Heroes of the 357th: DOSBox Staging

A guide to running the (maybe not so well known) DOS sim, Heroes of the 357th in DOSBox Staging. Heroes is a WWII sim of the P-51 Mustang based from England with missions taking place over France and Germany. Published by Electronic Arts in 1992 and developed by Midnight Software, Inc.

Originally released on both 1 x High Density 1.2MB 5.25" and 2 x Double Density 720KB 3.5" floppy disks, later released would be distributed on a single cd-rom. Not the most known or well loved sim it's generally considered middling but may still be worth a look for nostalgic purposes.

The recommended version is the cd-rom release.

Media

Due to the age or the media and the drives required to read the media, it is recommended to rip both floppy and cd-rom media to image files, to save wear and tear on media and the mechanical drives.

Floppy disks can be ripped to an .ima or .img image format. The cd-rom can be ripped to a data only .iso image format.

HOTAS config

Heroes only supports a joystick, however the below config includes throttle and rudder pedals to prevent the other peripherals from being incorrectly used by DOSBox and to allow keys to be mapped to the throttle. This is only required if the HOTAS has more than 4 axes and should be set through the DOSBox mapper or HOTAS profiling software. The config is shown below:

Physical axis	Windows axis
Joystick x-axis	DX_X_AXIS
Joystick y-axis	DX_Y_AXIS
Throttle	NONE
Rudder	NONE

Game management

Takeoff cutscene

I recommend using my DOSBox game management strategy. The recommended game management folders are:

• cd - to store the cd image.

• conf - to store any DOSBox or HOTAS configuration files.

• docs - to store any documents.

• fdd - to store any floppy images.

• hdd - the folder use as the emulated DOSBox hard disk.

DOSBox Config

This DOSBox Staging config for Heroes assumes the latest version (at time of writing), v0.82.1 will be used. The changes to the default config are shown below:

[sdl]
host_rate           = vrr
vsync               = off
presentation_mode   = vfr

[dosbox]
dos_rate                    = 1000

[cpu]
core                 = simple
cpu_cycles           = 4000
cycleup              = 100
cycledown            = 100

[voodoo]
voodoo                    = false

[mixer]
reverb     = large
chorus     = normmal

[joystick]
joysticktype                = 2axis
timed                       = false
swap34                      = true
deadzone                    = 0

[autoexec]
mount c "D:\Games\Dos\Heroes of the 357th\hdd"
imgmount d "D:\Games\Dos\Heroes of the 357th\cd\Heroes.iso" -t cdrom
imgmount a "D:\Games\Dos\Heroes of the 357th\fdd\*.img" -t floppy

c:
# cd p51
# p51 vga j adlib hi music sound
# exit

The [sdl] and [dosbox] settings are suitable for high frame rate gaming as described in this article by Omniclyde. The mouse iss left as the game doesn't use the mouse. These settings aren't strictly required and can be omitted to use the default settings.

In [cpu] settings, a core of simple is optimised for older real mode games. 4000 cycles is recommended but you may wish to change this, depending on personal preference or host pc. Cycles up/down is set to a suitably small increment.

Voodoo emulation isn't required and can be disabled.

The [mixer] settings can be changed to enhance sound and music to personal preference.

Heroes only supports an AdLib (Sound Blaster compatible) device for music and sound, so MIDI options aren't used or needed and the default Sound Blaster settings are appropriate.

There are example imgmount and mount commands to add floppy disk or cd images and the emulated hard disk folder. As there may be multiple multiple floppy disk images the * wildcard is used. The disabled commands can be enabled once installation is complete.

Installation

Installation differs between the cd-rom and floppy versions.

CD Image

CD-rom installer

Installation should be performed from within DOSBox. For the cd-rom version, the installer app (install.exe) should be run. The installation steps are:

• Select an installation drive, the default c: is appropriate.

• Select an installation directory, the default c:\p51 is appropriate.

• There are instructions for running the game.

• A text version of the manual is displayed.

Note: there are no graphics or sound/music options to choose.

Floppy Image(s)

There is no installer for the floppy version of the game. The game may have been ripped to one or two floppy images. To install from a single floppy image:

• Create an installation folder (c:\p51).

• Copy p51.bat and heroes.exe from the floppy image into the installation folder.

• Run heroes.exe to extract the game files.

To install from multiple floppy images:

• Create an installation folder (c:\p51)

• Copy p51.bat and heroes1.exe from the first floppy image into the installation folder.

• Copy heroes2.exe from the second floppy image into the installation folder.

• Run heroes1.exe to extract the game files.

• Run heroes2.exe to extract the rest of the game files.

Note: there are no graphics or sound/music options to choose.

Running & configuration

The game is run by calling p51.exe or p51.bat. In the DOSBox Staging config, p51 is called with arguments:

p51 vga j adlib hi music sound

The supported arguments are listed below:

ega	Loads game with EGA graphics.
vga	Loads game with VGA graphics.
j	Loads game with joystick flight control.
k	Loads game with keyboard flight control.
lo	Loads game in low graphics detail mode.
med	Loads game in medium graphics detail mode.
hi	Loads game in high graphics detail mode.
sound	Loads game with sound on.
nosound	Loads game with music on and sound off.
pc	Loads game with PC internal speaker sounds.
adlib	Loads game with AdLib sound card sounds.
tandy	Loads game with Tandy sound (VGA required)
quiet	Loads game with neither music nor sound.
music	Loads game with music on.
nomusic	Loads game with music turned off.

Options menu

In-game configuration

During a mission, 'o' will bring up an options menu as shown in the screenshot. Options are left as a personal preference.

Documents

The cd-rom release has a copy of the manual as a text file (heros357.txt). However a digital version of the manual can be found in pdf format and is recommended due to the included screenshots.

The reference card can be found on MobyGames.

Good hunting!