F29 Retaliator: A DOSBox Staging guide

Before F-22 Total Air War, before EF2000 and even before TFX, Digital Image Design (DID) created a sim. That sim was F29 Retaliator. Created in 1989 and published by Ocean in the same year, F29 brought smooth frame rates and fluid flying to the 286 and 386 PC's. If you were around, back in those days, playing games on the PC, chances are you came across it.

The sim includes the F-22, (which looks nothing like an F-22 as the game pre-dates it) and the F-29 which is actually the X-29 experimental aircraft.

The original release came on 2 x 5.25" Double Density floppy disks or a single 720k 3.5" DD floppy. A later re-release was distributed on a single cd-rom, with a lot of spare capacity!

These days the easiest way to obtain a copy would be with the digital release on Steam. It looks like it was originally released without the manual (which is absolutely necessary to play) but that has been rectified with the addition of a manual to the Steam guides.

Controller setup

The game only supports a joystick, sso the controller setup is straight-forward as shown below:

Physical axis	Windows axis
Joystick x-axis	DX_X_AXIS
Joystick y-axis	DX_Y_AXIS

If your HOTAS profile software does not allow you to disable axes you may wish to use a 4 axes controller configured as a 4axis joystick device in DOSBox. Having additional axes configured shouldn't matter as the game won't use them.

DOSBox Staging config

This guide assumes DOSBox Staging v0.82.0 will be used. Changes from the default configuration are shown below:

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

[dosbox]
dos_rate                    = 1000

[cpu]
core                 = simple
cputype              = 386
cpu_cycles           = 3000
cpu_cycles_protected = auto
cycleup              = 100
cycledown            = 100

[voodoo]
voodoo                    = false

[mouse]
dos_mouse_immediate       = true

[mixer]
reverb     = off
chorus     = off

[midi]
mididevice      = mt32

[mt32]
model       = auto
romdir      = "D:\Midi\Versioned"

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

[autoexec]
imgmount a "D:\Games\Dos\F29 Retaliator\fdd\disk1.img" -t floppy -ro
imgmount d "D:\Games\Dos\F29 Retaliator\cd\f29.iso" -t iso

mount c "D:\Games\Dos\F29 Retaliator\hdd"

c:
cd f29
call f29.bat
exit

The [sdl], [dosbox] and [mouse] enable high refresh rates as described in this article by Omniclyde.

The [cpu] settings are appropriate for a game of this age. 3000 cycles is the default and can be omitted. The cpu_cycles_protected setting will use the same value as cpu_cycles.

The [mixer] settings are a personal preference as the digital audio is provided by the default Soundblaster settings and the engine sound can be a bit grating.

The [midi] is provided by an emulated MT32 device with the setup described in the DOSBox midi article.

The joystick is set to a 2axis device as the game only supports a joystick. You may wish to change joystick settings depending on your HOTAS setup. Deadzone is a personal preference.

The [autoexec] section contains example lines for mounting a floppy disk image and a cd image. The mounted folders follow the DOSBox game management strategy. The final commands just run the game and close DOSBox once the game is quit.

Installation

Since F29 is a very old game installation is dependant on your particular copy. It may include a hard disk install utility. If so this should be run from within DOSBox to install the game onto the mounted c: drive. It may be called install.exe or hdinstal.exe.

If there is no install utility then you can copy the contents of the disk onto the mounted c: drive.

Setup

There is no separate setup utility, so the midi device configured in DOSBox will be automatically used. The Soundblaster configured in DOSBox will be automatically used for digital audio.

In addition there are in-game commands to control:

• Sound.

• Graphics detail.

• Control schemes (keyboard, mouse or joystick).

• Control precision.

The manual/keyboard reference should be consulted for a list of commands.

Documentation

The manual is absolutely necessary to play, as it lists mission objectives which are not listed in-game, a manual can be found within the Steam guides.

A pdf manual does exist for the Amiga and Atari ST versions with the missions being identical. There is also a keyboard reference included in the manual.

Some later releases provided a readme file with additional key commands.

The digital release has a keyboard reference within the Steam guides. However, it looks like some keys have been reconfigured in this digital release.

Good hunting!