DOSBox - How to define global settings, i.e. audio volume?

TimZett

I know (from reading about it) that DOSBox is quite a bit different from other emulators when it comes to configuration settings.

Same as with Retroarch.cfg on other emulators, is there an equivalent for DOSBox?

For instance, I have this ROM for Tyrian, and the audio is way too loud. I cannot change it in the game setup though (for whatever reason the volume bars are blocked).
So what else could I do?

TimZett

I just found that this command:

mixer master 50:50

when issued in DOSBox will reduce the master volume to 50%.

However, when exiting DOSBox this setting is being discarded, and I didn't find how the syntax for this would be in the dosbox.conf (in my case it seems to be dosbox-SVN.conf)

Can anyone help?

mitu

@TimZett If it's a command, add it to the autoexec section of the .conf file and see if it has any effect.

TimZett

Cheers :-)
At least one can see that during games startup, now this setting is being displayed.
Objectively it's a bit difficult for me to hear the difference, so I will test further by setting this to 1:1 or 0:0

All in all looking very good ;-)

dudleydes

@TimZett Have you tried the source port, OpenTyrian?

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/OpenTyrian/

TimZett

@dudleydes Wow, this is really cool. So to say a game to be downloaded via setup script :-)
I'll give it a try but probably a little later ;-)
Thanks for pointing me to this.

Efriim

@TimZett
yeah add it to the [autoexec] part of dosbox-SVN.conf
this is what my mixer looks like

mixer fm 250
mixer sb 65

On a dosbox side note; is there a simple way to run dosbox games that will hide the games folder and also not require entering folders? On another unnamed distribution this could be done by naming the "DOSGAME" folder to "DOSGAME.pc" and including a config file inside the folder.

edmaul69

@Efriim so I have a folder in the roms folder called pc2. I put all the games folders in there. Then I create .conf files named the names of the games and put them in the pc folder. Then in those .conf files I add an [autoexec] section that mounts the drives and points to the exe or bat files in the pc folder that boots that game.

Efriim

@edmaul69
That seems like an adequate solution, I was getting around to an idea like that. I wasn't %100 on .conf being runnable but it makes sense to me now that it overrides the dosbox-SVN.conf. Thanks for the helpful idea.

quicksilver

@edmaul69 I saw you post this somewhere else a while back and I followed your advice. Works perfectly and keeps everything nice and organized!

edmaul69

@quicksilver yeah I can’t stand seeing extra garbage if I don’t have to

mitu

@Efriim 'Unnamed' ? What is this - Fight Club :) ? If you're referring to Recalbox, there's no shame admitting their Wiki page about DosBox is better then RetroPie's.

Efriim

@mitu Okay, I think Batocera has a similar dosbox set-up. I really liked Lakka for its retroarch menu, but it doesn't really add anything to Retroarch. Recalbox only worked on my rpi2, that was last year when I first got into all this, I didn't spend long on it before switching to lakka, and then I got a rpi3b+ at the end of the year and tried batocera for a while, lastly I wound up here. Happy with the versatility in scriptmodule updates, and the contributions from the active community. I miss the intro video from batocera though.

mitu

@Efriim Batocera is very similar to Recalbox, since it was started by a former Recalbox team member - so I'd expect them to be very close.