Ok, ok, perhaps I will make a 0.3.2 release. The language bug is fixed and also the strange behavior in the environment variables editor (in classic and modern profile editor) has been corrected. I have found some small things I can do, so there will be at least some little new things besides the (at the moment) 5 bug fixes.

If you, J.B., have some more bug reports, they are welcome at any time.

The DosBox -> DOSBox spell mistake and some more homepage bugs (news section to long for page box, etc.) are fixed, too.

For any of you using a DOSBox CSV build I have released a little feature upgrade pack today. (It can be used with any 0.3.x version of D-Fend Reloaded.) The feature upgrade pack was built for the Ykhwongs DOSBox builds but should be useable with most of the CSV builds.

If you don't know the difference between the normal DOSBox version and the special builds, don't use it ! (See thread about CSV builds.)

The feature upgrade pack does not change the DFend.exe. The GUI for the special features is already in the regular DFend.exe but disabled by default (see the FAQ.txt) not to confuse normal users with settings their DOSBox versions cannot handle. The installer only changes the DFend.ini, adds some new default values to the ConfOpt.dat and brings a additional example profile. You can select which features shall be activated and which not. The most interessting thing should be the ability to setup PhysFS drives from the mount dialog.

BTW I'm planing a 0.3.2 bugfix release for the end of next week. So if you have any bugs you want to tell me, this would be the right time !

Alexander
Could you post a standard configfile created by D-Fend Reloaded ?
In one thread in the games section of dosbox there was something posted created by your frontend and it looked a bit odd.

Hi Qbix,
of course I can, here it is.

The file comes from a fresh 0.3.1 portable installation made to a "D-Fend Reloaded" folder on the desktop. In the profile file the virtual HD path etc. are relative but in the conf file only absolute paths are used. The conf files are build on the fly when starting a game.

In the autoexec section the first three commands are created from the "Environment variables" section and the "Drives" section. The "C:" is the first user defined autoexec command. (This means everything beginning with "C:" won't be there if the autoexec profile section for a normal game is empty.) The translation "C:\Users\Alexander Herzog\Desktop\D-Fend Reloaded\VirtualHD\" to "C:\Users\ALEXAN~1\Desktop\D-FEND~1\VIRTUA~1\" is done by a Windows API function so this should always be correct.

I have tested the D-Fend Reloaded prof -> conf creator with about 300 games. And for me it works very well. There are some little inconsistences between the dosbox.conf example config, the DOSBox readme and the (old) Wiki (for example [serialports] <-> [serial]). In case of doubt I've used the way it was documented in the example conf file.

Can you please tell me the thread where you've found the strange file ? Then I can look at it, too.

Getting Battlespire to run

this looks a better 😀

Some small remarks
prebuffer is limited to 100 (max)
we have it at 10

Next:
in mount you can use full paths:

1mount C "C:\Users\ALEXAN~1\Desktop\D-FEND~1\VIRTUA~1\"

can be

1mount C "C:\Users\Alexander Herzog\Desktop\D-Fend Reloaded\Virtual Drive"

that

1set Path=Z:\ 

Is not needed.

%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\.....

although data shouldn't be stored on the Desktop in a profile/home folder.

Thank you, the problem just was ConjurerDragon wanted to run a game from a location not reachable via any mounted drive in DOSBox. Normally D-Fend Reloaded changes to the program folder ("C:" and then "cd SOMEGAME") before running the game file. But in this case it could not.

Perhaps I should make some warning message appear in this case in the next D-Fend Reloaded version.

Thank you for your remarks.

1.) First of all you have just discovered a new bug:

1result.Add('blocksize='+IntToStr(Game.MixerBlocksize));
2result.Add('prebuffer='+IntToStr(Game.MixerBlocksize));

A copy and paste error...

2.) I know I can use the full names. I use the short version to avoid the DOSBox 134 chars on command line problem. (And when mounting multiple CD images from the same path for one drive I temporary mount the directory of the images as a drive to be able to do a "imgmount D Y:\CDIMG1.ISO Y:\CDIMG2.ISO ..." to make the command line shorter.)

3.)
The "set Path=Z:\" is not hard coded. It just comes from the environment variables section of the profile.

4.)
Of course it is not a clear way of handling programs to install them to the desktop. And of course I have a normal D-Fend Reloaded installation in "C:\Program files\D-Fend Reloaded" which uses "C:\Users\Alexander Herzog\D-Fend Reloaded" as its data folder and which will never write to its program directory (to make Vista happy). But as I'm using this installation for developing and testing I'm not so sure the profiles in this location are all ok at any time - so I've just made a quick USB stick installation to a subfolder of the desktop to give you a correct conf file.

In any type of installation paths in profiles are stored relatively to the so called base directory if possible. On a normal installation the base directory is the "C:\Users\<you>\D-Fend Reloaded" directory (but configurateable) and on USB stick installations its the program folder. This allows to plug the USB stick on any PC (=any drive letter) or copy the USB stick installation folder to any path and everything will be ok. As I said the absolute paths are made on the fly when starting DOSBox.

problem 2 will be worked around by dosbox itself as well in the next version. (4096 limit then) (and it's a dos limit, not a dosbox limit 😉 , the work around is a special hack for mount and imgmount)

That sounds nice. And about the 134-limit: I know this is a DOS limit. In the later days I've written programs under DOS. Using EMS and later XMS sometimes wasn't as easy as memory management today. And then TurboVision. I still have a book with over 1000 pages in my bookshelf which is called "PC Intern" but could also be named "Int 21h". So I have very, very big respect of DOSBox. For me it's one of the best pieces of software I've ever seen and that's why I'm trying to spread DOSBox a little bit more by making it easier to handle.

BTW I have also read "Add case insensitive support for string type options." in the CSV changelog. I can't imagine by the bug in which frontend this was inspired... 😀

At the moment I have some disabled settings in D-Fend Reloaded (which can be activated via the setup file or the upgrade pack released today) and there will be some more in 0.4.0. So I can make some options immediately available when there is a DOSBox version with this things. Just to be prepared.

Hello

Thank you for this good and nice program !

I translated it in french.

I attached the INI file to this post.
You can use it to integrate into D-Fend Reloaded.

By the way, I have some remarks, in order to help the development of your program.

general:
- many buttons and labels are not big enough to display their translated caption

english.ini:
- line 241 "Jet", I don't know what it is.
- error in line 304. "TimTed"
- line 307 "Sound.Joystick.Buttonwrap", I don't understand this "wrap".
- line 415 "ChoSse"
- l 426 "Dateien"
- l 504 "Dateien"
- l 526 I don't know what is "jump&run". platform games ?
- l 646 "cloes"
- l 672 "leayout"
- l 726 "seam"

I hope this will help.

This is how it should be:

1) "Jet" should be "Yet", as in "No filename yet".

2) "TimTed" sohuld be "Timed", as in "Timed intervalls for axis"

3) On "Sound.Joystick.Buttonwrap": No clue, but I've seen the term used in other languages, you can leave as it is and trasnlate the rest of the sentence.

4) "ChoSse" should be "Choose".

5) "Dateien" should be "Data"

6) "Jump & Run games" are just that, games were jumping and running are essential for gameplay. Think "Super Mario Bros." or "Bubble Bobble" type of game.

7) "Cloes" should be "closes".

8) "Leayout" should be "layout", as in keyboard config.

9) "Seam" should be "seem".

To other translators: If you have trouble with any of the words and the info on the INI is not helpful enough, try a good dictionary, such as this one:

http://www.wordreference.com/

Hi curieux,
thank you very much for the translation ! D-Fend Reloaded is getting better and better. Very nice.

Today I've worked on a long list of bugs reported by J.B. I will look on your file and on the problems in the english language file tomorrow.

Thank you Neville,
yes, your corrections are right. I've just changed the default language file:

1Filename.NoFileNameJet=(no filename yet)
2Sound.Joystick.Timed=Timed intervalls for axis
3DosBoxKeymapper.Titel=Choose keymapper config file
4Service1=Delete old unused setup files from D-Fend v2
5Info=Please select the games for which conf files shall be created:
6CloseDosBoxAfterGameExit=Close DOSBox when program closes
7KeyboardLayout.Info=If you select "default" as keyboard layout, the default value of this D-Fend language setup will be used ("US (US)").
8Info.AllTranslated=All strings in this section seem to be translated.

Yes, Jump&Run means platform games (Commander Keen etc.). In german the term "Jump&Run" or "Jump'n'Run" is very usual and "Platform games" is very uncommon. And I've no idea what "buttonwrap" means, too. I have found this in the DOSBox documentation but have not found any description what it means.

I know the problem with the button sizes. Labels have an autosize features and checkboxes / radiobuttons have an invisible paint area which I simply make big enough for all cases. But buttons are a bit more complex. I will check all dialogs with all languages the next days to make everything big enough.

I will try to finish version 0.3.2 by the end of next week. (In germany weeks begin on mondays, so "by the end of next week" means "in about 5 or 6 days".) So I won't make a "French language file for DFR 0.3.1" release before.

And one last thing "to other translators":
If you have trouble with any of the words and the info on the INI is not helpful enough ... you can also always ask me. I will always have time for people helping me with D-Fend Reloaded.

Thank you, Neville and Alexander

I corrected my translations.
See the attachement.

In france, we use the translation of "platform games" a bit more than "jump&run".

Alexander: I understand the difficulty of the button size.
In many programs, they are not big enough for the french translations as french sentences usually are a bit larger than english ones.

Neville:
Another dictionary can be usefull too: Freelang
http://www.freelang.net/

Alexander: I have a suggestion
In the dialog "program settings", tab "Language", could-you add a link to the dialog "Language editor" ?

Alexander:

About the buttonwrap, I had a look at the source code of DOSBox, mainly in "sdl_mapper.cpp".
I'm not sure at all, but I suppose that when buttonwrap is activated, the joystick's number of buttons is limited to an emulated joystick (instead of a physical one ?).

This is unclear, as I don't use joystick in this emulator.
If you know well DOSBox, you can look that source file, maybe it could help you to understand.

I also checked the french and spanish translations of DOSBox about buttonwrap, but they did not help me much.
The french translation says (I re-translate it for you) "Activate the inversion of the buttons, for the number of buttons emulated".
But the source does not seem to invert anything, juste limit the number of buttons we can use (click).

Well, my translation won't help you at all: I noticed Spanish gaming websites also use the English word, so I chose to leave the term untranslated.

buttonwrap wraps buttons, that is button 0-3 map to 0-3, and (physical)
button 4 maps to (emulated) 0 again, 5 to 1 and so on (buttonwrap=true).
For buttonwrap=false you can remap all (well many) physical buttons.

curieux:

I've modified the dialogs now. And I must say, until now I thought the German strings are rather longer, but compared to the French langauge strings they are really short and easy to handle.

The idea of making a link to the language editor in the setup dialog sounds good. But perhaps I will hide it when the setup dialog is opend as part of the first run setup, so a first time user will not open this editor as his first action.

wd:

Thank you for the information. I think I will add a description label in the profile editor (saying something like "DOSBoxJoystickButton:=PhysicalJoystickButton mod 4" - but a bit less mathematical).

Niville and curieux:

D-Fend Reloaded is nearly ready. At the moment there are 17 new langauge strings and (for the first time) I have changed 2 key names. "Filename.NoFileNameJet" became "Filename.NoFileNameYet" and "DosBoxKeymapper.Titel" became "DosBoxKeymapper.Title". From the two things I have written in this post perhaps there will come two more strings. So there will be altogether 21 things to change or translate. I will as usual make a list of all changes, add the new lines to the newest versions of your language files and mail them to you. I hope version 0.3.2 will be strings-complete at least by Tuesday evening. (And to Niville: This time there won't be any not listed changes in your language file.)

Ok, that's it for the moment. By now there are 9 smaller improvments and 12 bugfixes.