Het forum

Hello,

I appologize if a thread like this exist somewhere else, but havent been able to find it. 

I am currently trying to install various older games from my GOG library.

There seem to be an issue (which i saw reported somewhere) where the GOG installer crashes, however games are still installed in the wineprefix folders. Some games works fine, and i can just create shortcuts etc. manually. 

However there still seems to be problems with games using DOSBOX.

Games are installed with a local DOSBOX folders and multiple configuration files, but i am not sure how i can run the local version of dosbox. Running WIne to run .EXE files returns the following before quitting.

CONFIG:Loading primary settings from config file /home/tango/.wine/dosdevices/c:/users/tango/Temp/cfge419.tmp
MIXER:Got different values from SDL: freq 44100, blocksize 512
ALSA:Can't subscribe to MIDI port (65:0) nor (17:0)
MIDI:Opened device:none

 

/TANGO

Hi,

Well, if you want to use the win32 DOSBox version provided by GOG, you'll have to add arguments to your shortcuts, to emulate the Windows shortcuts; Say if I analyze the Alien Breed shortcuts, I get

* Alien Breed ["GOG Games/Alien Breed Pack/DOSBOX/dosbox.exe" -conf "..\Alien Breed\dosboxAB.conf" -conf "..\Alien Breed\dosboxAB_single.conf" -noconsole -c exit]

So it runs dosbox.exe with -conf "..\Alien Breed\dosboxAB.conf" -conf "..\Alien Breed\dosboxAB_single.conf" -noconsole -c exit arguments

 

The install scripts for DOSBox based GOG games does not use the win32 DOSBox provided by GOG though, it uses PlayOnLinux's DOSBox support, but it's mainly useful for scripting, since you must create a playonlinux_dos.cfg file that'll be used to generate a dosbox.conf file.

The documentation about the DOSBox support is currently buried in the forums (https://www.playonlinux.com/en/topic-8747-Ultima_123_GOGcom_Edition.html, "Friday 11 May 2012 at 10:43" message), it would need to be re-formatted to be included in the Wiki...

Hi,

Thank you for your reply,

The problem seems to be that the GOG installer crashes and no shortcuts are created. 

I get the game folder installed in the playonlinux games folder, but there are only a .lnk file, which is binary it seems. 

I have tried to run a global installed version of dosbox which works with a game such as theme hospital,

but not games like lands of lore 2 or wing commander 3. 

If i try to run the local dosbox with conf arguments as suggested i get different errors:

Cannot open assembly 'DOSBOX/DOSBox.exe': File does not contain a valid CIL image.  

or in other games a bunch of fixme messages before dosbox shuts down.

Have you tried making a shortcut to the .lnk files through playonlinux? I've encountered these files before with some games, and they often worked like a .exe for me.

As far as I can tell, the .lnk files are made by GOG and they basically launch the game through dosbox with their own dosbox .conf file settings. You may find they simply work, but running the game in windows dosbox in WINE is extra stuff when dosbox can run natively on linux. If you have problems running the game or are simply curious, there's another option I know of.

You can read the the .lnk file and see what commands they're performing in a windows environment. You can also perform the same commands in linux with your native version of dosbox, but there's an important bit here, I had to do them from the dosbox directory (not the game directory!) before they worked.