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DOSBox Staging is a modern continuation of DOSBox with advanced features and modern development practices, giving you the great compatibility of classic games with plenty of extras. A new release is available with DOSBox Staging 0.81.0 and it brings with it quite a number of changes to improve a whole lot of games.

The first major change is the removal of their original CRT shaders, with them being replaced by a much better set of 24 CRT shaders they say are "tweaked to perfection to emulate the glorious CRT monitors of the past, including authentic recreations of Hercules, CGA, monochrome CGA, composite CGA, EGA, and VGA monitors". They say you don't need to know much, and no configuration is required at all, as DOSBox Staging will automatically pick the best one based on the current DOS video mode and viewport resolution but you can turn them off if you wish.

Pictured - Gods — 320×200 VGA

Some of the other additions include:

  • Accurate VGA emulation.
  • 3dfx Voodoo 1 emulation.
  • New integer scaling modes.
  • Aspect ratio correct image captures.
  • Supercharged image and video capturing.
  • Aspect ratio and viewport enhancements.
  • A fix for the “black vertical bars” video corruption issue.
  • New deinterlacing shader for FMV games.
  • + much more graphical improvements.

See more in their release notes for the full explanation of each change.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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9 comments

damarrin Feb 14
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Lovely. DOSBox is super important and I'm so glad it exists and is being improved.
robvv Feb 14
Gods is an all-time classic. I've recently discovered that John Foxx did the music for this game!
hardpenguin Feb 14
Another project that deserves being regularly showered with donations ☺️.
My only real complaint about existing DOSBox is that when I use it to play, say, Master of Orion 2, I can't alt-tab out of it. Could I with this?
Calinou Feb 14
Quoting: Purple Library GuyMy only real complaint about existing DOSBox is that when I use it to play, say, Master of Orion 2, I can't alt-tab out of it. Could I with this?

OG DOSBox runs on SDL 1.2 which doesn't support alt-tabbing in fullscreen on Linux, while SDL 2 and later (used by DOSBox forks) do.
Quoting: Calinou
Quoting: Purple Library GuyMy only real complaint about existing DOSBox is that when I use it to play, say, Master of Orion 2, I can't alt-tab out of it. Could I with this?

OG DOSBox runs on SDL 1.2 which doesn't support alt-tabbing in fullscreen on Linux, while SDL 2 and later (used by DOSBox forks) do.
Sweeet! Thanks.
I think DOSBox-X is still my preferred fork of Dosbox.
Quoting: thelimeydragonI think DOSBox-X is still my preferred fork of Dosbox.

May I ask why? Just out of curiosity honestly. I've tried DosBox-X and it didn't seem to mesh well for me.
Quoting: TactikalKittyMay I ask why? Just out of curiosity honestly. I've tried DosBox-X and it didn't seem to mesh well for me.

Emulated some obscure DOS things I own correctly and some other things more accurately in regards to sound.
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