I don't think you can change the colors of the pillarbox....

bloodbat wrote:

I don't think you can change the colors of the pillarbox....

That may explain why I can't find the setting in the code...! Thank you.

And at least I learned that it's called the pillarbox, and that's something...

It depends on the output selected. Probably the easiest to change would be OpenGL: change glClearColor (0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0); in sdlmain.cpp.

gulikoza wrote:

It depends on the output selected. Probably the easiest to change would be OpenGL: change glClearColor (0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0); in sdlmain.cpp.

Thank you - I will try this as soon as I get back the machine where I build DOSBox.

Couldn't you extend this to implement a CGA/EGA/VGA border color like functionality in full screen with non-active display bars on two or four sides of the screen? If an EGA program sets the border to light cyan (Commander Keen 4), can't DOSBox instruct SDL to set the non-active portion of the display to light cyan? It likely would not be a perfect solution, but for programs that use the border to indicate status (Crystal Caves, Secret Agent), it would be helpful.

Basically that would be a variation of the overscan border patch, with all of its pitfalls. There could be five overscan choices; here is how they would look on a 16:9 widescreen display

1. no overscan at all, which is what DosBox currently does

   

2. full 4:3 overscan, as much as the emulated video card generates, calculated on CGA by subtracting Horizontal/Vertical Displayed from (Horizontal/Vertical Total minus Sync), slightly more complicated on EGA/VGA

   Filename

   1-full43overscan.png

   File size

   230.46 KiB

   Downloads

   No downloads

   File license

   Fair use/fair dealing exception

3. cropped 4:3 overscan, only display part of the overscan that the emulated card generates and cut off the rest, as a 15 kHz monitor would. Makes only a difference with CGA/EGA cards and their thick border, would be meaningless with VGA.

   Filename

   2-cropped43overscan.png

   File size

   228.54 KiB

   Downloads

   No downloads

   File license

   Fair use/fair dealing exception

4. cropped widescreen overscan, only visible in the direction in which the host's monitor exceeds 4:3, as thick as the emulated video card generates

   

5. full widescreen overscan, only visible in the direction in which the host's monitor exceeds 4:3, but filling the whole non-4:3 area.

   

On my 1920x1200 16:10 widescreen LCD monitor, number 5 would ideally look exactly like this :

I think it is almost as close to perfection as you can get with an ideal screen ratio. It is not quite perfect, since on real monitors there would be borders above and below the image when trying to maintain a reasonable aspect ratio. However, on a real CGA monitor, the horizontal borders are pretty wide and the horizontal width of the image cannot easily be adjusted, while the vertical size can using a knob on the monitor.

The problem is however, that this would depend on the dosbox settings (fullresolution, ...), the user's monitor and work only in fullscreen (unless the window mode would also be extended). Not that user friendly 😀

I would say: go for option 2 with a slider to adjust the "over / under scan" just as you could do with a real analog monitor. It would be an additional option to extend the border to the display aspect ratio. C64 emulators also emulate the border and nobody has opposed to that (but on a C64 the border actually can be used to display sprites). I understand that very few games use a border color but it adds to the feel one had when playing the original, I think.