Yeah, I think any command-line syntax capable emulator would work.

With all due respect, I think DFR shouldn't add support for more platforms. It should focus in what already does well, running games through DOSBox, ScummVM and Windows.

That DFR is capable of much more is great news indeed, but there are already other options for other emulators, such as GoodFE.

Let's not get things mixed up.

I can see your point. A strictly DOS oriented launcher without all the clutter.

Then I wonder, can a smaller program be made by someone in the community that could create .prof files out of command-line syntax?

Neville wrote:

With all due respect, I think DFR shouldn't add support for more platforms. It should focus in what already does well, running games through DOSBox, ScummVM and Windows.

That DFR is capable of much more is great news indeed, but there are already other options for other emulators, such as GoodFE.

Well, you're right. There are allready good Multifrontends out there, like the emuControlCenter (btw. that's my favorite Frontend)
In this Frontend, you can also add Dos-Games, ScummVM & about 150 other Old Computer Systems.
(the Dosbox-Section in this Frontend is not so "comfortable" like DFR ! )
So I use DFR for my Dosgames.

But, I like the Idea to add other Old-Games-Systems in DFR.......
So you can use 1 Frontend for all Oldschool-Games/Systems.
Thats my point 😉

Maybe sometime Alexander want to make this real.....a Multifrontend called "DFend Reloaded Plus" 😁

As already said, D-Fend Reloaded is primary a DOSBox frontend. So I will not try to support everything. But I can think of some improvements for calling Windows games: Most other emulators are just Windows programs so everything we need to do is calling them with the right parameters. And if the emulator is more complex and need some advanced configuration then it's time for some other dedicated frontend for them.

At the moment I'm trying to finish DFR 08.b2. I haven't had any time during the week but will hopefully have some time on the weekend. So with some luck we will have 0.8b2 by the beginning of next week. And if 0.8 is done, we can think of any new features for 0.9.

Alexander wrote:

Most other emulators are just Windows programs so everything we need to do is calling them with the right parameters. And if the emulator is more complex and need some advanced configuration then it's time for some other dedicated frontend for them.

This sounds O.K. for me ! Primary DOS, secondary windows-emu's [if possible].
Nice Compromise 😀

I've put some Emu-Games in DFR. Works like a charme 😉

Hi everybody,

I have just uploaded D-Fend Reloaded 0.8 beta 2 to the beta download page. This version is feature complete to the final version. The only difference between beta 2 and the final version will be bug fixes. So, if you want to translate D-Fend Reloaded 0.8, this is the right version to start. (See also the language file package on the beta download page.)

D-Fend Reloaded 0.8 will bring full DOSBox 0.73 support, has much smarter functions for detecting games when dragging a zip file to the program window or when scanning the games folder, has a new "Notes" section at the bottom of the program window (allowing to edit the game notes without opening the profile editor) and many more GUI improvements and new customization options.

Hi, ... Alexander

I use your = D-Fend Reloaded 0.8, Beta 2 "PortableApps package".

Windows 7 RC x64 Ultimate Build #7100 French Canadian, [UAC disabled = User Account Control disabled], 8 Gig Ram.
---

I have updated the Beta 2, with directly copy all new files, to the Beta 1 folder(s).

---

1) I see a strange button, that sometime is displayed.

(See screenshot)
--

---------------------------
Sylvain St-Amand (sst)

Hi, ... Alexander

I use your = D-Fend Reloaded 0.8, Beta 2 "PortableApps package".

Windows 7 RC x64 Ultimate Build #7100 French Canadian, [UAC disabled = User Account Control disabled], 8 Gig Ram.
---

I have updated the Beta 2, with directly copy all new files, to the Beta 1 folder(s).

---

1) The word "multilingual to Multilingual", is changed only inside the dosbox profile.

2) Is there a way, to fix and repair game profile(s) (automatically)?

(See screenshot)
--

---------------------------
Sylvain St-Amand (sst)

Thanks Alexander! Love the new Beta. Especially the new Notes tab. 😀

Hi sst,

the data view tab bug was due to the new notes tab. (I have checked ViewerArea.VisibleTab=forth tab instead of ViewerArea.VisibleTab=DataView.PageIndex, my fault.) It's fixed now.

While updating DFR the language for "DOSBox DOS" will be changed to "Multilingual" with an upper M. Also when installing DFR or when recreating the default profile, its created with an upper M. But of course DFR is not changing any other profile without asking the user. You can change the language for your profiles via the multiple profiles editor. (Select all profiles with language=multilingual and set language=Multilingual for them. That's it.)

[BTW: Translation status/time to RC1: 4 translations ready, still waiting for 7]

Hi, Alexander!
Here is Russian translation.
As usual, some notes:
1. New notes tab - toolbar button has no hints. And maybe add popup menu to memo with 'copy/cut/paste'?
2.User defined interpreters - file selector does not get selected file. Parameters field is not stored.
3.User-defined interpreters and qbasic - interpreter path auto mounting cannot be done after securemode.
4.Multiple profile editor, MountingChangeSettings - combobox hint is set to first item text always.

Hi, ... Alexander

I use your = D-Fend Reloaded 0.8, Beta 2 "PortableApps package".

Windows 7 RC x64 Ultimate Build #7100 French Canadian, [UAC disabled = User Account Control disabled], 8 Gig Ram.
---

I have updated the Beta 2, with directly copy all new files, to the Beta 1 folder(s).

---

1) The "Capture directory(s) section", have severals name, that finish with "1". It even do that, on a Capture game name, that not finish with 1 normally. In example the "Raptor" capture game directory, have now "Raptor"and "Raptor1" directorys, inside the ".\Capture\" directory..

(See screenshot)
--

---------------------------
Sylvain St-Amand (sst)

I have about 360 games/profiles in D-Fend Reloaded (beta 2 of version 0.8). I saw in the change list for beta 1 that "Faster program start on large game lists" has been added. However, I notice no difference in loading times (from version 0.7 to beta 2 of version 0.8 - I have not used beta 1 of version 0.8).

The load time is quite long - 4 minutes and 9 seconds.

My PC is not particularly slow - I have a lower end Core 2 Duo and 2 GB of RAM.

Any chance of improving the load time?

This is an excellent program. I'm using it to create a collection of every game for any system that I played before the end of the year 2001. Very easy to use.

Is the new DRF aplying some kind of blur to screenshots? I don't think it looks too good, can I disable it somehow?

[BTW: Translation status/time to RC1: 4 translations ready, still waiting for 7]

Well, I did not see that version RC1.
Ok, I download it now and start translating to French this week-end.

Hi

Here is the french translation.

A few hours .. 95 kB and 1530 entries to check or translate..

By the way, there are some mispellings in the english source sentences:

. "Chosse":
Chosse game filename as profile name

. "noting", "ment", "portalbe":
This function has noting to do with the portable operation mode of D-Fend Realoded! This function is ment to access files inside ISO images mounted in DOSBox which cannot be accessed by the Windows file structure. If you want to run D-Fend Reloaded from different place use a portalbe installation. This function will not help you running D-Fend Reloaded portabely.

. "Autonatically":
Autonatically add checksums

Ok, now I can go sleeping. 😀

Bye.

Hi everybody,

first of all: Thank you skatz and curieux for your translations. By now only the Italian and the Chinese translations are still missing.

Sorry, I haven't had any time during the weekend to look at all the posts and the bug reports. Instead of this I had to work with typo3 all weekend - and I really hate this thing. So only some short remarks:

Bug reports by skatz:
-> Next week.

sst:
This happens if you click on "Auto create" and the folder "Winter Games 1991" already exists. If you give the command to create a new screenshots folder to D-Fend Reloaded and there is no folder registered for the current profile, it will try to use the profile name as the folder name. But if a folder with this name already exists, it will add a number (beginning with 1) to it to get a non existing folder name. So if you have a capture folder (on disk) "Winter Games 1991" before adding a capture folder in the profile editor (by clicking "Auto create"), D-Fend Reloaded will use a new name ("Winter Games 1991"+"1" for example). But if this happens to an existing profile, this is a bug and in this case I would need some more information.

dukeraoul:
On my system (Core 2 Duo @ 2,66GHz) D-Fend Reloaded needs 2,5 sec. to start and load >400 profiles in report mode and 9,5 sec. in screenshots mode. If it takes over 4 minutes, something on your system is totally wrong.

Two things have been optimized for the program start in 0.8: The loading of the prof files can be a bit faster, because now the complete directory is scanned and then the files are read (instead of reading a directory record, loaded the file, reading the next directory record, etc.). Normally Windows should have cached the complete directory, so this should be no difference, but who knows. The second thing is avioding some unnecessary list updates on start-up (which should really bring some speed up).

Now most time during start-up is taken by Windows to add the profiles to the list. This is something I cannot influence or optimize any further.

Neville:
This is the new and often requested image scaler. After beta 1 I have asked anybody to test the different possible scaling algorithms... but of cource without any replys. Then I have decided to use the current one. In 0.8 there will be no GUI to change the scaling algorithm, but you can change it via the DFend.ini (the same way as already in 0.7). As I have already said:

D-Fend Reloaded 0.8 will also bring a better image scaling algorithm for screenshots (games list in screenshot mode, image previewer are and image viewer dialog). You can already test some different scaling algorithms by adding the line "ImageFilter=..." to the [ProgramSets] section in DFend.ini. Valid values are 0 to 8. "0" is off (the default in DFR 0.7), "1" is a very slow and simple scaling algorithm (using the pixel property to access the pixels) and "2" to "8" are some fast, more advanced fiters directly accessing the image scanlines. At the moment I'm not sure if I will offer an option to change the image scaler or just setup the best for use in 0.8. So please tell me which one is working well for you.

If there is demand for some GUI, I can add some in 0.9.

And one last thing for today:

A few hours .. 95 kB and 1530 entries to check or translate..

Yes, I know, translating is a lot of work. So thank you to all of you again. But believe me, writing the program means also some work. 😀

I installed D-Fend Reloaded (custom installation, another hard drive) accidentally to the /Programs folder (the installer didn't add a "D-Fend" folder, and I accidentally clicked past it) - and there was no way to stop the installation. I then uninstalled, intending to install into a subdirectory.... and the uninstaller removed -everything- installed in my Programs folder, and not into the recycle bin either. A way to escape/cancel an install, appropriate uninstall procedures, and having a subdirectory always be made by the installer would be helpful.