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DOSBox ECE (for Windows & Linux)

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Reply 1181 of 1550, by Malor

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I just wanted to post and say thank you very much for doing DOSBox ECE. I just installed it, and those patches you've incorporated make things so much easier. The fluidsynth inclusion is particularly brilliant. It makes MIDI emulation a lot easier... it can now be completely self-contained, instead of requiring an external synth, with the hackery required to get stupid Win10 to use it properly.

This might be hard to do, but a feature suggestion would be allowing both fluidsynth and the mt32 emulator to run at the same time. It'd be nice to have a single DOSBox config that I didn't have to edit, where I could, say, point MT32 games at I/O 300, and General MIDI games at I/O 330.

It's not a big deal, it's more a quality-of-life patch than anything. I can work around the lack by either editing the main config, or by using custom configs with shortcuts, but if it's easy to implement, and wouldn't impact performance, both at once would be a real convenience.

Already pleased as heck with the patchset as is, though. Thanks again for creating and maintaining it!

Reply 1182 of 1550, by zirkoni

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Malor wrote on 2020-12-21, 00:31:

It'd be nice to have a single DOSBox config that I didn't have to edit, where I could, say, point MT32 games at I/O 300, and General MIDI games at I/O 330.

What's wrong with having 2 DOSBox configs? You don't have to edit anything, just start DOSBox with different command line parameters (= 2 shortcuts to dosbox.exe).
And you don't even need 2 full config files. The first one can be the full config and the second only overrides some options.

https://youtube.com/@zirkoni42

Reply 1183 of 1550, by 7F20

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zirkoni wrote on 2020-12-21, 06:27:

What's wrong with having 2 DOSBox configs?

I've always found this to be a PITA myself. There are enough different possible combinations of settings for different games that it makes more sense to have one for each than it does to group games into similar configs and launch from the command line. Problem is that can land you with 100> config files.

I used to use DFEND, and then for awhile DFEND reloaded, but I think both projects got abandoned and I never looked for another front-end. I wonder if there is another decent front-end out there at this point that would work with ECE?

Reply 1184 of 1550, by Malor

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zirkoni wrote on 2020-12-21, 06:27:
Malor wrote on 2020-12-21, 00:31:

It'd be nice to have a single DOSBox config that I didn't have to edit, where I could, say, point MT32 games at I/O 300, and General MIDI games at I/O 330.

What's wrong with having 2 DOSBox configs? You don't have to edit anything, just start DOSBox with different command line parameters (= 2 shortcuts to dosbox.exe).
And you don't even need 2 full config files. The first one can be the full config and the second only overrides some options.

The biggest reason is because I often use DOSBox a bit like actual DOS, in that I launch it, browse through the directories with DIR and CD, and only then decide what I actually want to run. If that particular thing doesn't work properly with my current config, then I have to exit, edit, relaunch, and re-navigate, which is a bit of a pain. A single universal config, rather like a single universal CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT on actual MS-DOS, would be more convenient.

It would also require that I store less state about games in my head, as to which ones work best with MT32 and which prefer fluidsynth.

This wasn't really a problem with base DOSBox, because I always just used General MIDI and didn't bother with MT32 at all. ECE has improved that for me dramatically, but now I have a new problem. 😀

Reply 1189 of 1550, by _Rob

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7F20 wrote on 2020-12-21, 16:08:
zirkoni wrote on 2020-12-21, 06:27:

What's wrong with having 2 DOSBox configs?

I've always found this to be a PITA myself. There are enough different possible combinations of settings for different games that it makes more sense to have one for each than it does to group games into similar configs and launch from the command line. Problem is that can land you with 100> config files.

I used to use DFEND, and then for awhile DFEND reloaded, but I think both projects got abandoned and I never looked for another front-end. I wonder if there is another decent front-end out there at this point that would work with ECE?

DBGL works fine as a graphical front-end with DOSBox ECE.

Reply 1190 of 1550, by 7F20

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_Rob wrote on 2020-12-23, 21:48:

DBGL works fine as a graphical front-end with DOSBox ECE.

That looks really good. It's basically what I'm looking for, except that it requires Java. I don't have any Java stuff anymore, not sure if I would install it again just for this.

Reply 1191 of 1550, by Malor

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wyattwong wrote on 2020-12-22, 01:19:

I was surprised that no one reply my question but keep on posting in this thread.

It's because nobody can answer your question. DOSBox ECE doesn't have an official Mac port. You might be able to port it, it might not take that much work, but you will have to figure it out. It could end up being an absolute nightmare; the ECE patches might not play nice on the Mac at all.

None of us knows, at least so far. That's why you're not getting replies. Maybe nobody knows, anywhere.

A good starting point would probably be figuring out how to compile regular DOSBox on the Mac, first. Get that working reliably, and then see what changes when you try with ECE's source.

Reply 1192 of 1550, by void09

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I was wondering if an (almost) completely static build of dosbox-ece on linux is possible, and if someone is willing to give instructions on how to do it.
Need to bundle it as part of larger package.
I am also curious why the linux binary available on https://dosboxece.yesterplay.net/ is just 32bit ?

Reply 1193 of 1550, by mr.cat

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void09 wrote on 2020-12-28, 10:52:

I was wondering if an (almost) completely static build of dosbox-ece on linux is possible, ...

Hi,

The short answer is that it probably is technically possible, but static binaries are generally considered a bad idea (for a variety of reasons).
In this case there is the additional problem that the dosbox binary is linked with libGL. If you were to provide a statically compiled version, that binary would be tied to a specific hardware. I don't know of any easy way around that.
If you still want to try it, I guess just add -static flag and provide archived libraries (.a) for the linker would be the way to do it.
(Haven't tried that on dosbox or any bigger project for that matter, but that's how it's generally done AFAIK).

Reply 1195 of 1550, by Delfino Furioso

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hello @Yesterplay80 I've noticed that you are not updating the windows builds available on your dropbox
https://dosboxece.yesterplay.net/download/

are builds newer than 4393 hosted somewhere else?
or do you not have as much time as before, so compiling up-to-date builds is not a priority right now?

Reply 1196 of 1550, by TomVDJ

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Quick question: can I achieve this in Dosbox ECE at this moment: scale a 640 x 400 game to a 1280 x 1000 resolution (resulting in "pixels" that are 2 by 2,5). I want to run Lemmings like this. Original resolution is 640 x 400, but you can see that the game itself already has pixels of 2 x 2 (see attachment "original").

With this patch: https://github.com/bladeSk/DOSBox-pixel-perfect I manage to get it as I want (pixels of 4x5): see attachment "Patch". Only problem is that this patch can nog handle the "vgaonly" option, needed to get the colors right.

Does Dosbox ECE has something to achieve the same: basically have nice, sharp 4x5 pixels for this game as seen in the screenshot?

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  • DosBoxAndPatch.gif
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    Patch
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    Public domain
  • Original.gif
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    Original.gif
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    Original
    File license
    Public domain

Reply 1197 of 1550, by Ringding

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TomVDJ wrote on 2021-01-14, 14:20:

Original resolution is 640 x 400, but you can see that the game itself already has pixels of 2 x 2 (see attachment "original").

640 x 400 would have been considered high resolution at that time, which Lemmings definitely was not. Is "640 x 400" not just an artifact of how DOSBox handles this internally?

Reply 1198 of 1550, by TomVDJ

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Ringding wrote on 2021-01-14, 15:29:

640 x 400 would have been considered high resolution at that time, which Lemmings definitely was not. Is "640 x 400" not just an artifact of how DOSBox handles this internally?

You are right. It's 320 x 200. But when you use the "machine = vgaonly" parameter it shows as if the "original" resolution was 640 x 400. I have put vgaonly because this is the only one that renders the correct colors of the game. If I use "machine = svga_s3" the original resoltion indeed shows 320 x 200. However, the colors are way off. Also, only the game screen is 320 x 200. The title screen and level info screens are 640 x350. See attachments for all screens in original resolution (svga_s3). Also notice the ugly coloring in the level info screen and also in the buttons on the game screen.

I found this old thread about the doublescan issue with vgaonly: Double-height and double-width

Does the latest Dosbox ECE version still supports pixel perfect display (with pixels represented as sharp rectangles)?

Attachments

  • TitleScreen.gif
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    TitleScreen.gif
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    Title screen
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    Public domain
  • LevelExplanation.gif
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    LevelExplanation.gif
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    Level info screen
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    Public domain
  • GameScreen.gif
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    GameScreen.gif
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    Game screen
    File license
    Public domain

Reply 1199 of 1550, by Yesterplay80

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KainXVIII wrote on 2020-12-29, 11:28:

Which version of Munt DOSBox ECE using now?

One released on GitHub early in August 2020. Should still be 2.4.0.

Delfino Furioso wrote on 2021-01-12, 11:43:

or do you not have as much time as before, so compiling up-to-date builds is not a priority right now?

Exactly that! Time is very short atm...
But I managed to compile new builds right now! 😀

My full-featured DOSBox SVN builds for Windows & Linux: Vanilla DOSBox and DOSBox ECE (Google Drive Mirror)