Commander Keen 4 And 5 With Dosbox


christo930

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Has anybody got these games to work with dosbox? If so, could you post the conifg file? I get it to start up and show the initial hardware detection screen, but then when I push a button the screen goes blank. At this point the game should start showing COMMANDER KEEN in giant white letters scrolling from both sides of the screen ala terminater 2 (If my memory serves me correctly, it's T2). It works on the pc version of dosbox 65 and 70 as well as the mac version. It worked fine on my 286 with ega graphics (it's an EGA game, although there is a cga version which I havn't tried because cga is headache inducing). Commander keen 4 and 5 blow away 1,2 and 3 in every way, gameplay, graphics sound... I would love to be able to play this on my gp2x and any help would be appreciated. One other question, what level of pc should I expect from dosbox? If a game ran fine on a 286 would it run on dosbox (speedwise) how about a 386sx(no virtual 86 mode, 16 bit external data path)16mhz?

Chris
 
I have read somewhere that commander keen 4 and 5 only work with version of DOS 3.0 to 3.3

I don't know first hand if that's true or not, but I'm wondering if the games themselves are looking for those versions and the gp2x dosbox is having an issue being backwards compatible. Just a wild guess on my part.

As far as your question about level of pc in dosbox, much of that has to do with the machine running the app and the compatibility of the game itself. I've had games designed for 386SX that ran too fast on an Athlon XP 2800+, but on the same machine had an XT game that would crawl. As for the gp2x, I would expect that fully compatible games would be expected to run as if on a higher end 286 or lower end 386 at best. But there is so much tweaking that can be done it's difficult to make generalizations in regards to speed in dosbox.

Those are just my experiences.
 
poodle said:
I have read somewhere that commander keen 4 and 5 only work with version of DOS 3.0 to 3.3

I don't know first hand if that's true or not, but I'm wondering if the games themselves are looking for those versions and the gp2x dosbox is having an issue being backwards compatible. Just a wild guess on my part.

As far as your question about level of pc in dosbox, much of that has to do with the machine running the app and the compatibility of the game itself. I've had games designed for 386SX that ran too fast on an Athlon XP 2800+, but on the same machine had an XT game that would crawl. As for the gp2x, I would expect that fully compatible games would be expected to run as if on a higher end 286 or lower end 386 at best. But there is so much tweaking that can be done it's difficult to make generalizations in regards to speed in dosbox.

Those are just my experiences.
To the best of my knowledge Keen4 works with dos 3.3 and up. I have personally run it with dos 5, 6, 6.2, 6.21 DOS 7 (WIN 9X). There is definately enough conventional memory and ems and xms are not required, but I do have xms enabled (XMS is memory above the 1mb level running sequentially, ems is expanded memory paged in through a 64k page frame and not too many games want or need it.) for emulation (of ems), EMS would require an emulated 386 where xms would only require an emulated 286, unless of course, an LIM-EMS card is being emulated, but I don't think dos box does that when it can just emulate the 386.
As far as performance, I meant specifically with the gp32. Can anyone post what games they have gotten to run or a dosbox gp2x compatability page?

Chris
Chris
 
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To the best of my knowledge Keen4 works with dos 3.3 and up. I have personally run it with dos 5, 6, 6.2, 6.21 DOS 7 (WIN 9X).

Ok which is it, to the best of your knowledge or do you have first hand experience?

requirements

Since only a 286 is needed, the EMS configuration is likely not the holdup.

As far as performance, I meant specifically with the gp32.

Oh, I assumed you were talking about a gp2x, because of where you posted you didn't specify otherwise. I wouldn't know about the gp32. Even so, I find that DOS games are hit or miss. Some resource heavy games will run faster than those that have a small footprint. This is a common occurrence with DB.

Here, dug this up for you, hope it helps;
commander keen 4
 
poodle said:
To the best of my knowledge Keen4 works with dos 3.3 and up. I have personally run it with dos 5, 6, 6.2, 6.21 DOS 7 (WIN 9X).

Ok which is it, to the best of your knowledge or do you have first hand experience?

requirements

Since only a 286 is needed, the EMS configuration is likely not the holdup.

As far as performance, I meant specifically with the gp32.

Oh, I assumed you were talking about a gp2x, because of where you posted you didn't specify otherwise. I wouldn't know about the gp32. Even so, I find that DOS games are hit or miss. Some resource heavy games will run faster than those that have a small footprint. This is a common occurrence with DB.

Here, dug this up for you, hope it helps;
commander keen 4



What I mean when I said to the best of my knowledge was I didn't know for sure if it ran on DOS 3.3 or not, since I had myself only run it on the versions I listed which did not include dos 3.3
As far as performance, that was a typo, I mean the GP2X, you know, your finger get trained and from type gp32 so long it sometimes just comes out. I checked out the link you sent me, thanks.

Chris
 
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Well Keen4 definately works (tried it myself), however, it's a bit too slow to be enjoyable.
 
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