DOSBox Staging is the fork of the original emulator with an aim to modernize it and give it some more advanced features, with the latest release out now.
An important project because DOSBox itself is a vital bit of free and open source software, one that has enabled us not to lose out on thousands of classic games. Ensuring that it keeps working on modern systems using modern features with DOSBox Staging is awesome.
This release is a big one covering many parts of it enhancing “the quality of audio emulation (GUS, built-in MIDI, PC speaker), improved support for PowerPC and POWER8 architectures, and a healthy mix of usability, documentation, code quality improvements”. They go into a lot more detail in the lengthy release notes, which make for an interesting read.
I’m a huge retro fan, which regular readers will know quite well by now. So with the inclusion of built-in GLSL shaders to emulate the visual look of an analog CRT monitor, I couldn’t be happier with this release. Seems like it works quite well too:
Jazz Jackrabbit (Holiday Hare 1995 Edition) – showcasing crt-fakelottes-flat, source: DOSBox Staging
Even if I don’t want to play it like that now, it’s interesting for historical purposes. Perhaps more interestingly though, is that they’ve even added in integer scaling (pixel-perfect) option for OpenGL, which should make playing the classics just that little bit nicer especially on Linux as it allows for a resizable window now too.
The Lost Vikings (1993) with integer scaling, source: DOSBox Staging
Plenty of other exciting features included for retro gamers, worth taking a look.
See the release notes of 0.76.0 here and on GitHub. You can also grab it as a Snap.
Did you know you can use DOSBox with Steam Play on Linux? Thanks to Boxtron, another open source project, you can run almost any game on Steam that uses DOSBox quite easily.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.