Hello there my retro friends!

Today I am releasing RC3 of what is essentially the software equivalent of kitbash:

DFendX: An updated D-Fend Reloaded front end with DOSBOX-X integrated along with custom configs

This was spawned out of my desire for a more fully featured DOS emulation experience, with the ease of use of DFend Reloaded (which is, IMO, still the most userfriendly front end out there for Windows). This is a Windows only project, sorry Linux and MacOS users!. Basically what this setup allows is the easy importing and configuration of games for both MT32 (if you have MT32 control roms installed) and SoundCanvas (if you have the Roland Synth module configured via LoopMidi) as well as automatically applying a CRT shader for more true to life visuals. This is compiled from an updated DFend Reloaded source compilation I found here which seems to fix most of the annoying issues DFend has on Windows 10 like hard crashes and lock ups. The default DOSBOX install has been replaced with DOSBOX X preconfigured for CRT shaders. It will launch with them, no need to apply them per game. Also included are a variety of configuration presets for DFend Reloaded that have been customized to more closely resemble the class of PC they represent, and to add the correct parameters to interact with DOSBOX-X. I know it may not seem like much has been done here, but (atleast for me) this has made playing DOS games on my system much easier, and much more enjoyable. Currently the CRT shaders in usage are a Trinitron filter if you just launch DOSBOX-X into console mode as I find it looks better for text, and games launch with a high quality shadow mask filter.

I want to stress, I am NOT a developer. I know almost nothing about coding. I just know enough to half assedly assemble 2 programs and get them talking to each other more or less correctly. All credit should go to the maintainers of the code bases of these programs. There are a few bugs I know of that if I could find someone willing to lend some devtime to the project I don't would be hard to fix. If you want to be this hypothetical volunteer please reach out to me.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

* Windows 10 (8/7 may work but are not tested or supported)
* A performant graphics card supporting OpenGL level 3_0 (any MODERN graphics card IE post 2010 should meet these requirements, any IGP post 2015 should as well)
* 4GB of RAM
* Space on your C: drive

KNOWN ISSUES:

1.) Attempting to retrieve game metadata from the internet causes hard lock of program, must be closed via processes under task manager. [Likely unfixable without someone donating their dev time to fix the C++, its due to differences in how Win10 handles XMLs AND the APIs for both metadata providers are broken currently]
2.) Certain profiles that should be using SBPro hardware settings default back to SB16 mode [this is likely an error in my config files, this is anticipated to be fixed]

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:

1.) Extract the RC3 .7z to C:\DFendX\
2.) OPTIONAL: Install SoundCanvas VA as per PhilsComputerLabs YouTube Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WumRboSfn90
3.) OPTIONAL: Legally obtain and place MT32 roms into DFendX\assets\images\ and name them MT32_Control.rom and MT32_PCM.rom
4.) Add your favorite games to DFend as you would any other version of the program (Numerous tutorials available on YT and Reddit)

NOTE: Step 1 is NOT optional. The configs hard reference locations in reference to C:\DFendX\ placing it elsewhere will cause things to break.

DOWNLOAD: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U3L7sxsqweLz … iew?usp=sharing

If you have any issues let me know here in this thread so I can assess them and add them to the list, or I can also be contacted via the DFendX Release Candidate channel in my Discord (which can be found in my sig here).

Note: To anyone work who is contained with in, if I've stepped on your toes PLEASE reach out via DMs and we will straighten it out. I don't usually release my internal projects so I'm not sure what is considered best practices here. I don't think anything in this package is proprietary or barred from redistribution though.