keylie
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Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (2822)
Joined: 3/17/2013
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InfamousKnight wrote:
Again, how do I run dos games in libtas? Do I just put the path in command line of a game?
Yes, just put the path to dosbox in the game executable field, and the (absolute) path to the dos game in the command-line options field.
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Thanks to some hard work from keylie, PCem is now working properly in libTAS. I've been testing this with Windows 95/98 games with extremely promising results. I've updated the original post, check it for details on how to get it working.
Joined: 12/17/2018
Posts: 9
Slamo, me and a friend are testing setting up to try out PCem, and I wanted to know if you had by any chance looked into 98lite? I'm wondering about the validity of using resource reduced versions of a 98SE installation for making TAS runs, though obviously we're in the early days of discussion on this. Here's a video demonstrating 98lite's features: https://youtu.be/rCwtA9e3YRI And I won't say where, but it's not hard finding a copy of the professional version, which actually lets you do a fresh installation of 98. EDIT: Want to note that based on the stats from the video (though testing would be in order on our end regardless), performance impact on games was negligible, less than 1%, if unfair results is a concern. Again though, merely interested in the streamlining of this process for any potential future in Windows 9x runs.
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I haven't heard of it until now. It looks like a really promising option, especially 98micro which gets rid of all the network/internet related stuff that we definitely will never need. My opinion is that as long as the game is emulated properly, it doesn't matter how we got there. And the smaller the hard disk image, the faster it is to load and save states. I'll try it out sometime soon. It's great to see some more people testing this setup. A new branch of PCem for TASVideos was set up recently, there are people currently trying to adapt the patch to the new v15. If you want to keep up with the progress or if you want to report any bugs that occur in only the patched version, you can go here: https://github.com/TASVideos/pcem
Joined: 12/17/2018
Posts: 9
All the same, worth documenting what gets removed as there are in fact some games for Windows that rely on some of the internet stuff. Read into 98micro from the link you gave and noticed they remove the MS HTML engine, and I have a hunch that one game I run, Vigilance, actually uses that. Not sure if that particular game would run very well in PCem, but just an off the top of my head example of a game that might necessitate custom 98 setups. Glad you like the idea of 98micro though, and I agree, it would definitely help with savestate sizes. Also, wish I had noticed that PCem fork sooner. Will give it a look. Has anything else been documented concerning PCem for LibTAS?
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That's fine if it uses certain HTML features, it looks like features can be swapped around without reinstalling the whole thing. There isn't much documented yet on TASing with PCem, just the PCem fork and this issue for libTAS: https://github.com/clementgallet/libTAS/issues/208
Joined: 12/17/2018
Posts: 9
One thing I'm wondering about is how to facilitate the proper documentation of a .img drive for TAS runs? As in, how to export a list of all the files in a generated .img drive. EDIT: 7zip can possibly do it, with a terminal command no less. I am unable to test at the moment, but this may work.
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I updated the info for PCem. You no longer need to apply the patch to regular PCem, TASVideos now has its own fork. Keylie got it working with the new v15, so you can get it here: https://github.com/TASEmulators/pcem/releases
Joined: 12/17/2018
Posts: 9
Been spending the past few weeks on and off in my spare time to figure out issues I've had with PCem compiled for Linux, and I've learned something that I don't think has been properly said more often concerning the setup process. If you're finding that a version of the ROM collection you've found for the latest version of PCem isn't loading everything, that's because PCem in Linux is case sensitive, and will only load stuff that is lowercase, filename and extension both. But yeah, now I can properly get down to testing stuff. I was also able to sort've get the process rolling for trying out 98lite, but I'll confess that I'm not entirely sure how to use that software and it hung on me for far too long at one step of the process so I had to stop for the time being. EDIT: I did eventually get 98lite working. My honest advice is if you get 98SE installed first and then install 98lite and run it to transform 98SE into micro98 or whatever, that'd be the smart way to go.
Masterjun
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Joined: 10/12/2010
Posts: 1179
Location: Germany
slamo wrote:
I updated the info for PCem. You no longer need to apply the patch to regular PCem, TASVideos now has its own fork. Keylie got it working with the new v15, so you can get it here: https://github.com/TASVideos/pcem/tree/v15_235273a
Btw, what's the status on this? The link doesn't work anymore. Seems like the fork or branch doesn't exist anymore?
Warning: Might glitch to credits I will finish this ACE soon as possible (or will I?)
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fsvgm777
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Steam Community page - Cohost profile Oh, I'm just a concerned observer.
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Updated the links.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Masterjun
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Joined: 10/12/2010
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Thanks! (Someone else asked me about the links here due to my Linux Linux Linux run, so I asked for a status update.)
Warning: Might glitch to credits I will finish this ACE soon as possible (or will I?)