Posts for AlbertHamik

Posted: 6/23/2019 7:38 AM
(Edited: 6/4/2022 5:09 PM)
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AlbertHamik
Experienced Forum User
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.
Posted: 6/8/2019 7:51 PM
(Edited: 6/4/2022 5:09 PM)
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AlbertHamik
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 12/17/2018
Posts: 9
Oh sorry yeh, all the same it's a consensus of you guys on what eventually goes down. And I agree, that's been my goal too since LibTAS became a thing. Glad we're all on the same page with this.
Posted: 6/8/2019 9:34 AM
(Edited: 6/4/2022 5:09 PM)
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AlbertHamik
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 12/17/2018
Posts: 9
Yeah I've been a bit busy but slowly trying to figure that all out. Been helping to figure out all info regarding optimal Windows 9x setups for minimum base RAM usage, and I can't make any firm statements yet but there are options out there. Thanks to the ingenuity of Windows 9x users from almost two decades ago, there's a ton of documentation on how small one can make their Windows 98/95 installations. I'm even toying around with Windows NT 3.51 right now, which is noted to be able to run certain Unreal Engine 1.0 titles in software rendering. Hopefully though, when it does come time for tasvideos.org moderators and judges to agree upon the standards for this, we have a clearer understanding of how easy and reasonable it'd be to rely upon one version of Windows over the others. In other words, getting the most optimal setup, both for cross-reference and the ease of setup and use.
Posted: 6/8/2019 9:22 AM
(Edited: 6/4/2022 5:09 PM)
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AlbertHamik
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 12/17/2018
Posts: 9
There's actually a few issues regarding DOSBox ATM with regards to stability when running it with more process intensive software, so I would write that off for LibTAS when it comes to Windows 9x gaming. Thankfully, there's now PCem support in LibTAS as of April, so more process intensive x86 software from the 90s is looking to be TAS viable for once (plus all things 9x, and maybe some early NT stuff). Early days though and nothing official yet, but it at least takes the weight off keylie's shoulders for now.
Posted: 5/29/2019 12:14 AM
(Edited: 6/4/2022 5:09 PM)
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AlbertHamik
Experienced Forum User
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.
Posted: 5/28/2019 7:16 PM
(Edited: 6/4/2022 5:09 PM)
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AlbertHamik
Experienced Forum User
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?
Posted: 5/28/2019 6:34 PM
(Edited: 6/4/2022 5:09 PM)
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AlbertHamik
Experienced Forum User
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.
Posted: 12/20/2018 8:49 PM
(Edited: 6/4/2022 5:09 PM)
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AlbertHamik
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 12/17/2018
Posts: 9
Well good news, meh news, that absolutely fixes the issue. However, I guess libTAS eats at the emulation a bit too much as SkyNET drops to an unplayable crawl, and while Chasm fares better, it still doesn't run at it's ideal speed. Anyways, at least I know it's possible to do these games with libTAS now, so thanks for that.
Posted: 12/18/2018 12:37 AM
(Edited: 6/4/2022 5:09 PM)
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AlbertHamik
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 12/17/2018
Posts: 9
Well I was pretty excited to try this out for myself. Compiled both the latest stable versions of libTAS and DOSBox in Fedora 27 and setup two games of mine, Chasm: The Rift and The Terminator: SkyNET. Both of them threw back random error messages which tells me they didn't like libTAS very much as they play normally outside of it. I tested out another game I had, Radix: Beyond the Void, and that appears to work just fine. Bit of a shame, as I was really hoping to test out those two prior games.