It is old, but correct information as I remember. Esspecially the speed part. And well it is a neat feature to present if a frontend supports auto DOS32a replacing.

Erik.

There were reports that some games only work with dos4gw,
so better not enable that by default... and did you compare speeds?

I didn't keep track of timings, but i remember Tomb Raider being snappier then with 4GW. I mean loadtimes and all were faster. I could make an timings report on it though, but these would be kind of subjective.

The option isn't default, it is just a checkbox option a user can select. And if selected the DOS32a stub loader does its work, if it is an internal stub, else D.O.G. just copies the extender as DOS4GW. Keeping the original exe's as a backup, for when the user disables the DOS32a option.

Haven't found any games as of yet that refuse to run with the DOS32a though.

Erik.

First of all thanks for front end. Good job. Nice and easy-to-use.

Ok, now: I just faced such game. The Need for Speed SE. When it starts with changed dos4gw it tels about wrong size of dos4gw (must be xxxx bytes instead blahblah) and then it stops. So it checks it size. Maybe there is some fix for that? (sorry for some offtopic 😀 )

I remember NFS being the only game, well that I came across in my games heap 🙄 , that checks for DOS4GW. If so change it back to the original extender.

Just thought of something, maybe I could add an option to pad zero's to the end of the extender to equal the size of the original extender...

I'll see what I can do...

Thanks,

Erik.

I think I cracked it,

No not the game but the problem of Need for Speed not allowing DOS32a to be used.

To use DOS32a, use the one in this post. Copy it to the NFS directory, keeping the old DOS4GW by renaming that one too.

The DOS32a provided here is the original extender modified by D.O.G. to equal the size of the old extender.

I tested it with my version of Need For Speed.

Have fun...

Erik.

Thanks for that. 😀 I'll try it now. Btw I can make a russian translation of D.O.G. I've looked in Language.dat. Nothing special. But there is one problem. How to change the language in D.O.G. (oh my, how noobish this question looks, hehe 🙄 ). When I just replacing english language.dat with my own - I'm seeing some sort of abra-cadabra )). Something tells me - that there must be some encoding-changing mechanism. 😀
Ok, enough of offtopic - if you interested in that - you can pm me. 😀

Yep. DOS4GW works fine. There is no perfomance increase though. But it already normal. There is some minor glitches with sound. Playing with sound settings gives nothing. But I think I should ask DOSBox developers about that.

Thank you for the frontend again. 😀

Zoomer wrote:

Btw I can make a russian translation of D.O.G

Another btw, a russian language file for DOSBox itself is still missed, too. There is a 0.70 russian readme only. Please provide a russian translation of the DOSBox Language file to the crew, you can base it on the existing 0.65 version one (that means, you only have to translate, what's new to version 0.70). 😉

Ok. I'll look if I can make a russian translation of DosBox... If I have enough knowledges. 😀

I concur, NFS doesn't seem to benefit from it., but it does work now. 😉

Thanks for that. Happy I'll try it now. Btw I can make a russian translation of D.O.G. I've looked in Language.dat. Nothing special. But there is one problem. How to change the language in D.O.G. (oh my, how noobish this question looks, hehe Sly ). When I just replacing english language.dat with my own - I'm seeing some sort of abra-cadabra )). Something tells me - that there must be some encoding-changing mechanism.
Ok, enough of offtopic - if you interested in that - you can pm me.

Not offtopic at all, it is a D.O.G. thread (better would be on my forum)
anyways ask away...

The way D.O.G. works is that it reads in the Language.dat file with the current systems encoding technique. The language.dat files are created using the simple notepad, but with a Windows System set for that language.

In simple terms, if you have a Russian version of Windows and have set Windows to show Russian then it will treat the file as a txt with Russian ANSI, not unicode, in it. Therefore a Czech version of langauge.dat will only work on a Windows set to display Czech and not on a Dutch or Russian systems.

To change a Windows langauge, wich is NOT RECOMMENDED for unexperianced Windows users, goto languagesettings in the configuration manager of windows and select the tab general and there set Windows langauge.

Anyways, if you do translate the file then send the file to my email erikggdog a.t. inbox.com (see my hompage) in a zip file. Don't send me it as text, as my system or the email provider or shurely going to end up destroying your work as they can't handle unicode or Russian Cirillic. If you send me the file as a zip then this garantees your file remains unchanged.

Anyways have fun...

Erik.

Hehe. I have a Russian system but system language set to english (btw it's strange. I have set to english only interface of the os, location and other language-related settings set to russian. Also russian fonts, encodings e.t.c. installed in system. Russian apps work fine. I'll play with system settings. Interesting...). I didn't finished translation. But made it for dosbox. 😀 Soon dosbox will have russian lang. 😀

Ok. More interesting things. 😀 I have changed nothing to OS settings. I just didn't noticed that problem with encoding only on program menus. All other windows looks good. Hm. Hmmm. To change system interface to russian I need to reboot. Can't make it now. I'll try later. Here is a screenshot:

You have Vista, looks marvelous, I love it when things come together right. So many hours just to make D.O.G. handle themes right. I still need to change some things though for Vista, not that it is a big deal though, just the taskbar preview, old Windows dialogs, no Glassy effects and so on and on... I don't have Vista, so I can't fix it as I can't test it.

Well, that mainmenu is a bug with some langauges needing special fonts. Karelik, who made the Czech langauge.dat, found it just a week ago.
I've got that one fixed now, only need to finish up other additions to 1.54.
This week I'm going to upload the 1.54 Experimental version 2.

No need to change anything to the language of your OS.

New things in D.O.G. 1.54
- Add Columns you want.
- 4DOS shell extention (Enables the use of advanced bat files) Available in the Profile Manager under the Tab "DOS"
- Themes (Default, Windows XP, Windows 2K, Windows 98 ), you can choose the theme for the buttons in D.O.G., you can change the color of the buttons and the color of all Windows in D.O.G. Available in D.O.G. Options
- Fix for DOS32a and Need for Speed
- Fix for the main menu
- Localizer for the KeyB layout.
- Some code refactoring

Things to come :
- Making D.O.G. store profiles in an Acces database for speed and conveniance.
- Adding an option to the profiles, "Only keep the conf file present on the harddrive when needed."
- Making a commandline handler, lets call it "Puppy" 🙄 , so users are able to start profiles when given a command. This enables users to create windows links and being able to run profiles with plugins turned on.
- And so on ...

Thanks,

Erik.

wd wrote:

That's quite old information.

Not for me. I'm new to DOS. 😉

DOS32A is not a cure-all, Magic Carpet 2 is another game that doesn't work properly with it (worse still, unlike NFS : SE it won't even report that it's incorrect, just that MC2 w/ DOS32A becomes unstable - moreso than ever) and there are others. Best if you warn people within D.O.G.

I've got that one fixed now, only need to finish up other additions to 1.54.
This week I'm going to upload the 1.54 Experimental version 2.

Great. It's good to hear about new version.
I'm just finished translation. Testing it now. I can't test the menus though 🙁 Should I send it to you after testing or wait until new release of D.O.G to test the menus?
BTW I found some sort of a bug. The menu "Add ZIP" did not translated. Button is ok, dialog is not. (File, logical harddrivers, device type etc). Menus of other devices (cd rom, hdd, floppy and so on) are ok. I can't find links to these words in language.dat.
Well.. so... oh and:
There is not enough place on Mouse tab. Can you add a bit more? It's impossible to get all text in these small squares. Same problem with IPX tip section. I need just 1 more line.
There also were problems with Dos32a tip and CWSDPMI tip. I have held with text but this text now read a bit strange. Also need a bit more space.

Ofcourse if it's all possible 🙄 But main problem is mouse tab. )

ErikGG wrote:

Things to come :
- Making D.O.G. store profiles in an Acces database for speed and conveniance.

Why Access? Mozilla Firefox is thinking about abandoning their current database format (called Mork) for storing forms input /auto-complete info in favour of SQLite. Just a thought.

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Mozilla2:Unified_Storage

Too bad you are not doing Java, because then http://www.hsqldb.org/ (as used by DBGL) would be another choice.

dh4rm4
Best if you warn people within D.O.G.

Will do

Zoomer
BTW I found some sort of a bug. The menu "Add ZIP" did not translated. Button is ok, dialog is not.

Yup forgot to add that dialog to the translator.

Zoomer
There is not enough place on Mouse tab. Can you add a bit more? It's impossible to get all text in these small squares. Same problem with IPX tip section. I need just 1 more line.
There also were problems with Dos32a tip and CWSDPMI tip. I have held with text but this text now read a bit strange. Also need a bit more space.

Done,

Zoomer
Ofcourse if it's all possible Sly But main problem is mouse tab.

Not a problem at all. Every input is welcome. I'll upload the next 1.54 version this weekend. But rest ashured it will work and show up as in Notepad.

MiniMax
Why Access?

It was the first one to test on my list and I must admit it was the first time I ever got down to programming a database interface.

I'm just looking for a database engine that adheres to a few rules :
-Must be already installed on a freshly installed Windows 2000 or up system,
OR allows it to be shipped with D.O.G. without it needing installation.
OR must have the mechanisme to warn the user and direct him/her through the installation without too much fuss,
- Should use as little memory as possible
- Should be as fast as possible.
- Uses less then 5 files to form the database.
- Using it in Delphi doesn't result in writing 1000 or more lines of code just to use it. I know, I'm lazy 😉
- Opensource has a point ahead on the competition. But should be provided
compiled.

Acces is fast, is already installed in Windows 2000 and up, and Delphi already has a component for me to use (just 10 lines of code and poof 😁 ), BUT it is memory hungry (about 100MB of memory).

Still looking into others,

Thanks for the pointers.

Thanks,

Erik.