Skip to content

0.75.2 release notes

Release date: 2020-10-26

Summary

This is a maintenance release from the 0.75.x stable branch.

How to upgrade

Download and launch the latest version:

At theZ:\> prompt, run config -wc to write the new configuration file. Any existing settings will be retained, however, extraneous comments will be dropped.

New features in detail

Select monochrome palette colour

When emulating monochrome displays (via machine = hercules or machine = cga_mono), the default colour palette can now be set to either white, paperwhite, green, or amber in the configuration file, as follows:

[render]
monochrome_palette = amber

See: #607

Raw mouse input

You can enable this option to bypass the operating system’s mouse acceleration and sensitivity settings. This works in fullscreen or when the mouse is captured in windowed mode.

The option can be set in the [sdl] section of the configuration file:

[sdl]
raw_mouse_input = true

The feature is disabled by default, but some games (e.g. FPS titles, like DOOM or Dark Forces) work better with raw input enabled (especially when used with modern, very sensitive gaming mice).

See: #636

Bugfixes

  • Bundle C++ runtime libraries with Windows builds for users on Windows 7, 8.x, and those who disabled Windows 10 update mechanism. (#675)

  • Reimplement CLS command to prevent text mode reset. (#639)

  • Fix whitespace handling in modem ATD command. (#652)

  • Fix boot failure when using HDD image. (#522)

Notes for packagers

This release includes numerous fixes affecting our build system and other changes relevant for packaging (contributed by Gentoo packagers, and people preparing Debian, Fedora, and Flatpak packages)—prompt upgrade is recommended.

If you’re packaging DOSBox Staging for your OS, we have a few tips:

  • We strongly suggest keeping our default binary name: dosbox. DOSBox Staging is a drop-in replacement for older DOSBox versions—some existing and popular programs, such as Wine and GUI frontends, depend on the dosbox binary name. It’s also the default name of our man page and appears in the documentation.

  • You don’t need to generate your own desktop entry, appstream metadata (metainfo.xml), nor package description: please see the relevant files in the contrib/linux/ directory.

  • We provide desktop icons in scalable or raster formats (optimized for small sizes). Find them in the contrib/icons/ directory.

  • During the configuration step, remember to add -DNDEBUG to preprocessor flags (it’s important!), as well as using -O3 in both C and C++ compiler flags, for example:

    ./configure CPPFLAGS="-DNDEBUG" CFLAGS="-O3" CXXFLAGS="-O3"

  • Our testing indicates that GCC generates faster binaries than Clang, but use whatever compiler is more appropriate for your OS.

  • The license is “GNU GPL version 2.0 or later” (SPDX: GPL-2.0-or-later). GitHub does not show “or later”, but our packages should show the proper license info.

To all our package maintainers: thank you! 😄

Contributors

Maintainers

  • Patryk Obara
  • kcgen
  • nemo93

Contributors

  • Bernard Cafarelli
  • David Heidelberg
  • Feignint
  • MasterO2
  • NicknineTheEagle
  • WengierWu

Thank you

We are extremely grateful for all contributions, including the invaluable improvements merged in from the DOSBox project.