FASTER DOS GAMES ________________ Games and education applications with arcade-style action can be very aggressive in their exploitation of PC hardware, so they often won't run in the Windows environment because of the need for faster graphics. Almost all of the popular games run under OS/2 Warp, provided that customized settings are used. OS/2 Warp now automatically recognizes over 200 games, and creates individual icons with the associated settings to optimize performance. ADDING A GAME TO OS/2? ______________________ You can take advantage of this new OS/2 Warp feature in one of two ways: 1. Use ADD PROGRAMS from the System Setup folder to configure multiple games. For each game that OS/2 Warp finds, it assigns a set of customized DOS settings and adds a program object icon in the Games folder, which is found inside the OS/2 System folder. 2. Drag a Program template from the Templates folder to set up an individual program. When you install new games, use the default subdirectory whenever possible. Then make a note of the fully qualified filename (for example, D:\3DBODY\3DBODY.EXE) of the file used to start the game. Use the Program template to add the game to the location of your choice. When you enter the file name, OS/2 Warp automatically adjusts all settings necessary to run the game. Simply close the Settings notebook, and launch the program object just created. Either way, you avoid the inconvenience of modifying your CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT files, configuring memory, or using trial-and-error to find ways to keep demanding DOS-and-Windows applications working together. HAVE WE GOT A DATABASE FOR YOU! _______________________________ A file named DATABASE.TXT in the \OS2\INSTALL subdirectory includes the tested settings for over 200 of the popular games and education titles, including all but a few of the top 100 and a number of shareware titles. If you want to add your own personalized titles to OS/2 Warp's Application Recognition Database, merely edit the DATABASE.TXT file. When your changes are complete, compile the .TXT file with the following commands: CD \OS2\INSTALL PARSEDB DBTAGS.DAT DATABASE.TXT DATABASE.DAT After the next reboot, OS/2 Warp includes your new settings, and is able to recognize your applications whenever you run Add Applications or use the Program template to create a new program object. TROUBLESHOOTING _______________ OS/2 Warp permits you to do other things while a game is ongoing, but some graphics- or CPU-intensive games may slow down in this multitasking environment. For fastest performance with such games, close all windows and applications, especially other DOS applications, before you run a game. Leaving other applications open can steal CPU time from the game, thus slowing down any high-speed action. If you still have trouble running (or installing) your game under OS/2 Warp, the following notes can be of value. HAVING TROUBLE WITH SOUND? Whether running DOS, Windows, or OS/2, PC users occasionally experience problems running certain advanced games that aggressively use your system's sound capabilities. If you have problems with any game under OS/2 Warp, first try disabling the sound using the program's configuration, setup, install, or sound options. YOUR GAME DOESN'T WORK? A small number of DOS games apparently use memory-management techniques, such as Virtual Control Program Interface (VCPI), which are virtually impossible to support in any multitasking, controlled-memory environment, such as OS/2 or Windows. To run these programs, your best option may be to boot a native copy of DOS. Fortunately, OS/2 Warp has a dual-boot feature that lets you easily switch back and forth between DOS and OS/2 Warp. Once most users move to OS/2, however, they rarely return to DOS. OS/2 WARP DOESN'T RECOGNIZE YOUR GAME? Although OS/2 Warp automatically recognizes the top 100+ DOS games and automatically optimizes the DOS settings, there surely are games that are missed. In this case, you can either make a copy of a program icon for a similar game and then manually change the drive path and program name, or you can use the generalized system settings listed below as a base to start from, and fine-tune if needed. The DOS Settings are displayed in a graphical format, and can be changed according to your game's documentation, or to match the guidelines provided here. NEED TO SAVE AND SHARE SETTINGS? OS/2 Warp now allows you to save settings for an individual application in a file you can share with other OS/2 Warp users. From the DOS Settings page, select PRINT, and then ENCODED FILE, entering the name of the file that contains the saved settings. Then, from the DOS Settings page on another system, the encoded file can be used to recreate the saved settings for a new object by pressing the Load button. RECOMMENDED DOS SETTINGS ________________________ If you have other games or applications that are not recognized by the OS/2 Warp Add Programs application and that don't run under the default DOS full-screen session, try the following: 1. Create a program object for your game by dragging the Program template from the Template folder. 2. Enter the path and file name and any necessary parameters (such as -NOSOUND, -SB, -VGA, and so on) according to the application's documentation. 3. Select the Session tab. 4. Then select DOS FULL SCREEN. 5. Select DOS SETTINGS. 6. Select ALL DOS SETTINGS. 7. Select OK. 8. Change the settings in accordance with any documentation or technical support provided by the application vendor. If using multimedia applications, use the appropriate Win-OS/2 and DOS settings from the following: DOS/WIN INT_DURING_IO ON DOS/WIN HW_TIMER ON WIN VIDEO_SWITCH_NOTIFICATION ON WIN VIDEO_8514A_XGA_IOTRAP OFF OS/WIN VIDEO_RETRACE_EMULATION OFF DOS DPMI_MEMORY_LIMIT 8 Start with the base settings listed, making sure to set EMS, XMS, or DPMI memory to what is specified for the game you are running. If changing DOS settings, use the following recommendations, as appropriate: DOS FULL SCREEN This is a push button that is selected before editing the DOS Settings. Selecting this option causes your application to cover the entire screen instead of running in a window. You won't be able to see other windows and icons, but most games run much faster in full-screen mode. DOS_BACKGROUND_EXECUTION=OFF (DEFAULT=ON) Set this to OFF for most games so the game doesn't continue to run when switching to another application. In other words, the game "freezes" when it is in the background, and resumes when it is brought to the foreground. Set this to OFF if you don't want your fictitious character to get shot by aliens while you're working on something else! DOS_FILES=NN (DEFAULT=20) For those few games that use more than 20 files during game play, increase the number of files to 30 or 40. Doing this slightly reduces the amount of memory available. DOS_HIGH=ON (DEFAULT=OFF) In most cases, set this to ON (along with DOS-UMB) to provide more conventional memory for your game. Some games prefer to access the DOS high-memory space directly, requiring DOS-HIGH (and DOS_UMB) to be set to OFF. If DOS_HIGH is ON, you'll generally also want DOS-UMB to be ON, XMS_HANDLES to be greater than zero, and XMS_MEMORY_LIMIT to be at least 64. DOS_STARTUP_DRIVE=D: (A DRIVE LETTER) Some game applications allow the player to create a boot diskette to play the game. In those cases where nothing else seems to work, create a boot diskette, then enter "A:" for this setting. After that, when you double-click on the game icon, make sure that the boot diskette is in drive A. OS/2 Warp starts the game as though it were actually starting your system from drive A. DOS_UMB=ON (DEFAULT=OFF) This setting should be ON unless DOS_HIGH is OFF. It lets your DOS game load drivers and other terminate-and-stay-resident (TSR) programs upper and XMS memory, freeing conventional memory space for your game. DPMI_DOS_API=AUTO DOS Protected Mode Interface (DPMI) is a memory-access specification for use in multitasking environments, such as OS/2 Warp. Many new applications are starting to take advantage of this feature. If you see DPMI mentioned in the game documentation or in error messages, change this default to ENABLED. DPMI_MEMORY_LIMIT=4 This default is usually adequate. If you have a truly memory-hungry game, boosting this setting to match the amount of physical memory (RAM) you have might provide performance improvements. However, boosting it beyond your physical memory might cause memory swapping to disk, thus impairing performance. DPMI_NETWORK_BUFF_SIZE=8 This default should be okay, but some games require this setting to be 64. EMS_MEMORY_LIMIT=2048 If your game requires more than the default of 2MB of EMS (expanded) memory, you will want to increase this setting to match the amount of physical memory (RAM) you have in your system. HW_NOSOUND=ON (DEFAULT=OFF) Setting this to ON usually prevents your game from using your PC's internal speaker to make annoying noises. This setting does not turn off sound card support in games that attempt (but fail instead) to play under OS/2 Warp. Use the application's installation or setup features to control sound-card support. HW_ROM_TO_RAM=ON (DEFAULT=OFF) This setting, which enables copying ROM BIOS to faster RAM, usually improves performance slightly unless the system is memory-constrained. In some games, this slight improvement can eliminate screen flicker. HW_TIMER=ON (DEFAULT=OFF) This should be set to ON for games and other timing-sensitive applications that need direct access to hardware timer ports. With this setting ON, the performance of background applications could suffer. It's the price paid for fast-action games. Where else could you receive a fax while playing DOOM? IDLE_SECONDS=NN (DEFAULT=0) Some programs, such as games and word processors, spend most of their time idling, waiting for user input. Because they were written under the assumption that they are the only application running, they may make heavy use of the processor during this time, polling the keyboard or another device in order to appear as responsive as possible to the user. This setting lets you tell OS/2 Warp how many seconds you would like OS/2 Warp to wait before interrupting the program's idle time. By setting it to 10, you essentially tell OS/2 Warp to allow the DOS program to do whatever it pleases in 10-second intervals during idle time. When IDLE_SENSITIVITY is set to 100 (disabling idle-detection), it doesn't make any difference what IDLE_SECONDS is set to. IDLE_SENSITIVITY=100 (DEFAULT=75) Set this to 100 for most DOS games to disable idle-detection, essentially telling OS/2 Warp not to interrupt your game just because you haven't responded for a certain period of time (defined by IDLE_SECONDS). INT_DURING_IO=ON (DAFAULT=OFF) Setting this to OFF causes DOS programs not to receive interrupts until after read/write is done. It should be left ON for multimedia applications to avoid choppy audio. KBD_ALTHOME_BYPASS=OFF (DEFAULT=OFF) Some DOS games display great graphics even in a windowed DOS session. By pressing Alt+Home, you can toggle between running the game in full-screen or in a window. Other programs are not so well-behaved, and can even fail if using Alt+Home. In those cases and whenever the application itself uses the Alt+Home key sequence, KBD_ALTHOME_BYPASS should be set to ON, having OS/2 Warp pass the Alt+Home key sequence along to the application. KBD_CTRL_BYPASS In the case where a DOS game uses either the Ctrl+Esc or Alt+Esc key sequences or when the game does bad things to the screen when you try to switch back to the OS/2 Warp desktop from your game, you should set this to either CTRL_ESC or ALT_ESC. MOUSE_EXCLUSIVE_ACCESS=ON (DEFAULT=OFF) For most games, this can be set to ON to eliminate a second cursor and to give your game more complete control over the mouse pointer. SESSION_PRIORITY=32 (DEFAULT=1) For most games, this should be set to 32 to help the applications run faster. The setting of 1 causes it to run the fastest it can of all applications in the system that have a user interface. VIDEO_8514A_XGA_IOTRAP=OFF (DEFAULT=ON) For most games, this should be set to OFF to provide faster, unrestricted access to the video device. VIDEO_FASTPASTE (DEFAULT=OFF) In a few cases where a game seems unresponsive, setting this to ON can provide a minor benefit. VIDEO_RETRACE_EMULATION=OFF (DEFAULT=OFF) This should be left OFF for games and graphical applications to improve performance. XMS_MEMORY_LIMIT=2048 (DEFAULT=2048) Use this setting to increase the amount of XMS (Extended) memory available to an application or to provide additional memory for the use of DOS_HIGH and DOS_UMB. In general, it's a good idea to leave this number a few megabytes less than the amount of physical memory the system has. REMEMBER: for best performance close all windows and applications, especially other DOS applications, before running the game. Leaving other applications open can steal CPU time from the game, thus slowing it down. (Although it is possible to do high speed downloads while playing games, you probably shouldn't.)