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DOSBOX + EGA 640x350 + Right Settings = Widescreen DOS Game!

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First post, by Gemini000

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This actually came as a surprise to me as I was producing the 15th episode of Ancient DOS Games... If you have a widescreen monitor (preferably 1920x1080) and put the right settings into DOSBox, you can turn an EGA 640x350 game into a widescreen game!

Quick link for those interested in watching ADG Episode 15 - Snarf:
http://www.pixelships.com/adg/ep0015.html

I couldn't show the widescreen effect in the episode itself, since I do all of my ADG episodes at 640x480 for sake of consistency, but the settings are pretty easy to do. Set your fullscreen resolution to the widescreen resolution your monitor can handle, set the output mode to either opengl or ddraw, then head to your render settings, set the aspect correction mode to false, then set the scaler type to "hq3x forced", and voila!

files/ep15_widescreen_image.png
(Image not posted directly inline due to being HUGE...)

A lot of EGA 640x350 games have that vertically stretched appearance so quite a number of them would be suitable for this little trick. If you leave the aspect correction on, the screen squishes vertically, which doesn't look right, and if you don't set "forced" in the scaler setting DOSBox will more than likely reject your scaler choice.

It's been 15 episodes so far and I hope everyone who's been watching ADG has been enjoying it! :)

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    Ep15 Widescreen Image.png
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--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 1 of 3, by Great Hierophant

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Actually, this is hardly limited to an EGA with a 640x350 resolution. Most DOS games (CGA, TGA, EGA, VGA) use a 320x200 resolution. If you had a widescreen computer monitor with a 16:10 screen ratio, (native resolution of 1920x1200 for example) you would have instant widescreen for virtually any DOS game.

http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/ - Nerdly Pleasures - My Retro Gaming, Computing & Tech Blog

Reply 3 of 3, by Gemini000

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Great Hierophant wrote:

Actually, this is hardly limited to an EGA with a 640x350 resolution. Most DOS games (CGA, TGA, EGA, VGA) use a 320x200 resolution. If you had a widescreen computer monitor with a 16:10 screen ratio, (native resolution of 1920x1200 for example) you would have instant widescreen for virtually any DOS game.

True... but the effect with a 640x350 game is much more intriguing since the aspect ratio at that resolution is 16:8.75 and somehow this was expected to look normal on a 4:3 screen. :P

leileilol wrote:

I imagine the aspect forcing on 16:9 would be really really bad with those ModeX 320x400/320x480/360x400/360x480 games.

Perhaps... consider though that many such games still show graphics with the proper aspect ratio and simply use the extra pixels for greater clarity. For example, every game I can think of off the top of my head that's designed to use 320x400 or some other such mode is 3D. (IE: Normality, System Shock, Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri, Duke Nukem 3D...) All of those games either use special graphics or double the vertical resolution of sprites and interface items when running in 320x400 mode.

...I really need to review a text-mode game sooner or later...

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

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