-related improvement is the browser Links/2, which no longer uses own DLL files like a JPEG.DLL and a Z.DLL, but without its author having to rewrite related (ported) code to join the NetLabs SDL programme.

Of course the SDL directory tree would be as simple as x:\SDL12.DLL\188402 bytes\SDL12.DLL and matching BEGINLIBPATH and LIBPATHSTRICT settings for the game Amoebax and for the emulator ZSNES. Both are using that SDL12.DLL file, and an identical FSLIB.DLL file. I don't know if you can use both apps/games at the same time then.