That's why I always say: Never touch a running system -_-'

I have some bad news:
The DFR mobygames data reader is quite flexible configurable and can be reconfigured via the DataReader.xml without needing to change the DFR source code to react on a new mobygames homepage. But the new mobygames homepage is really bad: The data reader can find tags by their id and by their class names and can also count elements. (For example "the publisher is stored in the second div with the class name xyz which is child of the div with id abc.") But on the new mobygames homepage the information is not stored in a predictable manner. So at least we will need a new DFR release to make the data reader even more intelligent. 🙁

Reading the base information (year, developer and publisher) should be possible in a new DFR release. Reading the screenshots may or may not. Reading the game notes will not work anymore. And because the new mobygames search function cannot search for game names and restrict the results to "DOS games only" / "All plattforms" anymore, this function also won't be available in DFR anymore. 🙁 🙁 🙁

I do not know how long it takes to improve the data reader, so I cannot tell you yet when a 1.3.5 beta version will be available.

Was going to mention the mobygames thing, but I see you already addressed it.

I have another issue as well: I cannot seem to reliably create drive mappings with the D-Fend base folder as the path. This causes the mount path to be stored as an empty string, which ends up not working. This is a problem because I would like to put all my D-Fend games under a base path of E:\shared\games\DOS, each in their own subfolder, and then mount the base path as C:\ in DOSBox (as this best emulates the path setup that many DOS games expect).

Instead, I had to set E:\shared\games as the base path, causing all games to have relative paths like .\DOS\gamedir\gamename.exe instead of just .\gamedir\gamename.exe.

The mobygames data reader is working partially again. To update your data reader configuration file go to the help menu and click "Check for updates".
Name, Genre, Developer, Publisher and Year are readable again after updating the data reader configuration file. To make Cover images and Notes readable again a program update will be needed. I'm currently working on this.

@HunterZ: I will have a look at your issue report as soon as the mobygames problem is fixed.

Next improvements to the DataReader.xml (new version is on server):

• Now all items from the mobygames list are shown again. (Last version only displayed the odd numbered records due to different html class names for even and odd lines.)
• The "DOS games only" / "All plattforms" switch is working again: The mobygames homepage itself is not offering this switch in the GUI but the URL allows to define the target plattform.

DFR 1.3.5rc1 will support cover images again. But this cannot be brought to 1.3.4 via a DataReader.xml update. This needs changes to the program code. Next things on my todo: Mobygames only displays up to 25 results per page, so I need to follow the "Next >" links. Additionally reading the game notes is not yet working in my development version.

D-Fend Reloaded 1.3.5rc1 will have full mobygames support again - including cover images and game notes! This wasn't very easy but it's working again. The mobygames cover images page now is loading the images via Javascript. The html code just shows a loading spinner gif icon; the rest is done by Javascript. Making DFR finding the images in the html code without doing a Javascript code interpretation was a bit tricky. Also the game notes were not stored in an own tag anymore but are part of the content of a <div> which also contains the list of meta information (genre, developer, ...) as sub <div>s which requires a more accurate interpretation of the html code.

There are still some other issues and requests before we can have 1.3.5rc1, but we are getting closer.

Since you're editing the program, can you skip the part where you hard-code the data reader and instead make it extensible by users?

The Mobygames data reader is not hard-coded, that's why I was able to fix most of the problems within 2 days just by updating the DataReader.xml file on the Sorceforge server which DFR is using as its configuration to interpret the mobygames homepage. But the new mobygames homepage for example is loading images via Javascript - that's something DFR cannot handle at the moment. The next release will be able to also understand this.

Right, my mistake. (Now AFTER the update is done, a data reader xml file explanation will be appreciated..)

For everyone looking for CoverFlow, or at least a more graphical interface, please check out LaunchBox: LaunchBox: New DOSBox Frontend and Game Launcher

Alexander, I'm extremely appreciative of the work you're doing on DFR; it's a killer application that I've used and still use quite a bit. DFR and LaunchBox have rather different goals and approaches though, with LaunchBox aiming for more ease of use and a more "pretty approach", while DFR is a much more hardcore database app.

I'd like to at least add support for importing and exporting DFR games into and out of LaunchBox, to make it easy for people to go back and forth. I'll be looking to add this feature soon.

Anyways, here's the LaunchBox screen in its simplest form. It's not CoverFlow, more like a games shelf, but I think I'd rather view it this way than CoverFlow, anyways (but I'll consider adding it if the demand is there):

I don't want to start a flamewar here, but personally I think a post like this is *very* bad style, especially from a 'competing' author. I will stay away from LaunchBox just because of this post here, however good it might become.

I see LaunchBox as a niche product that is NOT competing with D-Fend reloaded, but me thinks this "look" SHOULD be implemented into D-Fend Reloaded. The Option "View"->"Screenshots" is simply not nailed down enough to specific Filenames in D-Fend Reloaded. It get's messed up with BoxShots and Screenshots. Maybe Andreas could implement such a *better* look? LaunchBox is more for Mini-Game compilations (Windows Games) and only a shortcut of D-Fend. But it should be integrated into D-Fend. We don't need LaunchBox as a single tool. A commandline-switch could easiely boot up D-Fend in such a mode that LaunchBox is showing. But it all depends on how Andreas feels about that. How about "DFend.exe -LaunchBox" ? (No offense here) 😉

Sure; I'm more than happy to help integrate the two, if that's what's ideal. I certainly wouldn't have posted here if I didn't believe that the two applications complimented each other, and I hoped that people would be able to see past any competitive grudges. Unfortunately, dosmax's response was rather disappointing.

I've learned, though, that there is very much a need for a "stupid easy" DOSBox frontend, and one of my main goals with LaunchBox is to work on making it as easy as possible to use (as well as automate whatever I can). The box art is also valuable because it helps induce a greater sense of "ownership" for the games, which both increases the appeal and hopefully helps to strengthen the market for older PC games. I love buying classic games from GOG, but I want more to be available. A greater sense of ownership will help to increase the demand for older games, which should in turn give us a greater selection. </tangent>

Anyways, LaunchBox could probably be integrated well enough just by reading the DFR configuration, but I will leave that option entirely up to Alexander, as it's certainly his right to make such decisions. The applications are written in two very different programming languages, so complete integration isn't really a possibility, but it would certainly be possible to have LaunchBox and DFR maintain the same games.

jasondavidcarr wrote:

http://www.jasoncarr.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/LaunchBox.png […]
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Having this in D-Fend Reloaded would rock my balls 😁

To remind you, we already have this kind of view, somehow... Yeah, i know it's slow when you have 400+ entries in D-Fend Reloaded - and the pictures are not scaleable, but it's definitly there. 😀

I am having a problem with using D-Fend Reloaded. This is what i do when trying to run dos game. I drag the compressed game file to the program interface and it extract the content. Then i click on the name of the game and it trying to start the game but after entering in full screen mode exits right after this. This is happen with all dos games i am trying to run. I have Windows 7 Ultimate x32.

I will greatly appreciate some help!

Hi there, I have an odd one here regarding installing from Original Disks with help the Installer. (Got Privateer in very good condition dirt cheap recently 😎) Every time it tries to find the floppy drive is outputs a message reading as follows:

Floppies and Drive are working OC and Installing from Images ist no biggie (besides disk swapping 😀)
The bugger even pops up if I add command options for mounting or custom commands to the global config dialog or the DOSBox config. Running Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit with enabled PAE. Just wanted to tell you that strange behavior.

Edit: Oh, and it locks up with the "Install anywhere on C:" popup and had to be killed with the Taskmanager after that.

Peter8900 wrote:

I am having a problem with using D-Fend Reloaded ... I drag the compressed game file to the program interface and it extract the content ... it trying to start the game but after entering in full screen mode exits right after this ... I will greatly appreciate some help!

What game are you trying ro run?
Meanwhile:
[*] You may need to run the game's setup first, to set compatible DOSBox compatible video/audio options [/*]
[*] Are you running an exe file? See if the game has any bat or cmd file and try to run that instead. [/*]
Don't be offended, but have you set up DFR's DOSBox options (DOSBox directory etc) correctly?

@wizzel (post from 2013-9-19):
You can use the context menu item "Use as screenshot in profiles list" for images in the screenshot preview area to select which image is shown in the games list in screenshots view mode. If you want to have the look of LaunchBox you can turn off the tree view on the left and the preview area at the bottom via the two menu items "Show groups tree" and "Show screenshots and sound files" in the "View" menu.

@jasondavidcarr:
Of course you can import D-Fend Reloaded configuration files if you want to. In the "confs" directory in the DFR user data folder (usually C:\Users\<you>\D-Fend Reloaded) you will find a .prof file for each game. (You can just ignore the Cache.dfr file which is just a read cache for DFR. When starting it checks whether the prof file date or the date stored in the cache for the file is newer and is reading the file from disk again if it has changed.) The format of the prof files is an extension of the prof file format of the original D-Fend. If you want to know how DFR is building the DOSBox conf files from this prof file download the DFR source code and look at the BuildConfFile function in the DOSBoxUnit.pas file.

@wizzel (post from 2013-9-22):
The size of the images can be set up on the setup page "User interface"->"Games list"->"List in screenshot mode". That's the big problem of DFR: It has thousands of customizing option but it looks like they are hard to find.

@Peter8000:
A bit more information would be helpful. D-Fend Reloaded can import game by just dragging an archive file containing the game to the program window, that's right. In this case DFR is trying to determine what to do. In many cases it will choose the right thing to do to start the game. But this automatic is not always and for all types of archives selecting the right thing.

As a first step you should have a look into the archive file to find out what steps are needed to install the game. Is the archive file made from a game installation (so only unzipping is needed) or are the file taken from an installation disk (so running the installer is needed) or are the files floppy disk images (so they need to be mounted as a disk drive etc.)? In the simple case you can copy the game file into a subfolder of the DFR games folder (see Extras menu to open the games folder in the explorer) and then try to run the game from the command line from the "DOSBox DOS" profile.

@Defcon5:
D-Fend Reloaded/DOSBox is using a mapping between real folders and virtual drives in DOSBox. In the default case only the real path C:\Users\<you>\D-Fend Reloaded\VirtualHD is mapped as C:\ in DOSBox. The error message above means: You have told DFR to run a file from the real path A:\ (from the real foppy disk drive) inside DOSBox but you haven't told DFR to to map this path into the DOSBox directory structure. On the "Drives" page of the profile editor you will be able to add drive mapping to access more paths inside DOSBox.

Thank you Alexander...I'll update this post when I have at least an import completed. 😀