Closed.

Ref: Has Anyone Really Been Far Even as Decided to Use Even Go Want to do Look More Like?

Reopened after reading your other thread. When posting try to clarify your thoughts otherwise you'll sound like a spambot.

Uh, source code doesn't work that way.

Yeah.. that would be pointless to even try to do.

It is compiled, and the source code is available for free as it is open source.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish?

I already know a few very easy ways to reduce the needed CPU power by at least 25%. Once I get all my other projects finished I am planning on going through the code and optimizing it like I did years ago.

With the little bit I did, it dropped the required CPU cycles by about 25%, and that was only doing some optimizations on the CPU core.

A few months ago I looked at the SVN code and saw that it is still set up the same exact slow way it was years ago.

Reverse Engineer software by recording its processes

DosBox does not see the 'source code' of the software that is running on it. It sees/executes only the compiled binary (exe/com files). The closest 'source' representation of the running software you can get is its assembly code. You do not even need DosBox to get it. You can use one of the many offline disassemblers and save the assembly code.
Biew:
https://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.1/system/biew/
IDA:
https://www.hex-rays.com/products/ida/support/download.shtml

cyclone3d wrote:

I already know a few very easy ways to reduce the needed CPU power by at least 25%. Once I get all my other projects finished I am planning on going through the code and optimizing it like I did years ago.

With the little bit I did, it dropped the required CPU cycles by about 25%, and that was only doing some optimizations on the CPU core.

A few months ago I looked at the SVN code and saw that it is still set up the same exact slow way it was years ago.

That would be very nice! I doubt there are many cases where DOSBox is too slow to run a certain game on a fairly decent PC, but extra speed would always be welcome, just in case. And if you did it to a build that had the best (or rather the most suited to general games) of the post v0.74 features added, then the result might be the DOSBox build that both newcomers and people who wanted to upgrade their current DOSBox installations might choose.

For beginners or those not well up on DOXBox, it can be difficult to know which DOSBox version is best, so they probably end up just using the now pretty old version 0.74. But a faster build, with the best (or most commonly used, or whatever) of the new features would be very enticing and easy to recommend.

Kerr Avon wrote:

For beginners or those not well up on DOXBox, it can be difficult to know which DOSBox version is best, so they probably end up just using the now pretty old version 0.74. But a faster build, with the best (or most commonly used, or whatever) of the new features would be very enticing and easy to recommend.

It generally is best to refer people to the official 0.74 or plain vanilla SVN unless there is a specific reason to need an extra feature. People keep asking for help here with ancient unofficial and unsupported builds. a perfect example is the broken Daum build. The devs do not want to have to troubleshoot issues caused by those modifications. Issues that do not occur with official DOSBox. It is also the reason that if there is a need beyond stock DOSBox I recommend ECE, which has a few patches, mostly limited to accuracy enhancements and builtin Munt support. Fewer and less radical patches means that there are fewer chances for those patches to break DOSBox.

collector wrote:

Kerr Avon wrote:

For beginners or those not well up on DOXBox, it can be difficult to know which DOSBox version is best, so they probably end up just using the now pretty old version 0.74. But a faster build, with the best (or most commonly used, or whatever) of the new features would be very enticing and easy to recommend.

It generally is best to refer people to the official 0.74 or plain vanilla SVN unless there is a specific reason to need an extra feature. People keep asking for help here with ancient unofficial and unsupported builds. a perfect example is the broken Daum build. The devs do not want to have to troubleshoot issues caused by those modifications. Issues that do not occur with official DOSBox. It is also the reason that if there is a need beyond stock DOSBox I recommend ECE, which has a few patches, mostly limited to accuracy enhancements and builtin Munt support. Fewer and less radical patches means that there are fewer chances for those patches to break DOSBox.

I've just downloaded the ECE build, I'd not heard of it before, so thanks for that.

Kerr Avon wrote:

collector wrote:

Kerr Avon wrote:

For beginners or those not well up on DOXBox, it can be difficult to know which DOSBox version is best, so they probably end up just using the now pretty old version 0.74. But a faster build, with the best (or most commonly used, or whatever) of the new features would be very enticing and easy to recommend.

It generally is best to refer people to the official 0.74 or plain vanilla SVN unless there is a specific reason to need an extra feature. People keep asking for help here with ancient unofficial and unsupported builds. a perfect example is the broken Daum build. The devs do not want to have to troubleshoot issues caused by those modifications. Issues that do not occur with official DOSBox. It is also the reason that if there is a need beyond stock DOSBox I recommend ECE, which has a few patches, mostly limited to accuracy enhancements and builtin Munt support. Fewer and less radical patches means that there are fewer chances for those patches to break DOSBox.

I've just downloaded the ECE build, I'd not heard of it before, so thanks for that.

Honestly it feels no different than 0.74

twiz11 wrote:

Honestly it feels no different than 0.74

SVN has significant improvements in compatibility compared to 0.74. ECE adds some additional, very useful features. YP80 hasn't added any whiz bang changes that initially smack you in the face, but if you enable MT-32 emulation, or the improved Nuked OPL3 core, or some of the other important things he has added, I think you'll find it's a tremendous improvement.

gdjacobs wrote:

twiz11 wrote:

Honestly it feels no different than 0.74

SVN has significant improvements in compatibility compared to 0.74. ECE adds some additional, very useful features. YP80 hasn't added any whiz bang changes that initially smack you in the face, but if you enable MT-32 emulation, or the improved Nuked OPL3 core, or some of the other important things he has added, I think you'll find it's a tremendous improvement.

way over my head, but i do like the color change, teal with the cool screenshots of games

I will give you the short version. It has options you can turn on that make DOSBox work better, look better, and sound better.

gdjacobs wrote:

I will give you the short version. It has options you can turn on that make DOSBox work better, look better, and sound better.

thank you, now why couldn't they have just compiled a new official version so those who use dosbox on steam upgrade

Ask the developers or publishers of the games on steam why they don't compile a new version of DOSBox for their games.

DosFreak wrote:

Ask the developers or publishers of the games on steam why they don't compile a new version of DOSBox for their games.

Probably the same reason they didn't recompile the game to run native, they don't want to expense resources into it. Especially since a lot of games still were written with large parts in assembler for performance as late as 1993.

Just the other day on the OBS forums I pointed someone to the ECE build because they were unable to figure out how to get game capture to work with dosbox, due to the scaling not meshing. Game streaming has come quite a ways since 0.74 was released on May 18th, 2010. Back when the iPhone 3GS was out.

This is the problem guys, the stock versions being shipped out, ARE broken under increasingly more common configurations. Particularly on 4K screens where a simple HiDPI switch in the compile process fixes that (or manually having windows override it.) The lack of SDL2 support also kneecaps playing games windowed on 4K screens since they will end up being the size of a postage stamp.

Like nevermind MT-32 (ROM requirement) or FluidSynth (GM support), or other obscure hardware (eg ReelMagic MPEG, S3 Virge, etc) that had less than 3 titles with that configuration. There is simply no standardization on audio output from dosbox, or what construes the best mode to run a game in.

Is whoever wrote v0.74 still around in the community? Has he/she/they ever said why they don't release a new, official version? And why doesn't anyone else release say 'v8.0 Unofficial', maybe first releasing it as a beta, especially to people who really know the program, so as to find if it and it's new components have any obvious problems, and then releasing it as the recommended version for newcomers and for including in game releases?

And no doubt these questions have been asked a hundred times before, so sorry if it's tedious to answer them, I just thought I'd ask since it's the current topic of discussion. DOSBox is great, so it's unfortunate that so many people might not get to use the better builds than a seven year old version.

It will be released when it is ready 😀