My favourite test case is Magic Carpet im SVGA. The SVGA code seems to be very badly written. It maxed out my old P4 2.6Ghz at about 5-15 FPS, no matter what i did (i played the game in VGA mode then). My new machine runs the game in SVGA and with all eye-candy on (smooting, reflections, etc.) without problems and not even 50% cpu usage.

I'll have to try Extreme Assault these days. This game was unplayable on my old machine in DOSBox even with the 3DFX patch.

The most demanding game I have is Battlespire.

Redguard is demanding too, but using Glide the burden is less.

EDIT: Software version of Redguard works too, and is obviously more demanding than the Glide version.

Hmmm, interesting. According to MobyGames, Battlespire shares the same engine with SkyNet and Future Shock, and Redguard. But only Redguard has 3DFX support, hasn't it?

ADDiCT wrote:

Hmmm, interesting. According to MobyGames, Battlespire shares the same engine with SkyNet and Future Shock, and Redguard. But only Redguard has 3DFX support, hasn't it?

Yeah, Redguard was the last game to use that engine, and the only one that had support for 3DFX.

Wow, i didnt know DOS games were still being made as late as 1998. I dont know much about these games, I thought the most demanding games for dosbox were the 1997 build games like blood, and such.

Freddo Redguard works in dosbox without glide with rg.exe (during installatnion you have to choose software mode). It also installs a different folder - 3dart (glide instalation has fxart)

Redguard has a software mode? They advertised it as Glide-only, so it's the only Elder Scrolls universe game for PC that I've never checked out.

I immediately though of Battlespire as well when I read this thread. I remember using all sorts of tricks to get it to run well in pure DOS 7 (Win9x DOS) on a PII-450.

How does it run in DOSBox? I've often thought of trying it again.

Also, Daggerfall uses the same engine.

The full ver of the game has software mode. Demo is glide only.

I could never get the full version with glide working in DOSBox with Gulikoza's build. Tried it again last night to be sure.

What is the problem? The game has to specifically be installed as glide, just copying the glide executable doesn't work. The other thing to watch out is to try to run the game with fixed cycles around 15K, then switch to max once the game starts loading.

robertmo wrote:

Freddo Redguard works in dosbox without glide with rg.exe (during installatnion you have to choose software mode). It also installs a different folder - 3dart (glide instalation has fxart)

Wow, it indeed works. I wonder what I did wrong the last time I tried it, which was several years ago 😵

The glide version always worked for me since late 2005 or whenever it was, and since then I haven't bothered to re-try the software version.

How do you "switch to max" cycles while a game is running?

probably with a hotkey he programmed in his build or so

Mechwarrior 2 with SVGA can be pretty demanding. Magic Carpet SVGA is worse though. Now even though I own it, I've never tried playing it in DOSBox, but what about Terra Nova? I hear that is pretty demanding. Of course you've also got WC3, WC4 and Privateer 2. Then there are more modern games like Fallout 1. Of course games like Carmageddon and Shadow Warrior in SVGA mode would hit hard as well.

Bottom Line: Pretty much anything that utilizes SVGA graphics is going to be demanding. Even though I don't believe Terra Nova does that 😀

With most of those having windows versions, it makes me ask what are the most intensive DOS only games? Another list to make are games that are slow or have slowdowns, or not slow running in that the cpu can handle it but cpu intensive nonetheless, born out of the way the emulation handles them like pirates gold, 1942 pacific air war, wolf3d, rotk3, comanche, ..

ih8registrations wrote:

With most of those having windows versions, it makes me ask what are the most intensive DOS only games?

Battlespire and Redguard are DOS games only. While mobygames state that they are for Windows too, they are wrong. The installers just make a Windows icon/launcher that will launch the DOS game.

Just out of curiosity, which were the very last dos games, and what year were they released? Did they all support SVGA and Glide?

Off the top of my head Battlecruiser 3000 (think it's software and glide) and Redneck Rampage (No Glide), and of course Fallout 1.

The eaiest most demanding game for people to aquire would be Quake 1 which I think can be downloaded from Steam.

The easiest way to find the "Most demanding games for DOSBox" would be to just search these forums for "DOSBox is slow", "Core=dynamic", "Increase cycles + slow)", DOS4GW, DOS32/A, etc etc.

Quake isn't THAT demanding. An average machine can DOSBox it with the playability of a Pentium 200.

Armored Fist 2 (MMX dependency), Bethesda XNGINE games in SVGA, WW2GI (1999 retail DOS Build game!) and Extreme Assault are the most demanding games I know of.

Quake is demanding but the fpu emulation of the recompiler is quite nice
so it's acceptably (imo) fast depending on your host machine.

Games that use selfmodifications that acually clear code blocks will run slow in dosbox.