dosbox ece or dosbox svn daum..

[roland ratzenberger]

can anyone tell me which are the main differences bewteen this 2 versions. further more svn daum also has the maximize option on the window menu something which dos box ece does not have. for me this is quite handy. can anyone know how i can make it also in dos box ece

[samsepi0l]

maximize window is done with ECE by pressing "alt and enter" at the same time. hit "alt and enter" again and it will shrink the window again.

I use ECE and it works fantastic for me. I don't know the differences so much but the educated folks at dosbox forum seem to really put DAUM down for some reason.

[roland ratzenberger]

hey mate.. well i know what you say about alt enter but in some very rare occasion this cause crashes in one of my machines when i returned to the windows screen after the game.. by using svn daum in that pc i have not that problem anymore . i also use dosboxece in other pcs and i have to say that BOTH DAUM AND ECE works a lot better when it comes to time factor than the default version of dos box. just play a track in daum and ece and then in default dos box and you will notice the difference.

in any case i cannot see why some many people as you say are so biased against daum and so favoured to ece.. the ONLY thing that i personally noticed is that the graphics in full screen mode are better in ece (less pixelized to explain this better). if anyone knows better this differences feel free to explain to us

[rremedio]

I used Daum for a while and I never had any problems. Then I tested ECE and I liked it better because it felt a bit more smooth and it looked maybe a bit better. But Daum was also good for me.

[samsepi0l]

in any case i cannot see why some many people as you say are so biased against daum and so favoured to ece.. the ONLY thing that i personally noticed is that the graphics in full screen mode are better in ece (less pixelized to explain this better). if anyone knows better this differences feel free to explain to us

I don't understand either, but the community at VOGONS is rather educated and opinionated.

Personally, I like the idea of having save states like DAUM has. This would help me with the other game I play- ICR2. It would be nice to save races part way though, because I race full 100% race lengths, and the 500 mile races get long sometimes.

[GP2tifoso28]

From my point of view I only chose ECE because the vogons people seemed really against DAUM (?) and samsepi advised me that ECE also solved the speed issue, which was my main motivation to change dosbox versions in the first place.

I'm happy with ECE as it solved the issue and have no complaints about it. I wasn't able to ascertain why DAUM was so hated, a lot of people seem to use it and are happy with it. But the hate is very real, I even tried to enquire about it on the vogons forum and was met with a rather hostile response

[roland ratzenberger]

From my point of view I only chose ECE because the vogons people seemed really against DAUM (?) and samsepi advised me that ECE also solved the speed issue, which was my main motivation to change dosbox versions in the first place.

I'm happy with ECE as it solved the issue and have no complaints about it. I wasn't able to ascertain why DAUM was so hated, a lot of people seem to use it and are happy with it. But the hate is very real, I even tried to enquire about it on the vogons forum and was met with a rather hostile response

hello mate.. personally as i have said i use both .. in one pc i use daum and in other pc i use ece.. i completely gave up and the 0.74 version.. the only thing which is better in ece is the graphics.. not a big difference but there is a differrence... apart from this the time factor is solved in both versions so i cannot understand which is the problem with daum taking into account that so many people HATE IT..

[GP2tifoso28]

From my point of view I only chose ECE because the vogons people seemed really against DAUM (?) and samsepi advised me that ECE also solved the speed issue, which was my main motivation to change dosbox versions in the first place.

I'm happy with ECE as it solved the issue and have no complaints about it. I wasn't able to ascertain why DAUM was so hated, a lot of people seem to use it and are happy with it. But the hate is very real, I even tried to enquire about it on the vogons forum and was met with a rather hostile response

hello mate.. personally as i have said i use both .. in one pc i use daum and in other pc i use ece.. i completely gave up and the 0.74 version.. the only thing which is better in ece is the graphics.. not a big difference but there is a differrence... apart from this the time factor is solved in both versions so i cannot understand which is the problem with daum taking into account that so many people HATE IT..

I agree mate I was also quite confused and perplexed about it, which was why I asked about it on the vogons forum. I think one thread was closed immediately and the other one was met with a less than hospitable response. Seems a bit strange to me

[samsepi0l]

It has been a few years, and I heard about dosbox X, and dosbox staging.... I tried dosbox X, and for some reason it runs slower for me... the processor occupancy stays below 100%, but the time to complete a lap longer than in real life. I tested Michael82's Monaco - where on screen cockpit times show about 1m24s, and in real life timed with my stopwatch cars lap at 1m40s. I was able to make this go faster by increasing cycles.

This was documented elsewhere, but I only saw it here: https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/issues/3211

My motivation to find a new dosbox option is so I can get something that works as well as my dosbox ECE, but has save-states. I know with GP2 we can save in the middle of a race, so it isn't that bad but I play a LOT of ICR2 and this has no option to save like GP2 has.

[GP2tifoso28]

It has been a few years, and I heard about dosbox X, and dosbox staging.... I tried dosbox X, and for some reason it runs slower for me... the processor occupancy stays below 100%, but the time to complete a lap longer than in real life. I tested Michael82's Monaco - where on screen cockpit times show about 1m24s, and in real life timed with my stopwatch cars lap at 1m40s. I was able to make this go faster by increasing cycles.

This was documented elsewhere, but I only saw it here: https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/issues/3211

My motivation to find a new dosbox option is so I can get something that works as well as my dosbox ECE, but has save-states. I know with GP2 we can save in the middle of a race, so it isn't that bad but I play a LOT of ICR2 and this has no option to save like GP2 has.

Hey samsepi, did you end up finding a solution? I too would like to migrate to a version which saves the state. I'm superstitious about the seed bug and I'd like to experiment preserving the seed DNA throughout an entire championship season.

This may be achievable by saving the game in the Sim before the race session is over and then picking up from there each time, as I believe the Réné Smit confirmed some time ago that the save files necessarily contain the precise seed state. Despite this I'd still like to do some real world testing to see how the seed state behaves between the 2 distinct methodologies

[samsepi0l]

No - I never really continued searching very hard. Gp2 runs so good for me on Dosbox ECE that I am able to get good FPS performance with all graphics on. I had worse FPS performance and the time-flow issue with other options.

Regarding the random seed - I wonder if there is a way to do something like forcing gp2lap to change this randomly. I think this is the best option. Nobody really plays gp2 without gp2lap anyway... (why would you?)

[GP2tifoso28]

No - I never really continued searching very hard. Gp2 runs so good for me on Dosbox ECE that I am able to get good FPS performance with all graphics on. I had worse FPS performance and the time-flow issue with other options.

Regarding the random seed - I wonder if there is a way to do something like forcing gp2lap to change this randomly. I think this is the best option. Nobody really plays gp2 without gp2lap anyway... (why would you?)

Fair enough, I'm 99% sure the seed state will be fully preserved in the save file anyway, provided I save before the end of the session. At least that's what Réné Smit said and I have blind faith in him as he's the 2nd biggest expert second only to Geoff Crammond himself.

If curiosity gets the better of me I'll try it with svn-DAUM, although I must admit I never tried it before mainly due to some mental conditioning I received over at the VOGONS and dosbox boards some years back. I can't speak first hand on it though.

It would be awesome to fix the seed thing properly but I'd say only Réné Smit and Geoff Crammond would be able to pull it off. Either way I'm satisfied with Rremedio's solution. My curiosity around it hinges more on superstition as I like the idea of preserving the seed DNA, so that my championship season will be 'genetically' linked to all of the prior sessions and events that preceded the current event, by virtue of the preserved seed string. I'm pretty confident it will work based off what Réné told me but I need to test it first to make sure 100% though. If not I'll cross the Rubicon and plunge into the dark abyss of DAUM

[samsepi0l]

Honestly- I like how ICR2 handles randomness so much better than how GP2 does. (both games have strong points and weak points).

ICR2 performance can change over the duration of a race or weekend, so drivers can get faster or slower. GP2 seems to pick a general speed for a full weekend, which mostly includes qualifying and the race as almost one.

In ICR2 if I have a failure or a crash or want to restart a race for any reason, all I need to do is shift+R. It starts a completely new race with new random events. Different drivers will DNF. Different drivers may be fast or slow. It's much more fun for the dynamics of it.

When I play Gp2 I set my carsets up with a much more competitive mix than what happened in real life. For example right now I am doing a 1994 season (I pick a random year carset every time, it just happened to be the default 94 year this time). I pick 20 tracks that somewhat follow the real schedule- but I added 4 from 16... tracks that could have been in a 94 season. I do the season with "non championship races". And calculate the points manually with my own points system and a spreadsheet.

I also aim to set up the magic data so I am competitive midfield and my fastest lap is about .7 seconds slower than the fastest car on the track.

1st = 50
2nd = 37
3rd = 30
4th= 26
5th = 22
6th = 19
7th = 17
8th = 15
9th = 13
10th = 11
11th = 9
12th = 7
13th = 6
14th = 5
15th = 4
16th = 3
17th = 2
18th = 1

I also set the ranges wider so that fast drivers have a chance to be slow, and slow drivers have a chance to be fast. For example lately Schumacher has been starting lately in the lower top 10. While the Simteks occassionally get close to the top 5.

So far after 18 races Schumacher, Hill, Coulthard, Hakkinen and Barrichello are very close for 1st place and could win the championship. Christian Fittipaldi even won a race this year.

At the end of the season- I make a custom hat to match the driver and car of the champion! I do all of the graphics myself, and have it embroidered. Here is a picture of my collection so far (I also do the same for icr2 so some of these are CART you will see)

[GP2tifoso28]

Sounds to me that ICR2 is fully randomising the seed at the commencement of each session, which would explain why you get completely different events each time. The gpx approach kind of works for me anyway because I always tended to run the Sim like Ted Meat, with no restarts and accepting the course of events in a stoic fashion.

I want to play around and experiment with performance values and so forth in the future. I always ran the Sim stock but I plan on running successive modded seasons. The only thing is I want to fine tune the performance values. My goals and approach will be quite different to yours but when the time comes I'll probably hit you up for some advice seeing as you have some good experience with the performance parameters.

Nice collection!