Hi everyone!

I'm quite new on gog and this is my first post here.

I downloaded and started Savage Empire as a free gift from gog. Surprisingly the game is displayed with an aspect ratio of 16:9 in Dosbox, without the image looking distorted or anything (at least not to me). How was this done? Clearly a game as old as this originally used an aspect ratio of 4:3, right? Actually the game looks good this way, I'm just curious how this was achieved.

The game originally is 4:3. I haven't installed it atm, but my guess is, it's simply stretched, either by DOSBox or by your graphics card fullscreen mode.
Compare your picture with GOG's screenshots (which are 4:3):
http://www.gog.com/game/worlds_of_ultima_the_savage_empire

Yes, you're absolutely right. The picture didn't look too ugly to me at first, but meanwhile I found the "Gog.com DosBox Configurator" and activated the function "keep aspect ratio". The game is now letterboxed in 4:3 and I must say it definitely looks better now ;)

Anyway, thanks for the reply!

You're welcome. If you want to know more about DOSBox' options, you'll find all infos here: http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Dosbox.conf

Each GOG game that's bundled with DOSBox contains a configuration file that you can open and edit with any text editor. GOG's DOSBox Configurator is doing the same, but with limited options.
The config file is usually named dosboxGAMENAME.conf