DosBox/Qemu/Theme Park Questions


Burbruee

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Hi

I was just cleaning out some old boxes in my house, and found my good old Theme Park box for the Commodore CD32, complete with the disc and manual and all that good stuff. And I had this sudden desire to play it again, really fun game.

I wasn't sure if we could play CD32 on the Pandora, so I thought about DosBox and gave the DOS version a go. Also Warcraft II Demo/Shareware version.

They both seem to play great in DosBox EX v8, but I have some issues regarding mouse support for both these games.

In touchscreen mode, clicks seem very inaccurate, doesn't click where I point and I have to click around the same spot several times to get it right, for theme park building roads is close to impossible. Also not sure if I can rightclick or how to do that which makes warcraft II a bit hard to play but it still works thanks to keyboard shortcuts

In nub mode it seems a bit slower, most notably the splashscreen/menu fades in/out (again testing with warcraft) really slowly and it doesn't do this in touchscreen mode (fades fast there). The gameplay is still fast enough to play but it has some micro stuttering at times that I didn't notice in touchscreen mode. Also I can't seem to move around the entire screen, it's like a small rectangle in the center of the screen where I can move the cursor around and this "rectangle" sometimes moves and I can reach for example the controls to the left for building etc, but then I can't move where I was before. And when I left click with the right nub it seems to move to a random position or click and drag by itself, so not exactly where I'm currently clicking but not as inaccurate as with the touchscreen.

Also in touchscreen mode the game looks stretched, not like this in nub mode. (black borders)

edit: ok in nub mode I switched from full screen to windowed and back to full screen again and then I can move around the entire screen area. However my clicks are still inaccurate and clicks somewhere else. For warcraft it still is playable because I can drag and select. But is there a way I can have it be more accurate for the clicks? It's really annoying. Touchscreen is unplayable because it goes all over the place, with nubs it's almost playable now.
 
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The touchscreen is a hard thing to get right through DosBox.. I gave up on it.

Although the best thing the Pandora has for Warcraft II is the newly released Stratagus. Using the Wartools (best done on PC or Mac) it extracts the data from the Warcraft II DOS CD and generates the proper datafiles to work with this engine.. It feels an plays just like Warcraft II, but with some slightly enhanced features.. like selecting more than 6 units at a time. This also works for Starcraft, but that project isn't as polished as Wargus is.

Both the Nubs and Touchscreen work fine with this.



 
 
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The touchscreen is a hard thing to get right through DosBox.. I gave up on it.


Although the best thing the Pandora has for Warcraft II is the newly released Stratagus. Using the Wartools (best done on PC or Mac) it extracts the data from the Warcraft II DOS CD and generates the proper datafiles to work with this engine.. It feels an plays just like Warcraft II, but with some slightly enhanced features.. like selecting more than 6 units at a time. This also works for Starcraft, but that project isn't as polished as Wargus is.


Both the Nubs and Touchscreen work fine with this.
Interesting, that would work. I've extracted the data files from the DOS game but I can't figure out where to put them on the SD card.

appdata/stratagus/home/.stratagus/ is created by the launcher.

Then I tried to copy the wargus directory from my PC into that folder but that didn't work. Tried in the main stratagus folder, in the home and in the .stratagus folder but nothing seems to launch the game. 
 
All you need to do is put the Wargus data files (Not the DOS files) into the appdata/stratagus directory.

Well you can delete the exe files.. but this is what you should see in the appdata/stratagus directory:
 

Code:
audio_02.inf  audio_07.inf  audio_12.inf  audio_17.inf       freepats        scripts        videos
audio_03.inf  audio_08.inf  audio_13.inf  campaigns          graphics        sounds         wargus.exe
audio_04.inf  audio_09.inf  audio_14.inf  cdda2wav.exe       maps            timidity.cfg   wartool.exe
audio_05.inf  audio_10.inf  audio_15.inf  extracted          music           timidity.exe
audio_06.inf  audio_11.inf  audio_16.inf  ffmpeg2theora.exe  pudconvert.exe  uninstall.exe
 
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All you need to do is put the Wargus data files (Not the DOS files) into the appdata/stratagus directory.


Well you can delete the exe files.. but this is what you should see in the appdata/stratagus directory:




audio_02.inf audio_07.inf audio_12.inf audio_17.inf freepats scripts videos
audio_03.inf audio_08.inf audio_13.inf campaigns graphics sounds wargus.exe
audio_04.inf audio_09.inf audio_14.inf cdda2wav.exe maps timidity.cfg wartool.exe
audio_05.inf audio_10.inf audio_15.inf extracted music timidity.exe
audio_06.inf audio_11.inf audio_16.inf ffmpeg2theora.exe pudconvert.exe uninstall.exe
I tried to put them right in the root of that folder, but it didn't work. But I didn't get any of those audio *.inf files while running wartool, just the folders. (campaign, freepats, graphics, maps, music, scripts, sounds, videos) and the extracted file.

Then I run the pnd, the little laundher shows up, I select wargus and then nothing more. Mounting the pnd and running from command-line I get "Maybe you need to specify another gamepath with ´-d /path/to/datadir´?" message. But yes I put the datafiles in appdata/stratagus/ dir, not in it's own subdir but right down that folder so no idea why it won't boot up.
 
the inf files may not be needed, just left over files from the music track ripping process.. Are the files generated that you have generated from the 2.2.7 version of Wargus? older versions won't work.
 
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the inf files may not be needed, just left over files from the music track ripping process.. Are the files generated that you have generated from the 2.2.7 version of Wargus? older versions won't work.
Yes. I downloaded both Stratagus and Wargus latest stable release on my PC and started the ripping process with wartool. It was 2.2.7 just like the one for pandora.
 
Do you have the DOS version of Warcraft II or the Battle.net edition? If the Battle.net version I was told that wasn't supported.
 
May help too.. while it works for me I was putting it into the wrong directory:

Stratagus appdata should be like this:

/media/YourSD/pandora/appdata/stratagus/home/.stratagus

/media/YourSD/pandora/appdata/stratagus/home/wargus

/media/YourSD/pandora/appdata/stratagus/home/stargus

Launcher will pick correct folder and launch engine.
 
As for Theme Park, would I be able to run in with qemu instead? Not sure how I would create an image of the game and include mouse support mapped to the nubs as I've never used qemu really (other than downloading one of those pre-made dos images with games from the wiki)

I really want to play this game, tried on uae4all (AGA floppy version) but it ran super slow. There's also the Playstation version but I'm not sure how good of a port that is. I believe the DOS version is regarded as the best one.
 
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