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Run old games in DOSBox in the browser

naclbox.com

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Re: Run old games in DOSBox in the browser

#21

Post by zerd »

nolok wrote: post #19
cool-RR wrote: post #16

Totally awesome. Though I kinda wonder, why Simon the Sorcerer, that used to run on a 386, now takes 100% of a processor core of a Core 2 Duo.

You have to realize that not only are performances of nacl probably going to improve with time, but more importantly this is not a port of the game in nacl, this is a port of the game, running in the dosbox emulator running in nacl (Dosbox emulate a whole old computer, which then load the game). Redoing such a game from scartcg in Nacl and getting rid of the emulator layer would have much better performances.

Another reason is explained on the website:

"Currently NaClBox is using far more CPU than it should. This is because the current version of SDL for Native Client has a bug that will crash the browser when you navigate away from it. To avoid that, I had to revert back to an older version of the SDL port that has high CPU utilization."

Re: Run old games in DOSBox in the browser

#23

Post by leoc »

kleiba wrote: post #5
buster wrote: post #2

If this isn't clear to someone: This needs Chrome and the Native Client. From the page: Please Note: You must have Native Client enabled in Chrome 12 or 13 for this game to work in your browser. To enable Native Client, do the following: Go to "about:flags" in your address bar (without quotes) Click "Enable" next to Native Client Go to "about:plugins" in your address bar (again, without quotes) Occasionally you will…

...thus it would be nice to change the headline from "..in the browser" to "..in Chrome".

In the long term, it would be preferable to fix the browser.

Re: Run old games in DOSBox in the browser

#24

Post by vmind »

mirrorskin wrote: post #7

Looks interesting, but after activating Native Client, I just see a black box in Chrome 15.0.849.1 dev on OS X 10.6.8 – anybody else has that issue? Or do the games only work on Windows?

Looks like the dosbox is loaded depending on which version of chrome you're running, and there's only 12 and 13 up, so 14/15 tries to get a file that doesn't exist.

Bit of silly coding, given the ABI is fixed from 13 onwards.

Re: Run old games in DOSBox in the browser

#25

Post by jbk »

jbri wrote: post #8
ck2 wrote: post #6

Native client is a horribly bad idea on so many levels. Wiz-bang demos aren't enough to distract from the danger. Now trojans have one huge, lovely target. Just change browser settings and boom, easy attack. This in combination with hiding everything from users (status bar, url bar, etc.) is super dangerous. It's activex all over again. Do it in webgl or otherwise, leave native code execution outside the browser.

In what way is NaCl worse than webgl?

Actually it is better for security.

Re: Run old games in DOSBox in the browser

#26

Post by jbk »

ck2 wrote: post #6

Native client is a horribly bad idea on so many levels. Wiz-bang demos aren't enough to distract from the danger. Now trojans have one huge, lovely target. Just change browser settings and boom, easy attack. This in combination with hiding everything from users (status bar, url bar, etc.) is super dangerous. It's activex all over again. Do it in webgl or otherwise, leave native code execution outside the browser.

Why so?

You don't have access to outside APIs with NaCL.

Re: Run old games in DOSBox in the browser

#27

Post by udp »

buster wrote: post #2

If this isn't clear to someone: This needs Chrome and the Native Client. From the page: Please Note: You must have Native Client enabled in Chrome 12 or 13 for this game to work in your browser. To enable Native Client, do the following: Go to "about:flags" in your address bar (without quotes) Click "Enable" next to Native Client Go to "about:plugins" in your address bar (again, without quotes) Occasionally you will…

Ah, well that isn't quite as impressive. I expected something like DOSBox compiled with Emscripten, with to render to.

Re: Run old games in DOSBox in the browser

#28

Post by nikcub »

ck2 wrote: post #6

Native client is a horribly bad idea on so many levels. Wiz-bang demos aren't enough to distract from the danger. Now trojans have one huge, lovely target. Just change browser settings and boom, easy attack. This in combination with hiding everything from users (status bar, url bar, etc.) is super dangerous. It's activex all over again. Do it in webgl or otherwise, leave native code execution outside the browser.

native client has the same sandbox and API access as javascript and chrome extensions

Re: Run old games in DOSBox in the browser

#29

Post by csl »

So, Native Client allows you to run out-of-process, sandboxed, _native_ code in Chrome.

Does that mean that the server needs to serve precompiled executables to visitors with different operating systems?

Re: Run old games in DOSBox in the browser

#30

Post by onedognight »

csl wrote: post #29

So, Native Client allows you to run out-of-process, sandboxed, _native_ code in Chrome. Does that mean that the server needs to serve precompiled executables to visitors with different operating systems?

The code is OS independent, but processor dependent (Currently i386 and arm).
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