GUI based DOS emulator?
 

I probably know the answer already, but does a GUI based DOS emulator exist at all? If not already, this is needed for those Abandonware lovers who just doesn't know DOS enough to use DOSBOX.

DOSBOX is good, just not very userfriendly. It's unnecessarily overcomplicated.

D-Fend is a Windows frond-end for DOSBox.

...and that's the closest one get to user-friendliness or noob-friendliness.
CrimsonBlue, you should realize how different the requirements of DOS games are. This means that in ANY EMULATOR,

- the specific game's
- specific version
- must be set up correctly/optimally for YOUR computer.

In this case, a database of configuration files should be created for, say, 6000 games and you could download this parameter file and feed it to the emulator for a kick-start. But as DosBox is still in development there is no use creating such a configfile collection - D-Fend will be adapted to new DosBox versions, too.

What's so complicated with it? You just start it up and "cd" into directory and then type the name of the binary file that executes the game...
Configuring is done is a text file. I like the old school way of just editing a text file, it's usually more straightforward that today's bloated GUIs. Then again most people seem to prefer those GUIs so it's probably just me being odd ;-)

The problems start when you need to mount different drives, set cycles etc etc. Doing all this in DOSBOX is more problematic than it needs to be.

But I didn't know about D-Fend so I'll be using that from now on.

Yet with DosBox I can run any game I want (oldies) and run it how I WANT IT, if you coulden't edit the cycles then the whole thing would be pretty pointless. DosBox is dead easy, give it a chance. ;)

Yeah, I am, but using D-Fend I can do all these things without having to type it all. If DOSbox was as easy as using normal DOS then I'd use it without GUI. But in DOSBOX you'll have to differentiate settings and such, and makes playing games more of a fuzz than it needs to be.

To mount a drive you type "mount..." etc., to set the cycles you change the value of "cycles" in the config file. I'm not sure in what way this is "unnecessarily overcomplicated" or "more problematic than it needs to be". Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that you found a solution that suits you better, but I don't think you were being fair at all. ;)

Erm... for people who don't actually know how to use DOS (either by way of being Mac people, or not owning a computer until recently, or something), DOSBox is pretty intimidating. Don't assume that everyone knows how to do everything you do.

You can edit cycles by pressing ctrl+F12 to raise them and ctrl+F11 to lower them. No need to edit the dosbox.conf file ... unless you want to make it "permanent".

I don't think anyone has assumed anything...

No offense, but if you can't understand simple dos commands then I don't get how you even know about the oldies, let alone WANT to run them. However I agree that D-fend is god send for those who need it (or want it).

I personally find Dosbox to be very user friendly, and if you have issues you ask about it here where people like myself will answer in easy to read answers. :) Not so intimidating once you get to know it, like any program. Its a hell of a lot easier than having to setup 10 different computers for each age of dos game, thats for sure.

D-fend can come in handy even for those of us with experience, as it makes installing and configuring them so simple a complete dos newbie could do it.....and convenient enough to make it painless. I have over 400+ games setup in D-fend each with working configs and settings.....now thats what I call convenient. :D

DosBox 0.65 supports saving video (in AVI) natively. Has any of you tried that yet?

Yep. Its great. You do need to re-encode the videos with a more available codec if you expect others to see it though....as the one included isn't very common.

Well, not everybody had a PC back then, and even if I know DOS decently enough, I find GUIs much better regardless of the difficulty. It's the fact that you have to type everything that makes it more of a trouble. Anyway, didn't own a PC back then, I was an Amiga geek. But not everything came out on the Amiga and I'm not even necessarily interested in games I've already tried. It's the huge amount of games I HAVEN'T tried that interests me.

If somebody simply prefers GUIs, fair enough. (Though for 90% of emulated games out there, the amount of typing you'll have to do in DOSBox is smaller than the word count of any post in this thread. :P ) It's the "unnecessarily complicated" part that confused me.

It's unnecessary because it can be done a lot more easily by having a GUI interface.

DOSBox is NOT easy and uncomplicated..

1. It's been ages since I've done anything DOS related (and even then it wasn't that much)

2. It IS confusing no matter how many bloody times all of you who are comfortable with computer programming and language say it's 'easy.' If I expected you to walk in and all of a sudden understand the language of science when it isn't what you do for a living, you probably would have a hard time with it too.

3. Even with dFend, I still don't know what I'm supposed to set certain things to. Yes, the interface is easy but if you don't know what you're supposed to plug in - it's weird. I have tried it with Gabriel Knight, with Kyrandia and I can't get any of them to start. If I were to post a thread about it in hints, I'd probably get sneered at because I couldn't understand it.

So I empathize with CrimsonBlue.

*rant over*

As one of the many people who've spent hours in the Tech help forum helping people get their old games working under DOSBox, I sort of resent that comment. :shifty:

:frown:

I'm deeply sorry if you truly believe you'd be sneered at, Mel, honest. There are plenty of DOSBox help threads in Hints, and as long as a thread starter articulates what exactly their problem is, help is provided with no condescending comments or such.



Anyway, all we wanted to say (I think) is 1) that DOSBox isn't less user-friendly than the original DOS, and 2) that it's not fair to its creators to call it overcomplicated, since implementing functional GUI is a lot of additional work (rather than minute's work that they were just too lazy to do). Nobody ever implied that the emulator should be instantly intuitive for everyone. I regret saying anything now.

me

I'm sorry too - I was just ranting because it seems as if there's a hint of 'if you play computer games, you must understand all the intricacies of computers' which isn't necessarily true... And not everyone does it.

I'll give myself one too...

Mel