I personally think that as long as the frontend is Linux/OSX/Windows compatible then that's as far as it needs to go. If so then DBGL is the most likely candidate.

I don't see it being packaged with DosBox though (Qbix/Harekiet have said in the past that they just want DosBox in the DosBox package).

There could be the usual DosBox official versions with no frontend included and then seperate packages for DosBox with the frontend included. (or if ykhwong's frontend every becomes crossplatform and equal to functionality of external frontends).

I also think it would be nice for these companies who are releasing their games as freeware but having to create their own custom frontends. If they could use the frontend that would be included with DosBox then it would make things a whole lot easier.

I don't really see the need to burden either the front end or DOSBox development 'teams' with extra hassle. Both products would have to be kepy in sync / compatible and each official release of DOSBox could [probably] mean a simultaneous release of the front end.

It's not exactly rocket science and most of the issues are simply down to people not reading the entire readme and/or looking for themselves before asking a question. I'm not sure providing a front-end would aid much as it'll proabably end up shifting the questions to front end developer instead of general DOS/DOSBox??

It would interesting to see how many single figure posters here actually 1) own the game legally 2) know anything at all about DOS 3) used Google to search for an answer themselves 4) have got the game running with the help provided 5) have enjoyed the gaming experience made possible by DOSBox and 6) would do it all again for another game. My thoughts.... not many at all I should imagine 😀

I disagree. Front-ends should be separate downloads. It would be a nice idea to put some links on DOSBox page though.

Reckless wrote:

I don't really see the need to burden either the front end or DOSBox development 'teams' with extra hassle. Both products would have to be kepy in sync / compatible and each official release of DOSBox could [probably] mean a simultaneous release of the front end.

Well yeah. It beats a user find some DosBox frontend on the internet and not having it work with the DosBox 0.57 they found somewhere else on the internet.

It's not exactly rocket science and most of the issues are simply down to people not reading the entire readme and/or looking for themselves before asking a question. I'm not sure providing a front-end would aid much as it'll proabably end up shifting the questions to front end developer instead of general DOS/DOSBox??

Shouldn't that be where the questions should be anyway? Except for a few tweaks here and there (damn I love my config -wc suggestion) the DosBox CLI is going to be the same as it's always been. (It's not gonna get any easier GOOD). Just like the "evolution" from DOS-> Windows which means that average users could now use computers because it had a GUI then so should the average user have to use a GUI to use DosBox. (Either that or they can use gametap).

It would interesting to see how many single figure posters here actually 1) own the game legally.

Probably not that many. These games are hard to come by legally even by searching online...

2) know anything at all about DOS

When I setup SNAP (menu system for DOS) on my ol' 286 for my family members they didn't need to know anything about DOS to play DOS games.

3) used Google to search for an answer themselves

What's "google"? Is that an AOL keyword?

4) have got the game running with the help provided

Well I'd like to think that all the help we provide actually....helps.

5) have enjoyed the gaming experience made possible by DOSBox

Probably more than half give up in disgust over pixelated graphics and go back to their Sims\WOW\SecondLife's.

6) would do it all again for another game. My thoughts.... not many at all I should imagine 😀

Yep, See #5. 😀

rofl

DosFreak wrote:

What's "google"? Is that an AOL keyword?

Ditto on the ROFL, reminds me of a lot of the customers that I've had to deal with.

On the subject of GUIs, I do like the menubar with ykhwong's builds. It gives a nice way to change settings on the fly without using up more hotkeys as well as it could let you, say, mount a drive without having to exit the program/game that you have running to access the command line to do it.

The idea of companies re-releasing old titles developing their own frontends can leave a lot to be desired, as the recent Sierra collections shows. Their launcher did not allow an easy DOSBox upgrade path. There was a number of issues with the DOSBox .63 shipped with the collections, which was readily solved by using .65, which broke the launcher.

Perhaps a combination of the menubar and alternate downloads of with and without an included frontend might suffice any needs of a GUI.

I say "if it's not broken don't fix it". I *always* use DOSBox through frontends like D-FEnd and DGBL, but you can't telli fthey will coninue to be in development as new versions of DOSBox appear. Packaging the emulator with one of the frontends could mean the end of the rest, and then nobody is guaranteing the "packaged" frontend will continue being developed. Not to mention how it will freak out the newbies, finding not one but two different things to look at.

I say keep it as it is, but emphasise in the docs that DOSBox is far more user-friendly when using frontends, and give links to the most prominent in the FAQs. This, and news announcing a frontend learns a new trick in the news page is all that's needed.

Why would you need a frontend when you already have Windows? What most frontends miss is the screenshot feature.
A reasonable thing to do could be taking advantage of the MAME frontend re-elaborated for MESS so we could mount directories and disks images with a Browuse feature, already implemented in MESS for disk images.
Personally I use an old all-purpose frontend.
Here are some screenshots (this is my first images posting as far as I can remember)

You are on to something here butterfly. That we have to distinguish between 3 tasks that a frontend should help with:

1. Organise your games for easy access.
   Any desktop file manager (Explorer on Windows, KDE or Gnome on Linux, Finder on Mac) can do that. Create folders, add pictures, and create short-cuts to something that will launch the game.
2. Launch the game with the correct setup.
   Any desktop file manager can do that. But appearently it is beyond the abilities of many people to create a shortcut, open the shortcut properties and add the necessary command line parameters.
3. Configure the emulator to suit the game.
   DOSBox has a lot of configuration settings, and I can understand if some people are hesistant to edit a file like dosbox.conf with its many obscure options.

It seems like MESS takes care of 1 & 2.

It would be nice if MESS could interface with an external configuration tool to create the dosbox.conf file.

Now I see your point 😅 I was just explaining my point of view. I didn't consider there's people that for a reason or another one can't do that.
Said that I think that the only way I know to organize games would eventually lead to the creation of some database like the GoodTools for example (though I don't think that's doable thinking of the DOS software panorama).
On the other hand there are too many configurations possible for each game and a branch of this forums is devoted to mainly discuss such problems.
Furthermore, DOSBox is in a status of continuous improvement - I'm not a programmer - and I guess it would be a bit too soon to set some "standards".
Oh well... I forgot the rest 😁

Front ends are a very bad idea because of the portable nature of DosBox.

A built in GUI would be better, like in ScummVM.

There are portable frontends written in Java and tcl/tk that will run on almost anything.