Games in DOSbox on Slackware 11.0

My Current Computer Specs


NOTE
Please do not email me with questions regarding the installation or use of DOSbox.
I like to hear from people who've been helped by this (these) webpages, but I am just not familiar enough with DOSbox to be giving out advice. This webpage details what *I've* encountered, and you are welcome to peruse it at will, but you will have to employ other avenues if your own system needs troubleshooting.
Thanks!
NOTE






Installing and Configuring DOSbox

(The games I've messed with are further down the page, if you've already got DOSbox working the way you like)


Got any older games that you really remember digging, but they just don't play any more?
If they could be installed under DOS, way back when, then DOSbox may be the answer you're looking for.
Below, I'll talk about how I got DOSbox running on my system, and which games I've been troubleshooting so far, maybe it will help you as well.

First things first. DOSbox is an emulater, which means your CPU is your lmiiter. I run an AMD AthlonXP 2600+, not anything bleeding edge, but not too shabby (as of this writing), and it seems to emulate something in the realm of 100MHz Pentium (that's a 586 class CPU) in my experience so far.
Now, I have only just begun to muck around with DOSbox, but from what I have read, my perception seems about right. If your CPU isn't all that recent, consider dual booting something like FreeDOS with your current OS.

This took a bit of fiddling and guessing, I don't know if I wasn't looking at the right files, or what, but documentation about configuring in Linux seemed a little spartan. Please read through the information on the DOSbox homepage
Download the source and unarchive it, descend in the new directory, and as root perform the standard   configure, make, make install
<download>
mkdir /tempDOSbox
cp   dosbox-0.65.tar.gz   ./tempDOSbox
cd ./tempDOSbox
tar  -zxvf   dosbox-0.65.tar.gz
cd dosbox-0.6.5
./configure
<watch the pretty scrolling text>
make
<watch the pretty scrolling text>
su
<enter password>
make install
exit

There. Now you have dosbox installed in   /usr/local/bin  . That wasn't so bad, eh?
Now let's be proactive for a moment. We're going to need a directory to play in later on, so as your normal user, place yourself in your home directory and make a new directory for DOSbox to play in.
cd ~
mkdir DOSbox

To start it, as a non-root user type    dosbox   from a console. This will open up the command prompt screen familiar to any former DOS users. You'll notice that it presents you with the drive   Z:  , not C. We have to mount our DOSbox directory as our C: directory, so at the DOS prompt type
mount c ~/DOSbox

Now we can move into C: and list the contents of the directory
cd C:
dir

It might be wise to test your CDROM drive out at this point. Open another Linux console, insert a CD and mount it
su
<enter password>
mount /dev/cdrom /cdrom-mountpoint

Make sure that non-root users have read-access to the device ( ls  -lh  /dev/cdrom   should yield at least   rw- r-- r--  )
Now go back to your DOSbox console and moun the CDROM drive, move into it and display the contents of its root directory.
mount  d  /cdrom-mountpoint
cd D:
dir

OK, now we have a DOS emulator and an emulated hard drive for it. Let's set THIS drive/directory up so that it plays nice. Go back into the Z: drive and run config with a switch to save the   dosbox.con   configuration file
cd Z:
config -writeconfig dosbox.conf

This should place dosbox.conf in the DOSbox directory (that's DOSbox under Linux, you can't see this file in the emulator). We're done with DOSbox for the moment, so get out of the emulator by typing
exit

Which dumps you back to the Linux command prompt.
Using a plain-text editor (like kedit), open up ~/DOSbox/dosbox.conf   This is the DOSbox configuration file, and you'll have to figure out what needs to be configured for your particular system on your own. For me, it pretty much self-configured, I didn't have to touch any of the video settings, and although it has automatically set me up emulating a Gravis sound card (I have a sound blaster IRL), it seems to work.
The only three variables I changed were
memsize=32 (increase the RAM used)
frameskip=2 (drop two frames, render one)
cycles=12000 (up from 3000 cycles per millisecond)

When I start DOSbox with a game, then run    top    in a second consle, I seem to peak out about 92.7% CPU usage. Note that, if you plan on running many apps in DOSbox, you may need several different directories for each, and a copy of dosbox.conf in each directory. So, for example, if you are going to install Lord of the Realm II,a dn Test Drive, make a directory inside the     ~/DOSbox  directory called LOTR2, and another called TD, copy dosbox.conf into both, then when you start dosbox, mount   ~/DOSbox/LOTR2 as your C drive, or   ~/DOSbox/TD  as your C drive, depending on what game you're dealing with.
So. That was DOSbox installation on Slackware 11.0, in a nutshell.


The Games
Old Abandoned Games
Abandonia has anexcellent selection of great old games that have been abandoned by the original creators. Looks to me like most of them play in DOSbox. If I get around to installing and playing a few, I'll update the webpage. I suspect they all play pretty well, though.

Lords of the Realm II

Exit the game, my Lord?
What a great game, an excellent mixture of turn-based a real-time gameplay. I had forgotten about the music too.
Installation went with only a few small hitches. I couldn't do a full install because DOSbox didn't emulate a large enough hard drive, but the basic install went down fine. Start DOSbox, mount your C: drive, mount your CDROM as D:   , move into the D:   drive and type   INSTALL   . The installation should go fine, and will dump you out to the DOS prompt when it's finished.
<open a console as user>
<open a second console>
su
<enter password>
mount  /dev/cdrom  /cdrom-mountpoint
exit
exit
<back to first console>
dosbox
mount c ~/DOSbox/C-mountpoint
mount d /cdrom-mountpoint
d:
INSTALL
<takes a moment, then goes graphical and starts the install>
<you'll have to click the mouse in the DOSbox screen to get the mouse moving in DOSbox>

Although I have a soundbalster card, it appears DOSbox is emulating a Gravis sound card. That's fine, it works, and it's what LOTR2 auto-detected, so that's the one I chose. When your done, it will kick you back to the DOS prompt, but my mouse disappeared, apparently trapped inside the DOSbox window. If you need to use the mouse outside of DOSbox at this point, you'll have to shut DOSbox down (type  exit  ), then restart later.
To play the game, with DOSbox up and the drives mounted, move into C:\LORDS2 and type   l2d  , and away you go.
cd LORDS2
l2d

When I first started DOSbox, I hadn't configured my cycles yet, and it was set at the default 3000/millisecond. Way too slow. The opening movie skipped and stuttered (hit the escape key to get through all the opening sequences), and once the game started, music and sound cut in & out, and the mouse shuddered along. Tune your cycles-per-milliscond variable, and the frameskip variable, in the dosbox.conf file (see above - Installing and Configuring DOSbox)

There is one update to the basic game, plus two updates for the siege pack add-on.
Just install the the base update from within DOSbox by exectuing the file.
I don't (yet) have the siege pack, so I can't comment on its updates.


Emulation in WINE ? Try here
Open Source alternative ? Let me know



Others?

If you've got it working in Slackware 11.0, and you've got a webpage, give me a shout and I'll link you in here.


Here's what I know about WINE, games in Slackware?
Want to run old Lokigames in Slackware?
How about new(ish) first person shooter?
Maybe you'd like to read about a few Open Source games.

HTH, "Have Fun".
I am Dan