Just got an error message while trying to retrieve information of the game "The Civil War: Master Players Edition" by Empire from MobyGames. Thought it could be relevant:

Using DBGL v1.00 beta 4.

Newcomer to DBGL. The game in question is Mike Ditka Ultimate Football from 1991. In Dosbox Staging I get sounds, voices and mouse cursor but in
DBGL with Staging used for dosbox version the voices sound muted and mouse use is not there. Do you know where in the config file I can tweak some things
to get it to work? The machine emulated is a 486, 16mb, S3, SB16. In stand alone Dosbox Staging I used the "base" settings.

Hi all, I'm feeling a bit under the weather, so I'll keep it short:

buckeye wrote on 2025-01-20, 17:31:

The game in question is Mike Ditka Ultimate Football from 1991. In Dosbox Staging I get sounds, voices and mouse cursor but in
DBGL with Staging used for dosbox version the voices sound muted and mouse use is not there. Do you know where in the config file I can tweak some things
to get it to work? The machine emulated is a 486, 16mb, S3, SB16. In stand alone Dosbox Staging I used the "base" settings.

I'm not sure, but you make it sound like you're using one of the available Templates for your Football game. If so, just start by reloading DOSBox's default settings (Edit profile, DOSBox, Reload settings) and go from there. I believe this particular game should just about run fine using the defaults.

Neville wrote on 2025-01-17, 11:26:

Just got an error message while trying to retrieve information of the game "The Civil War: Master Players Edition" by Empire from MobyGames. Thought it could be relevant:

Hey, you seem to have found the single MobyGames game entry without a cover art image (just joking of course)! Fixed in beta5. Also implemented support for 'favorites' when converting or importing eXo games.

T.B. wrote on 2025-01-13, 20:00:

since the new 0.99 version, I'm unable to start the app on macOS Sonoma 14.7.2. It doesn't matter rather I'm using the x86 or arm version.

Hi T.B. sorry for not getting back to you earlier. Unfortunately, I do not have access to a Mac machine at the moment. What seems to be the problem though, is that the files in your /Users/Thomas/.swt/ directory are not what SWT (DBGL's user interface component) expects them to be. You can try removing that folder entirely, so that DBGL will be able to re-populate it on startup. If that doesn't solve the issue, I'll have to investigate when I have access to a Mac again (probably later this week). Maybe something's changed with Sonoma, I don't know.

Regards,
Ronald

Glad to be of service, he he.

buckeye wrote on 2025-01-20, 17:31:

The game in question is Mike Ditka Ultimate Football from 1991. In Dosbox Staging I get sounds, voices and mouse cursor but in
DBGL with Staging used for dosbox version the voices sound muted and mouse use is not there. Do you know where in the config file I can tweak some things
to get it to work? The machine emulated is a 486, 16mb, S3, SB16. In stand alone Dosbox Staging I used the "base" settings.

I'm not sure, but you make it sound like you're using one of the available Templates for your Football game. If so, just start by reloading DOSBox's default settings (Edit profile, DOSBox, Reload settings) and go from there. I believe this particular game should just about run fine using the defaults.

It's working now since I reinstalled everything. Another question: when you select machine type and hit ok it seems like it doesn't retain the selection. I'll go back
in edit and the template selection is blank (see attached pic). Any suggestions? Thanks for getting back with me, hope you're feeling better.

Thank you buckeye, yes, feeling better! About the template setting - correct, this association is not retained. A template is simply a collection of DOSBox settings, which I do not consider to be of importance to be retained. A template can be considered a starting point for a profile. Please note that a DBGL template usually entails more than just DOSBox' "machine" setting - for example, soundcard settings are usually included as well. You can check the contents of a template using right-click -> View -> Configuration File. Also note that the included templates are really meant to be used with DOSBox 0.74, they may or may not work correctly with a DOSBox fork such as Staging. If you do intend to use templates with DOSBox staging, I would recommend you create your own templates based on your own DOSBox versions.

Speaking of profiles / templates meant for DOSBox v0.74, I recently created a DBGL setup to showcase DOSBox Staging and its new emulation of the Roland Sound Canvas. I also used some of the game packages on your website, to be exact the ones with Apogee, Epic and Id Software games, and I remember running into issues. If I moved the folder somewhere else, for instance, DOSBox Staging crashed on startup.

I didn't know whether to report this or not, because I can't tell if I was doing something wrong regarding paths and because I was using very beta options.

Trying to replicate the problems I mentioned yesterday, I've set up a new DBGL installation with DBGL v1.00b5, latest DOSBox Staging beta and said game packages. This time everything worked fine on my first attempt:

So I guess we can forget about the whole thing.

One thing surprised me, though. It is that most games are already setup to use a Sound Canvas or General MIDI for music. How come? Sound Canvas emulation was not available when those game packages were created, was it?

Neville wrote on 2025-01-28, 11:05:

One thing surprised me, though. It is that most games are already setup to use a Sound Canvas or General MIDI for music. How come? Sound Canvas emulation was not available when those game packages were created, was it?

Correct; Considering most users will most likely be using Windows, I decided to use "General Midi" if a game supports it, so it will play using "Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth" (with relatively low CPU load). But if a user would rather use OPL3, for example, these games should have a setup available in DBGL.

An interesting move. I remember having set up some games for General MIDI music, but I think they stopped working when I installed VirtualMIDISynth. Or maybe I should have changed something in their configuration, I don't know. Anyway, VirtualMIDISynth + the Arachno Soundfont is my current favorite way of playing MIDI music.

EDIT: Here you can hear it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUjUGB50CB8

rcblanke wrote on 2025-01-21, 19:42:

Hi T.B. sorry for not getting back to you earlier. Unfortunately, I do not have access to a Mac machine at the moment. What seem […]
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T.B. wrote on 2025-01-13, 20:00:

since the new 0.99 version, I'm unable to start the app on macOS Sonoma 14.7.2. It doesn't matter rather I'm using the x86 or arm version.

Hi T.B. sorry for not getting back to you earlier. Unfortunately, I do not have access to a Mac machine at the moment. What seems to be the problem though, is that the files in your /Users/Thomas/.swt/ directory are not what SWT (DBGL's user interface component) expects them to be. You can try removing that folder entirely, so that DBGL will be able to re-populate it on startup. If that doesn't solve the issue, I'll have to investigate when I have access to a Mac again (probably later this week). Maybe something's changed with Sonoma, I don't know.

Regards,
Ronald

Hi rcblanke. Sorry for the late response. Just wanted to tell you, that I fixed my starting problem by updating to Java 21.

Neville wrote on 2025-01-28, 18:12:

.. VirtualMIDISynth + the Arachno Soundfont is my current favorite way of playing MIDI music. Here you can hear it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUjUGB50CB8

That sounds great, 'though I will probably just stick with my trusty Roland devices... 😀

Great to hear you got it working T.B.!

Of course, if you own real Roland hardware there's no need to bother with virtual synths or anything.

DOSBox-X v2025.02.01 is just out. However, it seems that this time there are no new options / switches to worry about.

Here's the changelog.

Correct, no new configuration features. I've added 2025.02.01 to the DOSBox versions list in beta6. Also fixed are a few bugs in the exo convertor/importer, and I've implemented support for converting or importing game data only (thus without captures, pdfs, etc).

Hi all, another update; beta7 adds a profile editor field search feature. Also scrolling through the profiles list is now noticeably faster because the profile details (and thumbnails) are displayed only after idleing for 100ms.

Weird, I cant get it to launch with the beta's now on MacOS Sequoia 15.3.1. I missed a couple but last one I had was 0.100 beta4 and it worked fine (it's been a couple weeks since I've gotten 'game time'). Just updated to beta 7, icon just bounces once and that's it. Put beta4 back, same behavior. Reinstalled 0.99 and it works, but for some reason the minute I update it to either beta I have here, it stops launching.

Now you've got me curious about the MIDI stuff. Does it have to use a Sound Canvas or can any GS synth work?? I've got an XV3080 in my rack, came out about 10 years after the SC series, I'd bet the GS sound set in that is killer. It's too bad none of my samplers can be used as General MIDI instruments, now that would be fun..

It's all emulated. In Windows DOSBox sends the MIDI data to the default software synth you have on your system. That's usually the Windows one, which is reportedly not very good. That's why some users also install others, such as VirtualMIDISynth. These also support different "fonts" (sets of sample-based instrument sounds) if you want to experiment.

But that's for regular MIDI. When DOSBox forks emulate the Roland MT-32 or now the SC-55 / General MIDI they use embedded versions of MUNT or Nuked-SC55 software synths.

I can't say how all this is going to work under Mac OS, though.

Monotremata wrote on 2025-03-01, 16:41:

Weird, I cant get it to launch with the beta's now on MacOS Sequoia 15.3.1. I missed a couple but last one I had was 0.100 beta4 and it worked fine (it's been a couple weeks since I've gotten 'game time'). Just updated to beta 7, icon just bounces once and that's it. Put beta4 back, same behavior. Reinstalled 0.99 and it works, but for some reason the minute I update it to either beta I have here, it stops launching.

Please make sure you're using all the latest jar files from /lib (beta7.zip, specifically commons-io-2.18.0.jar, commons-text-1.13.0.jar and hsqldb-2.7.4.jar), and/or try removing the .swt folder in your home directory. If that doesn't resolve the issue, try running dbgl from the terminal and report back on the output.

rcblanke wrote on 2025-03-03, 16:35:

Please make sure you're using all the latest jar files from /lib (beta7.zip, specifically commons-io-2.18.0.jar, commons-text-1.13.0.jar and hsqldb-2.7.4.jar), and/or try removing the .swt folder in your home directory. If that doesn't resolve the issue, try running dbgl from the terminal and report back on the output.

The lib folder update did the trick, its back now. I keep forgetting about that, since I'm on a Mac I usually just grab the jar itself and update that. One of these days I'll drill it into my head to check the rest of it!