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Coleman

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What I do is just add the BAT files as roms, the emulator in my case is proxy but you should be able to easily use CMD.exe to launch the BATs. That's it, done. Launchbox can't get anything wrong because the BATs are what is being used, which is correct and expected. If the game you try to launch has not been unpacked yet, it will do it for you just like it should and if it has, it will simply run it. The only hard part was getting the images input. I don't have ANY metadata but I do have all the images. A good friend of mine, @Nielk1 helped me out one afternoon with making a renamer that gives you all the images in the correct folders. From there, all I had to do was decide what set of images went into what folder in LB. Really, all Jason could do to make it easier is make a feature to allow LB to open the bat files directly in the absence of an emulator or exe. Currently, importing windows games only scans, you can't just add whatever you want but like I said, it's super easy to get around.

I would offer the renaming utility but I am not the author so it would have to be up to him if it is ok to give it to you. It is also rather slapdash, does the job well but made in like an hour and is only for that one specific operation.

Screenshot (9).png

Edited by cammelspit
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I believe @Jason Carr knows that it's just the bat files that are needed to run the games. I think what is really needed is a way for LB to import these along with all the correct metadata and images automatically.

Also I believe that @eXo is considering making LB the default launcher for his collections if it is made fully compatible. (I might be wrong about this tho ?)

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1 hour ago, eXo said:

Once eXoDOS is fully integrated by LB I will these updated versions of each volume with LB packed in. Including several hundred new games as well as tons of bug fixes for current games.

Does that mean that the Win 95 collection is on hold until this happens as well??

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12 hours ago, nikeymikey said:

@eXo As your here, whats the latest on the next collection? Win95/98 is it?

 

Yes, that is the next full release collection. It is much more complex however than anything I have released to date, as it requires a dosbox-x branch which supports qcow2 images. At least 2 (a parent OS and a child w/ the installed game and modified OS files), but possibly a third nested image as well for save games/file changes. 

It also begins to tread territory that is pretty far outside of the original intended use of dosbox. The Win3x collection was already a huge pain in the ass due to this. Even though there is a lot of documentation on getting Win3x running within dosbox, most of the efforts had revolved around a handful of popular titles. 

I have not jumped into this collection at full scale at this time. An time spent on my collections has gone towards bug fixes and additions to my existing collections at this point.  A guy who goes by the name FirstRun80 went through essentially the entire eXoDOS collection and documented every bug he could find, and then passed that over to me. I have also been in contact with a few collectors who previously had "closed" collections, but have now sent me some of their rarer games to fill in gaps within eXoDOS.

My goal is to get a cleaned up eXoDOS released and use that release to coincide with full launchbox integration and support. At that point it will make more sense to delve into the w98/w95 stuff, as the dosbox branch I am using will be a bit more stable and I'll be able to modify my metadata to better fit launchbox. As of now, any work I do either has to be modified or have specific importers written for it. I'd rather have it all natively work together.

 

Somewhere in there I have to work my job and raise my kids too ;) But no worries, it will happen.

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@eXo

Thanks for the info, I'll wait patiently ?

I do realise there's a shit ton of work involved in creating these collections and I for one am grateful to you for doing it. I did mess about with dosbox in the past but it always got too fiddly and I ended up giving up. Thanks to you I can enjoy all the old classics with a minimum of fuss. 

Thanks again for all your hard work

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I can certainly echo that sentiment. One by one DOS installation is horrendously painful, not that I am averse to a little work for something I want. The W95/W98 collection is IMO certainly lower in priority since the lion's share of those games can still be run with some creative finagling. Maybe we can politely 'nudge' @Jason Carr into adding the few features needed for the DOS and W3X collections to be imported a little easier. I am good at politely nudging people into making stuff, or so it seems. Either that or I just become annoying enough for them cave, that is a real possibility. :D

Anyways, Thanks @eXo for the amazing collections! Stellar work!

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Is it possible that someone can walk me through launching Heroes of Might and Magic, Advanced Civ, and Sword of Aragon in Launchbox.  Most of the other games I am able to fix on my own when needed, but these 3 have given me a significant amount of trouble.  

 

Thanks 

 

And I definitely agree - TYVM for all the effort that went in to creating these sets!  I can not even imagine...

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Your meagre.ini file isn't seeing any of the data required to display the games.

 

* Did you run the setup.bat file?

* Do you have the games in a folder structure with special characters in the name? It works best in a root folder, such as d:\exo

* Did you download the entire collection or just a few games? If not the full collection, you likely didn't get the front end files which reside in the games folder with the names gamesAdv.zip, gamesrpg.zip, gameswin.zip, etc.. if you don't have them, get them and rerun the setup file.

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I tested this on multiple versions of dosbox and through mutliple changes in the conf files, as I have seen cursors refuse to act properly when a game is launched directly from the win.ini file and not manually launched within win3x.

Unfortunately, I had the issue every which way. What is odd however, is the mouse will select everything else. And other games I tried all played fine. This suggests the problem is with the game. If it was dosbox or windows, then I would expect the mouse to not act properly across the entire activity center, not just this specific game.

I don't have a lot of options in cases like this, other than either trying newer SVN dosbox versions or attempting to locate a second image of the game and trying a fresh install to see if it behaves differently. A third option, but less common, is to find a patch for the game that addresses the issue. However finding patch notes, let alone the actual patches, for games during this time period can be fairly difficult.

I'll keep an eye out for solutions.

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I fixed the issue this morning.  As I suspected, it was a bug in the actual media. I located a different copy of the game online, ripped it, ran the install into a fresh copy of windows, and the issue is now gone.

 

I've repacked the game for release in 3.0

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