Well, I'm looking at the guide at Tips for getting X-Com: Apocalypse working which recommends you use the standard CVS build (i.e. beta version) at:
http://cvscompile.aep-emu.de/dosbox.htm
This particular version doesn't contain all the files you'll need, so you need the ones from the official 0.63 release too. Simply install 0.63 then download the cvs version and unzip the files over the ones in your 0.63 folder. In following the guide, you'll then need to make some changes to your dosbox.conf file.

To actually install and play the game, you'll first need to mount a folder to be used as your dosbox C: drive, and also mount your cd rom drive.

For example, if you have a folder with all your dos games in "C:\dosgames" and your cd drive is D: then...

mount c: c:\dosgames -freesize 1024
mount d: d:\ -t cdrom

Note, that most games don't need the -freesize <whatever> bit.

As for the autoexec section in dosbox.conf, you can put the above commands in there, or you can just type them at the dosbox prompt. It doesn't make any difference.

Then just follow the rest of the guide for installing the game, and patching it and stuff.

how do you unzip over a file, do you just extract them to the same folder?

Ok, well I assumed that putting them over a file means extracting them to that file and now the game starts, but even after following his walkthrough, it has no sound and it froze right away, so is there anything that can be done about that? Also, is tehre a way to make the DOSBOX screen larger so that things arent so tiny once the game works?

It works very slowly and choppily (if that is a word) and freezes up eventually, so is there any remedy for this and the aforementioned problems?

Yeah, by unzip over I just meant extract to the same place, so the files get overwritten with the ones in the zip. If you did it right, it would have asked you if you wanted to overwrite them (probably).

Press Alt-Enter to switch between full screen and windowed mode.

For the sound...I'm not sure...did you set the game up to use SB16 ?

For the choppiness...well, the guide says it might be a bit choppy. I can only suggest playing with frameskip and cycles to make it as smooth as possible. You can use ctrl F7/F8 to change frameskip and ctrl F11/F12 to change cycles.

As for freezing up, it looks like a known issue with it happening every 5-10 seconds, but it shouldn't be locking up completely.

Edit: You might be able to use something called dos32a to fix the choppiness problem. It's a bit complicated, but this thread tells you how to do it: http://www.abandonia.com/forum/index.php?show … pic=1482&st=210

well, im not sure how choppy it is for others, but it is very choppy on my computer and it freezes up every 5-10 minutes, so if anyone has remedied the same problem i'd appreciate advice. Thanks for getting me this far, lofty.

I think to get it to run smoother I have to reduce my cpu cycles like it says in the other post, but i dont know how to do this and i dont know if this will have any adverse effects on my computer

Please read my last post carefully. I said how to change cycles. You can also set it in dosbox.conf where it says "cycles=". And no, it can't have an adverse effect on your computer, however high or low you set it. The worst you can do is set cycles so high it's using nearly 100% of your CPU, which will make your system slow while dosbox is running, just like running any other cpu-intensive program would. If you have any other questions, please read the README file, the guides in the "dosbox guides" section on VOGONS, and search the forums first. The basic stuff you're asking about optimising performance, changing window size, etc has been covered many times.

Well the game runs smoothly now, or so it seems. I still haven't been able to remedy the sound problem but that doesnt worry me, what my problem is now, is the fact that when i go to my base screen and try to build a new facility it freezes up, and it also freezes at the first mission where I go to inspect an alert. I've looked around the forums at all the posts with xcom apocalypse in the title and have found nothing, if there is a solution already given somewhere, I'll keep looking and hopefully find it, but if not, then i may need some help with this problem.

Well i've been looking all over the forums and still havent found a way to get the game to not freeze whenever I make any clicks that are of consequence........I can't build stuff in my base, and when it goes to the scene of an alert, i can't even move the mouse to get to the yes button to accept the mission. Any help would be much appreciated.

so right now I'm assuming that no one has had this problem of the game freezing up, so i should look elsewhere to get this game to run somehow.

Did you try dos32a ?

no, i guess i'll read up on that and see what it does,thanks for the suggestion

when my first alert happens and it asks me if i want to go on the mission after i send the thing to intercept it, the mouse is unmovable and everything becomes unresponsive. similarly, when i try to build new facilities in my base, it also freezes. dos 32a didnt, the problem, but the file i use to run it is a .bat file and so i cant bind sb to it, so i bound it to the normal .exe file and it still didnt fix the freezing problem, so any advice with possible solutions to the problem would be much appreciated. like if there is a way to bind to .bat files, or if i can somehow get it to work from the .exe file.

Yeah, you only need to bind it to the EXEs.
Hmm, I dunno then. You've tried pretty much everything. Maybe you'll just have to wait until support for the game in dosbox improves. It just seems to be one of those games... :\

yeah, probably.......thanks for the help though, when it comes out i will have everything else ready to work with the new patch to get it to work....

Did you ever try running it natively, without dosbox btw? It seems to run sort of ok for me - just too fast. Even sound kind of works if you select soundblaster in the setup. This is with a cd-rip version of the original game though, so might be different.

no, it doesnt run at all, i've tried a million times, but thanks anyway

Hmm. :\
Well, I don't know how to play XCom, but I tried a few things playing under dosbox, and didn't get any freezes, but probably I just didn't do whatever makes it freeze. (I tried building something at my base though, and that was ok). Either that, or it only freezes on the original CD version you're using.

At least it works with Dynamic core with the dosbox CVS. I was getting about 14,000 cycles out of it most the time which made it pretty smooth, so if you're still using core=normal you could change that. It's a lot faster than normal core.