Post a screenshot or two so we can see whether it's your memory or your settings that's faulty...

Well the thing is, when you played these games back in the day your monitor was probably smaller (less than 14" maybe) and back then the graphics would have been comparitive to other games making it seem better. Today on larger displays it looks pretty bad. 😖

The best thing I can suggest is maybe using a custom CVS that has an hq2x filter. That would help smooth things out a little.

However it would help to see some screenshots in case there really is something wrong.

EDIt - By the way another idea: Perhaps you are trying games such as King's Quest or other sierra onlne games? Some games have two versions...one older and a newer VGA version that might be the one you wanted.

avater_58: I concur with your explanation. Displays are a lot larger and sharper now, and modern games take advantage of this, so running old games on modern hardware really shows their age. Playing with DOSBox's scaler options is definitely something to try.

In case you are using an Nvidia card and a CRT, setting "enable doublescan for low resolutions" in the driver settings helps a lot.

thanks for the replies guys. Havnt got a great deal of time tonight to post screenies etc so will do it tomorrow. But thanks for some tips. I just dont think you understand how bad they were, im talking seriously blocky, like a car would just be made up of square blocks 🤣. Will post some shots for you tomorrow

hmm that last post was mine just wasnt logged in 🤣..Anyhow here is a quick one before i go out tonight. This is a shot of indy500, it never ever looked this bad.

http://img45.imageshack.us/img45/4831/indy5000wk.jpg

Something is definitely broken there. Palette is totally messed up.
Do you have latest drivers for videocard/direct-x?

The resolution looks correct (320x200), but it looks like it's using CGA colors (except for the blue car at the bottom).

Is your machine set to "VGA" in the dosbox.conf? Is there a command line option for that game to run in vga modes as oppposed to the CGA which it seems to be using? 😐

I don't really know this game so I can't give an accurate resposne. Any other shots of games that look messed up?

Underdogs has it.

I seem to remember there was either a separate EXE or BAT file for each graphics mode (CGA, EGA, VGA), or maybe it was a command line parameter.

I just tried the underdogs version and there was one exe. It showed up in colour. Works both with CVS and Dopsbox 0.63.

What does your dosbox.conf look like?

I'm able to differenciate 8 colors on the screenshot...
Black, white, magenta, dark cyan, dark blue, very light blue, very light green, and a middle blue in the audience (which may be the result of Jpeg artifacts.

It's definitely not CGA. I don't think it's paletted EGA either (IIRC, but I might be wrong).

Zorbid wrote:

I'm able to differenciate 8 colors on the screenshot...
Black, white, magenta, dark cyan, dark blue, very light blue, very light green, and a middle blue in the audience (which may be the result of Jpeg artifacts.

It's definitely not CGA. I don't think it's paletted EGA either (IIRC, but I might be wrong).

Good point....I didn't even notice that. 😅

(btw, off topic. Zorbid did you used to visit freeoldies? I could have sworn I saw you there when the english side was active all that long time ago)

tonyturbo: What version of DOSBox are you running?

tonyturbo wrote:

Managed to find an ISO of 500 old pc games on the internet...

Well, you get what you pay for... My best guess is: this CD full of cracked games is damaged. Get legal copies or use your imagination (no, we won't tell you if/how/where it is possible to get copies of questionable legality).

so many questions to answer 🤣. Where do i start. Right lets start with obvious. Firstly im using the latest dos box version 0.63. I`m using a raddy X850XT, DFI NF4 with all drivers completely up to date. Have all the latest windows updates and service packs also. Ok, `el pusher about the pallette being messed up, it wasnt actually playing in these colours, it just seemed to change this colour when i took a screenshot and hosted it, the colours were normal but the graphics as you can see are horrific, it is a 90 game and i remember them being alot better than that. It also looks that bad on other games like test drive, silent service 2 and defender of the crown, only ones i have tried so far as they were my fond favs when i was younger. `avatar 58` i will have to look and see about the dosbox config file, to be honest with you i have not changed anything, just installed it and started mounting some games to see what it was like. And as for `moe` had all these legal copies 10-15 years ago but sold them off as time moved along. This is more of a nostalgia thing and wanted to bring back some memories as i saw "500+ old pc games" through kaza and i couldnt help resist. Shouldnt make any difference to the quality, all the game files are there. will see if i can have a look at the dosbox config files, if i can find them 🤣. thanks for all your help guys, i would love to bring back my childhood memories again, had so much fun with my father and these titles when i was so so much younger.

If the colors were normal then the game is as it's supposed to be. I just got the Home of the Underdogs version because I couldn't find my floppy (haven't seen it in years). It's just as I remember it, although it certainly hasn't aged well. Here are some screenshots of it running in a recent CVS version of DOSBox:

I should also mention that I (or more accurately, my brother) got Indy Car Racing II a few years later and it has much, much better graphics (as well as network play!)