breshar wrote on 2024-02-13, 18:41:

I use D-Fend Reloaded 1.4.4 for quite a while now. I've added about 400+ entries, also making separate entries for modded games like Commander Keen or Doom.

This version of D-Fend Reloaded is outdated, and ScummVM probably changed the file format, so D-Fend Reloaded doesn't know how to read it.

Hi,
just was strolling through the forum yesterday to see if there are any new interesting posts and stumbled across the D-fend Reloaded thread and saw that people complain that Dosbox-X is not really supported in D-fend Reloaded. I am using Dfend Reloaded since a lot of years. Unfortunately I started with my games database (way more than 1000 games and software until now) before development of D-fend Reloaded ended, so I am now stuck with it. On the other hand it worked flawlessly until now, even with Dosbox-X. Just had to add a new Dosbox installation under Program options, point to the Dosbox-X folder and rename the exe from dosbox-x.exe to dosbox.exe. Any additional settings (like for example for MT32, used soundfonts or printing) can then be added in the "Custom settings" field under "Dosbox settings", though I have never tried Voodoo support until now. So I never had the need to even touch the dosbox-x.conf file. Just lately I had a problem with the Z drive path (Z:\;Z:\SYSTEM;Z:\BIN;Z:\DOS;Z:\4DOS;Z:\DEBUG;Z:\TEXTUTIL). Seems with newer versions of Dosbox-X the path needs to be added by hand in the DOS environment settings of D-fend Reloaded.
Maybe someone finds this helpful.
Ohrensessel

IIGS_User wrote on 2024-02-13, 19:05:

breshar wrote on 2024-02-13, 18:41:

I use D-Fend Reloaded 1.4.4 for quite a while now. I've added about 400+ entries, also making separate entries for modded games like Commander Keen or Doom.

This version of D-Fend Reloaded is outdated, and ScummVM probably changed the file format, so D-Fend Reloaded doesn't know how to read it.

I was thinking of renaming Dosbox-x to dosbox and having it for defend reloaded too today. Some other ideas today were add support for qbasic and/or basic-a wizards... basic-a was provided in a botched MIT license release by Microsoft releasing msdos 4.01. For 2026-1 January so far Dosbox-X has many new features... You may have to create a new config file for it, backing up your old one first.

Hi, I was looking at this frontend and think gee this would be good in Windows Millennium so I don't have to use the command line in DosbBox all the time.
There's nothing about system requirements for it.
Its funny how AI says run millennium in DosBox-X but doesn't talk about DosBox in Millennium itself. (I see no benefit except a toy)
DosBox is useful in Millennium as it has no dos mode. Even though its not supported.

I tried the dosbox-x method of renaming the .exe to dosbox.exe and the .conf to dosbox.conf. I got window mode to work, but fullscreen does not work well at all. Dosbox-x uses a different method of scaling. It does not stretch. When I go to fullscreen, it turns to just garbled lines and colors. Dosbox staging does not work at all.

Estel Randir wrote on 2026-09-26, 04:31:

I tried the dosbox-x method of renaming the .exe to dosbox.exe and the .conf to dosbox.conf. I got window mode to work, but fullscreen does not work well at all. Dosbox-x uses a different method of scaling. It does not stretch. When I go to fullscreen, it turns to just garbled lines and colors. Dosbox staging does not work at all.

Hi, I maintain a fork of D-Fend Reloaded called DFendX. It has first level support for Staging (and X/Pure). I would be interested to see if it solves any of your problems.

https://github.com/cyberfox1/dfendx/releases/tag/2.6.2

kolderman wrote on 2026-09-27, 05:03:

Estel Randir wrote on 2026-09-26, 04:31:

I tried the dosbox-x method of renaming the .exe to dosbox.exe and the .conf to dosbox.conf. I got window mode to work, but fullscreen does not work well at all. Dosbox-x uses a different method of scaling. It does not stretch. When I go to fullscreen, it turns to just garbled lines and colors. Dosbox staging does not work at all.

Hi, I maintain a fork of D-Fend Reloaded called DFendX. It has first level support for Staging (and X/Pure). I would be interested to see if it solves any of your problems.

https://github.com/cyberfox1/dfendx/releases/tag/2.6.2

I appreciate your response. How far along are you on dosbox-x support? I have tried 3 different forks of dosbox and it is by far the best.

I am using dosbox game launcher right now. It is pretty good, but it lacks the extra user friendly perks that defend reloaded has. Defend reloaded has superior pathing support (you can have spaces in your game paths), sound support is much easier to configure (one-click midi driver detection), the entire game configurations are stored in each game profile (not just the differences between the game and the default.conf), etc. Filter support was a bit bad though. Some of the filters were darker than they were supposed to be (I.E. tvx2, tvx3).

When I have time, I will give it a try. One thing I hope you change. The dosbox.conf files in defend reloaded are .prof files and have a different format than the dosbox.conf files. This causes a lot of issues when trying to convert .prof to .conf and then import into another front end. Even though you can convert using Defend Reloaded, it does not work very well.

Estel Randir wrote on Yesterday, 22:59:

I appreciate your response. How far along are you on dosbox-x support? I have tried 3 different forks of dosbox and it is by far […]
Show full quote

kolderman wrote on 2026-09-27, 05:03:

Estel Randir wrote on 2026-09-26, 04:31:

I tried the dosbox-x method of renaming the .exe to dosbox.exe and the .conf to dosbox.conf. I got window mode to work, but fullscreen does not work well at all. Dosbox-x uses a different method of scaling. It does not stretch. When I go to fullscreen, it turns to just garbled lines and colors. Dosbox staging does not work at all.

Hi, I maintain a fork of D-Fend Reloaded called DFendX. It has first level support for Staging (and X/Pure). I would be interested to see if it solves any of your problems.

https://github.com/cyberfox1/dfendx/releases/tag/2.6.2

I appreciate your response. How far along are you on dosbox-x support? I have tried 3 different forks of dosbox and it is by far the best.

I am using dosbox game launcher right now. It is pretty good, but it lacks the extra user friendly perks that defend reloaded has. Defend reloaded has superior pathing support (you can have spaces in your game paths), sound support is much easier to configure (one-click midi driver detection), the entire game configurations are stored in each game profile (not just the differences between the game and the default.conf), etc. Filter support was a bit bad though. Some of the filters were darker than they were supposed to be (I.E. tvx2, tvx3).

When I have time, I will give it a try. One thing I hope you change. The dosbox.conf files in defend reloaded are .prof files and have a different format than the dosbox.conf files. This causes a lot of issues when trying to convert .prof to .conf and then import into another front end. Even though you can convert using Defend Reloaded, it does not work very well.

Hi, thanks for the reply.

DFendX has full support for DOSBox-X for the existing options exposed in D-Fend Reloaded, plus many more (and more to come). There may be less commonly used options in DBX not exposed yet, but if you come across one you would really like to see exposed, please raise it as an issue.

As for converting prof files to conf files - the existing dosbox conf generator does just that (thats how it launches dosbox in the first place), so I am curious as to what is not working so well when you generate a conf from a prof. Are there attributes missing?

[/quote]
Hi, thanks for the reply.

DFendX has full support for DOSBox-X for the existing options exposed in D-Fend Reloaded, plus many more (and more to come). There may be less commonly used options in DBX not exposed yet, but if you come across one you would really like to see exposed, please raise it as an issue.

As for converting prof files to conf files - the existing dosbox conf generator does just that (thats how it launches dosbox in the first place), so I am curious as to what is not working so well when you generate a conf from a prof. Are there attributes missing?
[/quote]

I cannot give you an exact set of settings. But when I tried to import the converted profile from defend reloaded into dosbox game launcher It was not a smooth import. I had to manually adjust a lot of things. Maybe it's the way DBGL is setup with fields not pulling the correct information, I really cannot say. Although your interest is not in making the .prof or .conf files compatible with competing front ends, it is worth making sure the data is converted into the correct format. The profiles are the lifeblood of dosbox.

One thing I have noticed. As much as I have nostalgia for Defend Reloaded. When I used DBGL, some of the standard scalers that are common to dosbox simply work better. I loaded dosbox 0.74-3 into both DBGL & Defend Reloaded. If, for example, you run the tv2x or tv3x scalers in Defend Reloaded - they are a bit too dark and unclear vs if you run them on DBGL. This is using the exact same version of dosbox, but a different launcher. I could not tell you why. It looks a lot better in DGBL than Defend Reloaded. There maybe more examples.

Also, one of the problems with newer front ends, is that they are not pulling up the shaders that are present in the newer dosbox forks subdirectories. Maybe that is because these forks are evolving so much? There are a ton of shaders over on https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-shaders/tree/master. I think these are the same ones also https://github.com/tyrells/dosbox-svn-shaders … tree/master/crt.

If you can get full support for the innate scalers & full shader support going for Dosbox-x & Dosbox Staging, with Defend Reloaded features, I think you will be the top front end.

Estel Randir wrote on Today, 05:56:

If you can get full support for the innate scalers & full shader support going for Dosbox-x & Dosbox Staging, with Defend Reloaded features, I think you will be the top front end.

Interestingly, getting shaders working for DOSBox-X and Staging was the very first thing I did for DFendX, and was actually the motivation for starting the project in the first place. Would love to hear your feedback how it works for you!