I have just finished the multiple image option. In D-Fend Reloaded 0.2 you will be able to define multiple CD images and multiple floppy images when booting from floppy.

To avoid the 134 chars problem the directories/files for all mount/imgmount commands are now transfered to short names ("Program files" -> "PROGRA~1") when building the DOSBox conf files. If you use multiple images for one mount and all image file are in the same directory, D-Fend Reloaded will look for the last unused drive letter (normally "Y:"), temporary mount the images directory as Y:, imgmount's the images and then unmounts Y:, thank you Qbix. (... without having to setup anything for this manually.)

(And of course thank you IIGS_User for your hint, but I prefer to have all config settings in the DosBox conf file.)

All things I wanted to have in the 0.2 release are now ready. In the next days I will build some installers (not only complete installer like now but also an update installer which will only contain the changed files).

@Neville: I have attached the new spanish language file. If you like to translate the new strings, I would be glad. Altogether there are 38 new strings. Additionally I have made a list of all untranslated strings (also included in the zip) so you don't need to search for them.

I hope to find enough time the next days to finish version 0.2 so you can play with it this weekend.

Mmm... Almost done, but I have one question:

Couldn't find the string "Extras.BuildInstaller=&Build installer for multiple games..." under the section [Menu].

Should I add it myself?

I can't wait to try it, Alexander! Great stuff... sounds cool! Thanks heaps for fixing everything so fast (love the sound of the multi-mount automation, too!).

One thing I noticed the other day that may be a bug or may be something just on my end (not that major) is that when I was making some installers, two of the "big" ones (500-800mb) worked fine but didn't give the installer an icon. No idea why (I tried remaking them, same result... all the other installer have the "yellow box" icon just fine).

Cheers,
Banjo

Hi Neville!

Neville wrote:

Couldn't find the string "Extras.BuildInstaller=&Build installer for multiple games..." under the section [Menu].

"Extras.BuildInstaller=..." is in line 130 of the Spanish.ini file.

The string is already translated but I have changed the english version of this menu item. In version 0.1.2 in the extras menu the menu item was "Build installer..." but now we have an "Build installer..." menu item in the profile menu which means "Build installer (for the selected profile)". So I changed the menu item in the extras menu to "Build installer for multiple games...". I have taken your Extras.BuildInstaller translation for the new menu item in the profiles menu. So this is already ok, only the "for multiple games" is missing in the "Extras.BuildInstaller=&Crear programa de instalación...".

Banjo wrote:

One thing I noticed the other day that may be a bug or may be somethung just on my end (not that major) is that when I was making some installers, two of the "big" ones (500-800mb) worked fine but didn't give the installer an icon.

I have also noticed this before. Either this is a NSIS problem or it is a Windows problem. In both cases I can't do anything to fix it. D-Fend Reloaded is only creating the nsi script for NSIS. The icon is defined in the auxiliary script "D-Fend Reloaded DataInstaller.nsi" which is included in any nsi script created by D-Fend Reloaded. So the icon definition should be the same for all installers.

I could check with ResourceHacker or something similar if NSIS includes the icon to the installer. But at the moment finishing version 0.2 has my first priority.

Such big installer packages have another problem: The installer CRC checks itself directly after program start. If you run a big installer from DVD this can quite take a while.

Edit:
It's a windows problem...
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?s=2dd … large+installer

Should be OK, let me know if there are any problems:

Thanks for checking that out, Alexander. I use Inno Setup a lot, but haven't tried NSIS before so wasn't sure if it was a bug with that or what... doesn't really bother me, I just was concerned there was a problem with my finished installer.

I might look into the ability to break installers into "chunks" later on.

Hi everybody !

And finally D-Fend Reloaded 0.2.0 is online:
http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/

The changes from version 0.1.2:

• New dialog for changing multiple profiles at once.
• The serial port settings can be changed via a dialog now.
• If installed with the FreeDOS commandline tools, 4DOS can be set up as commandline interpreter in profile editor.
• If installed with the FreeDOS commandline tools, DOS32A can be used as a replacement for the DOS/4GW protected mode extender.
• Now you can specify multiple CD images for one drive mount and switch between them at DOSBox runtime.
• Now you can specify multiple floppy images for booting from floppy image and switch between them at DOSBox runtime.
• If a game has a data folder, D-Fend Reloaded can not only open this folder but also open a specific file in the data folder now (selectable via a directory list in form of menu).
• Installer packages for single games can be built directly from the the profile context menu.
• The DOSBox png screenshots can be saved as jpeg, gif or bmp image files now.
• The creation of the games list is much faster now.
• The DosBox program icon is used for the "DosBox DOS" default profile.
• The game info tooltips in the games list can be turned off and on now.
• More icons in the menu.
• Updated DOSBox links in the help menu.
• Added the vogons to the "Old games" link collection.
• [Fix] The serial port settings were ignored when starting DosBox.
• [Fix] Long lines in "Autoexec.bat" and "Custom setting" were split into two lines which can damage commandlines.
• [Fix] Numerial values were not stored when closing profile editor if you entered less digits than the edit field allows.
• [Fix] Added missing default value "auto" for joysticks.
• [Fix] Fixed some spelling mistakes in the English language file.
• [Fix] Wrong info text in DOSBox folder select dialog in setup dialog.
• [Fix] I/O control is always shown as "No" in the drives list independend of the real state of I/O control.

The next days I'll take a little holiday from D-Fend Reloaded, but I have already plans for at least 2 oder 3 further versions.

But for the moment: Have fun with the new version. 😀

Hi, I just had a look at this and I feel the time has come to move on from old dfend. The feature I especially like is the relative path "USB" mode. A few questions though before I start the transition:

Is there a simple way to transfer all my old settings and convert the paths to relative? Or do I manually have to put .\ in all the appropriate places, game by game?

What exactly does the "Make absolute to relative paths" button under service do? (path(e)s has a typo BTW)

What is the significance of the "game folder" and "additional data folder" setting under general settings?

If I want to make an installer how can I include extra files like settings files that many games put on C:\ ?

Thx and keep up the good work.

Hi J.B.,

Relative path mode

The "Make absolute to relative paths" in the setup dialog does exactly what you want (if your installation fulfills some premises):

All relative paths are stored relatively to the base directory. (In a normal installation this would be "C:\Users\YourName\D-Fend Reloaded" and in an USB stick installation maybe "E:\D-Fend Reloaded". And in an USB stick installation it will change dependen where you plug the stick.) The suggested directory for games is "<BaseDir>\VirtualHD" but you can use any other directory. If you select a game exe in the profile editor in a subdir of the basedir, lets say
C:\Users\me\D-Fend Reloaded\VirtualHD\MONKEY1\MONKEY.EXE
D-Fend Reloaded will save ".\VirtualHD\MONKEY1\MONKEY.EXE" in the profile. If the file lays outside the basedir, it will use the full path.

You can open the profile editor game by game, click on the "..." behind the game exe record and click on "Ok" and the path will be relative (if the file is in the basedir tree). "Make absolute to relative paths" simply does this for all games at once.

I know, it would be a good idea to write some documentation some day, but at the moment I just haven't enough time.

"game folder" <-> "data folder"

The "game folder" is the directory where the selected game exe is located.

The "additional data folder" is a user defineable folder (for manual, cheats and what ever). The suggested folder is "<BaseDir>\GameData\<ProfileName>". For every game you can create a data folder and connect it to the profile. So you can access additional files easily. (And if you create an installer package or move games from one installation to another the data folder will be inclueded.)

Extra games for installers

Extra dirs can be included by the "Additional program folders (will be deleted when game is deinstalled)" to installers. For example the OpenGEM profile in the demo package uses this.

But, sorry, you can not include single files to installation packages. But you can do something like this:

Mount ".\VirtualHD\SpecialGame" as "C:". (Ths game itself will be for example in directory ".\VirtualHD\SpecialGame\MyGame") and than declare ".\VirtualHD\SpecialGame" as additional program directory.

I hope, this will help you a little bit.

Excellent, just what I was hoping. But I might just need a little bit more help with the "make paths relative" service.

My games are located at "d:\programme\emulation\dos\games"

So I installed dfend reloaded to "d:\programme\emulation\dos" and copied over all the prof files from old dfend.

Now when I open dfend I and edit the profiles then, as you said, the full path changes to a relative path if I click on ... and select the same exe. But when I use the service the paths in the profiles do not change, they stay absolute.

Any idea what I could be doing wrong?

Excellent DOSBox frontend.

I noticed a small bug in the new version:

Run setup is not working properly.
It does not run the Setupfile but the Programfile.

My "Run Setup" option appears to work fine over here.

A minor bug I see in my version, the "View History" buttons are not in English.

Overall, great update and works perfectly on my mobile drive!!

Now that some of you mention untranslated items, the tooltips entry on the "View" menu shows the original German: "Tooltips in der spieleleiste anzeigen".

Looks like the similar issues that aroused in previous versions of the program, but the good news is that everything else seems to show as it should here.

BTW, the "maximize" bug is still present, but I wouldn't worry much about it. Chances are that the fault is on my videocard / drivers combo. I'm using a Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT and the ForceWare v163.75 drivers.

Anyway, this a great release, now DFR has almost anything I can think of, and it retains most of its simplicity. Time to make myself at home and start adding some more DOS games.

By any chance, can your frontend support multiple versions of DOSBox?

Hi everybody,

I have started working on version 0.3.0 now. I can think of a lot of still missing features. 😀 Some smaller changes and fixes are already done but I think 0.3.0 won't be ready before mid/end of february.

Run setup
I have checked the program code for "Run setup" and also tested the function (via hotkey, context menu and regular menu): For me it's working fine, too.
Can you tell me your values for "Program file" and "Setup file" (and perhaps the parameters if you use any)?

"Make absolute to relative paths" function
This function has a bug in version 0.2.0: If you have more than one additionally program folders defined, they will not be changed. But everything else should work. The function checks the following profile items: program file, setup file, capute folder, additionally program folders, dirs, data folder and mount folders. And it is using the same base folder for making paths relative like the profile editor does. Can you tell me which directory your D-Fend Reloaded installation does not changes correctly? Additionally it would be a good idea, if you tell me your base directory name, too.

Missing translations
Both fixed. For every string in D-Fend Reloaded I need 4 lines of code on different places to make it translateable. So I usualy write the normal program code for a dialog first and then at the end make it translateable - or forget to do this.

The "maximize window"-bug
And finally I can reproduce this bug here: If I choose the setup option "Restore window size on program start" and maximize the window before closing, I get the same strange looking window on start up. So I was able to fix this. In version 0.3.0 this bug should be gone.

Multiple versions of DOSBox
At the moment I see no big advantage from using more than one DOSBox version. I don't know any game which runs with an old DOSBox version but not with the current. Perhaps this could be interessting for testing nightly builds of DOSBox, but for this one could also use a parallel D-Fend Reloaded installation (in USB stick mode).
If I have enough time, I will think about this. But at the moment I have some other nice features on my todo with a higher priority.

I fixed the "make folders relative" problem by renaming the folder from "Emulation" to "emulation" so it's something to do with case sensitivity. I checked the original prof files and in them emulation is written with a lower case e, while the real folder had an upper case e. So probably a special and rare situation but maybe dfend could be changed to be case insensitive? Or is dosbox itself case sensitive in any way?

More bugs? The "all", "none" and "by genre" buttons in the multiple edit dialogs don't seem to do anything. And may I request resolution and scaling settings in the multiple profiles editor as these are settings I would be likely to change when moving from one PC to another.

Another one? I can't add new options to the default settings. Specifically I'm trying to add "direct3d" to the render options but after clicking OK it isn't saved.

Thank you J.B. for testing D-Fend Reloaded such intensively.

The relative path problem is indeed releated to some case sensitive comparisons. My MakeRelPath function checks if Copy(Path,1,length(RelPath))=RelPath. Now I do a UpperCase() on both sides.

The three not working buttons where simple connecting errors. I implemented the select/unselect code but forgot the connect it to the buttons. Resolution and scaling setting for the multiple profile editor are now on my todo for version 0.3.0.

And I have fixed the bug in the setup dialog. As a workaround for this bug until version 0.3.0 is ready you can do this: If you change the category after adding a new value, the value will get stored (if you press "OK" at the end of cource).