First post, by marzsyndrome
Hey, newcomer alert everyone!
First off, I just wanted to say I've enjoyed DOSBox somewhat over the past few versions, but with 0.70 I am even happier than before, particularly as by default cycles are now set to auto so I can run games like Tyrian and Constructor in a PERFECT condition without slowdown on my 3Ghz P4 with 1Gb ram - even Tyrian's Wild graphics mode flows smoothly! 😁
Now, I thought one day that perhaps I should register and ask for your word on a couple of things I'd personally love to see happen in the future if at all possible, to make DOSBox even better for people like me. Namely:
1) Will there be any way to support swapping of floppy disk images (or directories masquerading as disks) in future, mainly for when installing certain games to hard disk? Some of them are rather picky about whether they're being run off a floppy or HD, and in some cases editing their config/setup files (if at all possible) may not always work! I played about with the program last night and spotted the ability to mount more than one CD to a drive and swap between them when required, but it can't seem to do the same for floppies. I've seen that it's seemingly possible to swap floppies with the BOOT function - but I assume that'll only apply to bootable disks, and not disks where you have to install data off of?
2) This probably sounds very minor to the rest of you, but I'd like to ask also if the possibility of retaining file date stamps on files - especially from installing games off of disks/CDs/archives - can be made/applied in future? Compare installing a game through real DOS (or NT's equivalent of DOS) to installing the same title through DOSBox, and inspect the properties of the files afterwards - you'll find that the real McCoy can retain original datestamps, whereas DOSBox seems to lose all the information on them and just gives them the modern date of when you installed them (if you see what I mean). Somehow I just like to be able to retain some extra originality with these old games! 😉
So yes, hello to everyone here, and I look forward to your replies. 😀