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DOSBox Feature Request Thread

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Reply 100 of 298, by NY00123

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red_avatar wrote:

- better PC speaker emulation - I've been playing some PC speaker games lately and the sound really is nowhere near as cool as it sounded on a real PC speaker. Real PC speaker would use the computer case as a kind of hall - the sound would bounce off the insides causing a warmer, more vibrant sound. The emulated PC speaker sounds rather flat and dull compared to it. Even ignoring the effect of the reverberation inside the case, I got a feeling the emulation isn't quite right either?

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing, but I also encountered a difference between DOSBox and the "real thing" in terms of PC Speaker emulation. Basically, while on a vintage PC you may be able to hear multiple distinct beeps of the same frequency in a row, they're basically fused to a single beep in DOSBox. Even if the frequencies aren't all the same, similar differences can be heard.

This can be spotted in various early Softdisk+Apogee titles, although it's especially clear at times in certain games, like Dangerous Dave, Catacomb, The Catacomb (Catacomb II) and Commander Keen 1-3.

I once had an attempt with a (possibly) surprisingly simple patch to DOSBox, aiming to fix the issue for Keen 1-3, although it does some unintended changes in other games: Experimental patch: An attempt to improve PC Speaker emulation accuracy

About a couple of months later, ripa worked on an unrelated patch improving digitized sound playback, although he also incorporated a similar (and better) fix for the games above (should apply to revision 2 of the patch and later): Re: Want to use PC Speaker and not Sound Blaster in StarControl 1

Reply 101 of 298, by Thraka

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I would like to add a feature request.

I want to be able to control DOSBox via the prompt inside of DOSBox. Being able to operate all of the shortcut keys that you use on the window would be helpful to do from the prompt.

Something like typing (dbc being short for dosbox config):
dbc cycles=1000

Additional ask
This may be a stretch but I would love to be able to load specific conf files from the prompt and have DOSBox reinitialize itself some how.

Reply 102 of 298, by Qbix

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Maybe read the documentation ? You'd be surprised what you can find in there Thraka. Like the ability to change the cycles from the commandline

Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!

Reply 104 of 298, by JJJoseph

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This should be not too complicated. DOSbox loads with a second "DOSbox Status Window" underlying the main DOSbox screen. Sometimes the Status Window interferes with text input into the main DOSbox window. I'd like to have the option to hide or display the Status Window.

Reply 108 of 298, by autoexecdotbat

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1. support for multiple sound blaster cards at once (would be useful to Jaws for dos users)
2. support for various SB clones/compatibles (thunderboard, ESS audio drive, etc)
3. support for emulating hardware speech synthesizers (echo PC, votalker, artic etc)

to win the game you must defeat coppa!
http://chng.it/DNc2L8LvLJ

Reply 109 of 298, by autoexecdotbat

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also the ability to pass keys straight to dos box, bypassing the host OS (this would be particularly useful to those running windows on their DOS boxes)

to win the game you must defeat coppa!
http://chng.it/DNc2L8LvLJ

Reply 110 of 298, by Lo Wang

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Arbitrary sample rate mixer output:

It's currently impossible to make vanilla DosBox output at any sample rate that isn't listed as a possible value, which thing forces the user to cope with the artifacts introduced by either downsampling or upsampling (also the default 44Khz fallback behavior) whenever the sample itself must be played back at a non-supported rate.

By allowing this, the stream could be handed over the audio driver/mixer (in my particular case, a transparent, low-latency one) so that the hardware itself may perform the resampling, which in turn produces a very high quality output (at least perceivably much higher than anything that can be achieved without sinc interpolation) on this computer, with the added bonus of less CPU cycles going to waste.

Best regards and sorry for any inconveniences.

"That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" - Romans 10:9

Reply 113 of 298, by Dominus

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no chance at all. ykhwong is adding many different patches, many of which the developers said they will not add them.

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Reply 114 of 298, by Almagnus1

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Is there a way to have the game display at 4:3 resolution, keep the resolution locked, yet black out the rest of the screen?

I'm thinking of a solution similar to how the various web streaming services handle older 4:3 aspect ration content on 1080p+ monitors, yet don't distort the content by stretching it.

A better solution would be to have the full screen be at native full screen to the monitor, while having DOSBox think it's running at it's native resolution of 640x480, stretch the window to fill up the screen, but again center and keep the original aspect ratio using black boxes to pad the image to the proper aspect ratio.

It's distracting going through some of my older games and not seeing them stretched when they shouldn't be.

Reply 115 of 298, by Yesterplay80

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Almagnus1 wrote:

Is there a way to have the game display at 4:3 resolution, keep the resolution locked, yet black out the rest of the screen?

If I understood you right, adjusting these settings in your .conf-file should result in what you want:

[sdl]
fullscreen=true
fullresolution=desktop

[render]
aspect=true

If you want to get rid op any blurring and filtering of the image, adjust this setting accordingly:

[sdl]
output=openglnb

This should result in a crystal clear, nicely pixelated, correctly ratioed fullscreen image with black borders right and left, if you are using a widescreen display.

Last edited by Yesterplay80 on 2016-04-19, 07:38. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 116 of 298, by PhilsComputerLab

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Seeing all the screenshots and videos of DOS games in the wrong aspect ratio online, maybe:

- resize screenshots to 640 x 480
- resize captures to 640 x 480
- Have aspect=true as default?

YouTube, Facebook, Website

Reply 117 of 298, by jfrisby

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Someone was working on a 'pixel-perfect scaler' for SCUMMVM (x5x6 Nearest Neighbor): https://github.com/hooby3dfx/scummvm/tree/perfect-scaler-wip

Since there's monitors that can run 1600x1200 these days it'd be a great way to implement better 4:3 aspect correction.
Is this already possible in DOSBox and I've missed it? 😜

Reply 118 of 298, by VileR

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jfrisby wrote:

Someone was working on a 'pixel-perfect scaler' for SCUMMVM (x5x6 Nearest Neighbor): https://github.com/hooby3dfx/scummvm/tree/perfect-scaler-wip

Since there's monitors that can run 1600x1200 these days it'd be a great way to implement better 4:3 aspect correction.
Is this already possible in DOSBox and I've missed it? 😜

You may try this patch: SCALER Normal4-6x (DOSBOX)

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Reply 119 of 298, by Ant_222

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Yesterplay80 wrote:
If you want to get rid op any blurring and filtering of the image, adjust this setting accordingly: […]
Show full quote

If you want to get rid op any blurring and filtering of the image, adjust this setting accordingly:

[sdl]
output=openglnb

This should result in a crystal clear, nicely pixelated, correctly ratioed fullscreen image with black borders right and left, if you are using a widescreen display.

This is not entirely true, because openglnb employs a non-regular scaling by applying alternating integer magnification based on the representation of the scale as a mixed fraction. Setting aspect=false does not change it, i.e. pixels in this mode have a varying size. DOSBox is sadly unable to apply the simplest possible integer upscaling while in full-screen mode.