DOSBox Frontend

[P-J]

For those who use DOSBox (I know you're out there...) I've created a rather simple a functional frontend.

It's only 30K (zipped), and you can find it here.

Cheers

[Enverex]

Sites back up then?

Visited it the other day and just got the notice about the PC Games industry being crap

[Antiriad]

I recently upgraded to DosBox 0.61 and found it very impressive, but this Frontend of yours is great! Has a nice icon too which the original is lacking. I offered the official team to do one but got no reply

[P-J]

Originally posted by Enverex
Visited it the other day and just got the notice about the PC Games industry being crap

Hehe, yeah! Do you see the irony though? I've now devoted it to a frontend for an emulator designed for playing old PC games?

[P-J]

Originally posted by Antiriad
I recently upgraded to DosBox 0.61 and found it very impressive, but this Frontend of yours is great! Has a nice icon too which the original is lacking. I offered the official team to do one but got no reply

The original what? There is another frontend available?

[Unknown_K]

Originally posted by P-J
Hehe, yeah! Do you see the irony though? I've now devoted it to a frontend for an emulator designed for playing old PC games?

What was the website about before?

New games generally suck these days (unless you never played a real oldschool game and have no idea there is more then eye-candy to a game).

[manicx]

Cool! DosBox is one of my PC faves and a frontend was exactly what was missing...

[fisken uno]

Originally posted by P-J
The original what? There is another frontend available?

I might be wrong but I'm almost 100% sure that I've tried another 'unofficial' frontend for Dosbox in the past...

BTW yes I love Dosbox too. What a pleasure it was to play Sq4 all the way through without using annoying slowdown progs (Dosbox's slowdown is so smoooth).

[Enverex]

Originally posted by fisken uno
(Dosbox's slowdown is so smoooth).

Does it work well for GTA?
(I wan't to play SQ4 again, the narration was hysterical, any idea where I can get the version with narration?)

[fisken uno]

Originally posted by Enverex
Does it work well for GTA?

I don't know. I haven't tried GTA with Dosbox.

Originally posted by Enverex
I wan't to play SQ4 again, the narration was hysterical, any idea where I can get the version with narration?

The talkie? I've got it, and if you'd want it I would love to upload it for you - that is if you've got somewhere I could upload it; It's 170 MB uncompressed and I doubt it'll get much smaller with compression because the audio file is the biggest file and I don't think it's a standard audio file (or rather, it contains more information than audio) so it's probably not possible to compress it to mp3/ogg either. I just WISH there was a ScummVM for Sierra games.

[Enverex]

You could e-mail it me, that would work.
The best thing to do is compress the whole thing with WinRAR using "Best" compression mode with the option "Make solid archive". That should save at least a few meg - ben@atomnet.co.uk

[Antiriad]

Sorry to confuse you P-J. When I say original I meant the program itself, not another Frontend.

Are you going to get the DosBox team to adopt your Frontend as the official one? I think they should, would be like the GUI's for MESS and MAME which are included alongside the Dos program.

[P-J]

Originally posted by Antiriad
Are you going to get the DosBox team to adopt your Frontend as the official one?

I don't like to stifle peoples choice, so I'll stick with it as a separate project. I think it tends to confuse people too (not realising it's a separate program...!)

[Drake1009]

I'm going to have to download that frontend at some point. Never managed to get anything to run right on Dosbox.

[mtb]

Originally posted by fisken uno
I just WISH there was a ScummVM for Sierra games.

There is something, from my query of packages for linux debian:

It's gpl'ed, maybe there is also a windows version

Description: a portable interpreter for SCI games like Space Quest 3
FreeSCI is a portable interpreter for SCI games, such as the Space Quest
series (starting with SQ3) or Leisure Suit Larry (2 and sequels).
.
FreeSCI is in beta right now; the current release still has several known
bugs. It is feature-complete within the following limits:
- Only SCI0 games are supported
- The SCI debug functions aren't fully supported (and probably never
will be, since FreeSCI uses its own debug functions).
.
It offers the following improvements over Sierra SCI:
- Improved background picture support
- Trilinear filtering for text and images
- readline-like editing in controls
- General MIDI sound output (still experimental)

[fisken uno]

Originally posted by mtb
There is something, from my query of packages for linux debian:

It's gpl'ed, maybe there is also a windows version

Yes, there is a version of FreeSCI for Windows. Too bad this interpreter sucks so damn bad. Development is SO slow, it still only runs SCI0 games (not even SCI01!) and it's buggy as hell in my opinion. I lost faith in this project years ago; most of all I'd hope that the ScummVM team would take on the task to make a good Sierra interpreter but I know that's not gonna happen.

ScummVM is brilliant. Not only has it developed incredibly fast - now almost 100% supporting every Scumm game - it runs smooth like a dream, too = is very easy on the cpu power! Plus mp3/ogg support, which means that I can keep most of my old Lucasarts games on ONE disc!! These guys deserve getting paid for their work MUCH more than the lazy fucks over at LucasArts.

[Fred the Fop]

Hey PJ nice little proggy! I saw it announced on the DOSBOX main page.

Now I see a problem with some games in re: EMS. Some say there is not enough EMS. I try and up the RAM in the config file, but that does not seem to help. Not that I had much hope it would.

[P-J]

Originally posted by Frederic
Hey PJ nice little proggy! I saw it announced on the DOSBOX main page.

Now I see a problem with some games in re: EMS. Some say there is not enough EMS. I try and up the RAM in the config file, but that does not seem to help. Not that I had much hope it would.

I can't really help you with DOSBox related stuff, since I'm just as clueless in this department

Suggest you post on the DOSBox official forums, maybe they can help you out?

Tip though : Don't enable XMS and EMS. Use only one of them

[mtb]

Originally Posted by fisken uno

Yes, there is a version of FreeSCI for Windows. Too bad this interpreter sucks so damn bad. Development is SO slow, it still only runs SCI0 games (not even SCI01!) and it's buggy as hell in my opinion. I lost faith in this project years ago; most of all I'd hope that the ScummVM team would take on the task to make a good Sierra interpreter but I know that's not gonna happen.

ScummVM is brilliant. Not only has it developed incredibly fast - now almost 100% supporting every Scumm game - it runs smooth like a dream, too = is very easy on the cpu power! Plus mp3/ogg support, which means that I can keep most of my old Lucasarts games on ONE disc!! These guys deserve getting paid for their work MUCH more than the lazy fucks over at LucasArts.

Read here ( from http://www.scummvm.org/ )

Apr 1, 2004: Announcing CABAL

April 1st, THE INTERNET: The FreeSCI, Sarien and ScummVM teams today announced the formation of CABAL (Coalesced 'Adventures beyond Architecture' League), a universal adventure game interpreter. This new project will unite the strengths and capabilities of the projects involved, creating what the project members believe will be a revolution for adventure game fans around the globe.

When asked about the relevance of CABAL for the worldwide adventure gaming market, ScummVM project lead Max Horn commented that "[with] the market for adventure titles waning, we believe that the formation of a project with the explicit goal of running every adventure game ever released will infuse it with new life." FreeSCI maintainer Lars Skovlund added that "this will certainly cause an upheaval in the gaming world. Adventure game fans around the world, rejoice!".

In addition to supporting LucasArts' SCUMM games (including famous titles such as "Monkey Island", "Indiana Jones" and "Sam and Max"), Sierra's SCI and AGI lines ("King's Quest", "Leisure Suit Larry", "Space Quest"...), and other games already supported by the retrospective engines, the newly united team plans to continue to add further titles to their already impressive list.
Some of the juicy new modules include:

* An Infocom module (based on the Frotz Z-machine interpreter), so you can now play your favorite text adventures anywhere you go!
* Exult is being merged in as a plugin, allowing Ultima 7 fans around the world to play their favorite game on the many platforms already supported by the CABAL component engines - including Palm/PocketPC PDAs and the Dreamcast.
* Revolution software has offered the source-code for Broken Sword 3, which will be added to the titles supported by the upcoming CABAL3D project - alongside with Grim Fandango and, possibly, Ultima IX (negotiations are ongoing).
* Support for the SNES games Final Fantasy IV through VI (Japanese numbering, i.e. FF2/FF3 according to US releases) is planned for sometime this Fall. Whilst these are not strictly adventure games, the storyline and plots in this series are more imaginative than any 'action adventure' title published in recent years.

Offers by various companies, including Microsoft and Amiga International, to buy out the team have been gently but firmly declined by the leads of the joint project. "We know that we could earn a lot of money from this, but we are idealists and at this time we have the goal to reform the worlds adventure market. Once that is achieved, we can reconsider about making some money out of this."

after this, here ( same site ):

Apr 02, 2004: There is no Cabal

CABAL team splits over fundamental design issues

After yesterdays ground-breaking announcement, we are sad to announce the immediate disbandment of the CABAL team. Over the last several days there has been heated debate regarding several important design issues, and current tension in the team has risen to an insurmountable level.

"It's really unfortunate", Max Horn, senior developer on ScummVM and Exult, was quoted as saying, "but [former FreeSCI maintainer] Christoph [Reichenbach]'s ideas of aligning curly braces with the left-hand side of function declarations while appending them to the end of the line for 'while' and 'for' loops did not make any sense at all."
The latter replied by pointing out that "using anything but tabs for indentation is calling for trouble."

Claudio Matsuoka, of the Sarien project, pointed out his disappointment and noted that he didn't see much of a point in trying to co-operate with people entirely incapable of reaching agreements on such trivial issues. "I mean, we haven't even resolved the entire EMACS vs. vi dispute, and they're already at each other's throats again."
James Brown, another senior developer on the ScummVM project, sadly announced that he was laughed out of the project meer hours before a decision to split was made. "They just said I didn't belong, since I prefer nano as a editor..." he admitted.

no comment.