The current aspect ratio of the windowed mode is really not acceptable.

Why?

Hey, try this in your dosbox.conf:

windowresolution=640x480

Raymond, follow wildweasel's advice and if by any chance that change alone doesn't work, you'll have to try setting different output settings (surface,ddraw, overlay, etc).

njaydg wrote:

Raymond, follow wildweasel's advice and if by any chance that change alone doesn't work, you'll have to try setting different output settings (surface,ddraw, overlay, etc).

Tried all that ... doesn't work. Also, read the DOSbox configuration documentation and you will see the lines ...

"Note that the window size actually has a fixed 1.6 aspect ratio, so if you ask for 1280x1024, you'll end up with a squished 1280x800 window."

This means that asking for 640x480 will give 640x400. The window height is reduced to 83% of what was requested. A squished window means squished graphics.

So, I stand firm on my words that a DOSbox version for "true classic gaming" is needed, if a person wants to run in windowed mode without squished graphics. All this is nonsensical to non-purists.

i take it you have seen the aspect option inside dosbox.conf ?

Qbix wrote:

i take it you have seen the aspect option inside dosbox.conf ?

Thanks for the helpful information. I now have DOSbox running in windowed mode with acceptable results, as far as window size and performance are concerned. I made the following changes to my .dosboxrc file (I am running DOSbox-0.72 under Mandriva Linux 2007.0).

# windowresolution=800x600 from windowresolution=original
# output=overlay from output=surface
# aspect=true from aspect=false
# scaler=normal3x from scaler=normal2x
# A finalized copy of this file is saved as /home/myuserid/.dosboxrc

Game graphics are bright and crisply defined, just as they would be on an old CRT monitor. Game speed is notably slower than on my old AST 486DX2-66MHz, but games are still playable. I was unable to get a large enough window by setting 'windowresolution=640x480' with 'scaler=normal3x' so I went up to 800x600, giving a window that measures approximately 8.5 x 6.5 inches. I do not want to go beyond that because performance would really begin to lag. As it now is, DOSbox cyles have dropped down from 'max' to '3,000', frameskip=0, running Heretic, just as an example. I have cycles set at 'cycles=auto'.

During my previous attempts to change window size and aspect ratio, I was making the mistake of setting 'scaler=none' which negated any changes made to other configuration lines.

It was not my original intent to 'trash' DOSbox in any way. I just wanted to provide some input that might help guide future development efforts. DOSbox-0.72 for Linux is a remarkable achievement and I will be upgrading to a new version when development makes another 'giant leap' forward. Again, thanks for your helpful advice, which guided me in the right direction.

3000 cycles sounds suspiciously wrong. cycles=auto works fine for many games, but for some games DOSBox fails to estimate the optimal number of cycles. Try a fixed value, say 20000 and watch your real CPU utilisation. As long as your CPU-core does not reach 80%-85% you can continue increase the cycles.

MiniMax wrote:

3000 cycles sounds suspiciously wrong. cycles=auto works fine for many games, but for some games DOSBox fails to estimate the optimal number of cycles. Try a fixed value, say 20000 and watch your real CPU utilisation. As long as your CPU-core does not reach 80%-85% you can continue increase the cycles.

Yes, 3000 cycles is rather low. I will follow your suggestion and see what results I get. Thanks for the additional information.

<british accent>Am i the only one who thinks this thread is rather amusing?</british accent>

SCNR 😁