I freely admit to not knowing much about Dosbox, and I was hoping someone here could provide assistance. Having a widescreen monitor and loading Syndicate does what I'm sure it does for most: stretches it to full the screen. Is there a way to force the game into 4:3 mode so as to look proper?

I love having the game again as it is one of my best memories of gaming my junior year of high school, but the stretching makes it look pretty awful.

Open syndicate.conf (or something like that, a file without an icon) with Notepad or something similar. Then search for "fullscreen", it should be near the starting point of the configuration area. Change it accordingly (the .conf file also includes documentation in itself, and you can easily see the accepted values).

syndicate.conf is located in the folder where you installed the game.

Change your GPU scaling to either "maintain aspect ratio" or "use centered timings". That should do it.

First, I recommend what Tizzysawr suggests if you have the option because it's a system-wide thing and will work for all games. If you can't manage that for whatever reason you can configure DOSBox. The following is copied and pasted from a post of mine in another thread but should be applicable for you too:

"You need to track down the dosbox config file in the game folder. It should be called something along the lines of 'dosboxsyndicate.conf' but it may be something else similar.

Open this in notepad and change these things:

1. Change 'Fullresolution' from =original to =0x0
2. Change 'output' to =ddraw
3. Scroll down a bit until you find an option called 'aspect'. Change this from =false to =true.

Save it and give it a go and let me know if it works or if you have any problems."

While I was unable to get the other solutions to work (and I tried!), this one worked perfectly with no issues at all! I want to thank all of you so much for taking the time to respond. Should this same thing work for any other 4:3 game on here?

Again, thank you all! This solution, for anyone else that may read this, has worked perfectly.

It should work with any other game running in DOSBox.
By specifying 0x0 what you're doing is basically telling DOSBox to run at your monitor's native resolution. This stops your monitor stretching the image since it's receiving a wide screen signal, and DOSBox automatically adds black borders rather than stretching the game so everything's good.

Before starting a new thread, I wanted to see if anyone here knew how to do the same thing, force 4:3 mode, in ScummVM? I just purchased The 7th Guest, and while the game itself is presented 'widescreen,' my setup is still stretching it. I'd prefer, of course, to just have my monitor display it as if it were on a 4:3 screen.

As always, thanks!

Unfortunately, ScummVM doesn't have the myriad scaling options that DOSBox does... The only way you're going to get it to keep the aspect ratio correct is to do the thing Tizzysawr mentioned.

Someone here might be able to help you find the option if you can tell us what make your video card is and what kind of cable your monitor is connected with.

Oh, this'll be a blessing when I try to play Xcom Terror from the Deep again, it was horribly stretched, thanks!

My monitor is a sadly aging nVidia GeForce 9500GT, and it's connected with a DVI cable. Any other information that I can provide to anyone, please just ask!

Unless I'm mistaken it should still be recent enough to have scaling options in the graphics control panel. Unfortunately, I don't have an nvidia card so hopefully someone else might be able to guide you to where the setting is.

I'm using NVidia Control Panel version 3.5.752.0 on a laptop, so there may be differences from yours.
On the Select a Task... on the left, choose Display->Adjust desktop size and position. Then on the main window choose either "Use NVIDIA scaling with fixed-aspect ratio" or "Do not scale". Either of these 2 should leave you with a 4:3 window, though the do not scale will also keep the original resolution.
It is possible that you may have to first change your resolution to a non-native one for the settings to be active, but I am not sure about it.