DOS Games Discussion

Recently I have learned about the xBR scaler, and of course checked if there's a DOSBox implementation of it. And whaddaya think, there is. Moreover, it's a more advanced version of the scaler called xBRZ. The DOSBox build can be downloaded here. You don't need to tweak any DOSBox settings in this build, except maybe mounting your DOS directories. It's already configured to use the scaler and output 320x200 modes with correct aspect ratio.

The results of scaling are pretty interesting, as you can judge for yourselves. Here's a couple of shots:
Descent - Intro
Descent - Gameplay
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans - Mission Briefing
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans - Gameplay 1
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans - Gameplay 2

Additionally, the author of this build created a "scaler test" programme (available here) which can scale up any image on the fly, and save output as a separate file. It's original purpose it to compare the results of HQx, xBR and xBRZ, but you can also use it to have some nice scaled up graphics generally.

Cool, I hadn't heard of this one, thanks for the links and write-up.

Heh, I wonder when dosbox .75 is going to come out; lots of cool private builds like this one out there! /tangent

Youtube has some gameplay recording with xBRZ, too, like:
One Must Fall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU6Oo2uUM8I
One Unit Whole Blood Intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yKte_7mfNc

Jesus Christ!hehe

I'd say the one by EPICMEGA games with the robot and tin sound is original#!!

I believe someone that helped me out once programmed for them once?

Along the lines of MrFlibble's screen previews I would say awesome graphics#!!

Quadko wrote:Heh, I wonder when dosbox .75 is going to come out; lots of cool private builds like this one out there! /tangent

The vanilla SVN builds of v0.74 available at EmuCR are also quite changed compared to the 2010 version. I have no idea what the official roadmap is, but I suppose it could be possible that the next version could be v1.0, or v0.74 will remain a de facto v1.0.

My God, it looks horrible. Descent especially. Like it was painted by a slightly drunk 12-year old.

I use to like the looks of these "oversmooth" scalers, like Super-Eagle in ZSNES, but especially on big screens it looks pretty bad. I'd rather pixelation even.

MrFlibble wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2015 4:59 am
The results of scaling are pretty interesting, as you can judge for yourselves. Here's a couple of shots:
Descent - Intro
Descent - Gameplay
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans - Mission Briefing
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans - Gameplay 1
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans - Gameplay 2

The Warcraft result looks very nice, but Descent..OMG. Those "waves" are extremely noticeable, and I
can imagine that the effect when moving will be very profound and distracting.