DosBox Staging

0.81.2

This patch release fixes a critical keyboard regression bug in the classic Bitmap Brothers game Gods. The regression was accidentally introduced in the 0.81.1 release (#3777).

The game is very difficult to play without this fix, as holding down the movement keys may result in delayed movement, jerky start/stop motion, or no movement at all after a bit of playing.

0.81.1

The main focus of this maintenance release is to fix a couple of regressions introduced in 0.81.0, most of them related to game compatibility, and address a few long-standing issues.

This release was made possible by everyone who tried 0.81.0, submitted bugs and pull requests, and tested the updates. Thank you! 

Regression fixes¶

The release fixes the following 0.81.0 regressions:

• Fix Wing Commander 3 videos and cutscenes appearing height-doubled.
• Introduce vga_render_per_scanline = off workaround to fix the crash-at-startup regression in Deus, Ishar 3, Robinson’s Requiem, and Time Warriors.
• Fix the Tandy version of Impossible Mission II crashing at startup.
• Fix regression in Tyrian where pressing the arrow keys get registered twice in menus.
• Fix starting In Extremis resulting in a black screen.
• Fix wrong colours in Spell It Plus! (needs machine = svga_paradise).
• Fix wrong colours and garbled graphics in Spong and Exobius.
• Fix squashed video output in the text mode game Indenture.
• Fix the DOSBox Staging window gaining focus on every emulated video mode change.
• Fix crash when exiting DOSBox Staging while in fullscreen mode on macOS and Linux.
• Fix not being able to disable OPL emulation with oplmode = none.

Enhancements and fixes¶

We’ve also backported a number of enhancements and fixes for long-standing issues:

• Introduce vmem_delay = on to help with flickering graphics and speed issues in Hercules, CGA, EGA, and early VGA games. This has proven to improve compatibility with Future Wars, Operation Stealth, Quest for Glory II, Hostages, The Gold of the Aztecs, Crazy Brix, Corncob Deluxe, and Corncob 3-D so far.
• Improve support for multiple joysticks/game controllers (the mapper could behave erratically if you had more than one controller connected).
• Emulate a memory-expanded PCjr machine more faithfully. This improves game compatibility; for{ example, Space Quest (v1.0x and v2.2) and King’s Quest (1986 PCjr DOS version) now work instead of hanging the emulator.
• CD Audio is no longer muted in certain parts of Time Warriors and Alpha Storm.
• The batch file installer of Alpha Storm no longer fails.
• Forcing single scanning via crt-auto-arcade should now work with more programs.
• Fix various VGA double scanning related edge cases in demoscene productions.
• Detecting “repurposed” EGA video modes with 18-bit VGA DAC colours has been made more robust when using the crt-auto shader (should result in a double-scanned VGA shader being picked).
• Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese translations have been added, and most of the other translations have been updated.