DosBox reached version .70

Yeah, it's a pretty good upgrade. I did the WC testing for this one and all the DOS Wing Commander games run (as they did on 0.65). The first thing I noticed is that core=auto and cycles=auto now. The program does its best to see what the software you're running needs and automatically adjusts speed. For the most part, this works very well. Once in a while you'll notice a WC3 movie or something like that skip, but it's worth it for not having to tune your cycles/frameskip to get the speed just right. This was something people had trouble understanding and setting apropriately in prior versions. It's not perfect - the option to manually customize core/cycles is still there and some people will want to continue to do that, but it's nice that new users don't have to worry about that at first.

The authors of DOSBox also said there were some joystick improvements that should help Wing Commander fans. Hades actually had some trouble with drifting into the upper/left corner with this, but I haven't had a chance to dig in and try to reproduce that yet. Privateer 2 also continues to need the -ioctl switch enabled. Otherwise, good stuff. This is a very very helpful program for getting all your Wing Commander games to run.

We'll be updating our walkthroughs for the new version before long. For the most part they're still accurate, so start here if you need help getting games going: https://www.wcnews.com/techsupport.shtml
 
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This version is awesome, the only reason I didn't use dosbox much before was my having to frequently adjust cycle settings
 
Make a WC version of what? DOSBox already runs all DOS WC games. Prior to DOSBox, people did make custom programs such as MyJEMM to do things like this, but they are no longer necessary. HCl's trick to get Armada playable online uses a modified DOSBox executable.
 
Sure, I was talking about the armada modification.

EDIT: Because it also included joystick optimizations.
 
The new DOSBox is nice. I don't know if the previous version had this, but I just used some crazy 3x driver to fill a 42" widescreen in order to play WC1 in all its glory. It looked really good.
 
QuailPilot said:
I bet it did
Click to expand...

Have you used older versions of DOSBox?

The program has had the ability to go fullscreen for quite a while. In past versions this occasionally caused slowdown or discoloration. There has also been a scaler for intermediate resolutions, but I've had some trouble with those.
 
I'm using DOSBox for quite a while. The thing is that I never used it on such a large screen. For some reason, the normal fullscreen mode would result on a small square in the middle of the screen, so I had to use that 3x thing to fill it up.

The good thing is that it looks a bit different, and not very pixelated.
 
EA should re-release a Wing Commander Collection using dosbox or some variant(since it is open source)... WC1-5 on 2 DVDs, $40.

With more effort, you could even recompile the 3do version of Wing Commander 1(Super Wing Commander).
 
So, EA should live up to the common (and stupid) internet idiot claim that they don't innovate, they just recycle a formula ad infinitum? Then again, a lot of the people making that claim also scoff at Arena going for an entirely new look at the franchise, which is fairly solid proof that internet loudmouths shouldn't get much attention outside of their own little cliques.

Also, just re-releasing the original games (or at least the ones before Prophecy, which along with WCSO still holds up fairly well against modern graphics) won't do much beyond get the hardcore fans excited, and "hardcore fans" does not number in the millions (probably not even in tens of thousands) that would be required for it to be a justifiable expense, for EA. Catering to the vocal minority, at the expense of the masses (who are for the most part unlikely to buy "new" games that don't have any improvement in graphics over the original releases; in 1990 WC1's graphics were spectacular, today they fall rather short of that mark), doesn't pay the bills.
 
What would be the point of releasing WC1 with DOSBox? Anyone can simply buy the original WC1 and use DOSBox to play it.
 
ChrisReid said:
The authors of DOSBox also said there were some joystick improvements that should help Wing Commander fans. Hades actually had some trouble with drifting into the upper/left corner with this, but I haven't had a chance to dig in and try to reproduce that yet.
Click to expand...

Short version:
It may be cycles=auto; regardless of which of the two DosBox joystick implementations they are using, changing cycles after calibration will work on some games, but not others.


Slightly longer version:
I haven't checked, but it is very likely that if cycles=auto, it will cause some joystick issues if they're using some variant of my joystick code (which, IIRC, is what you find in HCl's special Armada dosbox) with games that use cycle counts for joystick timing rather than the actual time. The old super-cheap joystick mechanism broke down in the opposite case; if cycles changed since calibration it wouldn't work if the game used actual time. The old mechanism also just didn't work right with some games, and it failed with more games as cycle counts got way high (I originally fixed it so that I could play WC3 with my joystick at 70000 cycles).

If there is a specific Wing Commander game that is now having joystick issues, I'm sure one of us can address it in some way...
 
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