I love that game and have played it multiple times and was in the mood once again.... and I think it's the first time I've ever run it on this computer. (a Windows 10 machine). And there is something not quite right about it....

It "appears" as though the whole picture is "off" center, as in too high. There is a bit of black nothingness at the bottom, and I am quite certain (though with my memory not 100% certain) that at the top of the game there should be box you can mark that keeps your party on the road. This box is not there, and I think it's because as I said the whole picture is shifted "up" and I'm not seeing the top of it.

Has anyone else seen this? But more importantly, is there anything I can do in DOSBOX that might alleviate this problem (if it is in fact a problem... lol.. I guess I'm not sure the image is off center and too high, but I really think it is. Can you force Window mode in DOSBOX? Thinking that may solve the issue.

Anyhow, I guess this might have supposed to have been posted in the Krondor series forum... but number 1) the traffic there is slooooooooooooooooooooooooooowww and I likely won't get an answer for perhaps weeks or months and number 2) it really may be more of a DOSBOX question that a BaK question. Either way, if a mod feels it belongs in the Krondor series forum, I won't have an issue if you move. (wouldn't matter if I did though... lol)

Not related, but MOLEK-SYNTEZ is here. I just remember you made a thread about it few days ago.

Oh... THANK YOU, I did not know it was here.

Instabuy!!!! lol

thanks again.

Maybe the game is off center because of the Scaler or it might not be running on Desktop resolution.

At the game directory you can find the DOSBox game config file (*.conf) and edit it to change the options to whatever you like.

Here's an example of the settings I use:

[sdl]
fullscreen=true
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=0x0
windowresolution=800x600
output=openglnb

[render]
aspect=true
scaler=none

Oh, thank you thank you thank you. I'm going to try fullscreen=false and see if that works (assuming I even find the right file and then the right line in the file lol)

When in fullscreen, check your monitor menu (the hardware buttons, under or a side). Its probably doing some scaling.
A month ago, to run Jill of the Jungle on linux and unsuccessfully fiddling with the dosbox+driver config to fix the stretching, took me a few hours searching online on what was happening.

If not, check a nvidia/amd setting is doing the same.

Well, I couldn't find the file, so obviously didn't find the line in the file.

But I did find a file called something like DOSBOX configurator (or something like that). So I double clicked that and right there in front of me was a box to toggle full screen on/off. lol

BUT, I didn't toggle it off. Instead I tried another approach. In addition to the fullscreen toggle, there was a drop down box with various graphics options (Overlay, Surface, DDraw, OpenGL, etc.). So instead I tried changing that from Overlay to OpenGL. And fortunately (or unfortunately) that did indeed "move" the image down. When I went back into the game the picture was now noticeably lower, and there was no vast black nothingness at the bottome.

Unfortunately, there was now a vast black nothingness at the top now.... lol.

I guess it's my failing memory again. I could've sworn that screen looked different before (and you would think I would know considering just how many times I've played this gem of a game. I would've sworn there was a box at the top of the screen before where you could toggle staying on the road on or off. (If on, your party would not go off the road even if you hit a direction that would take them off the road... they would instead "bounce" as if hitting a wall and stay in the road). But maybe I'm confusing games or something. Maybe that was in BiA instead of BaK I dunno.

So, it plays okay on win 10? Another question, is the sound okay because on win 7 it played up?

Yeah it plays fine on win 10. As far as the sound is concerned, well, I'm not one of those sound aficionados that are very particular about the sound and take the default settings and make tweak after tweak after tweak until they get settings that are just right.... and my dumb ears can't tell any difference between them.

To me it sounds great, just like it did back in the day when I first bought it on CD and I played it and it used the CD sounds (you had to have the CD in the drive all the time but that was OK with me as it was that way with most games). But, as I said, I have dumb ears....

Try enabling "Keep aspect ratio" in the DOSBox configurator (probably in a second tab within it). Almost all games should have it enabled to appear as they did in 4:3 resolutions/monitors, but for some reason GOG decides not to enable it by default.

Also enable any options to keep the aspect ratio in your video card driver configuration, as Lostinablock already suggested.

BTW, if you had posted in the Krondor series forum, I'd likely answer, and quickly. It was quite rare for me to see this topic on the other hand, since I rarely drop by General. Almost all popular games have one or two "resident" troubleshooters. So even if there are few posts overall, questions get quick answers anyway. You probably should play around with Blocksize and Prebuffer numbers to solve that. It's not so much a game issue as it is of the combination of the game and DOSBox (and the numbers GOG decided to place there by default).

Pardon?...............I know what you mean.
Thanks for that, I might go back into it again in the near future as it is one the best games made.

I remember having trouble with running BaK in DOSBox a few years ago on older computers. This thread inspired me to give it another try on my Win10 laptop. The image looks fine for me now, but apparently I had similar issues with OpenGL back then. Checking some YouTube playthroughs, I also see the black borders on top or bottom of the screen for some, and I can confirm that's not how it should look. For me the black borders are only on the sides (keeping aspect ratio).

The thing about the sound is that the GOG version has CD audio on by default, and for some reason it results in music not looping, so you'll have a bit of music and then silence. You can turn off the CD audio, but if I understand correctly, you won't be hearing sound effects then, unless you follow these instructions. But if you don't care that much about music and sound and can live with how the game sounds now, maybe you don't need to fix it.

In the DOSBox Configurator you should enable the 'Keep Aspect Ratio' option and also select a 4:3 window
resolution like: 800x600 or 1024x768.

BaK ran at 320x200 natively, which is a 16:10 ratio.

I haven't installed and run it in a LONG time now but I do remember going in and editing the Dosbox .cfg file directly for a number of things, one of which was the scaler mode (HQ2X, I think?) to get it to a more viewable size.