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First post, by Macadactyl

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I've looked hi and low on Google and have been in the DosBox config file top to bottom. Is there a way to enable text wrap in the old Infocom text adventure games. in the browser version of dosBox it wraps correctly but on my desktop instance of DosBox for OSX the text does not wrap and it is driving me crazy. Thanks in advance.

Reply 1 of 7, by BloodyCactus

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infocom games draw to the width of the screen (80 characters). sounds like your desktop osx dosbox has a window bigger than the screen

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Reply 2 of 7, by Macadactyl

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Thanks. I think I am using the terminology wrong. Maybe that's why I couldn't find anything in google. The text does indeed wrap but words are spit mid word. So they aren't cut off they continue to the next line but it splits at the character level.
It reads li
ke this a
nd it is ve
ry difficu
lt,

Reply 3 of 7, by Jorpho

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Have you considered using Frotz instead of DOSBox? The games play exactly the same and Frotz should give you many more options. I think it is also included in the latest versions of ScummVM.

Reply 4 of 7, by ripsaw8080

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Frotz is a Z-Machine interpreter, and there is a DOS version of Frotz, so you do not really use it "instead" of DOSBox. You could use a native build of Frotz instead of a DOS-based Z-Machine interpreter running in DOSBox, though it might not seem as nostalgic. As for the text wrapping, it certainly depends on the interpreter, so trying another interpreter is a good idea, and note that the original Z-Machine interpreters made by Infocom only work properly in an SVN build of DOSBox if you happen to be using a text mode larger than 80x25.

Reply 5 of 7, by Jo22

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Hi! Speaking of alternative interpreters, there are also WinFrotz and Winfocom for Windows.
At least the latter one can run on Windows 3.1 also, which in turn can run inside of DOSBox..
It's of course not as nostalgic as running the original Z-Machine interpreter, though. 🙁

On the bright side, however, it is from the 20th century, at least.
So it's only a "few" years apart from the original, so it's still a nostalgic experience in some way or another.
And the window seems to be resizable, too.

Alternatively, it's also possible to run the Mac or Amiga versions of the Infocom games inside of DOSBox.
At least the DOS ports of Fellow and vMac do run here in my copy of DOSBox on a Raspberry Pi 4 running Raspbian Buster.

Personally, I think that the AmigaDOS versions are nice also.
The white on blue theme of Kick 1.x do fit the atmosphere rather well, I think.

Edit: Typo fixed.

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Reply 7 of 7, by BloodyCactus

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gargoyle is my terp of choice (which actually wrasp a lot of others and builds them with garglk so they are all gui-ised).

http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/

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