There is some cdrom ioctl stuff in dosbox which you might or might not
already know, could be useful.

Hi wd,

D-Fend Reloaded 0.4.0 will support all three ioctl modes ("-ioctl", "-noioctl" and no special modifier).

I hope with this the support for the DOSBox 0.72 features will be nearly complete. And like already in the 0.3.x releases there is an increasing number of (by default deactivated) setup options for new DOSBox CSV features. So D-Fend Reloaded should also be prepared for the next DOSBox releases.[/img]

was more talking about the
CreateFile(PChar(VolumeName),GENERIC_READ or GENERIC_WRITE,0,nil,OPEN_EXISTING,0,0)
stuff 😀

Alexander - at first sight I am sure your users will appreciate the spelled out access methods listed, but did you see my earlier post about how frontend authors are effectively inventing a new language? Image a user coming here, with a problem about an installer insisting that it needs a CD in the drive. And everyone here shouts "Use the -ioctl option". And the poor users says "WHAT??!!?? I don't have such a thing - NOWHERE!"

You could argue that we (the old hacks) should learn the new language, but I doubt it will happen.

Consider adding the words -ioctl and -noioctl (e.g. in parentheses) to your "new language" options.

thanks.

Hi MiniMax,

yes, I think adding a "-ioctl" etc. would be a good idea. I have already thought of doing something similar in the profile editor. But one the other side things like this might confuse some users, too. There are users who understand "simple word" but for some reason not "simple word (unknown word)".

So at the moment I will add it here but do not change the profile editor. If I have to much time on day and start writing some help file, I will of course for all settings mention the corresponding DOSBox setting.

It's always a hard job to make a program real end-user friendly (by going away from special technical terms as far as possible) and not loosing any functionality on the other side. So thank you for the advice.

Greetings
Alexander

It is hard to make everybody happy. Just keep an eye out for it, and look at how other programs that you yourself use has tried to solve this issue.

Hi everyone,

I'm a complete newbie to DOSBox and DFR, but I've been enjoying them a lot so far (about 2 weeks on my pc now). So far I've been able to correctly set up and play Tesserae, Lemmings, Lost Vikings and 7th Guest (latter one nicely running of ISO-images), and I've found a minor bug in DFR when setting up profiles for them.

When you add a profile through the wizard, the info you enter in the TDataGrid on the Program Information tab (genre, year etc.) is not reflected in the main window from DFR when closing the "Create new profile" dialog with OK. You have to edit the newly created profile (simply Edit and OK rightaway) to have the main window show the info.

When creating a profile with Add or Add from template, that info is reflected immediately after closing the dialog.

On a much more positive note though: big thumbs up for the creators of DOSBox and DFR! Thanks, guys (for making me feel old now 😉 )

Hi Ardent_Spirit,

Ardent_Spirit wrote:

When you add a profile through the wizard, the info you enter in the TDataGrid on the Program Information tab (genre, year etc.) is not reflected in the main window from DFR when closing the "Create new profile" dialog with OK. You have to edit the newly created profile (simply Edit and OK rightaway) to have the main window show the info.

Thank you, I have justed fixed the bug. Without your comment this bug would have made it also in the completely redesigned new profile wizard in DFR 0.4.0. It was a simple forgotten ReloadCache when closing the wizard. So the profiles on disk were ok, only in the games list the information were missing until program restart or opening and closing the profile editor.

BTW I have made some progress with the new features for D-Fend Reloaded 0.4.0 over the easter days, but there is still a lot to do. My release target for 0.4.0 is still end of April / beginning of May.

Is there any way to have saved, separate keymapper settings for each game with this frontend?

Hi Perplexia,

at the moment there is no way to configurate a keymapper file for each profile directly (=via a nice edit field with a "file open" dialog to choose one). But you can define a keymapper file via the per profile custom settings (see "DOSBox settings" page in the profile editor). Just write this lines in the custom settings edit box:

1[sdl]
2mapperfile=YourKeyMappingFile.txt

But keep in mind D-Fend Reloaded won't take special care for the keymapper file when building installer packages or uninstalling the game. (Only if you store it in the game directory it will be included / deleted together with the other game files.)

Perhaps the next version of D-Fend Reloaded will have real support for per profile keymapping settings. At the moment I'm thinking if this should go to my already very long 0.4.0 todo. (19 new things are already finished, 10 bugs fixed and 10 remaining open points on the todo.)

It would be nice to have the "real support" as you refer to it and I certainly won't complain if it has it with a later release, but honestly, just the fact that I can set up distinct settings for each game through the custom code makes me quite happy. I finally found a frontend that has all the features I want. Thanks for the code.

Hi everybody,
I have just finished a first beta release of D-Fend Reloaded 0.4.0. You can find a download page for the beta release here:
http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/BetaDownload.html
I have not uploaded it to the regular Sourceforge files page because this beta release is some kind of semi-public, so: Please only download it, if you want to test it. Do not use this beta release on your normal games database. (And for the translators: This beta is not string complete. I will release a second beta version in about two weeks. And this release should be a "ready for translation" version.)

The current release is ment for testing only, so if you find a bug or think there is something missing which can be added within the next two weeks, just tell me.

For the moment: Have fun with the new version.
Alexander

Mmmm... Seems stable enough, although I've backed up the game profiles just in case.

I've found something weird. Trying to figure out how the ScummVM support works, I've noticed the ScummVM section on the Options dialog. I've set up the program folder, but when I tell DFR to show me the list of supported games I get an error message: "file \scummvm.exe doesn't exist".

The version of ScummVM I'm using is v0.11.0.

Hi Neville,

Neville wrote:

Mmmm... Seems stable enough, although I've backed up the game profiles just in case.

I do not think the database handling of DFR 0.4.0 Beta 1 is instable (it's the same than in 0.3.2). I have written the "save your settings" for some other reason: The old installer copyed the \FreeDOS folder to the VirtualHD folder of the currently logged in user. So other users on the same computer won't find the FreeDOS files. The 0.4.0 installer copies the files to a NewUserData\FreeDOS subfolder of the program folder. And D-Fend Reloaded itself copies the files to the VirtualHD folder on first run (on each profile). Additionally the update installer will try to copy the FreeDOS files from the current user account to the NewUserData folder (because the update installer does not contain FreeDOS). Perhaps this things will change again before the final release (ok, not very likely, but perhaps). With saying "do not use this on your normal installation" I want to avoid users having some intermediate beta filestructure in their profile folders.

Neville wrote:

I've set up the program folder, but when I tell DFR to show me the list of supported games I get an error message: "file \scummvm.exe doesn't exist".

The ScummVM setup dialog bug is very easy to solve: Close the dialog (with "Ok") and reopen it and it will work. The "read ScummVM list" uses the ScummVM path from the program configuration but the setup dialog data are not written back to the configuration until you haven't closed the setup dialog. (In Beta 2 this will be fixed of course.)

Just checked, the ScummVM setup bug disappears if I do what you just said.

BTW, I have one question, not related to this last beta: Which command line WAV to MP3 compressors work well with DFR? I still haven't tested that, just realised when I saw the blank field in the Options dialog.

Very nice job with the newer and better d-fend frontend its very useful and easy to imgmount the games with multiple cds or games that you cant get running with out the cd.

Hi Neville,

Neville wrote:

Which command line WAV to MP3 compressors work well with DFR?

I have only tested D-Fend Reloaded with Lame. The "search program file" button next to the mp3 encoder edit field will also search for lame.exe. But for copyright reasons a cannot include Lame to the D-Fend Reloaded package. (The source code of Lame is available at Sourceforge, but only the source code, no binaries.) D-Fend Reloaded should be able to work with nearly every mp3 encoder. The parameters used when calling the mp3 and the ogg encoder can be configurated via the DFend.ini file:

1[ProgramSets]
2WaveEncMp3Parameters=-h -V 0 "%s" "%s"
3WaveEncOggParameters="%s" --output="%s" --quality=10

This setup options are also available in version 0.3.2. Beta 2 of DFR 0.4.0 will bring GUI elements in the setup dialog for this two things.

Thanks for the answer, I will see if I can get some nice music captured. That title song from "Lotus III" could be a good candidate.

I'm using the "Oh no more lemmings" sound (of course captured via DOSBox) as ring tone on my phone... 😀

And if I would let it ring for 4 minutes one could hear all little lemmings coming home.