http://sourceforge.net/projects/dfendreloaded/develop

Programming Languages: Delphi/Kylix
License: GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3)

Thanks!

Hello everyone. I'm running D-Fend Reloaded 0.9.2 on a Windows 7 x64 system. Whenever I try to click on a game whose profile I've created, nothing happens. No errors, nothing. Same thing when I click on the DOSBox DOS profile that was created by D-Fend.

If I click on Run, then Run DOSBox, it loads up just fine. Further, if I copy the conf file for the profile I created and run it with DOSBox, it fires up my game with no problems.

Any thoughts? Thanks!

Hi rnixon1974,
sorry, spontaneous I do not have any idea what could cause this strange behavior. But maybe D-Fend Reloaded itself can tell you what's going wrong. DFR has some built-in DOSBox start-up logging feature. If you add "DOSBoxStartLogging=1" to the [ProgramSets] section of your DFend.ini, DFR will write each step it takes for running DOSBox in a "DFR-DOSBox-Start-Test.txt" file on your desktop. (DFR is reading the DFend.ini on start-up and writing back the changed when closing, so close DFR first, change the DFend.ini and then restart it.)

And some general status updates:
I received a Czech language file for DFR this week. Uploading it to Sourceforge and testing the download I found a very annoying bug in version 0.9.2: The download of icons, language files and icon sets always fails. Or to be a bit more precise: The download of files of this type is working well, but DFR is mixing up the return values of the download function and always thinks the download has failed. So we will need a 0.9.3 release very fast. At the moment it looks like this release will only have two changes since 0.9.2: The new Czech language file and the fix for the bug.

Hi Alexander. Thanks for your reply and all your work on D-Fend Reloaded. It looks great!

I tried your suggestion, but it didn't create the file. Maybe it doesn't get that far? I then decided to try old versions. It worked in all versions up to 0.4.1. When I installed 0.5, it did the same thing the current version does.

I looked through the changelog, but I'm afraid that didn't give me any clues.

Thanks again!

Hey guys thanks for creating such nice thread. I have Little Big Adventure 2 which is working well in Windows but in DOS, I don't know what's the problem occur I am not able to play it. As whenever I open t and try to play it out, everything just go pause and I have to restart it. Can anyone highlight the reason why does it happen?

Start another thread in DOSBox Games/Apps. And don't use frontends if your game doesn't work. As it has nothing to do with d-fend

Hi michelsteeve,
I have just looked at the DOSBox start logging function in D-Fend Reloaded. This function is meant for profiling which step takes how long, so the logged information are written to file in the last step only. If this step is not reached, no file will be created. But it is very unlikely D-Fend Reloaded is not starting DOSBox and is not showing any error message. In the function used for calling DOSBox each early exit will display an error message.

So I have no idea what's wrong here. You could try one of following steps:
1.) In the profile editor or from the context menu of any profile you can take a look into the conf file which is used for calling DOSBox. You could check if there is anything strange in this file.
2.) You can try different render modes (from the graphics page of the profile editor). Maybe DOSBox is started but closes immediately and you have just made something wrong when activating the logging feature so there are not logging results for some completely other reason.
3.) You can try to change the DOSBox SDL layer between "Direct X" and "Win DIB" in the extended DOSBox settings. (In the setup dialog in full mode.)

If 2 or 3 solves your problem it's maybe a good idea to update your system graphics driver.

I have just released D-Fend Reloaded 0.9.3 (download page, changelog).

This little bugfix release was needed to fix one very annoying bug in the package download manager. Additionally this version comes with 14 languages (Czech as new language) and now has auto setup templates for nearly all games on Classic DOS games. I really hope 0.9.3 will be the last release of the 0.9.x branch.

Again: D-Fend Reloaded 0.9.3 already contains 80-90% of the new features for version 1.0 (see beta download page). You can activate this features as usual via the ActivateIncompleteFeatures=1 switch in the DFend.ini. Please also test this features. The 0.9.3 release is meant a bit as a 1.0beta0 release.

Alexander, you're a genius! It was the WinDIB / DirectX issue. I don't really play games other than DOSBox, so I never noticed it. Drivers didn't fix it. DirectX 11 that comes with 7 was damaged, and I had to to do a in-place install, but it works great now. Thanks so much!

http://lifehacker.com/5505343/d+fend-reloaded … ames-to-windows

although it is a bit of shame that they "think" that your program does the emulation.

First of all, great work Alexander. I've been amazed at the number of options built into this program and its ease of use.

That said, there is one suggestion I have to make. Using the "User directory style" operation mode, D_Fend Reloaded hard codes the settings to the C:\ drive. This probably works fine for most users, but my C:\ drive is a SSD and I try to limit writes to it whenever possible, so my personal data folder is configured in Windows 7 to another hard drive. I noticed in options I could change a few of the directories, but there is still other information being cached on the C:\ drive. Is there a way to manually change this within the current build, or is this possibly a feature that can be included in the future?

Hi, ... Alexander

I use your = D-Fend Reloaded, "v0.9.3", D-Fend Reloaded PortableApps package".

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1) Can you made that some other(s) section inside D-Fend Reloaded, can have graphics background?
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2) When installing with = D-Fend Reloaded PortableApps package, and select French.

See screnshot, ...

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3) Is there a possibility to have an option to "[Update Profile(s), using existing preconfigured profile(s)" ?

Automatic (Rename or Name) profile ?

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hi Alexander
unimportant thing
appear a english text while uninstall in turkish installed D-Fend Reloaded. Turkish is attached.

please also
can you publish all string in install and uninstall, here
for see

Back from Easter holiday...

1. DFR in press:
Even so DFR clearly says it's a frontend for the bundled DOSBox many people do not understand this. But anyway I think DFR has brought DOSBox to many people who wouldn't have used DOSBox otherwise at all.

2. Even more customization:
Putting background images to Windows common controls is quite hard (for example I cannot add a background image to the filter tree on left). So I cannot promise anything. For which element do you miss a customization option?

3. Language in first run wizard:
The regular DFR installer is writing the selected language to the registry so the first run wizard can select the right language. (The NSISLanguageID key in the language files is used for this.) But the PortableApps installer is not storing the selected language so I cannot read the chosen language when opening the first run wizard.

4. Profiles and templates:
There is no connection between the profiles and the templates so there is no easy way to update profiles from updated templates.

5. Untranslated string in uninstaller:
In some German forum a user posted that he installed DFR into a folder together with many other programs "to keep the directory structure more clear" (?). (For example not "C:\Program files\D-Fend Reloaded" but just "C:\Games" - without any DFR specific subfolder.) On uninstall DFR has deleted the complete installation directory - with all other programs in it (last command in uninstall NSIS script was "RmDir /R $INSTDIR"). The user was very angry about this and said "for doing this the author can be sued". The moderator told him that deleting the install directory is what nearly every uninstaller does and that it's a stupid idea to install many programs just one folder but anyway I have changed the uninstaller to only delete the files and subfolder created during installation. If there are any remaining files in the installation directory after this it will show the message above and ask if this files shall be deleted, too. Because I have added this security feature somewhere between 0.9.0 and 0.9.1 there is no translation for this string. But it's already on my new language strings list for 1.0.

I have been very busy working on D-Fend Reloaded 1.0 during the last month and now, after fixing in particular approximately 10^100 requests by robertmo, finally the first beta version of 1.0 is ready:

D-Fend Reloaded 1.0 beta 1 (changelog+download)

I think 1.0 is a big step in user experience. For the fist time D-Fend Reloaded brings installation support for making the installation of new games even more easily. Games can be installed from real disks, CDs, disk and disc images, folders and archive files. Even when importing an archive file the usual way, D-Fend Reloaded tries to detect if the game needs to be installed first and offers to use the installation support function. The installation support functions mounts the source media as A: or D:, opens a DOSBox window and display "Install the game to any folder on C: you like." (Additionally it tries to start the right installation program automatically.) When the installation is done it scans the games folder for new subfolders and tries to identify the game via an auto setup template.

Because of the often heard "DOSBox closes right after start" questions, DFR 1.0b1 brings a "DOSBox start failed" dialog: If DOSBox closes very fast, D-Fend Reloaded will show a dialog in which the user can change the render method (if it's really DOSBox that fails) or turn off "Close on exit" (if it's the game inside DOSBox that fails).

Some other mentionable things are the new cheats database, if you think you need some external help in playing some games, and the option to copy complete profiles into a FreeDOS based harddisk image. This can help you in the rare case some game is not running well in the DOSBox DOS emulation - and if you just want to play around with harddisk images the easy way.

Some general remarks:
1. The string list for D-Fend Reloaded 1.0 is not yet frozen so please do not start translating this beta release. When I add new features, the language files will change and getting a translation for beta 1 while the development language files already have been changed means a lot of work for me merging the files. So just relax and wait for the string list freezing in beta 2.
2. The feature wish list for 1.0 is still open. If you have any features you would like to see in the next D-Fend Reloaded release, tell me.

Wow, this new functionality is unbelievable.

You're a brave man Alexander, because you know this is going to add to your problem reports. You've undertaken to support the automatic and correct installation of every DOS game (and some Windows games) ever made.

You're not just brave, you're extremely ambitious!

Thanks for this release, I can hardly wait to see what happens next. 😎

An amazing release, Alexander.

First things first, I noticed right away that the annoying "column wrap after adding new profile" bug is gone. That was an old issue, it's great to see it finally fixed.

I''ve been fiddling with the new install helper as well. Right now I've only used it to install one game. It didn't work when I just dragged the files, but it more or less worked when I used a WinImage file instead. The problem seems to be that the game was in Spanish, and instead of an INSTALL.EXE it has an INSTALAR.EXE. Maybe you should add that one to the list of files DFR should look for. Same for other languages, the rest of the project translators could be a good source for that info.

Hi, ... Alexander

I use your = D-Fend Reloaded, "v1.0 Beta 1", D-Fend Reloaded PortableApps package".

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The problem seems to be that the game was in Spanish, and instead of an INSTALL.EXE it has an INSTALAR.EXE. Maybe you should add that one to the list of files DFR should look for. Same for other languages, the rest of the project translators could be a good source for that info.

===
= The problem seems to be that the game was in French, and instead of an INSTALL.EXE it has an INSTALLE.EXE. Maybe you should add that one to the list of files DFR should look for.

= Also for French games = you must detect "INSTALLE.EXE"

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No bug found, ... others test soon, ...
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Hi, ... Alexander

I can help with the, D-Fend Reloaded PortableApps package.

I have some time, to try to made the = D-Fend Reloaded PortableApps package, to use the "Data" folder, ...

Did you still whant to someone to made it ?

= (it can be like, DosBox PortableApps package = that use "Data" folder.)

Please respond me soon as possible, ...
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