eXo Posted April 18, 2018 Share Posted April 18, 2018 If you combine all the volumes and then run setup it will create a MS-DOS.xml that is a master file for all 3 volumes (or 4 or 5 when those release). If you download them to separate folders, then running setup will only create a MS-DOS.xml for that particular collection. A way to bypass this, if you want each collection in it's own folder for whatever reason, is to run the setup for each set, and then go into each collection and find the .game file in the XML folder. Copy all the .game files into the same XML folder (doesn't matter which one). Inside each XML folder is a "merge.bat" file. Run this and it will merge all .game files in the folder into a useable MS-DOS.xml file. You can then copy this to your launchbox "\DATA\Platforms\" folder. At that point you just have to copy over all the contents of the manuals folder (either from each set or your combined set), the contents of the image folder, and of course the contents of the eXoDOS folder. Granted, this may break at some point. I haven't tested it with newer versions of launchbox. At some point launchbox may not be compatible with this older version I am using. At that point, if you want to import into your existing launchbox install, the key would be to go ahead and run setup, launch the version of launchbox in my set, turn updates on, update it, and then copy the updated XML & image folders over to your master LB. Hopefully all that makes sense. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cleverest Posted April 18, 2018 Share Posted April 18, 2018 Yes thank you! I download and combine all of it together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voljega Posted April 18, 2018 Share Posted April 18, 2018 Those 3.11 collection will be downloadables as complete things ? or it is only update to the previous ones ? also are they the last ones or will there be new ? what about 'what's new' in readme.txt ? is is related to 2.0 still or only to prebious version of 3 (3.0 or 3.1) ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retrofrogg Posted April 18, 2018 Share Posted April 18, 2018 eXo - might it be an idea to release an all-in-one 3.11 pack containing the 5 packs, which might then be easier to add in to Launchbox? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eXo Posted April 18, 2018 Share Posted April 18, 2018 3 hours ago, Voljega said: Those 3.11 collection will be downloadables as complete things ? or it is only update to the previous ones ? also are they the last ones or will there be new ? what about 'what's new' in readme.txt ? is is related to 2.0 still or only to prebious version of 3 (3.0 or 3.1) ? All my packs are complete packs. Never just upgrades. If you read back, the original question was asking if they could update their existing pack by pointing this torrent to that folder. If you do have a previous pack, doing this will hash check all the unchanged files and you won't have to redownload them again. With something like the Adventure pack, which is 120gb or so, if you point the new torrent to your existing folder, about 95% of it should be the same. So you would only have to download about 10gbs worth of new data. 1 hour ago, Dan said: eXo - might it be an idea to release an all-in-one 3.11 pack containing the 5 packs, which might then be easier to add in to Launchbox? I will be doing that after all 5 packs are released individually. At that point I will put out a master pack with all 5 combined. Any future updates I might do after that point will be to the master pack, and I will no longer be maintaining 5 separate volumes. 10 years ago a 350gb torrent was unheard of, and most people didn't have the bandwidth, drive space, or ratio to grab something like that. Today you can buy 8tb hard drives and many people have 150gb+ fiber optic connections. Not to mention there are gigantic packs like the complete ps1 and GC collections that are close to, if not more than, a TB. So keeping my work split is antiquated at this point. Now if I start chugging on a Win9x pack.... that might have to be split, as I suspect it would be upwards of 5-6tb, if not more. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
65Cobra427SC Posted April 18, 2018 Share Posted April 18, 2018 These came to mind recently, so I'm curious... (1) What would happen if someone pointed the ADV v3.11 download to their ADV 2.0 folder? Would that cut back on the amount that needs downloaded? (2) Just to make sure I have this right. The Win3x Pack will be updated next, then the Win9x Pack, and they will be completely separate. (3) Since I'm not able to use PD, I'll have to rely on another website. Just wondering how practical it would be to post a checksum for each pack. The idea is to make sure none of the files have been tampered with as they get passed around. Thanks... and that includes your efforts, time and patience Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eXo Posted April 18, 2018 Share Posted April 18, 2018 1: You are on the right track with this thinking, however that is exactly what was being asked just a few posts ago (and multiple other times). However i understand not everyone wants to read through all 31 pages of this thread. If you did this, it would scan your 2.0 folder, hash everything that matched, and only download the differences. 2: there is no win9x pack at the moment. It is something I may begin work on at some point, however the current state of win9x emulation isn't exactly in a good place for that sort of project. The Win3x pack won't be updated until I finished all 5 volumes of the DOS collection. Which will be sometime in the fall I'm guessing. 3: I'll look into it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FistyDollars Posted April 20, 2018 Share Posted April 20, 2018 @eXo Don't know if it's already been fixed in the 3.1 versions, but Stormovik: SU-25 Attack Fighter and SU-25 Stormovik appear to just be duplicates of the same game (to give you an idea of how far I am in adding the collection to the database) 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retrofrogg Posted April 22, 2018 Share Posted April 22, 2018 Hi eXo is the 3.11 release of the first 3 packs out? You had mentioned it but I can't see it on the enjoyable spherical shaped protrusion. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FistyDollars Posted April 22, 2018 Share Posted April 22, 2018 If I'm reading his post correctly on the PD forums, it looks like he was going to have the 3.11 updates out sometime this week. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eXo Posted April 23, 2018 Share Posted April 23, 2018 I'm taking my time with it. I'm trying to minimize any potential issues. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FistyDollars Posted April 23, 2018 Share Posted April 23, 2018 Speaking of issues (and sorry if I don't post this on the PD forums, I don't post much there and have a different username anyway), Taito's Super Space Invaders doesn't seem to progress past the intro movie. It just plays and crashes? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eXo Posted April 23, 2018 Share Posted April 23, 2018 Thanks for letting me know Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soundtrackgeek Posted May 2, 2018 Share Posted May 2, 2018 Not sure if this has been asked and answered, but I have noticed a problem with the RPG 3.1 pack. Games that start with "The" doesnt load up because they point to a filename that starts with "The". For example The Bards Tale, but the actual .bat file is called "Bard's Tale 1, The - Tales Of The Unknown (1987).bat" I've done setup.bat a few times, but it doesnt seem to fix it. Also did the patch.bat. Any clues? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eXo Posted May 2, 2018 Share Posted May 2, 2018 wow. great find. I edited those game names, and then didn't fix the pointers in launchbox. Luckily I haven't put the updated version out yet, so I'm fixing it right now. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eXo Posted May 4, 2018 Share Posted May 4, 2018 Popping in to provide an update. Currently I have Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in what I believe is a finished state for v3.11 release. What makes 3.11 better than 3.1? And why is it only v3.11 instead of v3.4? Well, I picked 3.11 because that was the final version of Windows 3. But that has no bearing on this being a "small" update. Quite contrary, this is a big update. Adventure pack adds 22 games & fixes 4, with a total of 1,085 games now in that pack RPG pack adds 11 & fixes 3, with a total of 350 games now in the that pack Strategy pack adds 104 games & fixes 9, with a total of 1,470 games now in that pack Apart from the additions, every launch file has been modified to now minimize the command console, however if there is a question (like one of the games that can run in scummvm OR DOSBox) it will reappear, ask the question, and then re-minimize. I found that orignally the patch had actually broken the ScummVM supported games (now they only launched in ScummVM and didn't prompt for the dosbox version anymore), and got that fixed up. I've added lots of fun things like music intros for some of the games, lots more manuals, and some general clean-up. I've sent preliminary release versions to FirstRun70 for him to look over with his various tools, and we caught a few more things there. I've gone through the packs and marked what I consider the best games of each genre as "favorites". The idea being, that if you filter by favorites you will get a list of the "best" there is to offer (with my bias of course). You can easily un-favorite all of them to reset it, or you can start adding your own favorites to customize the list a little. The idea was to give people who are new to DOS a place to start. Opening a pack with several thousand games can be daunting. I'm hoping the favorites helps guide people to some of the gems they may not be aware of. Essentially, I've had these ready to go for about 2 weeks, but I've just been sitting on them finding small things to tweak or clean up. I've rushed releases in the past, and that has never turned out well in the end. So i'm moving fairly slow with these guys. I may release them next week, or I may sit on them a while longer while I work on the Sim pack. As you can see in this thread, bugs periodically pop up, and having these releases ready to go, but still being able to make small fixes like this, is invaluable. I've considered just sitting on all of them until i'm finished with all three, but releasing them over time allows people to download parts over time and not get stuck with 5 massive downloads all at once. For those with custom free tickets and a desire to have them all., I would suggest saving your tickets for "the big one". As I've mentioned previously, I plan to finish these volumes up, and then combine them all together and post it as a "complete" pack with all genres. Then going forward, any updates I make to eXoDOS will be to the complete collection, and not the individual packs. 3.11 will be the final release on the genre packs. This has been all I've worked on for the past few months, so I just wanted to give an update on were things are at and assure anyone waiting that good things *are* coming. Thanks! 4 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retrofrogg Posted May 4, 2018 Share Posted May 4, 2018 ExoDOS, you’re a hero! Tempted to wait until the full pack comes out - any (very rough) eta? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eXo Posted May 4, 2018 Share Posted May 4, 2018 I figure a month or so to finish up the Sim pack. Action... that is harder to estimate. I have some 500 games I am adding to that pack I believe. So I would guess August or so *if* other things don't come up. For example, I "finished" strategy like... 3 weeks ago, but I've spent time since then cleaning everything up, standardizing files, and add all the games mentioned above that were primarily ignored because my initial impression was they were in a foreign language. However some had english versions, and others were perfectly playable without needing to understand the text (puzzle games for example). So August/September seems like a fair rough estimate. Maybe a bit sooner if my summer is quiet, maybe a bit longer if I end up busy this summer. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cleverest Posted May 4, 2018 Share Posted May 4, 2018 Thanks so much eXO, any chance of getting the option to EXCLUDE adult games like it used to ask? or at least have it generate a list for us to see which ones are there? Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FistyDollars Posted May 4, 2018 Share Posted May 4, 2018 Hah some of those adult games were so embarrassing to submit to the DB, I swear I could feel the other moderators judging me. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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