Oh my. I adored Dungeon Keeper. Although this thread could apply to other older games, also.

Now that I have DK, I'm trying to tweak DOSBox a little, the dosboxDK.conf file.

EDIT: Right now using this page as a reference: http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Dosbox.conf

I think I got a little bit better graphics by changing the scaler from normal2x to hq3x. Also trying different resolutions, but while the game can be made to look better, it's a smaller box (and I'm working against a native 2560x1600 monitor).

I'm not sure whether changing the "output" from overlay, to, say, opengl will improve matters, so far haven't messed with this setting.

I'm not very familar with DOSBox, so I'm reading up on it in some FAQ's and the Wiki, but any pointers, links, etc, are appreciated.

- don't turn on "aspect", screws the video up, which is the opposite of what the FAQ claims
- mouse sensitivity ingame doesn't seem to work, but adjusting in this config file does.

I haven't bought Dungeon Keeper here so I don't know how GOG have set it up, but there are a few things I do with every DOSBox game I have here.

A nice useful thing that you could try doing is changing "fullresolution=original" to "fullresolution=0x0". It's undocumented, but 0x0 makes DOSBox run at whatever you have your desktop resolution set to.

I prefer ddraw as an output but I've heard Vista has trouble with that.

Out of interest, what do you mean by "don't turn on "aspect", screws the video up". Screws up how?

It's the entry under aspect correction there on the wiki. Supposedly "without aspect correction the display will look distorted", but I've found turning it on does that. By default it's disabled.

Hmm, from what I remember, the original DK used direct draw . . I'm definitely going to have to play with the output methods to see if I can improve the graphics.

I know the graphics are not going to be stellar according to today's standards, but I'm pretty sure it looked better than this.

You may have played the Windows version, which indeed looks better. The version on GoG is the DOS version.

That, and generally actual monitors generally only really look OK when running on their native resolutions -- and for most old games, that can't be done unless you want a very small screen in the middle with huge black borders.

Well, in the end it's down to preference but all DOS games were designed for 4:3 displays and if it's running at 320x200 or 640x400 then it will be squashed without aspect ratio correction (you may prefer the squashed appearance though, I'm not judging you).

Here's a comparison with the status bar face from Doom with and without the ARC. Left is correct, right is squashed, middle is... the Mona Lisa (I guess it's an example of a well proportioned face). You may think the left picture is too tall, but that's how it was intended to appear on an old CRT. The distortion is caused by modern computers assuming that all pixels were square. [url=http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/File:Aspect_Ratio_Mona_Lisa.png]http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/File:Aspect_Ratio_Mona_Lisa.png[/url]

Did you try changing fullresolution to 0x0 by the way? I think the best you're going to get is fullresolution=0x0, output=ddraw and aspect=true.

Try Gulikoza's build: http://www.si-gamer.net/gulikoza/

set output to direct3d, and pixelshader to hq3x, scaler to either none or hardware3x (don't remember off top of my head) and fullresolution to 0x0.

It will basically use the hq filter to scale to your desktop resolution, instead of a hard "3x" with blur-scaling afterwards. There were DOS games running at 320x240, 640x480, 800x600 etc as well, and for those aspect correction should not do anything.

Exactly, which is why I always have aspect=true. If a game doesn't need it then it doesn't do it. =D

What is special about Gulikoza's build?

I use it for openglhq output mode (doesn't work on all cards), and pixel shader support (which does, using direct3d output).

Exactly. And also potential performance boost since it will be using your GPU to scale instead of your CPU.

Hmm, they should really incorporate these into the main branch in future versions because this seems great.

When I changed fullresolution to 0x0 the display shrank down to a small square about 1/6th or so the size of my monitor.

Turning aspect on doesn't squash the display, it creates graphic distortion on the lower 3rd part of the picture.

I'll keep experimenting, but so far the best pic I get is output to overlay, fullresolution to original, as aspect to false.


EDIT:
- direct3d is not one of the valid output listed, but it seems to work well, best looking graphics so far

- turning aspect ratio still has issues - it chops up the bottom 3rd of the game's display

- making fullresolution=0x0 results in a tiny box about 1/6th the size of my monitor. ( I assume that's "zero x zero" and not the letter 0).

The attached picture is with aspect=true (on) and fullresolution=0x0
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Hmm, have you tried output=ddraw yet? I'm not sure if overlay supports scaling (this would explain the tiny window when you used 0x0 as well as the corruption with aspect ratio correction).
If output=ddraw doesn't work, try output=opengl.

EDIT: What OS are you using by the way? Also, are you using the version of DOSBox kalirion linked to or the default one that GOG installed?

Currently my output is set to "direct3d". ddraw doesn't look so good, and both opengl modes makes the game lockup completely. I can try output=ddraw and fullresolution=0x0, sure.

Hmm, I'm really mystified. What OS and graphics card do you have?