How to get Tyrian running perfectly in DosBox

[sgomes]

Hello everyone!

As you've probably read in The Last Zica's post about multiplayer, we were trying out some stuff yesterday. We fiddled around a bit with DosBox and found out these settings work great (both for single player and multiplayer).

-Open dosbox.conf in the DosBox folder and change the following:

In the [dosbox] section:
memsize=32
and if you want to play full-screen:
fullscreen=true

In the [render] section, if you want to play in a window:
scaler=normal2x

In the [cpu] section:
core=dynamic
cycles=auto

In the [ipx] section:
ipx=true

If you want, you can add some commands to the [autoexec] section to perform on startup. I have:
mount c c:\games\tyrian
c:

which mounts the tyrian directory (mine is in C:\Games\Tyrian) and changes to it.


Have fun!

[Tempest]

That's cool. I might try it (except the code to Start Tyrian; I already know that).

[The Last Zica]

Under [sdl], I'm partial to:
fullscreen=true
output=ddraw

And under [render]:
scaler=none

Which you probably only want to use if you're using fullscreen or a low desktop resolution - should be a slight speed boost, though. In nix, where I assume ddraw won't work, you might try some of the other output methods, some should be accelerated relative to others. Oh, and memsize may or may not help; most people have plenty of memory, though, so in such cases it doesn't hurt to be sure.

Another thing to try, under [sdl], is:
priority=highest,normal

How effective it is probably depends on your OS.

And under [cpu], cycles anywhere between 10000ish and 50000ish can be good, depending on your system can handle and what settings you want in Tyrian. The wild detail setting is very demanding and tends to require upwards of 33000, but music in the menus tends to be glitchy with over 20000ish. auto strikes a balance, it runs Wild well generally, and has less music glitching than a hard setting that's Wild-friendly, but to get perfect music I have to skip Wild and run the cycles down a bit.

You can also turn ems under [dos] off, since the game doesn't use it, not sure if it helps speed or not.

[The Last Zica]

More experimenting, more findings: it turns out Tyrian and OMF 2097 both seem to run great with only 8MB - you might get away with pushing it even lower, but why bother (listed requirements are 4MB in both cases, I'm assuming slightly higher for all features on - I had assumed full detail in Tyrian used considerably more than the base requirement, but it seems it doesn't.) Here's what seems to work best for me with Tyrian (just the settings that are different from DOSBox-0.65's default configuration):

[sdl]
output=ddraw
priority=highest,normal

[dosbox]
memsize=8

[cpu]
core=dynamic
cycles=auto

[mixer]
blocksize=1024
prebuffer=1000

Replace "output=ddraw" as appropriate if using nix or ddraw just doesn't do well for you. "priority=highest,normal" will likely differ in effect dependant on OS, I'm using 98SE - it may or may not work well in XP for example. My comments on the cycles= line from a previous post still hold. Fiddling with the 2 settings under [mixer] may help, it's probably highly machine speed dependant - you want the lowest blocksize that doesn't give much static (for fast sound response time.)

Use the following for fullscreen:

[sdl]
fullscreen=true

[render]
scaler=none

Or the following for windowed (you can still alt-enter to switch to fullscreen):

[sdl]
fullscreen=false

[render]
scaler=normal2x

The following may optionally speed things up/simplify things by turning things you don't need off (if you don't recognize something, you're probably not using it:)

[gus]
gus=false

[speaker]
disney=false

[bios]
joysticktype=none

[serial]
serial1=disabled
serial2=disabled

[dos]
ems=false

And if you're going to use multiplayer over IPX, this is essential:

[ipx]
ipx=true

To have your Tyrian directory automatically mounted as drive C (which you probably want):

[autoexec]
mount C <Full path to Tyrian here, i.e. C:\GAMES\TYRIAN>
C:

That should about sum it up. This is the configuration I was using during the multiplayer testing yesterday (Fullscreen, all unnecessary stuff disabled, IPX on, and Tyrian automounted.)

[Weep]

thelastzica said:

And under [cpu], cycles anywhere between 10000ish and 50000ish can be good, depending on your system can handle and what settings you want in Tyrian. The wild detail setting is very demanding and tends to require upwards of 33000, but music in the menus tends to be glitchy with over 20000ish. auto strikes a balance, it runs Wild well generally, and has less music glitching than a hard setting that's Wild-friendly, but to get perfect music I have to skip Wild and run the cycles down a bit.

Wow. DOSBox must run much better on x86 chips than on PPC. I found 8500 cycles works well for Low quality on my G5. Much higher and the music starts fritzing.

Quality-wise, it's all fun and games until the transparency effects start kicking in...

[The Last Zica]

Yes, the higher you put it, the more likely the music is to glitch, especially in the menus. Did you try auto? Also, note that the music will glitch far more in the menus than in-game at high cycle settings - you may get perfectly acceptable music and wild detail at full speed in-game with high cycle settings, yet still have horribly glitched sound in menus. Auto is usually the most overall acceptable for general play.

[Tempest]

I always play without music, although sometimes I would play with it. It's too bad the music is not quality like the mp3 songs.
My favourite is Sarah's Song.

[davince]

You kidding? I love the unique Adlib sound of Tyrian!

Thanks people for sharing this info. Tyrian tends to run slow on my PC so this helps a lot.

[death]

what does this stuff do?

p.s will It get tyrian running full speed?

[davince]

It will, I set DOSbox up like this and I could run high quality at full speed, and pentium quality at almost full speed (some slowdowns).

Another note: the sound stuttering got worse for me when setting the mixer's block size lower. It stopped when I set it to 3768 or higher (though higher will take more unnecesary memory).

[torkuda]

Okay... help! Is there a way to activate Tyrian directly from dosbox, or is that even the idea?

[Tempest]

This topic explains how to start Tyrian in DosBox.

[Gamera]

Do this in the .conf file:

[autoexec]
mount C C:\GAMES\TYRIAN
C:
Tyrian

[mazling]

'cycles=auto' seems to have solved all of my problems when I tried it myself the other day - after a year or so of setting the cycles manually and choosing to either have jerky graphics at low cycles or stutttering music at high cycles.
If you're brave enough, try out one the CVS build at ykhwong.x-y.net which has direct3d available as a renderer. It seems to improve things for me, anyway.

[zellsf]

DOSBox config posting time

I'm using a CVS build btw, but here's what I changed:

[sdl]
windowresolution=640x480
output=ddraw (Windows spesific, duh)

[dosbox]
memsize=64

[render]
aspect=true (in case a game isn't running in 4:3 and Dosbox tries some ugly resizing)

[cpu]
core=dynamic (pretty much essential to get DOSBox running at a decent speed, x86 spesific)
cycles=auto (because I'm too lazy to manually adjust cycles, not really recommended)
timesynched=true (cvs spesific, edit: disabled for a while, since it was totally freezing my Windows system)

[printer]
printoutput=printer (eh... I have no idea why I changed this)

[ipx]
ipx=true

[autoexec]
mount C C:\dos (mounting my dos games folder)
mount D G:\ -t cdrom -usecd 1 -ioctl (mounting Daemon Tool's virtual CD drive as a virtual CD drive in DOSBox, -ioctl is Windows 2000/XP/NT spesific)
ipxnet startserver
set path=Z:\;C:\edit (adding FreeDos' version of EDIT to path since DOSBox lacks a text editor)
C:\keyb\keyb no,858 (using FreeDos' KEYB program to load a Norwegian keyboard layout)
C: (duh)
cls (clear screen, to pretend I didn't just write 6 commands in a row as opposed to making a batch file)


Edit: and I really recommend not running fullscreen, you need the IRC window to communicate with other Tyrian players