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I have a HiDPI screen so running DOSBox normally gives almost unreadably small text. How can I scale the DOSBox window by a fixed and integer scale factor, say 200% that works for all resolutions?

  • None of the HiDPI Compatibility settings in Windows has any effect on DOSBox.
  • Setting windowresolution to something is not gonna fly, because it scales all resolutions to match the 'height' of that setting, giving crappy results. I care mostly about x200, x400 and x480 resolutions, and the least common multiple is x2400 which doesn't fit my monitor.
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Try this advice:

  • go to dosbox installation directory (on my machine that is C:\Program Files (x86)\DOSBox-0.74 ) as you see the version number is part of the installation directory name.

  • run "DOSBox 0.74 Options.bat"

  • the script starts notepad with configuration file: here change

    windowresolution=1600x800

output=ddraw

(the resolution can't be changed if output=surface - that's the default).

  • safe configuration file changes.

You might also need to ensure that the fullresolution parameter specifies the true resolution of the monitor.

If this doesn't help, please add to the post the contents of the configuration file.

You could also try with ddraw to use the scaler parameter, with normal3x as the scaler to multiply by 3. The scaler is applied first, so for example a 320x240 game becomes 960x720.

scaler=normal3x forced
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  • Did you even read my second bullet point?
    – Mark Jeronimus
    Apr 15, 2019 at 10:24
  • There are two settings that might be important here. Perhaps detailing what you tried, and posting the contents of your configuration file, could make the question clearer.
    – harrymc
    Apr 15, 2019 at 10:38
  • I already experimented with windowresolution. It sets a fixed window height. The setting for output doesn't change this formula except for surface which disables it.
    – Mark Jeronimus
    Apr 15, 2019 at 13:29
  • I added one more setting to my answer that you could try with or without windowresolution. Best value for windowresolution is a multiple of the original game resolution. If this was for example 640x400 then try for 1280x800. The default output of "surface" doesn't allow scaling, so use something else, maybe "opengl", but other possibilities are "ddraw" or "openglnb" or possibly "overlay", so you will have to experiment. Unfortunately DOSBox fonts are only scalable with pixelisation. You will need to experiment.
    – harrymc
    Apr 15, 2019 at 14:17
  • Perfect. scaler=xx forced was what I was looking for.
    – Mark Jeronimus
    Apr 21, 2019 at 10:42

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