videogamer555 wrote:The problem with SVNs is that they are nothing more than mods. There's DOZENS of them out there. Each one has very specific features that are not shared with other ones. So if I need one feature to play one game, and another feature to play another game, then I find myself installing a dozen different versions of DosBox. I want to be able to play my entire game collection with the main version of DosBox.
While I would normally agree with you that it's best to have one program that can do everything, I sort of disagree in this case.
I did install the official release of DOSBox at one point, but now I typically put a copy of DOSBox in each game's directory. I create a directory for the game, then I make a DOSBox directory and a directory to act as the C drive. I create a custom CONF file with whatever settings I want for that game, a menu to let me run different versions or the setup program, and then I call it with a BAT file. This allows me to make the game installation portable. It can be copied to a USB drive, or easily packed into an archive. If I ever want to play it again, I just need to unpack the archive and it's ready to go.
Personally, I prefer the Daum SVN version (1/27/2014) because it has save states, Glide support and support for using MP3 files in place of the audio tracks on a CD image.
philscomputerlab wrote:Time to build a Retro DOS Gaming PC 😀
That's how my "journey" started. There were a few little things that I noticed about DOSBox, and that made me get into real hardware.
Things seemed just the opposite to me. I've tried to run games in true DOS in the past and I had nothing but problems. Having to install DOS drivers for everything, worrying about having enough memory free, programs running too fast, etc. Admittedly I've only tried a couple dozen games in DOSBox, but so far they've all worked pretty much "out of the box" with maybe a little tweaking to get them the way I wanted.
Dominus wrote:What you demand of the devs is essentially what you get withthe Daum SVN. It adds every little thing and stuff but lacks stability because of that.
For what it's worth, I played through Tomb Raider and the Unfinished Business add-on using the 1/27/2014 version of Daum and didn't have a single problem with it. I also used it for testing various Glide wrappers, so it was more than a quick once-through each level.
DosFreak wrote:The #1 goal is compatibility with DOS games. This has been stated thousands of times in these forums. Extra features take away development time from this and hinder future development of DOSBox.
With that said the next DOSBox release will have some new features.
I find it refreshing to have a program that has continued to maintain it's primary purpose instead of adding a metric assload of bells and whistles to get people to buy it.....
I mostly agree, however I would argue that some of the extra features enhance your ability to play games. The save states in the Daum version came in quite handy while playing Dark Forces last year. I've also used them on Alien Trilogy. Some may argue that the designers didn't intend for you to be able to save during the levels, but I'd argue that only allowing you to save at the end of levels adds unnecessary frustration to games.
The ability to play the Glide version of Tomb Raider enhanced my enjoyment of the game. Besides looking quite ugly, the software rendered version is quite buggy in its handling of textures. As you turn the view, textures change, move and even appear and disappear.
And while not actually enhancing gameplay directly, the choice not to support the use of MP3 files in place of the audio tracks on a CD image seems like an odd omission considering that it supports Ogg Vorbis files, which are also lossy, but 3-4 times the size of MP3 and not nearly as universally used as MP3.
