Kymaera 2.0 DOS beta version available

[PacManFan]

Howdy everyone,

PacManFan here.

I have a version of Kymaera for DOS available for testing if anyone is interested.
The address is:
http://www.pacmanfan.com/downloads/ky_dos.zip

You need to download the main windows version from sourceforge first, then download this version, and follow the dos setup instructions.

If someone with a DOS machine or Win98 machine could verify this for me, I'll make an official release

Thanks,

-PMF

[JoyMonkey]

I had meant to give it a go last night, but got caught up in wedding stuff (who would have thought getting married would be such a chore?). I should have time to try it out tomorrow though, looking forward to it!

[SirPeale]

I'd like to try this one myself.

Just tried the Windows version (hadn't tried it previously).  Nice stuff!  Only one question: are you going to put zip support in?  I only ask because I was confused why my artwork wasn't showing up.  Right up until I unzipped it, and there it was.  

[PacManFan]

Zip support is probably a good idea. Are you referring to all png's for a directory in a single zip file? Or each individual png in it's own zip file?
Or something like an entire directory structure of snaps, marquees, titles, etc... in a single zip file?

I'd like to be flexiable enough to support any of these options.

Kymaera already has zip support through the zlib library for libpng, but it's not looking for zip files to load.

It would be kind of nice to run all external resources through 1 compressed archive. I wonder if there would be any performance degradation for unzipping files...

-PMF

[SirPeale]

I was talking about the directory being in one zip file.  IE all the snaps in the snaps.zip file.  That's how it's distributed, and I keep it that way since Mame32 supports it.  Keeps things neat.

[JoyMonkey]

I just gave it a quick try.

I used my main PC, setup Windows Kymaera 2.0 from WindowsXP - (and by the way, 2.0 is beautiful- well done!).  I installed it on IDE drive E and set it up to run DOS Mame 0.66, it works great from windows. From the Command Prompt within Windows, DOS Kymaera works great.

Then I booted from a DOS floppy (I used the Super DOS 7.1 disk available here because it supports NTFS drives).
When I try to run ky_dos.exe it gives me this error:
CPU error: incorrect opcode. Killing process

Maybe this is just becase of the PC setup I'm using, I'll try and root out a Pentium DOS machine to try it on tomorrow.

PS. my machine is an AthlonXP2700+, 512mb on an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe.

[JoyMonkey]

I found a P3 machine with a fresh Windows98 install and spent some time setting up Kymaera on it. The regular Kymaera.exe won't run (probably not surprising).
Ky_Dos works perfectly with Win98, I set it up so it launches DMame0.66 and played some BurgerTime. After a the BurgerTime distraction, I thought I'd get back to work.

I made a copy of my old ArcadeOS cabinet's hard drive (which uses the same P3 computer) and used that to try Ky_Dos out from pure DOS. Unfortunately, there seems to be a little problem.

This is what I get:

[PacManFan]

I ran into that problems a few times too. What the problem was for me, was the fact that I had a list "favorites.xml" in my mame.emu config. "Favorites.xml" is 9 charaters long, and true DOS only supports 8.3. I attached a txt readme file along with the DOS version explaining this.

Go into W98 and remove the favorites.xml game list. Also, check the emu's settings and make sure there are no long filenames. Check the skin file too. (you can take a quick peek using a text editor).

I'm betting it's a problem with a long file name.

Thanks for reporting, You're almost there.

-PMF

[spence]

G'day PMF,
Sac01 put me onto your project after I have been having heaps of trouble getting acrcadeos252 to see my games and not getting advmame / advmenu to display at all.
I love Kymaera in win98, but I want to go straight to DOS.  All I see when I run ky_dos though, is a line all across the top of the screen about 3 pixels wide. Then I have to give it the cntrl-alt-del to start again.
Any tips?
Really appreciate the effort,
spence

[JoyMonkey]

Would these different problems we're having have anything to do with using different graphics cards? I've been testing it with a Dell Optiplex with onboard ATI Rage graphics, with DOS 7.1.
I get the error in the above photo unless I switch Kymaera's skin to 8-bit 640x480, in which case all I get is a black screen.

[PacManFan]

G'day PMF,
Sac01 put me onto your project after I have been having heaps of trouble getting acrcadeos252 to see my games and not getting advmame / advmenu to display at all.
I love Kymaera in win98, but I want to go straight to DOS.  All I see when I run ky_dos though, is a line all across the top of the screen about 3 pixels wide. Then I have to give it the cntrl-alt-del to start again.
Any tips?
Really appreciate the effort,
spence

Kymaera for DOS is not quite ready for prime time, but I would appreciate any help in debugging it.
Here's a few steps to help you get it setup:

1) install the windows version
2) configure it for DOS mame
3) remove the z26.emu config
4) remove the favorites.xml gamelist from the mame setup
5) open up the skin file in a text editor and search for "fixedfilename"
6) everywhere you find "fixedfilename", make sure that the filename is a short filename (8.3)
7) make sure all your paths are short filenames

Kymaera should work fine on any graphics card, I'm using Allegro(same as Mame),  so it should detect fine. Use 16bpp or 32 bpp, I'm having some issues with the palettes in 8bpp modes.

Run ky_dos from a Win98 command line to make sure everything works, then restart your machine in DOS and re-run it. Hopefully, it'll all work at that point. If it doesn't, open the game.log file and post it here so I can see what's going on.

I hope this helps.

-PMF

[SirPeale]

Say, PMF?  Why don't you release a DOS package?

[PacManFan]

Say, PMF?  Why don't you release a DOS package?

I'm planning on releasing a DOS package soon, but there a few complications:

1) I want to make sure the DOS exe can work on someone else's system besides mine (still hasn't happened yet)
2) There is no way to configure the DOS version except through the windows ky_cfg application, so you still need windows to run the DOS version at this point. I'm currently make a Cross-platofrm setup program for the next release now.

-PMF

[SirPeale]

Why's the .emu file in a xml format?  If it was in an on/off format with straight text labels it could be done by hand.  It still could, but it's confusing.

[PacManFan]

Why's the .emu file in a xml format?  If it was in an on/off format with straight text labels it could be done by hand.  It still could, but it's confusing.

One of my "requirements" for Kymaera was that there was to be NO manual editing of configuration files. This works fine and dandy for the Windows version, but I hadn't planned on porting Kymaera to DOS and Linux, now that I have ported them I need to port my config program as well. I guess that was a design oversite.

-PMF

[sac01]

I'm sitting back waiting patiently to switch one of my cabinets (dos based) from Advmenu to yours.. I'm assuming the dos version will function the same? skinnable, vertical compatible, etc ?


sac

[PacManFan]

I'm sitting back waiting patiently to switch one of my cabinets (dos based) from Advmenu to yours.. I'm assuming the dos version will function the same? skinnable, vertical compatible, etc ?


sac

Yes, Kymaera DOS version will be (almost) identicle to the windows version. It uses the same files, etc..
One note: DOS and Linux version do not yet support avi and mpeg movies.

I'm putting in code into Allegro right now to allow 15khz modes in the GFX_XTENDED drivers section.

-PMF

[sac01]

Perfect.. i don't use the avi/mpeg functions in my cabs anyway... And i was just gonna ask about 15khz support since i wanna put this on my vertical arcade machine...

Thanks PMF
I'll keep watching...

sac

[SirPeale]

What about an in-frontend edit?  ArcadeOS does this.