[Cori91]

Hello guys!

I’m new to Magic Dosbox so I got a bit puzzled here, I watched a few videos, read a few forum posts but still stuck.

Anyway I downloaded Magic Dosbox, got MM3 Isles of Terra.
I got to launching the game, but it starts up soooo slooow. I thought it crashed or I set it up badly. But no, first it’s a black screen (guess it’s for loading) then sloowly the New World Computing logo comes up then slowly again the “Presents” word under it. But it’a so slow that again I thought it crashed.

Anyway I got there and I got stuck, not sure if I have to press any keys to get to the main menu but I’ll figure that out, the main thing is that the logo comes up so slow I guess the game will be this slow too. I tried to change te cpu cycles but If i go to expert mode and change it the says I have mount it at start up so I’m not sure what’s up.

Any help from the DOS afficionados here? Thank you!

[Cori91]

Nobody? 🙁

I have tried MM 4-5 World of Xeen. And it is working fine! So I’m not sure what’s up with Isles of Terra.

[admin]

Hi,

Mm3 must work fine. Let the performance in game profile on automatic. The only thing what comes on my mind is that the game what you downloaded has is set to different sound card then you have in game profile (game profile is setup of your emulated machine). Run install.exe from mm3 directory and set it to sound blaster 16.

[Cori91]

It is running with Soun blaster 16, although in the conf file under sblaster there’s sbtype=SB2. Although even if I change the sound card to SB 2.0 it’s still very slow.

Performance is automatic too.

🙁

[admin]

Hm, in game profile – scroll to main program and press button “get”. Generate expert config and paste it here please.

[Cori91]

Alright I got it. Hope it helps!

[dosbox]
memsize=16
#vmemsize=2
#vmemsizekb=0
machine=svga_s3

[render]
aspect=false
frameskip=0

[cpu]
core=dynamic
cputype=auto
cycles=max 105%
cycleup=500
cycledown=500

[speaker]
pcspeaker=true
pcrate=8000
tandy=off
tandyrate=22050
disney=false

[midi]
mpu401=none

[gus]
gus=false

[sblaster]
sbtype=sb2
mixer=true
oplmode=auto
oplemu=fast
oplrate=16000

[mixer]
nosound=false
prebuffer=15
rate=16000
blocksize=512

[ipx]
ipx=false

[serial]
serial1=disabled
serial2=disabled
serial3=disabled
serial4=disabled

[dos]
xms=true
ems=true
umb=true

[joystick]
joysticktype=none

[autoexec]
mount c: “<games>/Might and Magic 3 – Isles of Terra (1991)/MM3/”
c:
MM3.EXE

[admin]

Try sbtype=sb16. But this is only a better sound. If in mm3 config is set midi then change it to sound blaster, this can make the slownest. Else all looks good. Do you run it from sdcard or internal storage?

[Cori91]

You mean that I change in the config file?

I’ll try although there’s not even music even though the game loads in with like 1fps, so there is video, but to get to the main menu I have to wait minutes.

It is run from internal, don’t have an sd card for the phone.

I have no idea what could be the problem. Although I randomly downloaded the game from google from a link, but not sure what could be different for the gog version. (didn’t want to bother with gog for the phone although I have it there)

[Cori91]

If I change sbtype to sb16 in the config and enable expert command and then start… somehow the dosbox doesn’t find the game, says I have to mount it.

[admin]

Did you run install.exe and set sound card in that utility? And what it tries to mount? There should be info about path which it tried.

[Cori91]

Yes. I set “Install.exe” for the Setup, the Main program is “MM3.exe”.
Tried the sound with sound blaster 2 or 16, both settings have no sound and the game running with low framerate.

The thing is in my .conf file, under autoexec, I have this… (if I want to launch with expert commands)

[autoexec]
@Echo Off
mount c: <games>
c:

My game is in games folder under another folder named MM3.

Shouldn’t I change the location to?

[autoexec]
@Echo Off
mount c c:\games\MM3
c:

But I tried this and says that the directory c:\games\MM3 does not exist.

Drive C does not exist.

What the hell?

Thanks for the help by the way!

[admin]

Allright, but did you launch install.exe? And did you set the sound card in install.exe?(not in game profile). You must set sound card in game profile (your emulated machine) and the same in mm3’s install.exe program (in ms-dos was not plug-and-play detection for sound card, user had to instruct the program manually which sound card is in the pc)

“mount c c:\games\MM3” cannot work, you are not on windows.

You can use “mount c /android/data/bruenor.magicbox/files” for private application folder or “mount c: ” for public storage on android 11+ (you must grant read/write permissions in initial survey on some folder). Public storage for android 10 and below can be “mount c /storage/emulated/0/” for example. Google messed it terribly.

But generally “mount c: ” is correct. It replaces with granted path.

What is your android version?

[Al ex]

The cycles=max setting in Dosbox can act up in rare cases. If I use it in Screamer 2 for example, I’m forever stuck at the loading screen. It doesn’t seem to pick up speed for reason, and stay at its slowest setting.
So maybe it’ll help if you try a fixed cycle setting, like cycles=5000.
I’ll see if I can get my hands on it for some testing.

[admin]

I believe in this case is conflicting wrong sound card or irq. I experienced mysterious slownest several times in the past. Re-setup game’s install.exe ot setup.exe with correct sound card should fix it.

[Al ex]

Could be possible. I’ve tested the game, basic game profile, no expert settings. Just picked the exe file, launched the game, and it worked fine. So it’s definitely doable. 👍

[Author]

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