I like it as it is, portable without having to do anything apart from installing games at DOSROOT.

You do, but not everyone does. Having an option to choose either accommodates both.

Naturally... an extra case in every DOSBox installation wouldn't hurt anybody. What I don't really get is what is really the problem. If sb doesn't want to use the DOSBox version that ships with DBGL, the one with the DOSBox.conf in its folder, they can add whatever version they already have installed, right?

I did that for ages before turning my whole setup into portable.

EDIT: OK. I get it now...

collector wrote:

I haven't looked at your frontend in a while, so I took a look at the latest. I would rather use the official DOSBox than what is packed in the DBGL package. The default for the conf file now is in the user data folder "%LocalAppData%\DOSBox". DBGL will not accept a conf file outside of the program's folder. I have not found a way to force what is the expected default location.

Yeah, seems that some kind of change is unavoidable.

kolano wrote:

Can a screenshot be pulled from there as well? Might be preferable to display a "No images" message in the UI rather than the pop-up dialog box.

Yes. Yes.

I'm not clear on what the "set to Mobyrank" option does for Pouët.net queries ?

It sets the Custom9 field to ((Pouet demo score) + 1) * 50. Label is indeed a bit ..confusing.

Can that be provided as a separate query button, rather than a toggle?

No, as it is likely that support for more searchengines will come in the future. Why do you ask for a separate button? I've made DBGL remember the last engine selected, hope that it improves usability.

code120 wrote:

Were it possible an option to disable the screenshot column in the "All profiles" tab only (and display it with smaller lines), so to keep that list visually as compact as possible? When there are lots of profiles it's difficult to browse it.

Sorry, probably not possible, because support for changing table row heights is very limited in SWT (now). Remember that you can navigate easily in a large table just by typing the first few letters of a profile's title.

collector wrote:

You could just grab the version of DOSBox from the stdout.txt. That is where I get the version from for my installers.

I understand, but DBGL needs more than just a version number. YKHWong and Gulikoza's builds, for example, provide more options and DBGL can 'autodetect' these now. Moreover, older DOSBox versions do not provide version information and SVN builds are not specific enough (version=SVN).

You could just have it query both locations, just as DOSBox does.

What locations are you referring to? Please realize that DBGL also runs on Linux and OSX, where other locations might be applicable. Currently, I think it would be best to just have the user select the DOSBox executable and accompanying conf file, manually. Would you suggest otherwise?

Test build 0.71e is up!
All the latest files, to upgrade just grab the jar as usual.

Hi all,

Build 0.71f is up, with

* added support for configurable dosbox.conf locations (collector)

All the latest files, to upgrade just grab the jar as usual.

Thanks

Hi all, release 0.72 is up. No changes since 0.71f.

I'll try the 0.7X version tonight 😀 Thanks still for the great work rcblanke - I've been mostly absent from the forum but I still test a lot of games whenever I can (it's a bit of a hobby too, to add as many games as possible :p ) and your front end helps a great deal.

Is there a way, in the info section, to add a link to dosbox.exe with parameters?

If I add only dosbox.exe it runs it, but if I add a simple -noconsole, not anymore. I'd like to setup an alternative exe for a game to launch with dosbox, that is, without creating a new profile.

Edit: solved

I'm not clear on what the "Screenshots" column currently sorts by, it seems odd. It would be an improvement if blank fields sorted together.

Kolano, DBGL sorts on captures folder name; it will not be possible to sort on the actual images themselves as that would require scanning through all the game captures folders on startup, which is just too slow.

rcblanke wrote:

Kolano, DBGL sorts on captures folder name; it will not be possible to sort on the actual images themselves as that would require scanning through all the game captures folders on startup, which is just too slow.

Thanks for the response, and all your hard work here.

Ok, so it sorts on capture folder name, which is normally based on the ID value. It sorts similarly to ID, but in a different order as they are sorted as strings instead of as numbers. One can't do otherwise, as the capture folders can be configured to use any filename value.

Regarding the slowness of scanning...
-If the screenshots column is shown, aren't you reading through all the folder to show the thumbnails anyway?
-If you are not I'd presume thumbs are generated and stored somewhere. If so, could you sort on the existence/non-existence of a thumb then on the capture folder name?

One other request would be to align the column order shown by the "Profile Table" options screen with the current order used. Preserving order when columns are added/removed.

kolano wrote:

If the screenshots column is shown, aren't you reading through all the folder to show the thumbnails anyway?

No. Screenshots are lazy loaded, which means only loaded when visible in the list viewpane. Once loaded, they remain in cache for fast retrieval, until the user forcefully resets the cache.

One other request would be to align the column order shown by the "Profile Table" options screen with the current order used. Preserving order when columns are added/removed.

This is unlikely to be implemented, as it is very tedious to build and hardly worth the effort IMHO. But feel free to submit a patch 😁

Just a quick note to say that the website was updated a bit (providing some info that is scattered throughout this thread).

rcblanke wrote:

kolano wrote:

If the screenshots column is shown, aren't you reading through all the folder to show the thumbnails anyway?

No. Screenshots are lazy loaded, which means only loaded when visible in the list viewpane. Once loaded, they remain in cache for fast retrieval, until the user forcefully resets the cache.

One workaround might be...
-Store a flag in the DB when thumbnails are generated, or perhaps the thumbs themselves could serve as such
-Clear such flags when screenshot regeneration fails
-Set this the screenshot sort to sort on that flag

The only time that would seem to have questionable results would be prior to the initial generation of screenshots, though some initialization could address that. At the same time I realize such starts getting complicated.

rcblanke wrote:

kolano wrote:

One other request would be to align the column order shown by the "Profile Table" options screen with the current order used. Preserving order when columns are added/removed.

This is unlikely to be implemented, as it is very tedious to build and hardly worth the effort IMHO. But feel free to submit a patch 😁

I may look into such, thanks for providing the code. Though perhaps I'd reconsider once I better understand why aligning/preserving the column and list orders is complicated. The column re-ordering has been an annoyance for me since I started to use the Custom fields. Each time I enable a new one, I have to resort my columns and I'm on my 5th reordering now.

A few other feature requests...

-A generic list filter. Basically a text input that would filter the list to profiles that contained the entered term

-Integration between the profiles DB and profile configs. So config options could be exposed as columns. This is likely complicated similarly to the screenshots ordering issue, where it requires better alignment between filesystem content and the DBGL DB. Again, perhaps such can be addressed by up front scanning, with live updates, and a a refresh option; avoiding the cost of repeated scanning.

Hi all,

A new test build is up (0.72a) with:

* The notes field in the profile editing dialog now uses the configurable (monospaced) font as well
* Added support for empty write locations for PhysFS mounts (so that it writes to the captures folder) (Phil)
* Fixed a StringIndexOutOfBoundsException when a mount is missing its ending quotes
* A fix for an issue which could cause config settings for another DOSBox generation in some .conf files, when multi-editing profiles with multiple DOSBox versions but not setting a new one
* SWT update to 3.6.2

All the latest files, to upgrade just grab the jar as usual.

@kolano: All valid requests and suggestions, but just not high-priority for me at the moment.

Regards,
Ronald

There seems to be a bug (/w v0.72) in that clicking the "Consult ..." button when one has no internet connection causes DBGL to hang.

Hi all,

A new test build is up (0.72b) with:

* A really nice DBGL icon for all platforms made by VR (Sandy)
* Implemented connection timeout to prevent deadlock when using websearch without internet connection (kolano)
* Added support for locale variants, and added Lord Rius' "Español (Capitalizado)" variant

All the latest files, to upgrade just grab the jar as usual.

Regards,
Ronald

I have a question... Is there any size limitation for the exported games packages? I have some people complaining of decompression errors if the package exceeds 2 Gb.

Hi Neville,

The only limitation that I can think of is FAT32 which has a max. filesize of 2GB. If a file inside that archive is larger than that, it will fail to unpack on FAT32.

If something else is the cause of the problem, I need more information (ideally a DBGL stacktrace).