Comments on: DOSBox Graphic and Machine Emulation, CGA, VGA, Tandy, PCJr, Hercules

By: Moi

Moi — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 17:36:32 +0000

lemmings,kellogs and pinball fantasies benefit from it. Those games change the palette while the screen is updated.
vgaonly support this.

lemmings the titel screen I think.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:56:05 +0000

If you can give me an example or two of games that will not work under the svga_s3 but will work under vgaonly, that would be great.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:48:05 +0000

I can tell you by just looking at the screen shots that Darkseed has a need for VGA because of the palette requirements. EGA’s range of 64 colours was too limited, specially by the time Darkseed was released in 1992. The Atari ST from 1985 had a range of 512 colours, the Commodore Amiga 1000 also from 1985 had a range of 4,096 colours. Both of which made the EGA range of 64 colours look feeble in comparison.

Here is the results of Darkseed in EGA mode.
http://ipggi.wordpress.com/files/2009/06/start_000.png

By: Pygy

Pygy — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:45:47 +0000

You may also detail the more accurate vgaonly mode, required for a lot of demos and a few games.

By: Pygy

Pygy — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:41:15 +0000

A small nitpick: Darkseed is a 640*350*16 EGA game. The 64 color palette was available in that mode too (and possibly in that mode only, if my GWBasic memories don’t fail me).

If you need a high resolution VGA game, look for Knights of Xentar (X-rated, but you can find nice, child proof pictures too), or Flight Simulator 4.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:26:58 +0000

Thanks for that information DosFreak, I’ll update the entry.

By: DosFreak

DosFreak — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:48:25 +0000

svga_nolfb fixes speed or graphics issues with some SVGA games.

The old UNIVBE utility had the ability to disable the LFB which performs the same function as svga_nolfb.

By: patrick.jakubowski

patrick.jakubowski — Sat, 09 May 2009 17:50:53 +0000

I’m happy to read good article like this. It is really worth job. Thank you.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 03:17:20 +0000

A very well-written and accurate article! I’m an old-time PC user who actually played games on all the displays you mentioned, except for PCjr – never had one of those.
There were a few 1980’s CGA games that used certain tweaks to the graphics mode. Like Round 42 and Moonbees that used a 160×100 16 color mode on an ordinary CGA machine. These tweaks would not work on EGA or VGA cards, so these games could not be played on modern PC’s until DOSBOX came along. The guys who wrote DOSBOX did a real favor to all old gamers!
I wrote a little shareware game in 1991 that had 4 color CGA and 16 color Tandy modes. It was called Darwin’s Arena.I never got around to porting the 16 color graphics to EGA, so the 16 color version was also unplayable on modern PC’s until DOSBOX. Seeing it again after 10+ years made me very grateful to the DOSBOX crew.