Is it possible to force a color depth in DOSBox? \ VOGONS

Is it possible to force a color depth in DOSBox?

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First post, by Jeff Paine

Posted on 2008-04-12, 03:11

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I'm trying to play The Last Express on Mac OSX, the colors are fine in windowed mode, but they're all messed up in fullscreen mode. I'd prefer to play fullscreen mode but I'll make do with windowed if I have to.

Anyways, I researched this problem and it seems it's OSX-specific, and it seems to be related to color depth. As an experiment, I tried lowering my color depth in OSX's system preferences, and the game would have messed-up colors even in windowed mode unless I had millions of colors selected.

So, the problem seems to be that DOSBox is trying to run the game in 8 or 16-bit color, when it needs to be running in 24 or 32-bit color. Is there any way to force DOSBox to run the game in 24-bit color?

Reply 1 of 6, by collector

Posted on 2008-04-12, 04:55

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I would imagine that the game itself is only 256 colors.

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Reply 2 of 6, by ADDiCT

Posted on 2008-04-12, 08:52

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Search the forum, i remember at least two threads about the very same problem. I believe there is no real solution to the problem, but i think i remember that a workaround was to start DOSBox in fullscreen mode (as opposed to starting it windowed, and switching to fullscreen afterwards).

Reply 3 of 6, by Freddo

Posted on 2008-04-12, 12:35

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Should work by using OpenGL as output, shouldn't it?

Reply 4 of 6, by Jeff Paine

Posted on 2008-04-12, 14:43

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collector wrote:
I would imagine that the game itself is only 256 colors.

Yep, but for some reason it only works in 24-bit color

ADDiCT wrote:
Search the forum, i remember at least two threads about the very same problem. I believe there is no real solution to the problem, but i think i remember that a workaround was to start DOSBox in fullscreen mode (as opposed to starting it windowed, and switching to fullscreen afterwards).

I tried that, it doesn't work, and I also tried starting in windowed and then switching to fullscreen, and that doesn't work either

Freddo wrote:
Should work by using OpenGL as output, shouldn't it?

I tried every output method and got the same results.

Thanks for the help, but I guess I'm stuck in windowed mode.

Reply 5 of 6, by MiniMax

Posted on 2008-04-12, 20:23

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Tried some older version of DOSBox?

Reply 6 of 6, by Jeff Paine

Posted on 2008-04-12, 20:50

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0.65 doesn't work at all, and 0.70 and 0.71 give the same results as 0.72

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