Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

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almeath
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Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by almeath »

In Quest for Glory V the soft cursor does not work correctly in full screen mode. It completely disappears unless the cursor is moved back and forth rapidly across the screen, which basically makes the game unplayable.

When I switch to window mode and set the hard cursor to true, everything works normally, but the game has to be played in a tiny 640x480 window.

Since there is no way to get the hard cursor working when in full screen mode, is there instead a way to force integer or nearest neighbor scaling while still in window mode? Ideally I would like to triple the 640x480 to 1920x1440 in window mode.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

The hard cursor only works in window mode.
You can try different sizes in combination with forcing integer or nearest neighbor scaling.

I suppose you do not have a retina screen. Then try integer scaling with for instance window size 900x660.

Edit: No, sorry, that does not work. That size plus integer scaling in full-screen would work, but then you do not have the hard cursor.
Last edited by Ronald P. Regensburg on Mon Mar 25, 2019 7:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

You can, of course, decrease the resolution of your screen in System Preferences on the host macOS. That will make the SheepShaver window appear larger on your screen.
almeath
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by almeath »

Yes, I could switch to non-native resolutions but at the cost of the image being blurry. Perhaps in the future a screen magnification setting could be implemented, similar to the one in Mini vMac.
kanjitalk755
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by kanjitalk755 »

I found that if the integer scaling is used, the hard cursor can be used in full screen mode.

I have implemented that.

https://github.com/kanjitalk755/macemu

You have to set the preference file as follows.

Code: Select all

hardcursor true
scale_integer true
scale_nearest true
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

I will post a new build with this and other recent changes as soon as I have the time to do that.
almeath
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by almeath »

kanjitalk755 wrote:I found that if the integer scaling is used, the hard cursor can be used in full screen mode.

I have implemented that.

https://github.com/kanjitalk755/macemu

You have to set the preference file as follows.

Code: Select all

hardcursor true
scale_integer true
scale_nearest true
That is excellent! Works perfectly, and mouse responsiveness is vastly improved. :smile:
almeath
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by almeath »

I have tested the fullscreen hardware cursor on 30+ games and it works 99% of the time. So far, I have identified a couple of games where it does not work:

1. All the Lemmings games - when forcing the hardware cursor, the custom in-game cross-hair cursor shows up as black instead of green, including in windowed mode.

2. In the World at War games (Operation Crusader, Stalingrad, D-Day America Invades) the custom green colored in-game cursor appears to be operating as a software cursor (as moving the cursor outside the borders of the game window does not work and it has the noticeable lag of software mode). When the games are quit, the hardware cursor automatically activates again when back on the MacOS desktop.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

It is a long time ago when I tested the hardware vs. software cursor extensively. I remember, while using the hardware cursor, that for software-specific images for which the hardware cursor had no equivalent, the software cursor was used. I suppose that is what you experience.
almeath
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by almeath »

That makes sense. It is just interesting that some games behave in the opposite manner, Quest for Glory V being a case in point. It uses custom cursors, but these only work in hardware mode within SheepShaver. I suppose it comes down to the specifics of how the individual games were coded.
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by kanjitalk755 »

The hard cursor of SheepShaver supports 1bit/pixel(B/W) only.
almeath wrote:1. All the Lemmings games - when forcing the hardware cursor, the custom in-game cross-hair cursor shows up as black instead of green, including in windowed mode.
Perhaps this is 1bit/pixel, but the color table is ignored.
almeath wrote:2. In the World at War games (Operation Crusader, Stalingrad, D-Day America Invades) the custom green colored in-game cursor appears to be operating as a software cursor (as moving the cursor outside the borders of the game window does not work and it has the noticeable lag of software mode). When the games are quit, the hardware cursor automatically activates again when back on the MacOS desktop.
If it is not 1bit/pixel, the soft cursor is used.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Thanks. In all these years this is the first time I got a clear explanation why the hardware cursor is sometimes replaced by the software cursor.
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adespoton
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by adespoton »

Hmm... would it be possible to add a prefs-based hard-override that used the default cursor as a hard cursor? It wouldn't be useable in all cases, but there are many use cases where a black arrow with no lag is preferable to a colour cursor with lag.
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ClockWise
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by ClockWise »

Just reading old posts and feel like chiming in that Quest For Glory V is probably best emulated in Dosbox.

Indeed, you can buy all five games in the series on GOG for ten bucks: https://www.gog.com/game/quest_for_glory

Off topic, I know, but I played a whole lot of those Sierra games back in the day...
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by adespoton »

Quest for Glory V is the only game in the Q4G series that's not playable under ScummVM. It plays fine, however, under WineSkin -- it's a Windows game, so it may have difficulty under DOSBox.

I believe it was also eventually released for free, so you can download it from a number of places if you don't want to go via GoG.
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by ClockWise »

Yeah, I was first going to recommend SCUMMVM, but then I realized that it isn't a 2D game. According to GOG the whole set is emulated via Dosbox, so I guess that handles it at least acceptably. And ten bucks for the whole series is a heckuva deal.
almeath
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by almeath »

It was released as a dual PC/Mac game in 1998. The minimum requirement is Windows 95/System 7.5. I know it is technically possible to get Windows 95 running under DOSBox but there are all sorts of problems with it.

Now that the hard cursor issue is fixed for full screen, it works very well in SheepShaver, essentially the same as under a Windows virtual machine in Parallels or VMware Fusion.

Incidentally, SheepShaver or VMs will be the only way to run this game on a Mac when macOS 10.15 removes 32 bit support and permanently breaks Wineskin compatibility. Maybe one day ScummVM will support it too.
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by ClockWise »

Oh, cool. Good to know that SheepShaver is useful in this context!
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adespoton
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by adespoton »

almeath wrote:Incidentally, SheepShaver or VMs will be the only way to run this game on a Mac when macOS 10.15 removes 32 bit support and permanently breaks Wineskin compatibility. Maybe one day ScummVM will support it too.
Seems to me it should still be possible to run Wineskin apps; 32-bit instruction support isn't going away, just 32-bit API support. So if Wineskin is re-compiled as a 64-bit app, it should still be able to load and run Win32 code inside.

I'll have to talk to the guys at portingteam and see if there's plans afoot for this.

[edit] ...or not.

Image

It should be possible to switch the wrapper, the Wineserver, quartz-wm-ws and WineskinX11 to 64-bit, but it appears the Windows executables are being presented directly to the OS, which likely isn't going to work.

[edit2] Hmm... Doh123's forums are broken. Going to post here instead:

We have a potential issue coming up:

https://flic.kr/p/2fGJD3t

Starting with 10.15 in September, 32-bit processes likely won't launch on OS X. As that image shows, there's lots of processes spawned by the current WineSkin that are 32-bit.

I figure 32-bit instructions should still work on the processor, but we're going to have to present everything to the OS wrapped in 64-bit code if the OS will launch it.

Probably best to at least get everything that converts to 64-bit easily done, so that any Win64 software will at least run in it.

Darwine/Winebottler/PlayOnMac/WineHQ guys will likely be facing similar issues.

Somehow we have to overcome this: https://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=23005

Possibly running inside the macOS hypervisor like Veertu does would work. Or running inside qemu-x86.
almeath
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by almeath »

Yes, 64-bit Wineskin does not avoid the problem of having to run all the underlying 32 bit processes. Those will just not run in 10.15 unless they are translated live or run in a virtualized environment.

At least wIth the imminent deadline, the development of a work-around seem to be gaining traction:

http://portingkit.com/smf/index.php?topic=875.0

Of course, in the long run we might not be able to stop Apple completely shutting down the whole show. If they switch to ARM architecture it would basically destroy x86 compatibility for good. Remember SoftPC and VirtualPC? Uggh.

Anyway, I have probably taken this way off topic.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Back to the cursor.

I noticed that when the hardware cursor is used in my latest build from kanjitalk755 source, cursor grabbing (control-F5) now makes the cursor disappear. This happens with the hardware cursor in both window mode and full-screen mode. I do not use cursor grabbing often, so I cannot tell when this issue was introduced.
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by kanjitalk755 »

It turned out that the issue existed since switching to SDL2.
The mouse grab operation is different from SDL1.2, so I don't know if it can be resolved.
Use the soft-cursor if you need the mouse grab.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Apparently the combination hard cursor and mouse grab is not used often, otherwise we would have heard about it sooner. I will adjust my setup manual.

Maybe it is possible to disable mouse grab with the hard cursor, to make it so that control-F5 does nothing when the hard cursor is active. No hurry, though.

Edit: I went to the setup manual to make the change and I see that it is already mentioned there. Forgot all about it. :oops:
Last edited by Ronald P. Regensburg on Thu May 02, 2019 1:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
kanjitalk755
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by kanjitalk755 »

Ronald P. Regensburg wrote:Maybe it is possible to disable mouse grab with the hard cursor, to make it so that control-F5 does nothing when the hard cursor is active. No hurry, though.
Changed as above.
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Re: Quest for Glory V - cursor problem

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Thanks. I posted a new build.
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