possible Tweak, Need other users to help test

[Chizmad ●]

Found an interesting tweak.

set your memsize in the DosBox.conf to

Code:

memsize=63

save the document (not as a .txt !!!)

then go to Z.CFG and add these lines to the top of the file

Code:

texturememory 20000
objmemsize 20000

and save the document (again not as a .TXT)



in my experience this HAS given me more stable frame rates and less screen tearing in daggerfall.

basically this tweak allows texture memory and object memory to have 20mb each of cache within the 63mb of ram, IIRC daggerfall only caches about 8mb between these two values to store those bits of data.

this also works in Native DOS daggerfall on older systems, and you can go as far as 40000 for the values. it eliminates times when the game would lag or 'pause" while it loads the rest of the dungeon. and generally increases performance. (40mb for each crashes dosbox) this performance tweak is not limited he just needed us or the Daggerfall setup version, I tried it on my older computer with a manually set up dosbox configuration and it worked as well.

The reason why I am asking others to try it out is because I suggested it to Ancestral Ghost, and he stated he might include it in the next version of daggerfall setup if other users find it to be an increase in performance.


let me know in the comments section or the poll whether or not this did much for you.

[Chizmad ●]

Some dungeons im not noticing that much of an improvement. Anyone else have feedback on this?

[Chizmad ●]

This tweak has been addedbto the newest version of daggerfall setup, so check it out

[MrFlibble ●]

I have tried playing around with the cache memory sizes in the past, but with much lower values than you suggest, and it did not seem to yield any reasonable performance increases (this is mentioned here). I'll certainly try out your approach!

On another note, it seems that Lucius discovered the cause of frame rate drops in Daggerfall by reverse-engineering, at least he had hinted about it in one of XL Engine progress updates IIRC.

[FrozenWolf150 ●]

I tested this out and the game won't even start. If I set the texturememory and objmemsize values to the ones you suggest, it crashes instantly with a message that it's out of memory. If I set them to half of the values you suggest, it crashes saying "Daggerfall has returned the error 0."

Does this depend on the type of OS you're running? I'm not sure what went wrong.

[MrFlibble ●]

I tested this out and the game won't even start. If I set the texturememory and objmemsize values to the ones you suggest, it crashes instantly with a message that it's out of memory. If I set them to half of the values you suggest, it crashes saying "Daggerfall has returned the error 0."

Curiously, I'm getting the same results (Linux, vanilla DOSBox, clean install of the freeware DF version from BethSoft patched to build 213). Perhaps if DOS4GW is changed to DOS32A it fixes the problem? Gotta try that.

[Edit] Yup, DOS32A fixes the problem. To replace DOS4GW, download DOS32A from the official site, install it somewhere DOSBox will recognize, back up FALL.EXE, then navigate to the BINW folder where you put DOS32A and type sb /r c:\dagger\fall.exe (assuming you installed DF at C:\DAGGER\).

[Edit 2] I've briefly checked how the game plays with the texture cache & stuff maxed out, and there doesn't seem to be any considerable improvement. Specific places known to slow down the game (like certain taverns) still behave in the same manner. Perhaps larger caches will contribute to greater stability overall but they do not fix this kind of issues.

BTW, the game runs fine at 17k cycles for me. Setting the cycle number higher results in sound stuttering during the intro, which suggests this is not the way to go. SVN Daum might work better though.

[FrozenWolf150 ●]

[Edit] Yup, DOS32A fixes the problem. To replace DOS4GW, download DOS32A from the official site, install it somewhere DOSBox will recognize, back up FALL.EXE, then navigate to the BINW folder where you put DOS32A and type sb /r c:\dagger\fall.exe (assuming you installed DF at C:\DAGGER\).

[Edit 2] I've briefly checked how the game plays with the texture cache & stuff maxed out, and there doesn't seem to be any considerable improvement. Specific places known to slow down the game (like certain taverns) still behave in the same manner. Perhaps larger caches will contribute to greater stability overall but they do not fix this kind of issues.

BTW, the game runs fine at 17k cycles for me. Setting the cycle number higher results in sound stuttering during the intro, which suggests this is not the way to go. SVN Daum might work better though.

For clarification, what do you mean when you say to install DOS32A somewhere DOSBox will recognize? It's been ages since I've worked with anything DOS related, and DOS32A is new to me.

Regarding the cycles, I had gotten frustrated with the snail's pace default setting of DF.conf that came with the game, so I did some experimenting as well. I found that setting it to "auto" or "max" makes the game run a lot faster, but it causes some glitches. Commoners on the street get stuck jogging in place, and the keyboard movement controls for sliding left and right will randomly malfunction. The best setting I've found for my particular system is "auto limit 50000." I can't speak for anyone else though, and results will vary.

[MrFlibble ●]

I found that setting it to "auto" or "max" makes the game run a lot faster, but it causes some glitches. Commoners on the street get stuck jogging in place, and the keyboard movement controls for sliding left and right will randomly malfunction. The best setting I've found for my particular system is "auto limit 50000." I can't speak for anyone else though, and results will vary.

Note that setting cycles to auto just makes it use 3000 cycles for a real mode application, and switches to max for a protected mode one. So in case of Daggerfall auto and max makes no difference.

I've been playing for a while with the following settings: vanilla DOSBox v0.74, Bethesda's freeware release of DF w/ huge installation size and patched to build 213, dynamic core, memsize=16 (default), 17000 cycles. I also set objmemsize to 2500 and TextureMemory to 5100. under these fairly modest settings I've noticed no performance degradation whatsoever compared to higher values (e.g. a while ago I played with memsize=31 and 30000 cycles).

For clarification, what do you mean when you say to install DOS32A somewhere DOSBox will recognize? It's been ages since I've worked with anything DOS related, and DOS32A is new to me.

Just ignore DOS32A. Previously I had experimented with it and found no advantage to replacing the default extender that comes with the game. Conversely, I started getting glitches or performance degradation IIRC. It appears that the game cannot handle a lot more memory and the developers didn't really expect anything higher than 16 MiB of RAM, so it's pointless to allocate more if the programme cannot make meaningful use of it.

Of course if you crank up cycles the game will be faster, but not due to performance increase, but to an unnatural speed-up (which is known to cause broken game behaviour if excessive). For example, there are areas like certain taverns of Mages Guild buildings where the game inexplicably slows down. If you turn up cycles it will play faster but the slowdown will still be noticeable.

I wonder if setting the cpu type to Pentium may affect performance somehow.

[Chizmad ●]

you need to set dosbox to use 63mb as that is its max
having dosbox use more virtualized ram for dos games doesnt impact performance on games that came out after the early 90s afaik.

you need more ram to use this optimization as 16mb is not enough to allocate 20mb for game data and 20mb for object cache (textures and etc)

thats why it runs slower. you didnt put the memsize to 63