DOSBox project of the month on SourceForge.net. Waiting for the next release
DOSBox, the emulator designed to run DOS games on modern operating systems (and not necessarily on a PC), has been chosen as project of the month for May 2009 on the open source platform SourceForge.net. It’s the latest award granted to a software that “simply does what it is supposed to do“, as the authors state, and that after having summed up more than 10 millions downloads is ready for an update awaited since almost two years.
But let’s get things in order: with the award granted by SourceForge.net, the project coordinators have given an interview posted on the portal’s Community Hub. The DOSBox authors recall the reason that brought to creation of the emulator, namely the release of Microsoft Windows 2000 and the resulting drastic compatibility cut with gaming software designed to run in a DOS environment, in close contact with the hardware rather than through cumbersome frameworks made of peripheral drivers and system kernel.
Other than compatibility, the other two important aims that drove the coders to start their project were the ability to run games in a window, as any other Windows application, and to improve graphics with scaling algorithms, extremely needed if one thinks about the fact that the standard resolution of many DOS games is and remains 320×200 against the quite a lot higher values already popular then.
DOSBox intended audience, the developers state in the interview, is the one composed by “people who want to play DOS games and preferably already have a familiarity with DOS“, but there is no doubt that during time and because of the growing popularity of the emulator this audience has become hugely wider with all the resulting issues. DOSBox is used by a good number of commercial players as a compatibility layer for old titles redistribution, in accordance with the aim to become “the standard tool to run DOS games without a hassle” strengthened by its creators.
The DOSBox crew then reveals to have on its wishlist two highly requested features, that is the ability to save the state of the emulated game and to interact with the software through a GUI “for people without a strong knowledge of DOS commands“. PC retrogamers’ preferred emulator takes up almost 200 hours per month for the entire team of official developers, which forge their code on a 64 bit Linux platform “using the default development tools” and on Windows XP with Visual Studio.
At the end of the interview, other than inviting users to be active on the official forum to help the others to properly set up the emulator with games, the coders announce that in May the so much awaited version 0.73 of DOSBox will be finally out, a release that comes after version 0.72 distributed in the far away August 27, 2007 (that coincidently is my birthday). Development on the upcoming DOSBox update has gone into the Release Candidate phase, and even if I can’t say anything about it at least I can confirm that there will be a lot of news for practically any aspect of the emulator.
In the past days I have been granted a short e-mail interview with the DOSBox crew, but unfortunately the reply hasn’t arrived in time for this news hence I will post it later.
This post has been featured on Slashdot on May 11, 2009.
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4 Responses to “DOSBox project of the month on SourceForge.net. Waiting for the next release”
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I remember Kung Fu Louie! It was one of the most fun games ever for Dos. Classic Shareware. Unfortunately, the graphics were probably privative compared to the Game Consoles of the time, but nevertheless, it was grand.
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Agree, I’ve had a good time with it, and soon I’ll review it with downloads et all
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Cool . My favorite dos game was digger.
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Funny thing is that I’ve tried it just some days ago with DOSBox 0.73rc1… I prefer Lode Runner anyway
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