Runnig Win 3.x games through DosBox in Launchbox

[demiurg1981]

Hello.

If you install win 3.x in DosBox you can autolaunch win 3.x games same as dos games.

I tried to implement that in launchbox. I have DosBox with Win 3.11 installed. I tried 2 games. Journeyman Project and Civilization.

Somehow it doesn't work if i use dosbox tab in new game setup. So I made an emulator for windows 3.x platform in which i wrote a path to my folder with dosbox, and all the other needed info. Than I assosiated this emulator with platform windows 3.x

Then I inserted autolaunch line in the dosbox.conf

Then I created those 2 games in Launchbox. In each of them I chose my emulator to launch the game and supplied the path to the game's .exe file

Civilization launched either using the play game option or launch with... option, but without sound.

And I couldn't launch Journeyman Project because it requires CD to be present to play, and I couldn't figure out how to mount the CD on startup. Putting mount CD line in dosbox.conf didn't work.

This is how my autoexec section of dosbox.conf looks like:

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
# You can put your MOUNT lines here.
@echo off
mount c disk_c
rem mount d f:\ -t cdrom
path=z:\;c:\;c:\windows
keyb ru 866

c :
win c:\civwin\civ.exe
exit

Edited May 21, 2020 by demiurg1981

[Zombeaver]

My advice is to setup each game with its own instance of  DOSBox + 3.1 (about 70~ MB), make any adjustments as needed, and then add a shortcut to that instance of DOSBox into Launchbox - i.e. don't do any of it through the DOSBox tab or through an "emulator" in Launchbox. Just treat it like any other Windows game. I'd also suggest using Daum for 3.1 games.

I would also advise against trying to start a specific game exe through the autoexec. A better way of doing this is by editing the load= path in the WIN.INI (in the Windows directory of your 3.1 install). For Journeyman you'd set it to load=C:\JMAN\jman.exe.

I actually have an install package for Journeyman: Project Turbo on my site if you want to see an example. These can be imported into Launchbox like any other Windows game.