«

[The Fifth Horseman]

personally, I have yet to use a frontend for DosBox. So far, messing around in the config file is enough.

[Japo]

...no I wasn't being ironic or funny. I really think that would be cool. I'm thinking of people who never used DOS but would still like to play the cool games of yester-year. You know, like our kids one day. (Personally, my kids are still to young but one day...)[/b]

Okay that was my final impression, it's only that I didn't want to seem stupid going seriously for a joke. But my comment is that console games were programmed with full knowledge of the platform, while PCs were 99% compatible but each hardware setting along with ROM, DOS version, drivers, etc., created its own little unique enviroment for games, out of a unique combination of hardware and software manufacturers and products. And yet every DOS program had to guess what would it find to a very low level, unlike Windows now who takes most of that work onto itself providing a more standard enviroment for external programs. (I'm no computer expert so am I saying nonsense?)

If it's been made with console roms I guess it would surely had been made with DOS games as well if it were equally feasible. But of course it's a good idea, only hard to implemet it seems.

Infact, cooler still would be a system that would wrap a DOS archive into a single XP compatible executable (and datafile) and take all the work away from newbies. Esentally all you'd have to do is double-click and play. Either that or make a DOSBox executable package that was a DOSBox executable set up to load and run a game that you just drop into the directory and go. Actually, that might be possible. I'd have to look into it.[/b]

Hm, that doesn't look unlike one of Russ's macros or something of the like packed along with each game. We might be seeing something like that some day. By the way Russ, that's, er, cool, and, weird. Interesting.

I can't say much about the frontends. Both are windows only.
Boxer was made for a much older version of DOSBox. So it misses a lot of settings compared to
D-Fend.[/b]

Yes I was only asking about the most popular front-end --actually the one dosbox.sourceforge.net links-- and the one I use. But if anybody knows about others for any platform let him feel free to inform us. Anyway I'm also Windows-only so... :P

So, what are those settings which Boxer misses and what real practical purposes do they serve? However given tha D-Fend causes unstability and other nasty stuff, if I were to expand from Boxer I think I'd go for plain DOSBox like most of you, I think I could easily hadle it if I just tried. It's only that I used Boxer the first time I used DOSBox, and I haven't needed nor bothered to learn more since then.

[Data]

So, what are those settings which Boxer misses and what real practical purposes do they serve? However given tha D-Fend causes unstability and other nasty stuff, if I were to expand from Boxer I think I'd go for plain DOSBox like most of you, I think I could easily hadle it if I just tried. It's only that I used Boxer the first time I used DOSBox, and I haven't needed nor bothered to learn more since then.
[/b]

Well DOSBox sets missing items to it's default value and those are very reasonable.
The scaler section has lot of interresting scalers in them (which boxer is missing)

What are you linux? Isn't there a front end for linux or are you too hard core for front ends?
[/b]

The discussion was/is about Boxer and D-Fend. Hence my remark was totally valid. There are frontends for linux as well. (All of them being cross-platform actually.) Using a frontend has not always to do with the hard coreness of it's user. I know of very advanged DOSBox users which have over 1000 profiles setup in D-Fend and burned the whole tree to a DVD (combined with D-Fend and DOSbox).
It's just a matter on how much time you want to invest in keeping your old games playable.

The idea of zips is interresting. It brings up a question on who should handle the zips...
Should DOSBox get that intelligence or is it clearly a task for a frontend ?

PS: I've never seen any proof of D-Fend making games inplayable. I think it might have been configuration problem by the user.

[melthas]

PS: I've never seen any proof of D-Fend making games inplayable. I think it might have been configuration problem by the user.
[/b]

I certainly agree that. D-Fend doesn't do something different than DosBOX does. It only allows you to change the settings as you want. When you are done with the settings it saves a special dosbox.conf for each game. When you start the game, DosBOx works with your settings and the game begins, D-Fend is no longer in effect (Please correct me if I'm wrong). I had nearly completed Indiana Jones-Fate of Atlantis until my saves were gone but I don't think it is because of D-Fend. It would surely happen in solid DosBOX too or it's just because of another program.

BTW, I didn't use Boxer but, from what I've seen in the screenshots, it surely misses many settings. D-Fend has all the configs available. If you really like to use an autoexec.bat D-Fend allows it and it can also override the game config depending on your selection.

Many games won't work flawless on my machine and I just click/unclick boxes in D-Fend menu until I get to the right configuration. I find it much easier than messing with the conf file.

About executable ZIPs, it would be really cool but I don't think it's possible. Every PC would require different configurations for different games. Many games working with certain configurations on some machines wouldn't work on the others.

[JimmyJ]

Also, when it comes to old games, they have many executables in the same folder, dosbox wouldn't know which one to pick :P