The Design Desktop - Play unreleased sneak peaks of upcoming SCI releases

[Collector]

I did too, last night and got nowhere.

[MusicallyInspired]

"get goodies basket" works. It doesn't seem to understand that "get basket of goodies" means the same thing.

[lance.ewing]

I just gave the KQ2 remake a go on my Macbook Air 11" and for some reason the keyboard input wasn't working. It didn't respond to the arrow keys and it wouldn't let me type in any commands. I was able to walk around the scenes using the mouse though. The keyboard issue might be a jdosbox problem. Keys are working fine on the Java version of PICEDIT when I run it on my mac. I just tried running jdosbox standalone outside of the browser and keys are working fine on the DOS command line there as well. Haven't tried it with a SCI game yet though.

The other thing I noticed was that the screen refresh was very flickery and flashing a lot. I'm guessing you're all seeing this though. The speed of ego walking around the screen seemed fairly standard. It was just the screen refresh that was very noticeably flashing. Faster PCs probably don't see this.

[Collector]

Does this happen with other games in jDOSBox?

[MusicallyInspired]

No screen flashing on my end. And keys work for me.

[Collector]

Nor mine, but we both have PCs. I am wondering if Macs have problems with jDOSBox.

[gumby]

On several slower computers in my home I did notice some flickering, but mainly I noticed that the speed was slower (maybe 80-90%).  During times of flickering, music also suffered so I just attributed it to speed.  Sounds like you might have a different issue going on Lance.

[lance.ewing]

Nor mine, but we both have PCs. I am wondering if Macs have problems with jDOSBox.

Yeah, I guess it is possible. My main machine is a PC as well, but I got a Macbook a couple of months ago. It was mainly to have something portable for travelling, but I've started using it as my main home development machine now. Java should in theory be the same on all platforms. I guess it could have been a one off as well, so I'll give one of the other applet demos a go and see what happens.

I'll also see if I can get a SCI game running in jdosbox when it is run standalone outside of the browser.

[lance.ewing]

On several slower computers in my home I did notice some flickering, but mainly I noticed that the speed was slower (maybe 80-90%).  During times of flickering, music also suffered so I just attributed it to speed.  Sounds like you might have a different issue going on Lance.

This Macbook Air 11" doesn't exactly have the best CPU. It is a lot more powerful than other similar sized machines such as netbooks, but for things that require a lot of CPU, it isn't going to compete with a desktop PC. An emulator is probably quite CPU hungry. The fact that everyone is seeing slow performance means that it is running as fast as it can, and so I guess using as much CPU as it can get hold of. This probably explains the screen flashing in my case.

[lance.ewing]

Nor mine, but we both have PCs. I am wondering if Macs have problems with jDOSBox.

Yeah, I guess it is possible. My main machine is a PC as well, but I got a Macbook a couple of months ago. It was mainly to have something portable for travelling, but I've started using it as my main home development machine now. Java should in theory be the same on all platforms. I guess it could have been a one off as well, so I'll give one of the other applet demos a go and see what happens.

I'll also see if I can get a SCI game running in jdosbox when it is run standalone outside of the browser.

Interesting. Well I tried KQ2 again tonight and the keyboard entry was working fine. It must have been a one off. I tried everything I could think of last night to get it to accept keyboard input but it was refusing to. Everything fine now. I also noticed that it loaded a lot quicker tonight. KQ2 might be cached I guess, but the other games I hadn't yet tried were loading quicker as well.

The flashing is still the same though.

[Cloudee1]

I'm not sure what's going on there with the screen flickering. I mean the cursor flicker is real bad in missile command of shoot em up because of the way I did my stars. But the screen... But if cpu speed is slower then I guess it could cause it, but it would only be guesses. I do notice though that kq2 play speed seems real close to normal whereas neither of mine are.

[Collector]

The performance of jDOSBox is not nearly as good as that of DOSBox, but then its development is only about 3 or 4 months old. It also does not use SDL.

I'm not sure what's going on there with the screen flickering. I mean the cursor flicker is real bad in missile command of shoot em up because of the way I did my stars. But the screen... But if cpu speed is slower then I guess it could cause it, but it would only be guesses. I do notice though that kq2 play speed seems real close to normal whereas neither of mine are.

I have not noticed any screen flickering in the missile command part of shoot em up, but then I have not tried it on one of my older PCs. I also noticed one reason it takes the games to load. You have it set to download the unziped IMG files. If you drop them in a ZIP or a JAR they will only be 2-4KB in size instead of ~4MB of the IMG. Shoot em up weighs in at 289 KB compressed in a JAR.

To mounting an IMG from a JAR:

Code: [Select]

 <applet code="jdos.gui.MainApplet" archive="jdosbox.jar,game.jar" width="640" height="400">
    <param name="param1" value="imgmount c jar://game.img -size 512,16,2,512">
    <param name="param2" value="c:">
    <param name="param3" value="autorun">
  </applet>
Just remember that the "game.img" needs to be in a "jdos" folder in the "game.jar".

[Cloudee1]

Given the nature of these games, I'm trying to keep them off of the users computer as much as I can. when it comes to our games, or Sierra demos, no qualms about it.

[gumby]

Given the nature of these games, I'm trying to keep them off of the users computer as much as I can. when it comes to our games, or Sierra demos, no qualms about it.

I don't think that zipping/jarring up the games requires them to be downloaded onto the users HD for unzipping.  I would assume they just unzip in-memory.

[Collector]

I don't think that zipping/jarring up the games requires them to be downloaded onto the users HD for unzipping.  I would assume they just unzip in-memory.

This does indeed seem to be the case.