DOSBox/Starcon 1 woes

[ErekLich]

Howdy all,

I am running Windows XP (Home Version) and have the version of StarControl 1 from the CD (I forget what they called the CD, but hopefully y'all know what I'm talking about).  If I run Star Control "straight up" it will run, but very slowly.  So I asked around the UQM boards, and they all said "use DOSBox!  DOSBox is amazing!  It will even do your laundry for you!"  So I tried DOSBox, and...

Star Control STILL ran slowly!

So, if anyone has some advice for another DOS emulator, or knows how to make DOSBox run Star Control properly, or even how to make DOSBox do my laundry, I would greatly appreciate the help.

ErekLich

[Scott_Irving]

I haven't been able to get DOSBox to work with anything properly, even a simple program (but great program, I want to make a sequal) like Transport Tycoon. Im running XP Pro, and Ive tried some of the other dos emulators none of them seem to work, at least with XP (blast it). Which is why I just decided to go with a true dos system actual im installing OS/2 Warp 4 which runs dos programs great not to mention it can run win 3.1 and some 95 programs (ie ones not needing DirectX, though you can get an emualted directX for OS/2 among vast amounts of otherthings)

[Chad]

You are using 0.57 correct?  Have you tried creating a custom CONF for it?  

Set the cycles to 4000 (1800 by default -- doing this really sped SC1 up for me!)

Set keepsmall to true (false by default)

Its on my todo list to add a page to PNF just for DOSBox...  in the mean while, I found this on the UQM forums for how to generate the custom CONF file.  (its in the DosBox manual also   )

"-Start up dosbox and at the Z: prompt type "CONFIG - WRITECONF DOSBOX.CONF" (without the quotes). Close DOSBox.
You should now how a file called "DOSBOX.CONF" in the dosbox directory, which can be "opened with" notepad or any text editor."

[Chad]

Scott, Transport Tycoon might be too new of a DOS game to work.  None of the protected mode DOS games work (IIRC Transport Tycoon was one of these)  :-/

I'm sure they'll implement all of that sooner or later!

[ErekLich]

I have one thing to say, Chad...


YOU DA MAN!

Now how about that laundry?  

Edit:  Oh yeah, how do I go about setting up a "macro" so that I can double-click the icon and have it set up DOSbox to play Star Control for me?  Is there a way?

[Chad]

Glad I could help!

If I understand what you want to do, take that conf file and make copies of it for different games (if different games require different confs that is).

Once you have your SC1 one, name it something like sc1.conf...

Then I'd use this command from a Command Prompt...

dosbox d:\games\starcon -conf sc1.conf -fullscreen

OR

you can create a windows shortcut to double-click to start a game.  Just put something like this (edit to match your file locations, etc) in the "Target" of the shortcut "properties" (right-click on the short cut to access the properties)

D:\games\dosbox0.57\dosbox.exe d:\games\starcon -conf sc1.conf -fullscreen

[ErekLich]

EDIT: Nevermind, I got it now

your command line needs to have the ".exe" or ".com" or whatever it is after the path to starcon explicitly put in there.

Thus, my command line to run it is:

C:\DOSBOX\dosbox.exe c:\starcon\starcon.com -conf dosbox.conf -fullscreen

[Chad]

yup, that looks like it should work  

I left out all the commands to change directories and stuff in a real DOS window  

[Scott_Irving]

I shall have to try that and good point with  'TT' I should try some of the others, none the less im still going the way of true dos box...