dosbox sdk! xDD

NSIS is a WINDOWS installer, right?

I have always hated an ms-dos game needing booting into some flavour of windows to unpack it. Your call, though.

What about installation based on floppies?

Can't say I'm fond of this idea. Zip archives are easier and cross-platform. Sure, it requires more from the users, but so be it.

I have been using NSIS for my installers. It is easy and flexible. My installers are not really quite what DosFreak has in mind, though. They are intended for those with the games, but are intimidated by setting games up in DOSBox, not redistributing the games. Few of the regulars here have need of them.

What DosFreak is talking about is a standard for the re-releasing games with DOSBox, as with the Steam releases and the last Sierra collections. I think that this is a very good idea, considering how badly this job can be screwed up. The Sierra releases used a proprietary launcher that had the conf file hard coded into it, making it unusable for anything later than about 0.63 - 0.65 and no reasonable upgrade path for DOSBox. Many of the issues that people had with the releases were fixed by upgrading to 0.65 from 0.63. If we had a standard for packaging DOSBox with re-released games, it might prevent such screwups.

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

NSIS is a WINDOWS installer, right?

I have always hated an ms-dos game needing booting into some flavour of windows to unpack it. Your call, though.

You would have to do this anyway with most of the new re-releases, Besides, the objections because of differences in platforms is irrelevant as DosFreak mentioned a similar solution for Linux and OSX. Take the same approach with these platforms, too. In fact it could be setup with a separate installer for each platform, each using the same uniform archive.

Freddo wrote:

Can't say I'm fond of this idea. Zip archives are easier and cross-platform. Sure, it requires more from the users, but so be it.

Steam is not going to distribute games as simple zips, so that is irrelevant, too. Besides, many installer archives can be opened with the likes of 7zip.

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

What about installation based on floppies?

Redistribution won't be done on floppies. As a side note, for my installers using the original media, for floppies I have the user copy all of the files into a temporary folder on their HDD and run the installer from there. I could have it read the files from the floppy, but many newer PCs no longer have floppy drives and in addition many times data has to be recovered from the old floppies with tools like Unstoppable, first.

collector wrote:

Steam is not going to distribute games as simple zips, so that is irrelevant, too. Besides, many installer archives can be opened with the likes of 7zip.

Who's talking about Steam? Bethesda Softworks released Daggerfall for free earlier this week and it's a zip file.

Everyone can download that zip file and configure it with DOSBox, no matter if they use Windows, Linux or Macs. They don't even need Steam or any program like that. Just unzip ("The Third Most Portable Program in the World") (or some other unpacker) and DOSBox (also very portable).

And on Steam this sort of thing isn't needed either, cause it's all preconfigured with autoexec options and just launched like any other Steam title.

I wasn't meaning make installation as floppies but what format is to be used for those original installations that require install from floppy?

Winimage?

Nor was I. The original install files don't matter. It just needs the game files themselves and a scripted way to set it up in DOSBox. We are talking about repackaging the games with DOSBox for re-release, whether by digital distribution via download or on a CD/DVD. This is for the "devs/publishers", as DosFreak said, not for the original media as my installers are.

Hmmm, It's doubtful that any publisher/developer will use DBGL so I guess we'll leave that out.

I'm thinking it would be nice if they are going to release multiple games they do NOT include DOSBox in each game package. (Easier to upgrade, solves the Opps! We "accidentaly" deleted DOSBox files!) So:

1. Have them install DOSBox first. Either they have a hosted copy of DOSBox or preferably they point to the DOSBox website (that way they are downloading the latest version.
2. Package each game in a OS specific installer. The game would already be pre-configured for DOSBox usage. MENTION THAT THE PACKAGE WILL NOT WORK UNLESS DOSBOX IS INSTALLED (Obviously it would work in real DOS but that goes without saying....mabye)
3. Include game manuals if available.

Now the question is, where to install the games? They can't be in \Program Files or \Program Files(x86).
They shouldn't be in the user profile.
I'd say they should be in a \Games folder.

So:

C:\Games\Publisher\8.3CharacterGameDirectory.

Arrrgh, it would make it alot easier if each Publisher would just use DBGL WITH their games included for that instead.

1. Download and install DBGL with ALL games included from each Publisher.
2. Done.

DOS games are so small that nowadays it doesn't really matter.

DosFreak wrote:

I'm thinking it would be nice if they are going to release multiple games they do NOT include DOSBox in each game package.

I would like to see a more standardized location to DOSBox, say "%ProgramFiles%\DOSBox" instead of including the version number. The DOSBox installer could have a simple function to delete, move or rename any previous version in that folder to avoid any conflicts. If the latest version installed was always in the "%ProgramFiles%\DOSBox" folder, shortcuts, launchers and or profiles would never be broken by up grading DOSBox. All such games could use this location for DOSBox.

collector wrote:

I would like to see a more standardized location to DOSBox, say "%ProgramFiles%\DOSBox" instead of including the version number.

Snippet from my personal DOSBox.cmd script:

1        set pfiles=%PATH%;%ProgramFiles%
2
3        rem Loop through the directories listed in %pfiles%, searching for
4        rem the highest numbered DOSBox version from 0.99 to 0.51.
5
6        for /L %%V in (99,-1,51) do (
7            for %%P in (DOSBox-0.%%V\dosbox.exe) do (
8                if not "%%~$pfiles:P" == "" (
9                    set dosbox=%%~$pfiles:P
10                    goto found
11                )
12            )
13        )
14
15        echo No DOSBox-?.??\dosbox.exe found in
16        echo %pfiles%.
17        goto error_exit
18
19:found
20        echo "%dosbox%" %*
21        "%dosbox%" %*

Thanks, I'll have to figure out how to translate it to NSIS script or to have it return the variable to the installer. It still doesn't address the problem of broken existing shortcuts when a new version of DOSBox is installed. The old shortcuts will still point to the old version and if that old version is uninstalled, they will point to nothing. Not a big deal users that can navigate their way around Windows and can fix broken shortcuts, but they are not the ones that use these installers.

Why the need for complicated stuff? The game should come in a preinstalled state. Just include a script file for Nix, Mac, and Windows directed to open DOSBox with the included config file named say GameA-DOSBox-0.73 and GameA-Setup-DOSBox-0.73 if needed. Direct them to the DOSBox site to download DOSBox itself (or a frontend).

The end user would have to do the hard work of *gasp* editing a file or two for paths if they didn't install to the default location. If they want to use a scaler, then they can edit the config file.

I guess they could include files made for a DOSBox frontend too. No need for crappy registration entries and the like. Yet so simple that you would have to be a complete idiot or new to computers to screw it up.