This is an absolute monster of a release, probably our biggest so far!
Highlights
-Authentic adaptive CRT emulation
-Accurate VGA emulation
-3dfx Voodoo emulation
-New integer scaling modes
-Aspect ratio correct image captures
-Supercharged image and video capturing
-Aspect ratio and viewport enhancements
-IBM Music Feature Card support
And many, many, many more...
DOSBox Staging Basics
Today: Brand new „Getting started“ guide
With the new DOSBox Staging 0.81 RC1 out the door, we also created a brand new „Getting Started“ guide.
If you are new to DOSBox or didn’t tinker with it in a while it makes sense to take a look, we promise!
It describes everything you need to know to get your favorite games running in no time, in the least steps possible!
Also explains advanced configuration like different graphic modes, soundfonts and MT-32 emulation.
The hardware requirements aren't the problem here, it runs on much slower machines.
That crash shouldn't happen using cycles=auto (default), report that as a bug if you want.
After using cycles=12000 you can adjust ist using Ctrl+F11 and Ctrl+F12 shortcuts to maybe improve the sound further. For me (Mac mini M2) the game works great using 12000 though.
Drop by our Discord or raise a ticket on GitHub if you have further issues.
So, astronomy peeps—what is this? This is an iPhone photo, so it doesn’t resolve everything, but that bright streak is actually a string of bright pulses. Is that a meteorite breaking up? Alien invasion? Buckaroo Banzai emerging from the 8th dimension?
Ok, WTF is this? I paste a hex address into the VSCode search box and now without my asking some kind of Office crap is popping up over top? What makes you think a random hex number is a date?
This is exactly the sort of useless direction that the AI and Office folks have been leaning into the last few years, and it is annoying as hell. They always seem to test some well-worn path and think they're coming up with amazing keystroke-saving efficiency gains without considering all the annoyances and false positives they introduce along the way.
And the annoyances in my experience always outweigh the supposed convenience. I'm always tripping on them in the normal course of my work, and am never seeing the benefits. You can add the annoying "autocomplete" and "drag & drop text" and a myriad of other supposed convenience features to the list. Count me out. 😡
DREAMM 2.1 is officially released for Windows, MacOS, and Linux targets (x64 and ARM64). DREAMM is a bespoke emulator for LucasArts titles running on DOS, Windows, and FMTowns platforms.
Shout out to @aaronsgiles and congratulations on releasing a brand new version of his DREAMM emulator for playing LucasArts games on modern systems!
DOSBox is awesome but it's always nice to have options. Cheers.
Maniac Mansion came either on one 3.5" disk or two 5.25" disks. The contents were nearly identical, except for the index file (00.LFL), which mapped which rooms were on which disks so the game could prompt you to insert the right disk when you got to a particular room.
Well apparently the Spanish licensee either made a mistake or had some other issue such that when they shipped the single-disk version, they included the two-disk index file. Meaning the user might be prompted to insert disk 2 at some point in the game.
The workaround? The text on the floppy label: "Cuando el disco 2 sea solicitado, volver a introducir el mismo disco"
Which Google translates as: "When disk 2 is requested, reinsert the same disk"
Finally had to break down and put in a disc-switching solution for multi-CD games.
For some multidisc games, it's easy to eliminate disc swapping by just copying all the disc 2 files next to the disc 1 files. As long as there's no overlapping names, and the game doesn't explicitly check for CDs, you're good. This works for Rebel Assault II and Infernal Machine.
For other games, there are overlapping files, but you can be clever. Escape From Monkey Island has one file that you can basically concatenate the CD1 and CD2 versions and it will run happily with no disc swaps.
But then you have the games with Redbook audio. Both Outlaws and Jedi Knight do this, and there's really no good solution to the fact that you'll get the wrong music if I don't provide a way to switch CDs. So I'm rejiggering the way they install so that disc 1 music/cutscenes are separated from disc 2 items, and the game will prompt. You'll have a menu item to switch between the two.
This also makes it possible to support games that are quite explicit about CDs as well. Jedi Knight stores the disc number in the user profile, for example. And Behind the Magic has overlapping files with no mechanism to bypass them. So having proper support in place solves both issues.
Just wish I'd done this earlier and not in the homestretch of a beta cycle! 😬
While I'm at it with #DOSBox, is there a way of making a folder or drive non-persistent?
Basically, I want the SDK to be as untouched as possible by a DOSBox session. There is no way to avoid the SDK creating files inside the \SIBOSDK folder, but existing files shouldn't be changed, and the files created could happily be lost when the session is closed.
Again, I'm thinking scripts, batch files, or Go (easily ported).