What to try if your favorite game doesn't work.

This really depends on the age of the game:

- Somewhat older game (pre-1990):

• * The game complains about graphics
  Try fiddling with the machine setting in dosbox.conf. The default setting vga is good for most games (especially new ones). But to get (for example) cga/tandy/hercules graphics you might have to set the machine to it.
  
  * The game complains about memory:
  • 1. Very old games don't expect much memory to be free. As a result of this they claim that there isn't enough memory while there is too much. To counter this problem, we've created loadfix. This program eats up memory. See the README for more information about this command.
    
    2. Some games don't like EMS/XMS: You can disable either or both in the configfile.
    
    3. Some games want more memory: You can increase this in the configfile.
  * Some game have issues with certain memory configurations. So if the game looks a bit bugged. Try changing XMS/EMS/memory size.
  
  * Some games have problem with certain sound devices. You can usually configure the game to use another emulated sound device. If the game autodetects it => simply disable the offending sound device in the configfile of dosbox.

- Somewhat newer game:

• * The game complains about CDROM
  This is tricky as crossplatform cdrom support isn't as well developped as crossplatform graphics support. Usually it's enough to mount your cdrom with -t cdrom. But in the README there are many more parameters that will help!
  
  * Game crashes
  There are numerious reasons for this. Usually try experimenting with memory settings and sound device settings. If it's a dos4gw game: Try another version of dos4gw from here (dos4gw itself isn't exactly bugfree.)
  
  Some examples:
  • Crusader doesn't work without XMS (crash) With XMS it's fine
  • Ufo crashes if: dos4gw=1.95 and sound device is GUS.
  • Privateer only works if: ems=false
  * Some games want to be installed at certain locations. Usually documented somewhere :)
  
  * Try disabling sound. (if that works you know at least the offending part)
  
  * Dosbox doesn't support 16 bit graphics at the moment!
  
  * Try real high cpu cycles or real low cpu cycles

Offcourse DOSBox itself isn't bugfree and isn't finished.