DOSBox freezes on some games...

[Simoneer]

For some reason, DOSBox seems to freeze when I play some games, usually when I'm about to enter a battle in a game (in Darklands, for an example, right after I choose to fight - and in Anvil of Dawn when trying to select a character), or something similair. What might be the cause this? Oh, and the Mouse (even the in-game mouse) is still movable, only it can't be used for anything. Can't use the keyboard for anything either.

Please help. I love all these old games, and not being able to play them hurts my gamer soul.

[Mighty Midget]

One thing first, it's a stock question really but, have you made sure the sound settings for the game(s) match the sound settings in the DOSBox configuration file?

[Simoneer]

Thanks for the quick reply.

But no, I have not. Never even thought about that. Either way, as far as I know, I haven't been playing with any options (at least not in DOSbox), and yet it used to work fine before - but not anymore. I remember playing Anvil of Dawn for a good bit, but now I can't even choose a character!

Oh, and yeah, freakin' registered now.

[Mighty Midget]

Thing is, wrong sound config can have some pretty far out implications.

Open the DOSBox config file in notepad, there you will find the sound settings. Most games are happy to have a Soundblaster 16, but there are other "cards" there if the game so wishes. Make sure the configurations are good, that is, most games are playing just fine with address 220, IRQ 7, DMA 1 and HDMA 5. Then, run the game sound setup and make sure the settings there match the settings you chose in the DB config.

[Simoneer]

Still won't work. :/

[The Fifth Horseman]

Are you sure you ran the game's own setup utility and configured it to use the correct sound card and parameters?

[_r.u.s.s.]

simoneer what's exactly your processor and what are your core and cycles settings in dosbox

[Eagle of Fire]

Let's not forget that DOS games are often buggy to start with. Maybe it is not DOSBox which crash, but the game itself.

Which games exactly are you trying to run?

Edit: nevermind the version question, here is a more usefull one: did you download the game from our site or from another site?

[AlumiuN]

Well, actually, DOS games tend to work fine on the hardware they were designed and tested on. But because they (mostly) interface directly with the hardware, you can't guarantee that they will work properly with every setup. DOSBox, however, should be able to run them fine. Check their compatibility on the DOSBox website.

[Simoneer]

...Anvil of Dawn worked fine after I re-downloaded it (from this site, of course). O.o Gonna try to re-download Darklands as well. Thanks for trying to help, everyone.

Can dual processors mess up DOSBox, by the way?


Edit:

If needed for ''evaluations'':

Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.0GHz
Memory: 1534MB RAM

[The Fifth Horseman]

No, they can't. Neither can 64-bit ones.
However. Only a single core will be used by the emulator. DosBox just wasn't coded with multicore in mind.

[Simoneer]

Ah, okay. Good to know.

[_r.u.s.s.]

actually yes they can, if you don't have very perfect dual core processor it will run slow because it runs on the single core..

and i see you're running two 2GHz amds. yes it will run terribly on that processor. not 2d games but something more complicated like blood or strife will definitely go choppy

[Simoneer]

...To the contrary, both of those runs smoothly. O.o

[_r.u.s.s.]

is only mine turion so slow then? :(

[dosraider]

Yes.


:tongue:

[red_avatar]

It all depends on how you use Dosbox. Use the proper amount of cycles, don't use any filters, use surface and not opengl (opengl slows things down I noticed), etc.

ALso, make sure to give DB high priority.

[The Fifth Horseman]

I'd suggest using either overlay or ddraw instead of surface. Overlay is nearly identical, but fixes glitches with some games' graphics (take cutscenes in the CD version of Flashback as an example). DDraw is faster, but causes a loss of definition.

[Simoneer]

Thanks for the heads up.