Dosbox and Commander Genius Fusion

All discussion about the Commander Genius project (a Keen interpreter + more).
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What do you think about the idea of DosBox fusion with Commander Genius?

Good idea, I was waiting for a long time to see this happen
7
54%
Well, I prefer netplay, you promised us that for a long time and still not there
5
38%
You should concentrate on other enhancements
1
8%
Other opinion, please write in this topic
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Total votes: 13

gerstrong
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Dosbox and Commander Genius Fusion

Post by gerstrong »

Since many requests and time I didn't have I was thinking to take part of the dosbox code and merge it into Commander Genius the way, that it would be like Dosbox but with extra features fit to the Keen games and maybe others.

I would try to reduce some code, make the graphics smoother, enhance music and sound experience and add many more goodies to let the fan hearts beat higher :-)

For now I would provide an option to play Commander Genius with Dosbox VM instead of our engine.

The first advantages you will get is more flexibilty for configuration, because it would fit to the Commander Keen games at best.

Another thing the Game Launcher will show and find your games so you can easily choose and let it run with CG/Dosbox so you don't need to use dos shell or anything like that, not even batch scripts. CG will know how to launch Keen games and mods, even with multiple patch files

If I get it to tweak some stuff, I'm sure the experience will be more pleasing than using plain dosbox.

But the most important thing, you will get original physics and all the mods are going to work as intended.

I would do all my tests on Keen Dreams because I would like to add this to CG. It will be the first to use Dosbox VM but I will enable it for all the Keen Games and maybe for others like BioMenace or Cosmos Cosmic as well.

Now it's your turn, what do you think about the direction of CG?

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tulip
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Re: Dosbox and Commander Genius Fusion

Post by tulip »

gerstrong wrote:But the most important thing, you will get original physics and all the mods are going to work as intended.
I think this is the crucial point here, we've spent a lot of time trying to reproduce the original physics but they always remain different.

We'd still be able to support all the graphical enhancements like HQ-Packs with , and some stuff like inlevel saving and level replayability, non-two-button firing for vorticons and such I think should still be possible.
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Post by lemm »

I think that it would have made more sense to make CG a customized dosbox from the start. Then, you would not have had to reverse-and-recode the entire game, but simply critical portions that would need "code injection". In addition, it would make mod support far easier than it is now.
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Post by gerstrong »

Maybe yeah, but we have two good engines without dosbox and I think we can use it for other goodies.

Plans were a bit different in the past than today, also knowledge was different back then.
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Post by MoffD »

I like the idea but I like netplay better :o can I have both?
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Post by Levellass »

MoffD wrote:I like the idea but I like netplay better :o can I have both?
And also, can you release an official TUIT?
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Post by MoffD »

Go for fusion! :D
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Post by Tormentor667 »

Go for the fusion I'd say as well
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Post by AST »

It would be good to see this happen particularly as you intend to include keen dreams as this would complete support for all the original PC games which I believe was one of the early intentions of the project.

Supporting the existing mods is also a worthy objective so not complaining about doing so and leaving Keen dreams out of the current engines as the mods are worth supporting.

There has been a lot of hard work put into this project which I think many are grateful for.
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Post by gerstrong »

Interesting results so far.

Netplay is also urgent, I see it, but it will have to wait, first comes dosbox fusion. After that I will take a look into Netplay.

The gears for the fusion are already rotating. Just need to update the GsKit code and more will be done soon!
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Post by Keening_Product »

What platforms will the fusion version be available on? Will there be a mobile version like with regular CG?
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Post by tulip »

if the touch input doesn't pose a problem then I don't see why not.
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Post by gerstrong »

Yes, there will be. Gears are running on the project, but I have nothing pushed to github yet, because I still must finish some preparations.

Dosbox is already integrated into CG in the version I'm working on. I can compile it all together, but much more has to be done.

My main focus is on touch capability and I will try to handle it like it is done in the CG versions now.

I think the mapper can help us on that a lot...
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