When using Dosbox to play Dos games, I have a problem with mouse movement. I guess everybody else also have this problem?

The first problem is this: When you are moving the mouse, in order for the movements to register, you have to move the mouse "fast". It seems like Dosbox is filtering out smaller movements. I'm guessing this is because I'm not using a PS2 or a Serial mouse?

The second problem is this: Moving the mouse horizontally is twice as fast as moving the mouse vertically. It means the pointer moves twice as fast when moving right and left.

Is there a solution to these problems?

I am using a Logitech G700 mouse tried to lower the poll rate but the lowest I could get was 200 (I guess I would need 125 for best PS2 behavior?)

You can try to tweak the mouse sensitivity parameter in the config file. I use d-fend as interface to manage my dosbox based games, so I can edit easily the profiles, but you can do it manually. open your game install folder and look for a Dosbox(something] config file, edit it, and towards the end you'll find

autolock=true
sensitivity=100

try changing the sensitivity

Thanks :)
Changing sensitivity to 200 seems to fix the slow movements not registering problem although it makes the mouse jump several pixels at a time rather than move smoothly.

The "aspect ratio" problem is still there. It moves slower on the Y axis and faster on the X axis.

It may in fact be the aspect ratio of the screen resolution you are using, if you are playing games fullscreen and stretched to fill the screen. The movement in either direction, actually corresponding to a 4:3 screen, then stretched along the x-axis to fill a 16:10 or 16:9 screen, so distance being elongated in that direction.

Try playing in a window, or with aspect ratio maintained (pillarboxed to display only a 4:3 - can be done by specifying fullscreen resolution of desktop I think, instead of original) and see if it still feels faster on the x-axis.

This.

For the "jump" effect, you might have to tweak the CPU and memory parameters.

What game are you playing? and what's your config ?

Which game are you talking about ?
Is there a difference between windowed and fullscreen mode (alt-enter switches)

and lastly, do you have logitec software installed ? (I recall it messes up the mouse movement under certain conditions)

The mouse movement is messed up in all of the Dos games I tried. I have LGS installed but disabling it does not change anything. My monitors native resolution is 1680-1050 and the screen Dosbox games open are in that recolution. (I still have black borders but I guess that's because of Dosbox scaling) Maybe I should try a 4:3 resolution like 1280-1024. Does anyone know how to configure it in dosbox.cfg ? When set fullresolution=1280x1024 , it still opens a 1680-1050 screen.

in the config file, look for the parameters :

fullresolution = width x height | original | desktop

and /or

windowresolution = width x height | original | desktop

for more info : http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Dosbox.conf


The need to tweak up quite a few things is why some use frontends ( graphic user interfaces ) for Dosbox, like http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/

As I said in my post, set your fullscreen resolution in the DOSBox conf file used for the game. If you have it set to desktop then it uses whatever resolution that you use for your desktop. Using a renderer such as ddraw or opengl might also help. Then when you use a 4:3 resolution in the game (e.g. 640x480) then it should be pillarboxed to keep the correct aspect ratio.

Some very old games use 320x200 which wasn't a square pixel mode (320x200 square is in fact a 16:10 aspect ratio, but these old games were used on 4:3 screens, so we know they weren't square pixels). There is an aspect ratio setting in the conf file that plays these non-squre resolutions with the correct aspect so that they appear as 4:3.

fullresolution=1280x1024

It still opens a 1680-1050 screen. :(

I'm using output=opengl

Use 1680x1050 or desktop.
By using 1280x1024 it is scaling that up to fit your screen via stretching aloong the x-axis. Setting it to your fullscreen resolution sets it correctly, so when it only has 1280 pixels to display horizontally it has to leave the sides blank. It is of course a little more involved than this as it will still scale up to fill the screen height, but you'll get the right size out of it.

or use :

fullscreen = false
windowresolution = 1280x1024

that way you will have a windowed game screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio

I am sorry, I wasn't very clear with one of my questions:
The horizontal vs vertical movement problem: Which game ?

And what about fullscreen vs windowed mode ? I recall reports of people saying that only fullscreenmode had problems.

Trying it with UFO - Enemy Unknown. (it's not on Gog). But it also happened with some other games. I was wrong about it happening on all games. It doesn't happen for example in Goblins3 or Gabriel Knight 1.

X-COM: Enemy Unknown, aka X-COM: UFO Defense?
Try this: http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=UFOextender
It is a Windows loader for the game. You can still play it vanilla, but it does provide various bug fixes and can provide new functionality should you wish to enable those functions.