Why do people use dosbox instead of chocolate doom?

[BUYXRAYS]

I have heard of plenty of people who use dosbox to play doom. And to all you dosbox users, why?

Why don't you use chocolate doom? It is basically the same.

The only reason I can think of is for playing older versions of doom before v1.9

Edited August 9, 2023 by BUYXRAYS

[Turbulent]

I used to play primarily Dosbox on Steam because it was default and I didn't have a lot of issues with it. I played and still play a lot of other games in Dosbox. In general I find it a pretty useful program.

[PKr]

The more important question is why to use Dosbox instead of Dosbox Staging at this point.

[G19Doom]

Why not?

[HavoX]

2 minutes ago, PKr said:

The more important question is why to use Dosbox instead of Dosbox Staging at this point.

Or Dosbox-X, for that matter.

[Lippeth]

Several small reasons:

• Navigating the DOS environment and entering DOS commands helps set the mood
• Pressing Y to quit to DOS actually goes to DOS
• Nostalgia

Spoiler

A subtle color difference (Which turns out to be a bug in DOSBox-Staging, and has since been fixed)

 

Edited August 15, 2023 by Lippeth

[Async Unicorn]

CRT Filters

[plums]

@Lippeth I meant to ask before, how did you get that DOS screenshot? If it's just normal shot then the file might have the adjusted palette. Unless that's just DOSBox colour correction?

 

Also current versions of Crispy Doom can take your OS into account with quit messages :)

 

Edited August 9, 2023 by plums

[Metal_Slayer]

52 minutes ago, G19Doom said:

Why not?

Dosbox is an emulator, and emulators have input delay while Chocolate does basically the same thing without that.

But most people test maps on it just to be sure that they made it 100% DOS compatible.

[Gregor]

1 hour ago, Lippeth said:

Several small reasons:

• The subtle color difference
    Hide contents

  

   

But which one does reproduce the "correct" coloring of the scene of an actual DOS machine running Doom?

[s4f3s3x]

17 minutes ago, Gregor said:

But which one does reproduce the "correct" coloring of the scene of an actual DOS machine running Doom?

 

You also have to take into account the gamma setting of a real CRT

[Lippeth]

1 hour ago, plums said:

I meant to ask before, how did you get that DOS screenshot? If it's just normal shot then the file might have the adjusted palette. Unless that's just DOSBox colour correction?

 

That's a fair assessment. I captured it through DOSBox Staging by pressing the PrtSc key, and it saved a 320x200 png which I then vertically adjusted in Photoshop. It does reflect what I see when playing which prompted the screenshot comparison in the first place, and I've messed with the cga_colors parameter among others in the DOSBox config to see if it's just the way it's emulated, but I never came up with anything conclusive. But in either case, I've come to enjoy the grittiness of the green hue, at least when playing wads with the stock textures and palette. I can attempt to make a video comparison at some point if the screenshot method is imprecise.

 

37 minutes ago, Gregor said:

But which one does reproduce the "correct" coloring of the scene of an actual DOS machine running Doom?

 

I would love to find more info and see a comparison attempted by someone with the appropriate hardware.

Edited August 9, 2023 by Lippeth

[Master O]

3 hours ago, BUYXRAYS said:

I have heard of plenty of people who use dosbox to play doom. And to all you dosbox users, why?

Why don't you use chocolate doom? It is basically the same.

The only reason I can think of is for playing older versions of doom before v1.9

 

Some very early Doom mods at one point could only be played in DOS Doom, most notably Batman Doom.  Thankfully, Chocolate Doom does support it now.

[ludicrous_peridot]

18 minutes ago, Lippeth said:

I would love to find more info and see a comparison attempted by someone with the appropriate hardware.

 

Also to the OP ( ;) )  I play Doom on a Win98 machine, albeit not with a CRT and with an Intel G41 card.

How could I help with the comparison? In DOSBox-X the colors in Doom and Boom are the same for me.

 

I run DOSBox for a stricter memory management code which helps find bugs in source ports, that Windows 98 would tolerate, for the debugger and for video recording, as I don't have the second machine handy to capture VGA output with.

 

 

3 hours ago, BUYXRAYS said:

The only reason I can think of is for playing older versions of doom before v1.9

 

This Chocolate supports, by the way.

 

 

Edited August 9, 2023 by ludicrous_peridot

[TheUltimateDoomer666]

9 hours ago, Lippeth said:

• The subtle color difference
    Hide contents

  

   

This is odd to me because I've never seen DOOM in DOSBox with a slight green tinge before. I tried DOSBox 0.74-3, DOSBox-X, and DOSBox Staging with several different output methods, and nothing matches how your DOSBox screenshot looks. I just get the regular "neutral"/Chocolate DOOM palette at slightly different brightness levels (when using PrtSc). Edit: I'm able to get DOSBox Staging to look close to your screenshot, but the colors still aren't exactly the same. Edit 2: Your screenshot does indeed show how DOSBox Staging looks when DOOM's gamma correction is turned off.

 

Edited August 10, 2023 by TheUltimateDoomer666

[StuartT]

I play Doom II in Steam which uses a dosbox (I think). Never had any issues with it. What's the problem with dosbox then?

[BUYXRAYS]

6 minutes ago, StuartT said:

I play Doom II in Steam which uses a dosbox (I think). Never had any issues with it. What's the problem with dosbox then?

It used to. Now it uses the unity remaster I believe.

[Geniraul]

One of the key reasons why I prefer DOSBox is the ability to access all DOS games (at some point including the original IWADs plus custom vanilla PWADs) from the same directory. King's Bounty -> ^switch -> The Ultimate Doom -> ^switch -> The Lost Vikings -> ^switch -> Quake -> ^switch -> Stunts etc. Normally, I don't need to exit the emulator just to run a source port.

 

Also, now that I've played the original IWADs with a comfy blue screen of Norton Commander, and then DOSBox, for decades, why would I want to loose that DOS-related feeling? There are enough PWADs (a lot of which are really fantastic, by the way) with advanced features which I run through source ports anyway.

Edited August 9, 2023 by Geniraul

[Lippeth]

41 minutes ago, TheUltimateDoomer666 said:

This is odd to me because I've never seen DOOM in DOSBox with a slight green tinge before. I tried DOSBox 0.74-3, DOSBox-X, and DOSBox Staging with several different output methods, and nothing matches how your DOSBox screenshot looks. I just get the regular "neutral"/Chocolate DOOM palette at slightly different brightness levels (when using PrtSc). Edit: I'm able to get DOSBox Staging to look close to your screenshot, but the colors still aren't exactly the same.

It does seem to only be present in Staging, or at least not present in DOSBox 0.74-3, suggesting that it might just be the way it emulates CGA/VGA colors. Do you recall what settings made it begin to look similar? I remember asking about the green tint in another thread, and while it piqued the interest of a few, there were no clear answers. It's likely less relevant to Doom and more appropriate to DOSBox in general at this point though.

 

Here's a quick capture of my screen with Doom running in DOSBox Staging and Chocolate at the same time.

Spoiler

 

[OpenRift]

Assuming OP is just talking about DOSBox in general, the main reason I use it is for that oldschool authentic experience. I love the novelty of running WADs like KDiKDiZD, Back to Saturn X, and Doom 64 for Doom II in a DOS environment. Sure, that can be replicated with Chocolate Doom, but being able to play with the original EXE just feels... right, to me.

[OpenRift]

1 hour ago, Lippeth said:

 It does seem to only be present in Staging, or at least not present in DOSBox 0.74-3, suggesting that it might just be the way it emulates CGA/VGA colors. Do you recall what settings made it begin to look similar? I remember asking about the green tint in another thread, and while it piqued the interest of a few, there were no clear answers. It's likely less relevant to Doom and more appropriate to DOSBox in general at this point though.

  

Here's a quick capture of my screen with Doom running in DOSBox Staging and Chocolate at the same time.

  Hide contents

 

Oh damn, y'know, I actually noticed this in other DOS games as well, namely Rise of the Triad. I was doing some comparisons between the DOS version and the recently released Ludicrous Edition, and I noticed the slightly different tint. At first I thought it was a mistake on the part of Ludicrous Edition, but now I'm convinced it's just how DOSBox Staging displays color.

Edited August 10, 2023 by OpenRift

[maxmanium]

One reason for vanilla testing purposes is seeing if a midi crashes the engine for whatever reason. Since Chocolate Doom doesn't use DMX you can't test it that way.

[INfront95]

Because i like the feeling of typing Mount c, Cd doom etc. Patching doom with dehacked, write files to load the game, plus it can't be more pure'er except playing on true hardware. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

[TheUltimateDoomer666]

4 hours ago, Lippeth said:

Do you recall what settings made it begin to look similar? I remember asking about the green tint in another thread, and while it piqued the interest of a few, there were no clear answers. It's likely less relevant to Doom and more appropriate to DOSBox in general at this point though.

I was messing around with the in-game gamma setting for some of the comparisons and forgot to reset it. After re-checking DOSBox Staging (with default opengl output), I just noticed DOOM's colors match your screenshot with the in-game gamma correction turned off.

[Individualised]

One reason might be to mimic older hardware. For example if someone is making a vanilla-focused .WAD and wants to make sure it would run well on period hardware I can see DOSBOX being useful for that.

Edited August 10, 2023 by Individualised

[Midway64]

GOG.

 

GOG makes some good packaging with DOSBox, making launch menus, configuring the necessary for the game to run optimal, allowing the user to run multiplayer LAN matches, and other neat fuzz.

That's why I own DOS games (including Doom) on GOG, they're so easy to access that needing a source port becomes optional (IMO).

 

Oh and DMX, that too, some guys leave out huge MIDIs that you are sure they ain't gonna be working on Vanilla Doom.

[Adam Oker]

I don't run doom on DOSBOX,but I do run Boom on DOSBOX.

Honestly,it's probably nostalgia, it also feels good to run doom on dos.

[Skraegorn]

On 8/9/2023 at 12:40 PM, PKr said:

The more important question is why to use Dosbox instead of Dosbox Staging at this point.

DOSbox Pure with RetroArch is my second favorite after DOSbox Staging at this point purely for convenience sake. 

[johnnovak]

DOSBox Staging maintainer here. @OpenRift reported the green tint issue to us, and indeed, it's present in v0.80.1 (our latest stable release) in all VGA modes. See @OpenRift's ticket and the results of my investigation here:

https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/issues/2747

 

This regression is completely fixed in our latest development builds (downloadable from here: https://dosbox-staging.github.io/downloads/development-builds/), so the next stable v0.81.0 version to be released sometime later this year will contain the fix.

 

Apologies for the inconvenience, but then you can only notice it in games that feature 100% neutral dark grey gradients (it's quite hard to see on lighter greys), and even then it takes a good eye (that's why it went completely unnoticed by us).

Edited August 15, 2023 by johnnovak

[Lippeth]

@johnnovak So one of the reasons I prefer playing Doom with DOSBox Staging ends up being an unintentional bug and won't be present in future builds? Harsh.