Dosbox fullscreen issues

eberhab

Hello,

I am running wolf3d via dosbox core using a Pi2 and a 4K monitor and the game only uses a small fraction of the screen:

Is it possible to make DOSbox use the entire vertical resolution of the physical screen? In order to reproce this you can basically just follow the standard "PC" wiki guide (more details below).

What I have tried so far:

I have been playing around a lot with resolution settings in the game's dosbox config but nothing really seems to help making the game "larger"
Also tried to run the game with different Video Modes with no solution.
One thing I noticed is that when launching the same conf file using "lr-dropbox" core, the resolution work out of the box. Here the game directly uses (almost) the entire physical screen, which is what I want. But then the lr core does not yet support the keymapper and midi and the hq3x scaler also do not seem to work, so unfortunately this is not really an option.

At this point I am a bit lost where to search for the problem. By getting it to work with lr-dosbox with the same config it seems that I can rule out the dosbox-conf-file as a source of the problem, but I really don't know what else it could be.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

More details:
Pi Model: Pi 2B R1.1 with a 4K screen via HDMI
Power Supply used: Standard USB 5V 2A supply
RetroPie Version Used: 4.7.15
Built From: retropie-buster-4.7.1-rpi2_3.img.gz
USB Devices connected: bluetooth and wifi usb stick
Controller used: Nintendo Pro Controller (via BT)
Guide used: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/PC/ (Following both links for "How to add games" and "Using individual conf files per game"
Config/ File: /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/wolf3d.conf (https://pastebin.com/frBfjjnY)
Emulator: DOSbox core
Video Mode: CEA-16/ default
How to replicate the problem:

Install DOSbox core
Put linked config file into /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc
Download and unpack Wolf3D to /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pcdata/wolf3d/
Install/ Launch wolf3d via EmulationStation via wolf3d.conf

jamrom2

@eberhab Hi. Welcome to the forum.

You mention you loaded DosBox core. Try DoxBox-Staging. It's a more streamlined version for Retropie use. It's listed in either experimental or optional in the Retropie emulator loading menus. Make sure you update your Retropie script to the latest version. Once you have it loaded, then press a button once you select the game, allow the runcommand menu to come up, and choose the option to choose a specific emulator for that ROM from that menu option.

Start there before anything else. Rename that conf file to something else, or just save a copy to your PC and delete it. Each version of DOSBox has it's own specific conf lines and using one from another will cause all kinds of head-aches.

There are actually several versions of DosBox available for use. Some work better than others... but here they are in no particular order.

uses the benefit of the libretro core with shaders, menus, overlays - but can be performance restrictive on Pi3b+ and less
lr-dosbox
lr-dosbox-pure

Uses the .conf files format
dosbox
dosbox-sdl2
dosbox-staging (uses the conf files format)

Start with that and see if you get full-screen play before you start tweak anything else. The default settings of Staging should handle Wolf3d.

jamrom2

This thread will help as well... if you scroll through it and see my avatar (Evil Otto) you'll begin to see how thick-headed I am and how many issues I had configuring DosBox until I figured out it was the old .conf I had left in there.

It also helps to show how DosBox based games need to be setup to work best. Since I've done this, I've never looked back and I am extremely happy with the results.

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/25041/dosbox-official-thread

eberhab

@jamrom2 Thanks so much! This completely solved my problem :-)

Here is what I did:

Install "dosbox-staging"
Use one *.conf file per game which basically only consists of the [autoexec] section. I do have an [sdl] section in the individual game configs to define different map files. All other settings are being defined in the global dosbox-staging config in /opt/retroarch/conf

Also I tested all the other cores you mentioned, but with limited success:

dosbox: Has the resolution problem as mentioned in my original post, the image of the game is very small
lr-dosbox: It seems to work well, the resolution is fine, but lr-dosbox does not yet support keymapping (so it says in the readme), and keymapping is an essential feature I need/ want to use
lr-dosbox-pure: Unable to run as it crashes with "unknown machine command" (both when installing via source and pre-compiled)
dosbox-sdl2: Launches into a black screen and stays there forever

After studying also the dosbox thread you linked in your post I do have another question. I still have a problem with my mapper file (I can't get "analog up" to work even though it is defined in the map file). Some post in the "dosbox-official-thread" mention the use of "mapper-sdl2-git.map". Do you know where to find this file?

Big Thanks!

eberhab

@jamrom2 Disregard my last question. I realize that map files can be created with the dosbox keymap tool (ctrl+F1). I still have the problem that two of my axes cannot be mapped, but this is a different topic: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/30993/dosbox-pro-controller-working-only-partially

Again thanks a lot for pointing me towards dropbox-staging!

jamrom2

@eberhab hi. Good to know it's working and that you were able to sort a lot by reading that thread.

As far as the emulators... Just stick with Pure and Staging. Not sure what's wrong with the pure setup that you get a blank screen. Make sure the .conf options for pure are specific to the emulator version.

Theyre working on yet another fork of DOSBox that looks promising. Keep an eye on that thread. The guys on there are very helpful.