Hi,
Been using Magic Dosbox for about 6 month now, so thought I’d share some of mine. This is the first one I did, Ultima Underworld 1 on a Moto G5 (1920×1080, 5″ screen), it’s also the most complex in terms of layers. I wanted the look and feel to be seamless with the original DOS game, and to work on a small device (phone). This is the version I completed the game with and I was very happy with it.
MGC File
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1o5xuzKYRqh8qnBMefCxfBOVgqAJCc8YB
Uses relative mouse for general use. Some of the combos switch to absolute mouse to click things then switch back.
Main Features :
– 4:3 DOS screen aspect ratio to preserve the original 1992 design (plus on a widescreen display the black bars created on the sides can be used for controls)
– tap power gem to toggle a custom 11-way game pad for movement / flight which used the in-game cursors as source artwork
– hot spots for the 6 action icons on the left side of the DOS screen
– map overlay with zoom function
– fully functioning spellbook overlay.
A gamepad is necessary for combat due to the in-game mouse movement system. The zoom on the map helped on a very small screen, and the spellbook was something I tried cos I wanted a more authentic in-game look than a widget bag, plus there’s a lot of spells in this game.
The model uses a lot of layer switching so the game starts with a blank top layer with just 1 button to “Show Controls” once you are ready (makes it easier to load saves at beginning using the game mouse).
Main Game Screen
The normal overlay is 16 self-explanatory side buttons for the main actions in the game, colour coded (Red = fight, green = action, grey = look/jump, purple = mouse, yellow = system).
Button backgrounds are from the game’s character creation panels, with coloured edges created by Hue rotating the border. Invisible hot spots are :
– 6 action icons on left (F-keys)
– power gem toggles the game-pad layer
– gargoyle searches for monsters
– first inventory item opens the map overlay
– top left shoulder item opens a custom spellbook
Map
The map is accessed by tapping the map (must be first inventory item). This has hot-spots for Close and Page up/down, plus a zoom for the North and South halves of the map by tapping the + buttons.
Spellbook
Tapping the rune bag (upper left shoulder item) shows the rune panel, opens up a spellbook with the main spells I used, and then pauses the game so you can browse them.
– navigate the Circles of Magic pages using the 4 buttons on the book
– tap a spell to load it onto the rune shelf ready for use and return to the game (also resumes game and hides rune panel)
– to close the book without hiding the rune panel tap the gem on the spine at the top (then to close the rune panel tap Stats)
Each spell is a combo to tap the correct rune position. They are all editted copies of a single combo that clears the rune shelf, clicks on 3 runes and then pulls the chain. The 2 rune spells just pull the chain twice as that made creation easier. At the beginning I set all the text properties to opacity=64 to make unavailable spells look greyed out, and as I acquired runes I set newly available spells to 100% text opacity to make them black.
This worked very well for me right to the end of the game, but did have these intermittent issues
– it’s possible to get overlays out of sync with the game, usually happens with closing the map in game rather than with the overlay. The map Close button is quite big so recovery is easy, just tap roughly where the panel chain is.
– The artwork for flight and the spellbook background occasionally loaded with the wrong aspect ratio. I don;t know why, this seems to be something with Magic DosBox’s display. It’s purely cosmetic and a re-start solves it.