get better display drivers ? maybe check if you have stuff in your taskbar /background that changes the pallet accidently

There's nothing else running.. also on a Mac version of dosbox, so not sure if that makes a difference. 😀

Seems to be the same kind of problem I'm having with The Last Express 😢

Right, see
The Last Express

Maybe somebody check what mode is set (sdlmain.cpp) and why that
mode doesn't work (or if it works, how the palette is screwed up).

Wow.. glad you showed that to me.. glad I am not the only one with that problem.. well, kinda... haha! 😀

ive had a similar problem in a game cant remember what it was through, but i fixed it by switching to full screen before running the game (though you've probably tried that)

If all else fails, you could do a sort of a workaround by setting DOSBox up so it runs in a BIG window, so it takes up the whole screen.

That's an idea. I tried doing a scalex2 or something like that... but it didn't make much of a difference. What is the command for a big window? I just know how to toggle from fullscreen to windowed. Thanks.

Set windowresolution the same as desktop and try a different output, surface won't work for this.
On my machine the window doesn't fill the whole screen until the actual game starts, so you may have to fiddle with it to get it the way you want it.

Ok, so I tried using the following commands, because it wasn't working
output=ddraw
windowresolution=1280x1020
but it stayed the same size. I tried finding some examples on how to change it, but i couldn't find it. Any ideas? It doesn't give me an error message, but it doesn't do anything either.

ddraw is windows only, maybe try overlay?

hmm.. nope.. no dice.. didn't seem to work. 😀