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FlyinJ · Jun 16, 2017

DOSBOX was great for it's time. It got the job done for what it was... and if you really put the time in you could almost get a game running as it should run. But just slapping it into a game, not testing if it works correctly or not then selling the game is a pretty shoddy business practice.

After grabbing a few classic DOS games off of GOG, I just gave up trying to play them after noodling around with their settings for an hour. One game wouldn't play half the sounds and the music was making popping noises all over the place. The other wouldn't display correctly no matter what I did with the launcher (preserve aspect ratio did nothing, scale2x, scale3x, OpenGL or surface... what do any of these settings mean, and why am I dealing with them?). I paid for this game, why isn't it working?

GOG needs to invest in making a better emulator, and making sure that every game runs correctly right out of the box. I can almost guarantee that they would get a huge influx of sales if they put the time into a project like this.

As it stands now, I just can't be bothered with this crap any more.

Wowfunhappy · Jun 16, 2017

FlyinJ said:
DOSBOX was great for it's time. It got the job done for what it was... and if you really put the time in you could almost get a game running as it should run. But just slapping it into a game, not testing if it works correctly or not then selling the game is a pretty shoddy business practice.

After grabbing a few classic DOS games off of GOG, I just gave up trying to play them after noodling around with their settings for an hour. One game wouldn't play half the sounds and the music was making popping noises all over the place. The other wouldn't display correctly no matter what I did with the launcher (preserve aspect ratio did nothing, scale2x, scale3x, OpenGL or surface... what do any of these settings mean, and why am I dealing with them?). I paid for this game, why isn't it working?

GOG needs to invest in making a better emulator, and making sure that every game runs correctly right out of the box. I can almost guarantee that they would get a huge influx of sales if they put the time into a project like this.

As it stands now, I just can't be bothered with this crap any more.

Actually, one of the things GoG is known for is hand-fixing old games to work properly on new systems, without tons of fiddling.

I unfortunately can't say what your problem is though. :/

You may want to try contacting support. They offer refunds when support can't solve an issue.

KKRT00 · Jun 16, 2017

Good luck at finding developers wanting to make new DOS emulator lol

finley83 · Jun 16, 2017

GOG don't release a lot of DOS games any more, so doubt it would be worth the investment.

Also, try DOSBox Daum, it has vsync and better shaders.

Raptomex · Jun 16, 2017

I agree with the testing. All games should be tested to work as intended before release. However, DOSBOX can be configured, including the right aspect ratio and whatnot. I always keep TXT document of specific config command that I can apply to the config file for each game.

John Kowalski · Jun 16, 2017

I don't know how DOS emulation works or how GOG distributes its files but can't you just use another emulator?

Crayon · Jun 16, 2017

Dosbox is great but more often than not when I get a dosbox game from Gog, it comes with default settings. It's discouraged me from buying more.

FlyinJ · Jun 16, 2017

Wowfunhappy said:
Actually, one of the things GoG is known for is hand-fixing old games to work properly on new systems, without tons of fiddling.

I unfortunately can't say what you're problem is though. :/

You may want to try contacting support. They offer refunds when support can't solve an issue.

My experience has been they get a DOS game to the point where it loads and they hear some sounds then sell it. I can't think of a single DOS game I've bought from them that didn't have an issue I had to fix by delving into archaic .cfg files and googling solutions for hours. Why didn't they do that work? There are 3 OSes they officially support... run it on all three, make sure everything works, then sell it. It's not that big of an ask if you're giving them 5-10 dollars for the product.

Danny Dudekisser · Jun 16, 2017

I agree. DOSBOX seems to work fine for some stuff, but other games are a pain in the fucking ass to get working. Like, I still can't get the DOS version of Quake to run at higher resolutions than 640x480 without chugging, which is ridiculous.

rrs · Jun 16, 2017

I'd say PCem is the superior getting old things to run properly emulator but it's a huge pain to use vs dosbox

Mivey · Jun 16, 2017

DOSBox is open source. Since a non-trivial amount (I would presume) of GOG's revenue seems to come from old games that need to be playable, it doesn't seem unjustified that they should hire a dev or two and improve it's quality.
Don't reinvent the wheel, just built better wheels.

luka · Jun 16, 2017

the fact that gog still bundles their dos games with a 5 year old release of dosbox is pretty baffling when there are far better alternatives these days.

AstroNut325 · Jun 16, 2017

Is there a way to play DOSBOX games in window mode?

Edit:

luka said:
the fact that gog still bundles their dos games with a 5 year old release of dosbox is pretty baffling when there are far better alternatives these days.

I'm clueless when it comes to this sort of stuff. What are the better alternatives?

petran79 · Jun 16, 2017

finley83 said:
GOG don't release a lot of DOS games any more, so doubt it would be worth the investment.

Also, try DOSBox Daum, it has vsync and better shaders.

Problem is that if you replace the built-in GOG Dosbox with another one,either SVN or Dosbox-X, game wiĺl not run. Gog uses older versions

Tried it with a couple of games. You'll need a non-GOG version of the game.

KainXVIII · Jun 16, 2017

KKRT00 said:
Good luck at finding developers wanting to make new DOS emulator lol

Lol yeah, like its that simple 😀

But i agreed that their dosbox implementation is shoddy:
1. Dosbox 0.74 is outdated (it IS 2012 build), so including latest SVN or custom builds (at least Daum dosbox, which WAS included in some dos games on Steam, or excellent ECE build) is a must have feature.
2. Dosbox games is often poorly configured (like too high/low cpu cycles, 22khz audio instead of 44, wrong midi device). And their dosbox configurator utility is fine by itself but also outdated, some options are just don't work anymore.
3. Also many games don't have setup or installation file to config sound card (in Ultima or Wing Commander) which were included in original package.

So every time i install GoG dos game i need to inject fresh dosbox build (ECE for me) and configure dosbox for it. But it worth it - MT-32 support, pixel-perfect undistorted image scaling and just more compatibility =)

Lork · Jun 16, 2017

The problem is that they use an ancient version of DOSBOX and don't bother to configure it correctly, not DOSBOX itself.

Chacranajxy said:
I agree. DOSBOX seems to work fine for some stuff, but other games are a pain in the fucking ass to get working. Like, I still can't get the DOS version of Quake to run at higher resolutions than 640x480 without chugging, which is ridiculous.

Why would you even want to do this in the first place, and why is it "ridiculous" that DOSBOX wouldn't easily accommodate you pushing a game way beyond what the kind of computer it's supposed to be emulating is capable of?

AstroNut325 said:
Is there a way to play DOSBOX games in window mode?

Press Alt-Enter.

Dr. Zoidberg · Jun 16, 2017

Can you give game examples, FlyinJ? I don't doubt you at all but I haven't run into any problems getting my GOG DOS games to work.

uncredited male · Jun 16, 2017

I don't expect much support from a service that sometimes doesn't even bother to remove the warez group sigs from their pirated executables. The game-specific forums have some good DosBox configs for the more popular games at least.

Danny Dudekisser · Jun 16, 2017

Lork said:
Why would you even want to do this in the first place, and why is it "ridiculous" that DOSBOX wouldn't easily accommodate you pushing a game way beyond what the kind of computer it's supposed to be emulating is capable of?

The DOS version has the option to run at higher resolutions, so... why would I not prefer to use those?

chrominance · Jun 16, 2017

When I played Wing Commander I (and to a lesser extent II), I found it very difficult to find DOSBOX settings that worked well. Either the game would move too fast during normal spaceflight with few ships around you, or performance would drop to single-digit framerates during heavy combat, so you'd have to constantly adjust the CPU cycles setting while in-game to get a smooth-ish experience. That might be less a problem with DOSBOX and more with Wing Commander, though.

nkarafo · Jun 16, 2017

I like GoG but i will never get why they released Dungeon Keeper as a DOS game, via DosBox. Wasn't Dungeon Keeper a Windows game first? In DosBox it's slow and there is a shit ton of screen tearing since DosBox doesn't support any kind of vsync.

Lork · Jun 16, 2017

Chacranajxy said:
The DOS version has the option to run at higher resolutions, so... why would I not prefer to use those?

Lots of PC games had the option to do completely unreasonable things just because they could. Running a software game in high resolutions is extremely taxing, so it's not surprising that an emulated old computer would struggle with it. The real question is, if you want to play in high resolutions why are you using the DOS version of Quake?

Dr. Zoidberg · Jun 16, 2017

Mousnis said:
I like GoG but i will never get why they released Dungeon Keeper as a DOS game, via DosBox. Wasn't Dungeon Keeper a Windows game first? In DosBox it's slow and there is a shit ton of screen tearing since DosBox doesn't support any kind of vsync.

Yes, it was a Windows 95 game. I can't speak about Dungeon Keeper specifically but getting lots of Win95/98 games running in Win10 is a nightmare and for many games impossible. I can attest to this personally. There is no convenient "DOSBox"-style emulator for Win 95 games, either. Just full-on PC emulation and even then game performance is often less-than-stellar. I am guessing that offering the DOS version was the only solution to getting the game running on the majority of configs.

But again, I don't have that game so maybe Win10 would run it fine with just the built-in compatibility modes, but that's the exception and not the rule from that era.

mattwhite924 · Jun 16, 2017

I tend to buy their DOS games only to move them onto a real DOS PC. Yeah I know most people can't do that, but I do like how they usually include images of the original CDs in their installations.

Would be nice if they ran better on modern PCs though.

Metal Gear?! · Jun 16, 2017

Their default DOSBOX config would cause games to shut my primary monitor off until I killed the DOSBOX process and unplugged and replugged my monitor.

FlyinJ · Jun 27, 2017

Does running a DOS game through their Galaxy client improve the DOSBOX initialization/options/emulation at all? Or is it exactly the same as clicking on the icon for the game in the installed directory?

SapphiCine · Jun 27, 2017

Fiddling with DOSbox settings is one of the low points of being a PC gamer. Can't trust GOG's defaults at all and the documentation is shit.

chrominance said:
When I played Wing Commander I (and to a lesser extent II), I found it very difficult to find DOSBOX settings that worked well. Either the game would move too fast during normal spaceflight with few ships around you, or performance would drop to single-digit framerates during heavy combat, so you'd have to constantly adjust the CPU cycles setting while in-game to get a smooth-ish experience. That might be less a problem with DOSBOX and more with Wing Commander, though.

Apparently early Wing Commander games played like shit back in the day too. They need to sell those games with a warning.

Dr. Zoidberg · Jun 28, 2017

FlyinJ said:
Does running a DOS game through their Galaxy client improve the DOSBOX initialization/options/emulation at all? Or is it exactly the same as clicking on the icon for the game in the installed directory?

I believe there is no difference.

SapphiCine said:
Fiddling with DOSbox settings is one of the low points of being a PC gamer. Can't trust GOG's defaults at all and the documentation is shit.

I don't find it that hard but I've been PC gaming since the actual DOS days so editing an .ini doesn't seem so bad. There's tons of DOSbox info online if you search for it. Even Youtube how-tos.

SapphiCine · Jun 28, 2017

Dr. Zoidberg said:
I don't find it that hard but I've been PC gaming since the actual DOS days so editing an .ini doesn't seem so bad. There's tons of DOSbox info online if you search for it. Even Youtube how-tos.

Perhaps I never found the right resources. Changing an .ini is fine but not having clear and detailed instructions for those settings is frustrating.

Tizoc · Aug 20, 2017

This is my first time hearing of DOSBox Daum.

Is it the current go-to software to run DOS games from GOG, for example?

If I want to have my GOG DOS library run thru Daum what do I need to do?

capitalCORN · Aug 20, 2017

chrominance said:
When I played Wing Commander I (and to a lesser extent II), I found it very difficult to find DOSBOX settings that worked well. Either the game would move too fast during normal spaceflight with few ships around you, or performance would drop to single-digit framerates during heavy combat, so you'd have to constantly adjust the CPU cycles setting while in-game to get a smooth-ish experience. That might be less a problem with DOSBOX and more with Wing Commander, though.

That's exactly how it behaved on DOS pcs of their day though. Turbo off or too fast to play.

Crayon · Aug 20, 2017

capitalCORN said:
That's exactly how it behaved on DOS pcs of their day though. Turbo off or too fast to play.

It's true. Alot of game back then... the framerates would fluctuate and you just kinda rolled with it. You could feel the cpu getting loaded up and the games actually played in slow motion as the drawing of the frame and the game logic was all one loop. It was common across computers, arcade games and consoles and we called it slowdown.

So you could play wing commander on a fast computer and it was too fast, or a slower computer where its super smooth in empty space but chugs a bit in a big dogfight. It was never "locked".

vocab · Aug 20, 2017

Some defualt dosbox configs are pretty crappy. I emailed them about a world of xeen hard lock that you can run into on the non speech version with their defualt audio settings. All you had to do was change the sound card and IRQ value. Stuff like that bothers me, you have to pray someone else ran into this bug and has a solution.

s_mirage · Aug 20, 2017

Tizoc said:
This is my first time hearing of DOSBox Daum.

I wouldn't use Daum any more to be honest. It hasn't been updated in aeons and you're probably better off using something like ECE if you aren't building Dosbox yourself. If you do use Daum, use the build from January 2014; the last couple of builds are just plain broken.

dr_rus · Aug 20, 2017

Tizoc said:
This is my first time hearing of DOSBox Daum.

Is it the current go-to software to run DOS games from GOG, for example?

If I want to have my GOG DOS library run thru Daum what do I need to do?

Install Daum's build of DOSBox and run GoG games through it. But unless you're looking for some advanced tinkering you should probably just go with the regular DOSBox as for the majority of players the difference will be negligible.

https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/SVN_Builds#List_of_SVN_Builds

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