Steam Play compatibility tool to run DOS games using native Linux DOSBox
Join us at Discord server: https://discord.gg/8mFhUPX
Curated games: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35328265-Powered-by-DOSBox/
Boxtron is now installable using Flatpak, Copr, or AUR.
aspect=false
.The latest pre-release builds of dosbox-staging include multiple smaller and bigger improvements over stock DOSBox, several bugfixes, some new features, and overall better experience (changelog, summary).
Download dosbox-staging 0.75.0-pre-392.
To use it with Boxtron in Steam, update [dosbox]
section of your ~/.config/boxtron.conf
:
cmd = ~/<your-path>/dosbox-staging/dosbox
To use it outside of Steam Runtime, install dependencies.
Have fun, and send us feedback :)
Join us at Discord server: https://discord.gg/8mFhUPX Curated games: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35328265-Powered-by-DOSBox/
Users testing previous build confirmed, that it provides substantial improvements over stock DOSBox. Thank you to all testers! Let's keep the ball rolling…
Download package (link) and unpack it somewhere.
Update [dosbox]
section of your ~/.config/boxtron.conf
:
cmd = ~/<your-path>/dosbox-staging-2/dosbox
Read more about dosbox-staging project in this Vogons thread; source code for this release is on po/boxtron-test-4 branch in dosbox-staging repo.
Side note: this is the very first DOSBox build I tried, that runs Stargunner at proper smooth 70FPS, as intended by developer in 1996; this is free-to-play game, check it out. :)
Join us at Discord server: https://discord.gg/8mFhUPX Curated games: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35328265-Powered-by-DOSBox/
BOXTRON_RUN_EXE
To accompany this Boxtron release, I prepared an experimental DOSBox build from the dosbox-staging repo. To test it, download the package, unpack it somewhere and configure Boxtron to use it by changing/adding following line in [dosbox]
section of your ~/.config/boxtron.conf
:
cmd = ~/<your-path>/dosbox-staging/dosbox
You can confirm it's running by looking at the window title (it should say "DOSBox staging").
I would love to hear feedback from you about the quality of this build :)
This version of DOSBox combines krcroft's new audio for DOSBox patch to replace SDL_sound dependency with heavily trimmed NY00123's SDL2 adaptation patch and additional changes from me to marry the two, rebased on top of the newest trunk of upstream SVN version.
You can find this work on po/boxtron-test-1
branch in dosbox-staging repo, but consider it very early and experimental state; I do not recommend merging these changes to your DOSBox fork yet.
Compared to DOSBox 0.74-3, this version has:
Some games, that are significantly improved by using dosbox-staging:
Known issues:
imgmount
to fail for some games - happens e.g. in GOG version of MK3, and Steam version or vanilla TR1 (when running outside of Boxtron).Join us at Discord server: https://discord.gg/8mFhUPX
Highlighted changes:
render.aspect
to true
and disregard value picked by the publisher; in result number of game-specific tweaks went down. Users can still override render.aspect
per-game.mount
/imgmount
commands using single quotes around paths.Quick stats since previous release:
Join us at Discord server: https://discord.gg/8mFhUPX
This project will be called "Boxtron" from now on and is developed in parallel to Luxtorpeda, sharing the organization name, domain, etc.
After previous releases, I received some feedback indicating that users think this project is enabling support for games one-by-one (which is not the case). For this reason, from now on, I will rather do summary status updates instead of pointing out exactly which games improved. Please read the "features" section in README.md file if you want to know more about this tool :).
At the moment we know about 153 DOS titles on Steam, 73+ were tested (with slightly above 90% of games rated Platinum so far). Boxtron provides automatic MIDI support for 15 games (plus few, that can handle MIDI auto-detection on their own). It also fixes various problems in several more games (applies missing patches, brings back DOS support, etc.), making them playable out-of-the-box.
This release focused on internal changes dictated by the project rename:
steam-dos.conf
is automatically upgraded to a newer format and renamed to boxtron.conf
, preserving user options inside.BOXTRON
instead of SDOS
. Old names still work to preserve backwards-compatibility but are deprecated until future 1.0.0 release.boxtron
. Content of some sections was moved to automatic configuration. As a consequence of these two changes, some of your games might now work faster, but your other DOSBox settings (e.g. scaler) might be set back to default.boxtron
instead of steam-dos
Join us at Discord server: https://discord.gg/8mFhUPX
Check our wiki for compatibility reports and follow Powered by DOSBox curator on Steam! :)
midi.use_sequencer
setting or SDOS_USE_MIDI_SEQ
environment variable. More details in configuration article.XDG_DATA_DIRS
Join us at Discord server: https://discord.gg/8mFhUPX
Check our wiki for compatibility reports and follow Powered by DOSBox curator on Steam! :)
Highlights for this release:
Join us at Discord server: https://discord.gg/8mFhUPX
This release provides:
Also, support for MIDI auto setup for:
Check our wiki for growing list of compatibility reports and follow Powered by DOSBox curator on Steam! :)
Join us at Discord server: https://discord.gg/8mFhUPX
This release introduces MIDI auto-configuration for more games:
Some other changes:
midi.synthesiser
settingThis week DOSBox received 0.74-3 update - poke your distribution package maintainers to include it in repos ASAP! :)
Join us at Discord server: https://discord.gg/8mFhUPX
This release introduces MIDI auto-configuration for selected titles:
Just click "Play" and enjoy glorious MIDI music, there's no need to hunt those pesky SETSOUND.EXE
programs.
If you don't like MIDI music, then turn it off with midi.enable = false
or SDOS_NO_MIDI
and these games will be reconfigured back to use emulated Sound Blaster for music.
Other changes:
dosbox.bin
configuration option renamed to dosbox.cmd
and now accepts full commands and not only paths.default.sf2