DOS Box Cycles
7 years ago
Queensland, Australia

Some decision needs to be made on the number of cycles for DOS Box with this run.

I believe my run was made on the standard cycles of 3000. SimonN's run was made on 6000 cycles.

A few questions to answer:

SimonN - why did you choose 6000? What are the effects on cycles on game speed (will need some investigation)?

Can we find out what is closest the original game? Otherwise we'll need to just decide upon the best speed (if it makes a difference).

Germany

At 3,000 cycles, Fox lags with 3 or more enemies on the screen. Level 2 has many enemies and lags almost everywhere. I have a soft spot for 3,000 because it was DOSBox's standard setting years ago, before they changed the standard to max cycles; also one SDA topic [1] suggests 3,000 acknowledging the lag. But I find the lag unfitting.

At 8,000 cycles or more, music and sound won't initialize. I settled on 6,000 because it's a reasonably round value smaller than 8,000. I'm not sure if 6,000 still lags, it's much smoother than 3,000.

It's possible to start the game at slow cycles, then raise cycles far over 8,000 and still have music. I'm not sure how e.g. 10,000 and 20,000 differ in Fox, I believe you get slightly faster level loading, but I haven't measured this yet. During levels, there's no difference, Fox caps fps.

TASVideos doesn't accept DOSBox, but has two suggestions: "Estimate the CPU power wanted by the game in megahertz. Multiply by 1000." [2] Fox was developed on a 12 MHz machine, but 12,000 cycles already prevent the music. The other suggestion is "Use the largest possible value that you think makes the game run more fluently, but not larger. If uncertain, use 40000." Again, this disables music.

Maybe level loading is similar enough to allow unlimited cycles, even though this might depend on the host computer. We rejected max in Jazz Jackrabbit because it would save about 5 seconds in a 30-minute run over existing runs; instead we settled on 40,000 to match existing runs and the TASVideos suggestion.

Try core=auto, cputype=auto, cycles=3000 to get a feeling for the lag. It's OK to postpone the decision and measure more first. But I'm happy that the discussion is on the table. :-)

-- Simon

[1] https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/official_dosbox_settings_discussion_topic.html [2] http://www.tasvideos.org/DOSBox.html

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Queensland, Australia

Sounds good Simon.

I will put in the rules 6000 cycles OR LESS, as if people run on a standard 3000 cycle count that is fine, it is only a detriment for them.

In regards to start and finish times, the standard time is first input to last input. Also some versions of the game do not have the final sequence where they kiss (this is within the game as a separate level).

Start: I would say start button pressed. Finish: I would say exit of level 20 (when black screen is seen).

Latvia

Good work guys btw, love this game, hope to see any any% all levels run soon :)

Germany

I'm perfectly good with 6,000-or-less.

Fresh thread for start/stop time: https://www.speedrun.com/titus/thread/jiycm

Xarthok: Thanks thanks! All levels is scary because of level 9's super-precise jumps before the boss, but I have the itch to run all levels.

-- Simon

Edited by the author 7 years ago
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