XGA resolution?

[vakarr]

One of the posts on this forum mentions that you can increase the resolution but not how to do that. How do you do that? What's the highest resolution supported, I suppose it would be XGA (1024X 768)?

[vakarr]

OK I found the following. You have to find the file DosboxDarklands.conf, Usually it is in:
C:\steam\steamapps\common\darklands\dosbox_windows

MAKE A BACKUP COPY i.e. copy the file and name it something like DosboxDarklandsOriginal.conf, so you can go back to the original after mucking around with the settings.

edit DosboxDarklands.conf,with Notepad, and change line 60 to one of the following (try them and see which you like)
scalar=super2xsai or (this one is recommended the most)
scalar=normalX2 or
scalar=advmame2x
scalar=advinterp2x (gives cleaner text) or
scalar=supereagle (the highest setting)

Also, change
output=overlay to output=ddraw

Change the resolution to something like 640X480; it might be worth trying 800X600 or 1024X768

It's worth trying the maximum settings just to see the opening sequence, the graphics are much smoother. Of course you do have to be careful as you might make the game unstable.

[mwirkk]

Nifty! Thanks for the tips Vakarr!!

Cheers! pax
-mwirkk

[Jumbo Shrimp]

DosBox Daum is apparently a newer version and has more options for better fine tuning, better performance etc.

[mwirkk]

Originally posted by Jumbo Shrimp:

DosBox Daum is apparently a newer version and has more options for better fine tuning, better performance etc.

Indeed DOSBox SVN-DUAM is a newer branch of DOSBox with much additional support for newer HW, but even it itself has passed into a somewhat sustained engineering mode (SE) a few years ago. Steam distros of DOS games include DOSBox Duam with the game installation in addition to the mainline DOSBox distro. There are actually quite a few other SVN DOSBox branches a person could experiment with, but it may require some additional plumbing on the user's part to make it work in each case.

Edit: by "plumbing" I mean finding the right config settings that work best with the game for the particular DOSBox variant being employed.

[Jumbo Shrimp]

2 things that made the biggest impact for me were setting:

cycles=100000

Which works great for a high powered PC, in my case AMD Ryzen 5800x. On my older Bradwell Intel CPU, I was able to go up to 20000 and above, the music started to have some degradation. But anything above "auto" is a must for snappy display.

Than for quality of display, a little bit of fiddling will probably be needed, but one from Dam that works quite well for me is scaller set to:

scaler=advinterp3x

to fit my 1600 vertical resolution perfectly (I think)

Also, to not get stretched display, to get a 4x3 rectangle:

aspect=true

Another QoL issue is to go to game settings and set sound to Soundblaster Pro. (The Roland one was a little iffy. Better for pure music, but sound effects were not so great).

[mwirkk]

Originally posted by Jumbo Shrimp:

2 things that made the biggest impact for me were setting:

cycles=100000

Which works great for a high powered PC, in my case AMD Ryzen 5800x. On my older Bradwell Intel CPU, I was able to go up to 20000 and above, the music started to have some degradation. But anything above "auto" is a must for snappy display.

Than for quality of display, a little bit of fiddling will probably be needed, but one from Dam that works quite well for me is scaller set to:

scaler=advinterp3x

to fit my 1600 vertical resolution perfectly (I think)

Also, to not get stretched display, to get a 4x3 rectangle:

aspect=true

Another QoL issue is to go to game settings and set sound to Soundblaster Pro. (The Roland one was a little iffy. Better for pure music, but sound effects were not so great).

Those are great trips Jumbo Shrimp. Thanks! :)

As per your experience with Roland support, when you tried that did it also involve swapping out the original ASOUND.* and PSOUND.* files for their RSOUND.* counterparts? ...i.e., as described in the "Simultaneous Roland & Sound Blaster Support" section of the README file distributed with Darklands on the original media:
http://www.darklands.net/writs/README07.TXT

Thanks again!

[Jumbo Shrimp]

Thanks for the tip on the sound. I am not sure if I am missing something. I was definitely getting the Roland sound, but I just did not like it.

I went back to SoundBlaster Pro.

Also, I went down from 100000 to

cycles=50000

I think it is fast enough. I think with the higher number, scrolling on the battle map was difficult to control. So hopefully the lower value will slow it down a little, while keeping display speed fast enough in the rest of the game.

[mwirkk]

That MPS provided hack was supposed to allow for simultaneous Roland and Sound Blaster output. I never had a Roland myself back in the day, just an adLib followed by an SB16 and later on an SB32, so I was never able to check out how well it actually worked for myself.