[SteamLauncher]

After a lot of digging, and moving to another machine I found a few things. 

It would appear that you check that the path contaings "*LaunchBox\Plugins\SteamLauncher\*" I had mine as "eXoDOS\…." this caused it to produce a warning message.

I've noticed that I get slightly different results when using LaunchBox vs BigBox. Also if I turn global steam launch off and use the context menu, it will actually launch, but not via the proxy. Another gotcha appears to stem from the fact that you're renaming the original exe and replacing it with the proxy. There's quite a lot of brittleness in this process, but without having tried my hand at it myself I cannot comment on a better alternative (or if one even exists). I now realise that the proxy will never work for exodos as it's a bunch of batch files, since you're renaming it wont execute, it also appears that steam doesn't support batch files only exe's.

I've tried the DOSBox that ships with LB and that only works without the proxy. Steam thinks I'm playing LB not doom. 

It also seems that once the proxy fails, that's it... you have to restart the whole lot before anything will work again. Something seems to be holding onto some corrupted object that keeps getting reused.

I've cracked your binaries open to have a look inside, haven't had much time to spend on it yet. But so far it seems like a lot of what I've deducted is correct.

I'm still not sure why it doesn't work for me, but it works for others. I'm guessing that it has to do with the fact that I'm trying to run batch files which screws the pipeline up and then nothing else will work.

@cammelspit what kind of witchery do you employ to make eXoDOS work?

[SteamLauncher]

I figured that to be the case. I just ran it without steam at the time to ensure the proxy actually kicks off. I wonder if me alt tabbing might be screwing with it too, I’ll do more digging.

 

How ever multiple instances shouldn’t cause the issue as the ddls should be loaded in proc, not like the old com days...

 

[SteamLauncher]

The plot thickens, I checked for duplicate plugs ins, but found none. Then I decided to remove all plugins, run LaunchBox to verify nothing was present and added the plugin back. I ran LaunchBox without steam and the proxy started up and the game ran. How ever it’s back to square 1 now. 

I did briefly see a rogue LaunchBox process while trying to remove another plugin. 

 

Ill do more digging and update as appropriate, I thought I had a workaround for a minute, but I was clearly wrong... I’ll try on the faster machine later, I wonder if it might be a timing issue or potentially some weird race condition...

[SteamLauncher]

It’s very odd that it’s both machines. I just use the built in av. 

What’s really weird is that it used to work. I was wondering if it was an update of some sort that messed with it. It might be a wider permissions issue, seeing as how I keep coming back to it. How ever the permissions are open to everyone with full control...

if you push the code to github, I’ll see what I can figure out, when I get enough spare time. 

[SteamLauncher]

It’s very odd that it’s both machines. I just use the built in av. 

What’s really weird is that it used to work. I was wondering if it was an update of some sort that messed with it. It might be a wider permissions issue, seeing as how I keep coming back to it. How ever the permissions are open to everyone with full control...

if you push the code to github, I’ll see what I can figure out, when I get enough spare time. 

[SteamLauncher]

If you could push the code to github I’ll attach visual studio to the process to track it down. 

 

I see the exception is the LaunchBox logs. 

I’m also seeing permissions issues with the DosBox-sl-delete.exe proxy copy. 

One machine is on the latest win 10 updates, the other is lagging behind a bit. 

Both latest version of steam. I’ve tried LaunchBox 9.6 and 9.9

On one machine I’m running the software on a micro sd. The other is on an external hdd. 

It was working for non dos games at some point, but now works for neither...

 

is is there any hidden registers entries you add?

 

also the debug logs for the proxy is not being created. 

[SteamLauncher]

I’ve now got a slightly different issue which I need to solve first. When I try to launch via steam I get an exception saying that SteamLauncher.XmlSerializers dependency is not found. 

Which is weird as it was working before. I’ve tried it on 2 machines with the same results. 

 

Games that we’re launching properly before now just times out with that exception. 

I can also only get the overlay working with DosBox Daum. I’m using doom as my test game...

i can get it to put black bands at the top and bottom of the screen for other DosBox builds, I suspect it’s the render pipeline that’s not compatible. 

Getting the launcher proxy to work again would be a good start. 

[SteamLauncher]

I’ve tried it without the eXoDOS bat file by using launchbox’s Built in DosBox function, still no joy. I’ll upgrade Launchbox to the latest version (9.6 at the moment) and try again. But something is off... I’m assuming that when I hit the guide button I should get the steam overlay?

[SteamLauncher]

It’s a launcher bat file, I guess. The issue is probably that the batch file runs a few exe’s and then eventually DosBox. 

[SteamLauncher]

Just wondering if this works for DosBox. I’m using eXoDOS and that launches DosBox via a batch file. Any hints on how this plugin works internally (is the latest code on github or something)? So I can figure this out...