This guide is written for use with DOSBox 0.74, the latest version as of April 2014. Travellers from the future might run into inaccuracies. Sorry about that.
DOSBox is scary if you don’t know how it works. I’ve spoken to many a would-be DOS gamer, eager to explore the classics of the pre-Windows era, but are held back by the unforgiving text-based monstrosity that is DOS. While DOSBox may be an emulator, it’s a pretty faithful one, which requires at least a grounding in DOS to get the most from it.
And if you’re looking to get the most from it, I’d recommend checking out Abandonia’s excellent guide on using DOSBox, as well as browsing the official Wiki.
If, on the other hand, you’re just looking to get started in the emulator as fast as possible, I think I can help!
I won’t lie: DOS is text-based, which means you’re going to have to learn and remember text commands. Don’t worry, to make this as easy as possible I’m going to list and explain all the commands you’ll need for DOS gaming. They are as follows.
MOUNT
-T FLOPPY
-T CDROM
-FREESIZE
CD
I’ll be explaining them in the most straightforward manner I can think up. By the end of this you should have a firm grasp of the basics.
1: But first, the lazy trick.
Before I get into the text commands, I thought I’d show you the ‘lazy’ trick for running DOS programs through DOSBox. In Windows, simply select and drag a game EXE file onto the DOSBox icon, and it should run. This won’t work for every game (Such as games requiring a CD to play), but it’ll work for most.
2: Mounting drives and using files.
Firstly, in Windows, create a folder in the root directory of your drive and put all of your DOS software in there. Don’t use names with spaces or more than eight characters, DOS can’t use them.
For tutorial purposes, the folder I’ve created is ‘C:\Games’.
DOSBox is a virtual environment. All of the hard drives, CD Drives and Floppy drives have to be created virtually by you. It’s all smoke and mirrors, designed to fool old games into working as they should. When you start DOSBox initially, you won’t have access to any of your files. This is because you need to ‘mount’ your drives first. To mount your drive, type:
MOUNT C C:\Games
This will mount the ‘Games’ folder as your Drive C. Any game you run in the emulator will see this folder as your hard drive. Now, to open your new ‘drive’, type:
C:
Congratulations! You’ve just created and accessed a virtual Drive C within DOSBox! If you want to see the files in a folder, you can type ‘DIR’ to get a full list, or ‘DIR /W’ to get a tabled view.
But how do you run your files? Running executables is pretty easy, you just type the filename (For example, to run Dagger.exe, just type ‘Dagger.exe’).
To open another folder, type ‘CD’ and then the folder name. To go back out of a folder again, type ‘CD ..’ (That’s CD and then two full-stops). To return all the way back to the root directory, type ‘CD /’.
If, for one reason or another, you wish to unmount a directory, just type ‘MOUNT -U C’, replacing ‘C’ with whatever your drive letter happens to be.
Now, let’s try mounting a CD drive. This is almost exactly the same, except for a few additional characters. Just type:
MOUNT D D:\ -t cdrom
This’ll mount your disc drive (Assuming your disc drive is on ‘D’). As before, just type ‘D:’ to access it. With this, you’ll be able to install DOS games from a CD onto your computer!
If you’ve still got a floppy-disc drive like the cave people of old, you can do the same with that. Just type:
MOUNT A A:\ -t floppy
Now, when installing games from the DOS era, hard-drive space can be an issue. While you may very well have a 1 TB drive or similar, a regular DOS game won’t know what the hell that is, instead assuming you have nothing. To rectify this, try:
MOUNT C C:\Games -freesize 500
This command will disguise your hard-drive as having only 500 MB of space remaining. Feel free to change the number to whatever suits your needs..
3: Config.
You might be thinking that typing all this crap in every single time you run DOSBox might get a little tedious! And you might be right! But thankfully you’ll never have to find out, since DOSBox has a means around that. Namely, the configuration file.
Inside DOSBox’s folder, you’ll find a file named ‘DOSBox 0.74 Options.bat’. Run this, and it should pop up a text file. Scroll right down to the bottom and you’ll find this:
[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
# You can put your MOUNT lines here.
Any commands written underneath these words will be automatically inputted into DOSBox on launch. For example, I have written:
mount c c:\games\ -freesize 1000
mount d d:\ -t cdrom
c:
dir /w
So when I start DOSBox, it instantly mounts drives C and D, opens Drive C and displays a list of contents. This saves so much time, and helps avoid the frustration of typing in little text commands.
As far as the rest of the file goes, I’d mostly leave it be. The exception to this being ‘aspect’. Under the ‘render’ section you’ll find:
aspect=false
Replace ‘false’ with ‘true’. This should correct any aspect distortions (Which are especially common on widescreen displays).
4: Sound setup and game speed.
A lot of games are going to need setting-up before you can play them otherwise their sounds will be replaced by silence. For most DOS games, you'll find an EXE in their folder called 'Setup', while others will run a setup program during install. Regardless, setup programs look something like this:
If there's an auto-detect, try your luck with that. If not, or the auto-detect fails, you'll have to set it all up yourself.
First, head into the 'Select Digital' screen and select either 'Sound Blaster' or 'Sound Blaster Pro'. When the program asks for Ports, DMAs or anything similar, just select whatever is default.
Next, go to the 'Select MIDI' screen and repeat this process, but this time choose 'MPU-401' or 'Sound Blaster Pro'. Once your sound devices are set up, save all changes and launch the game.
Assuming the sound is working (If not, go back and try different sound devices), we can move onto the nest problem: speed. Some games will run smoothly without any alteration, but most won't. If you're getting framerate problems, try pressing 'CTRL+F12' a few times until it speeds up.
That’s it! Well done for slogging all the way to the end of this. Hopefully your DOSBox is all set-up and ready, and you’ve got the knowledge to use it! Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment