DOSBox settings

This isn't really a speedrunning thread but compet-n is probably the only reason people use vanilla .exes these days so might as well post this here.

Which release of dosbox and what kind of settings does everyone use for it? So far I've only tried the one that came with steam release which was really bad for some reason and SVN-daum which is ok most of the time. Sometimes it'll suddenly start dropping frames like crazy which really blows because it pretty much kills the run. The controls are also slightly worse than on windows ports (especially mouse) but I'm not sure if that's just how it worked back in the day. I've tried messing with different cpu cycle and emulation settings with no luck. Might just be my computer being awful (this) though.

version: 0.74
3000 cycles are enough
Using vista.
As a keyboarder I need to put -nomouse always, that's the only real nuisance.

some time ago tatsurd wrote about the mouse sensitivity being raised more than the basic value of original setting, how to do that? that was one of the last things keeping me from using box instead of pr+

I use 0.74 on XP with a much worse computer than yours and don't have any problems running vanilla exes, with the default settings and max cycles. Try that version, if it still sucks, try disabling sound in dosbox.conf as a first step.

mpu401=none 
mididevice=none

sbtype=none

Mouse control feels identical to Chocolate Doom, which generally feels different than any other port to some degree IMO. It's also a little weird having the mouse move forward/back when you've been playing without it for so long. Also I'm sure you know about longtics needing a patch for original exes but I'm mentioning it just in case.

blob1024: edit DEFAULT.CFG in your vanilla doom folder, change mouse_sensitivity to something higher, maybe try 30 as a start. Don't go into the options screen in Doom after you do this, you'll crash the game.

plums said:

It's also a little weird having the mouse move forward/back when you've been playing without it for so long.

You can just use novert for disabling forwards/backwards mouse movement.

Oh cool, I hardly ever use vanilla but that's still useful to know about.

Thanks for the replies, in the end 0.74 main release of dosbox did the trick. Only setting I changed from default was scaler to normal3x, switching anything else seems to be a bad idea. Especially switching output mode or using aspect ratio correction. So now things are looking pretty wide but guess I can deal with it if I play in a window.

It is possible to have severe input lag under DosBox, even on beastly machines. This is because it uses SDL, which as everybody around here knows, is horrible. I remember there being some setting I had to tweak in the config file, extremely obscure, to get this input lag issue even partially resolved. Even then, playing Strife under DosBox compared to playing Choco Strife equals running into every wall, bumping into stuff constantly because it just doesn't respond to input. The latency is off the charts.