It's a 1996 game and I doubt it's made for 16:10.

Did you read the question?

``
Is there a way to tell dosbox to crop the output video area? I can mess with the source if needed.
''

Did you read the conf?

Yes, I did. So I have to assume there is no easy way?

Any idea where I should check in the source then?

I would guess sdlmain.cpp, where the various types of drawing surfaces are created. Maybe look at SDL docs for what is possible. You may also want to limit the mouse range to be inside the viewable region, or you could lose sight of where the pointer is in the cropped-off border area.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

It's a 1996 game and I doubt it's made for 16:10.

The game is actually limited to a ~16:10 window (512x320 within 640x480). Refer
http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/zork-ne … nds/screenshots

Also, here's a prior post concerned with the black bars in the game...
Zork Nemesis

My guess would be that such was due to the game using a good amount of video and something akin to Quicktime VR (i.e. 360 degree images), and needing to squeeze it down to fit on 3 CDs. It also uses scan-lines in this video.

Regarding a means to resize the image, I'd guess that it may be easier to work out a shader to scale things up with one of the DOSBox revisions that have Direct3d/shader support.

On this subject, I find the 2xSaLAA, 4xSaL shaders do a good job of cleaning up FMV games that use alternate row scan-lines (though I'm having trouble locating my source for them). Still hoping for a shader that would clean up triple row scanline things (i.e. typically rgb scanlines used to simulate higher bit color ranges with 8b)