0MHz DOS Collection 2024.03.20 Released

[vamp13]

Is it normal that some games like Heretic often have stutters or hiccups where the screen freezes for like a split second. Is there anything I can do on my side to make the experience smoother?

[MiSTerTea]

How do game saves work? Are they in each individual VHD? What if I wanted to backup the game saves of all installed games?

Save game files are stored on each individual VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) that is mounted as Drive C: (IDE 0-0) because this is where the game files are stored. Some games allow you to choose a different drive to save to, but generally it will place the save games where the rest of the game files are.

Once you quit a game you should be at the DOS prompt where the game files are...

If you then type DIR /OD (and then press ENTER) it will provide a directory listing of all the files in order by date.
(The DIR /OD is not case-sensitive, so you could type it in as lower case as well such as: dir /od)

The files at the end of the list are the ones that were last changed and will generally show you the config and saved game files.

To make a backup of every saved game would mean going through each VHD and locating the save files then copying them to another drive.

I would recommend only backing up the game that you're currently playing rather than doing a wholesale backup for every game.

You can mount a floppy disk to transfer files to/from VHD.

You can grab a blank floppy image file from here:
https://archive.org/details/blank-floppy

Also WinImage is a nice program for working with floppy Images in Windows.
https://archive.org/download/win-image/winima90.zip

I'd suggest making a copy of the blank image and name it something like ThisGame_Saves.img (Where ThisGame is the name of your game).

Mount this image file as Floppy A: (or Floppy B:) and then type a copy command that will copy your save game files to the A: (or B:) drive.

Making a backup of every save game you have would be a complicated bash script on the Linux side involving something like: mounting each VHD one by one, checking for each game's save files, backing them up, etc. This would be a lot of tedious work that would need to be updated every time a new game is added. Alternatively, it can be accomplished per game by just copying saves to floppies.

P.S.
I'd like to note for anyone creating VHDs to remember to allow enough extra space on the VHD for save game files. Every game has different file sizes for saved games, as well as different number of saves that can be created. Thanks.

[Fuzzball]

How do game saves work? Are they in each individual VHD? What if I wanted to backup the game saves of all installed games?

Save game files are stored on each individual VHD

That is a shame and, for me personally, is a rather big disadvantage. I would want to periodically backup all saves rather than doing it individually.

[Emubastard]

How do game saves work? Are they in each individual VHD? What if I wanted to backup the game saves of all installed games?

Save game files are stored on each individual VHD

That is a shame and, for me personally, is a rather big disadvantage. I would want to periodically backup all saves rather than doing it individually.

Sadly there is no good game save mechanism. As was with these DOS games at the time of their inception. No NVRAM or anything like that. Some games like the early Ultima's or Wizardry did allow you to mount an A: disk for a game characters but as has been pointed out, most games just save data in their directory.

I don't think it's likely anything would be added to the core either to help the backing up of these save game files.

Play your game, overwrite with the contents with the ZIP if you want to set it back to it's original state. Not much different than what we did in the old days with re-installing games.

Not all the suckage can be removed from DOS. That's the experience.

-=Emubastard=-

[virtuali]

The main problem is Dos is quite limited and there were no standards: almost every game saved its data in its own way.

Sure, something can be done, it's a lot of work, because each game must dealt with some custom treatment but, for example, it might be possible to do something like this, see two possible approaches:

1) A separate .VHD used for saves, like Amigavision.

2) Using the Shared folder.

In both cases, the batch file that starts the game should do something like this, in this order:

• Check if some game folder exists on the drive mounted either on the 2nd VHD or the Shared folder. If using the Shared folder, it should first call MISTERFS.EXE to mount the Shared folder on some drive letter.

• If the folder exists, it might contain saved data from a previous session so, it might be enough to copy all files from there, to the actual game directory.

• If we used MISTERFS (because of the shared folder), use MISTERFS /u to unload it, since it takes a fair amount of memory

• Starts the game, which will eventually create or modify the saved game files

• If we used the shared folder, call MISTERFS to mount the drive with the saved files again

• Copy all files newer than a certain date back on the mounted drive, so they'll be ready to be restored in the next session.

To standardize things a bit .VHDs containing the stock file for the game might be configured to not have recent dates, if the original files have a date that matched the files as they were released, it might be a good idea to set all files to have either the same date or not newer than, let's say, 1-1-2000, this way the batch file can be very similar for every game, and assume that every file newer than 2000 ( or 2010, or whatever ) must be something new that didn't belong to the stock .VHD, so it must be a saved game, or an option file, a joystick calibration file, all things that are supposed to be saved.

[Armakuni]

Has anyone had an issue trying to run 7th Guest ?

It starts to run but always stops with a critical error has occurred

[Fuzzball]

Has anyone had an issue trying to run 7th Guest ?

It starts to run but always stops with a critical error has occurred

Same here.

[Emubastard]

Has anyone had an issue trying to run 7th Guest ?

It starts to run but always stops with a critical error has occurred

I was just playing it without issue. So I'm not sure what could be going on. How recently did you acquire it?

-=Emubastard=-

[ItalianGrandma]

Has anyone had an issue trying to run 7th Guest ?

It starts to run but always stops with a critical error has occurred

Same here.

The MGL that is on archive has a typo in the path to the disc at the moment ("guestc" instead of "guest"). You just need to change this:

Code: Select all

<file delay="0" type="s" index="4" path="media/7th guestc/7th guest-1.chd"/>

To this:

Code: Select all

<file delay="0" type="s" index="4" path="media/7th guest/7th guest-1.chd"/>

[ZForceFFC]

I primarily use a PS5 controller for MISTer gaming, but the games on this collection seem to be detecting the PS5 controller as a mouse (i.e. it will let me use the touch pad as a mouse cursor and pressing it does a left click) Has anyone had any luck getting a PS5 controller to work with games like HEretic, Doom or Jazz Jackrabbit?

[Emubastard]

Has anyone had an issue trying to run 7th Guest ?

It starts to run but always stops with a critical error has occurred

Fixed in latest archive.

-=Emubstard=-

[ItalianGrandma]

I primarily use a PS5 controller for MISTer gaming, but the games on this collection seem to be detecting the PS5 controller as a mouse (i.e. it will let me use the touch pad as a mouse cursor and pressing it does a left click) Has anyone had any luck getting a PS5 controller to work with games like HEretic, Doom or Jazz Jackrabbit?

I use a PS5 controller too. I have some instructions here. At the moment it does require using the latest unstable MiSTer main file: https://github.com/0mhz-net/0mhz-colle ... 2025660853

[vamp13]

Has anyone had any luck getting a PS5 controller to work with games like HEretic, Doom or Jazz Jackrabbit?

Unrelated to your question, but has Heretic been running well on your Mister? Mine has plenty of visual stuttering. I've only been able to make a minor improvement by going to the in-game options and removing all text from item pickups.

[Emubastard]

Has anyone had any luck getting a PS5 controller to work with games like HEretic, Doom or Jazz Jackrabbit?

Unrelated to your question, but has Heretic been running well on your Mister? Mine has plenty of visual stuttering. I've only been able to make a minor improvement by going to the in-game options and removing all text from item pickups.

It does not run great but is "probably" running as well as it can on this core. Unless there is some open hexen or other FastDoom like method that can be applied here it's probably not going to get any better.

Suggestions welcome.

-=Emubastard=-

[explosplankton]

When I load a game from the dosgames menu or open the ao486 core, either way, the text on screen is very blurry and I cant seem to get any game to load. As far as I know I followed the setup instructions exactly. What would cause this? No other core is affected and I was previously able to play dos games normally with the too 300 pack.

[remax]

I use a PS5 controller too. I have some instructions here. At the moment it does require using the latest unstable MiSTer main file: https://github.com/0mhz-net/0mhz-colle ... 2025660853

WHOOOOO !!!! Very good news, as it will be a much cleaner way of handling joystick support (even though JoyEmu were doing a decent job).

[BabaYaga326]

Anyone know a way to move all games over at once rather than individually one at a time?

[remax]

I use a PS5 controller too. I have some instructions here. At the moment it does require using the latest unstable MiSTer main file: https://github.com/0mhz-net/0mhz-colle ... 2025660853

WHOOOOO !!!! Very good news, as it will be a much cleaner way of handling joystick support (even though JoyEmu were doing a decent job).

It works wonderfully, but i guess it's not portable and the input file is dependant on the joystick used, there is no way to produce an universal input file, or am i wrong ?

[Emubastard]

MT-32 configurations incoming. Enjoy.

-=Emubastard=-

[vamp13]

It does not run great but is "probably" running as well as it can on this core. Unless there is some open hexen or other FastDoom like method that can be applied here it's probably not going to get any better.

Suggestions welcome.

-=Emubastard=-

Thank you for answering. A recent video by "Video Game Esoterica" seemingly stated that Heretic could be run at full speed in this 0Mhz DOS collection.

Apparently he'll be posting a video soon on how to pack our own games into this collection, which I'm looking forward to so I can try adding some games myself like Dark Seed 1 & 2.

[ItalianGrandma]

I use a PS5 controller too. I have some instructions here. At the moment it does require using the latest unstable MiSTer main file: https://github.com/0mhz-net/0mhz-colle ... 2025660853

WHOOOOO !!!! Very good news, as it will be a much cleaner way of handling joystick support (even though JoyEmu were doing a decent job).

It works wonderfully, but i guess it's not portable and the input file is dependant on the joystick used, there is no way to produce an universal input file, or am i wrong ?

Since many controllers will have different vid:pid IDs, it will be hard to have universal mappings. The best that could probably be done is to include an extra folder of common controller configs per game, but that’s kind of a tall order and would require lots of help from the community to get working. Not to mention the fact that everyone is going to have different preferences for what the standards should be on a per-game basis.

[BabaYaga326]

Anyone know a way to move all games over at once rather than individually one at a time?

For anyone who wants to try it: https://github.com/mrchrisster/0mhz-col ... nloader.sh

[MiSTerTea]

MT-32 configurations incoming. Enjoy.

-=Emubastard=-

Nice!

[ZeroB]

I get a black screen for every game I tried, lol I even opened the OSD menu and manually inserted VHD files into all IDEs, but nothing seems to work

[midline_slippy]

Anyone know a way to move all games over at once rather than individually one at a time?

For anyone who wants to try it: https://github.com/mrchrisster/0mhz-col ... nloader.sh

This is an awesome tool and VERY much appreciated.
However...

If you currently attempt to download the complete collection, its going to take 24+ Hours! Also, unless I missed something in the code (very possible), it keeps the .zip and the extracted files? Hope you have 100gb+ free space avail...

Not being a coder, I don't know how hard it would be to implement this, but, having an option to NOT download certain games would be HIGHLY advisable!! and something I personally would love to have. The Pocket updater does this. You get the option to Update All, or choose which packages (games in this instance). So the first time you were to run the script, it creates an ini file. Then (assuming you want to choose what packages) it asks you yes or no for every game when it does the mgl check, saving your choice in the ini file. So, when you run the script in the future, it remembers what you didn't want to download, auto inputting that choice and only asking you for new games not download or chosen not to download. If you want to downlaod a game you previously said no to, delete the ini and go thru the process of saying no to everything else again.

[Swainy]

Guys, I’m having trouble getting this working.

WOKanx8.jpeg (269.39 KiB) Viewed 8543 times

r9PYTYy.jpeg (307.15 KiB) Viewed 8543 times

I was using the Top 300 VHD games before and I think that’s what’s stopping this from working. I’ve not used this core in ages though.

[chunky_tesco]

i use the following command to download as I don't have the MT-32 pi hat

Code: Select all

ia download 0mhz-dos --glob="*" --exclude="*(MT-32)*"

and the following bash script to unzip what i need into merged folders for SFTP/copying to the microSD.

Example usage to get modified zip files within the last 2 hours

Code: Select all

./0mhz_unzip.sh -h 2 

0mhz_unzip.sh

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

# Check if the script is called with two arguments
if [ "$#" -ne 2 ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 -h <hours>"
    exit 1
fi

# Check if the first argument is "-h"
if [ "$1" != "-h" ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 -h <hours>"
    exit 1
fi

# Check if the second argument is a valid number
if ! [[ "$2" =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]]; then
    echo "Invalid input: Second argument must be a number."
    exit 1
fi

# Directory to search for files
directory="/path/to"

# Calculate the time in seconds based on the provided hours
hours="$2"
seconds=$((hours * 60))
current_time=$(date +%s)

# Find files in the directory modified within the specified time

find "$directory" -name "*.zip" -mmin "-$seconds" | while read -r zip; do
                unzip -n "$zip"
        done
#fi

[BabaYaga326]

Anyone know a way to move all games over at once rather than individually one at a time?

For anyone who wants to try it: https://github.com/mrchrisster/0mhz-col ... nloader.sh

This is an awesome tool and VERY much appreciated.
However...

If you currently attempt to download the complete collection, its going to take 24+ Hours! Also, unless I missed something in the code (very possible), it keeps the .zip and the extracted files? Hope you have 100gb+ free space avail...

Not being a coder, I don't know how hard it would be to implement this, but, having an option to NOT download certain games would be HIGHLY advisable!! and something I personally would love to have. The Pocket updater does this. You get the option to Update All, or choose which packages (games in this instance). So the first time you were to run the script, it creates an ini file. Then (assuming you want to choose what packages) it asks you yes or no for every game when it does the mgl check, saving your choice in the ini file. So, when you run the script in the future, it remembers what you didn't want to download, auto inputting that choice and only asking you for new games not download or chosen not to download. If you want to downlaod a game you previously said no to, delete the ini and go thru the process of saying no to everything else again.

On your first point, I agree. It took me just about 24 hours for the script to download all of the required files. When setting up my Mister, I instinctually bought the biggest SD card I could find (1TB) knowing that at some point I would need that space. If you're not interested in having the entire library, then you can already pick and choose what games you want to install using this tutorial (highly recommended!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdVYIupwil0&t=175s

I took a look at my SD card content after running the script. The only ZIP's that I have on my SD card are the respective VHD files (they look like ZIP files). The VHD files are required. Therefore, I don't think you need 100GB+ of free space. I grabbed the entire library and it was 25.4GB total.

At the moment, the script seems to only support downloading the full set (which should be under 30GB). Addressing another of your concerns, the script only downloads images not in your library, so if you have the VHD and MGL points to that VHD, it won't touch a game you already have. Running the full script again only looks for new games that you don't yet have in your library. It shouldn't overwrite any game saves.

Perhaps down the road they will add an a la carte download option? Follow him here:
https://x.com/chrisshelms/status/177323 ... 61075?s=20

I just started checking out a few DOS games and they boot straight up to the game. Much easier! And USB keyboard/mouse was recognized straight away as well.

[midline_slippy]

I’m at about 33hrs right now with the script running and it’s not finished yet (I have gig+ speed internet). I already had a couple of the games installed. Looks like it deletes the zip files after extracting them. That’s good. I was worried about the size, as I was about to download additional individual games instead as you suggested, but this was MUCH faster and easier to install all of them using the script and then delete what I didn’t want. If I could just mark what I did and didn’t want, it would save both time and bandwidth. Especially considering the overall size (which I did initially overestimate).

[limi]

Hope you have 100gb+ free space avail...

One of the main points of the 0MHz DOS Collection is that it’s split up. You will never need double the space of however many games you download to unpack the games — just whatever the largest single game is.