I think a GUI, like the one found in ykhwong's builds, is the way to go. Newbies can have their go at the menu's, while the oldskool power-users can keep to their commands. Dosbox will probably always be a little bit daunting for the newbies as they have to learn a new OS and have to find an optimal .conf for their specific computer.

But hey, I'm happy the way it is now 😀

I've been building oen to make things easier while maintaining control of every feature of DOSBox. A lot of newbies won't understand going through a configuration file and changing things for every game they play. That takes time and effort, and it's a lot easier for them to use the frontends out there (and hopefully mine one day) to simply click on their game and have it start running properly right from the get-go.

Personally, I'm in favour of using frontends. Not only they are easier to setup, if you have several DOS games it's a pain in the a** to remember the correct setiings for every single one of them. I'd rather spend some time taking snaps and creating the profiles, then forget about the whole thing.

I'd be lying if I'd say frontends are "the solution" or that I haven't come across issues while using some of them, but generally speaking they're better than command line.

And I used DOS in the old days an awful lot. I casn't imagine how confusing it can get to the Windows-only generation.

This said, I'm not terribly missing a GUI in DOSBox. Those who want assistants and windows have a great variety of frontends to choose from, and the DOSBox team doesn't need to bother about these issues.

i do agree with you generally except for that thedosbox team doesn't have to deal with the frontend issues. When you look at the forum you see the issues creep up here all the time. The worst ones are those caused by old frontends with current dosbox versions. People will run into this all the time 🙁

Well, let me rephrase that, I meant that the DOSBox team can focus on improving the program instead of worrying about building an interface.

But yeah, I have no trouble believing what you say. I'm a regular visitor of abandonware message boards, and many they are still filled with people giving the wrong advice and suggesting the wrong, outdated frontends.

You'd think that by now people should know DBGL is very similar and much better than the Defunct Frontend That Should Not Be Named, but no, they'd refuse to use anything but that one, no matter what.

I even wrote a guide about the whole thing, that can be found in several of those boards, and the management of one of those sites went as far as to replace it with their own guide promoting the use of said outdated program.

Duh.

What would be the best Windows frontend then? I've picked up DBGL based on your mention Neville, but last Windows compatibility installer is two versions old now.

You can install the Windows version, then overwrite it with the latest JAR file, it works fine.

And yes, D.B.G.L. would be my first choice, followed y D-Fend Reloaded.

DBGL. as long as D-fend reloaded changes the default settings of dosbox I wouldn't recommend it (the cycles on 3000 is really bad as it gives the dosbox is slow messages again 😀 We were so happy to be finally slow free messages 😀 )

I tried several of them myself and had problems with them all, whether it was missing functionality, just being a pain to use, or physical problems with the software. That's why I've written my own front-end. I even plan on having a game wizard so that a user can answer a few simple questions and it will generate a decent configuration for the game based on the answers, such as CPU, memory, and other requirements.

Do you plan to release it to the general public?

I've been using D-Fend Reloaded with very few problems. I like it over raw DOSBOX because I have both VGA and Tandy games running. This way I can run them all without editing the config. There is an occasional game that needs a setting tweak in D-Fend, but not in DOSBOX alone. One I recall was Primal Rage. But at least a dozen other games have run fine with the defaults.

Speaking of frontends, what about removing outdated ones from the DOSBox download page?

I think, the following frontends could be removed, because they don't have been updated for years now:
Radnor
DOSBoxer (Jaeger Tech, download seems removed)
Petit DOSBox

I'm not sure about the following entries:
RobyDOSBox
DBoxFe
DBFrontend

-> Keep the download list short! 😉

Neville wrote:

Do you plan to release it to the general public?

Sorry I haven't checked this thread in a while. Yes it is already available to the public, and is only in beta because I have not added one-click joystick support. I am trying to figure out how to query the OS to discover which (if any) joysticks are attached to the system so that he user may simply select one and go. You can find links to the program and the default configurations in my signature. The program is very stable, and allows a large number of configuration options with a point-and-click interface. Each game stores its own information, such as memory needed, video-type, core-type, cycles, etc. Check it out if you want, it stores all of its settings in "486.cfg", and does not touch your registry.