output=opengl
scaler=none
aspect=true

set fullresolution or windowresolution to whatever resolution/size you want DOSBox to use

Thanks for replying so quickly. That seems to work for getting the DOS prompt fullscreen, but when I tried to run a game it didn't do much. I suspect there's a good chance my girlfriend's rubbish laptop doesn't support OpenGL.

I've just had a poke around and it seems it DOES support OpenGl, amazingly enough.

It's got Intel 945GM Express Chipset graphics (I can't find anything more specfic than that, I'm still not used to Vista 😀 ), and there are OpenGL options available:

Asychronous Flip - Off
Triple Buffering - Default
Flipping Policy - Flip
Depth Buffer Bit Depth - Default
Force S3TC Texture Compression - Off
Force FXT1 Texture Compression - Off
Driver Memory Footprint - Normal
Texture Color Depth - Desktop Color Depth
Anisotropic Filtering - Application Control

The desktop's running in 32-bit colour, it's got an Intel Dual Core T5300 @ 1.73Ghz with 3Gb of RAM, running on Vista SP2 32bit.

I think this is likely an OpenGL problem, but I'm no expert. Any ideas? 😀

EDIT: It does work with Monkey Island 2, but it's noticeably slower. I had tried it with Syndicate before (which worked perfectly in windowed mode), and Syndicate just froze as soon as it ran the batch file.

Crikey, the music for Monkey Island has just come on and the speed's going up and down all over the place.

You can also use output=ddraw and output=overlay.

Speed issues? Time to play with cores and fixed cycles settings.

ripa wrote:

You can also use output=ddraw and output=overlay.

Using DirectDraw has fixed the speed issue. thanks!

I've changed the scaler to normal3x and advinterp3x, and along with the ddraw change this has given me a window that's nearly full-screen (advinterp3x seems to smooth the pixels so it looks arguably better).

Strangely enough Syndicate reverts back to a small window as soon as I enter a mission, but as it doesn't affect Monkey Island 2 I guess it's something to do with the way Syndicate uses graphics modes. I haven't got any other games I can test it on at the moment, but now both of these are properly playable I'm very happy.

Thanks again.

add forced to the scaler line

You shouldn't need a scaler (i.e. scaler=none should work) if you use any other output= except surface. As long as your fullresolution= matches your desktop (i.e. if your desktop is 1600x1200 then use fullresolution=1600x1200 or fullresolution=0x0 - 0x0 is shorthand for using the same mode as desktop) in fullscreen dosbox should cover the whole screen (except if you have widescreen, then dosbox adds black bars to the sides to keep the aspect ratio correct).