Is this still being worked on?

I'm getting an "Out of String Space" error when i try to add more games to my database comprised of 336 games, at the moment. My launchbx.txt file is 79.873 bytes long.

I was expecting this would support thousands of games in the database.

This is amazing. Thank you.

First of all that is just what I needed a few days ago. Thank you so much for all your hard work.

I plan to use it daily on my Wii dosbox - it is very important it does not affect ram allocated for games, thank you so much for this.

VESA mode with box screenshot cover downloaded from internet would be nicer.

has anyone successfully tested Setmul with this?
I currently use moslo.exe and launch my speed sensitive games with a batch file, that has moslo.exe /20 gamename.exe (for example)
not everything works well and I have only recently discovered setmul, and that looks like it may be better for slowing down 'old' titles. However, enabling it for a tile and disabling afterwards would be better than having to reboot after invoking it for a particular game.

any feedback apprecicated.

carlostex wrote on 2021-01-27, 11:13:

Is this still being worked on?

I'm getting an "Out of String Space" error when i try to add more games to my database comprised of 336 games, at the moment. My launchbx.txt file is 79.873 bytes long.

I was expecting this would support thousands of games in the database.

I used to use this launcher but stopped using it for this reason. It seems that it runs out of conventional memory due to containing too many strings in launchbx.txt.

arthur071169 wrote on 2021-08-02, 13:06:

has anyone successfully tested Setmul with this? I currently use moslo.exe and launch my speed sensitive games with a batch file […]
Show full quote

has anyone successfully tested Setmul with this?
I currently use moslo.exe and launch my speed sensitive games with a batch file, that has moslo.exe /20 gamename.exe (for example)
not everything works well and I have only recently discovered setmul, and that looks like it may be better for slowing down 'old' titles. However, enabling it for a tile and disabling afterwards would be better than having to reboot after invoking it for a particular game.

any feedback apprecicated.

I have tested SetMul while using this launcher and it works fine. You must the "Run App Command" like this for example:

1C:
2CD \GAME
3SETMUL L1D
4GAME.EXE
5SETMUL L1E

In this case it will disable the L1 cache of the CPU before running the game, after you are done with the game it will enable once again the L1 cache.

jasondavidcarr wrote on 2019-09-10, 00:00:

Better yet; is anyone interested in the source code? If there's interest, I'd be willing to Github it.

Has this been done ? I am interested to see the source code as well ! 😁

I managed to increase the total of games in my database up to 557. I did this by stop using the configure area and simplifying the patch by using a tool called WCD. WCD jumps immediately to a path by having itself a database of multiple paths.

Now i don't get any "out of string space" errors but if i try to add the 558th title i get a "Out of Memory in module MAIN at address xxxx:xxxx".

Damn. I like this launcher. Too bad that Visual Basic is so damn wasteful.

Anyone else editing their LAUNCHBX.TXT in Windows? I'm trying this to speed up menu config, but it doesn't function when transferred back to DOS. I think it's failing on the CD\ command when I try to launch a game, with a parameter error.

I've tried different text editors (classic Notepad, Programmers Notepad, and the Notepads app), converting between unix/win/mac line endings, and ansi/utf-8. But the only thing that works is editing the file in DOS.

Can confirm Launchbox runs on an XT with a NEC v20 installed.

jasondavidcarr wrote on 2019-09-09, 23:50:

Anyways, I can always use a break from "real" development every once in a while, so let me know if there's anything you guys are missing from the app.

Any chance of adding support for a 320x200 video mode?
I've been trying to find a simple launcher style program similar to this one, but haven't been able to find anything that supports low resolution.
I might have to figure out how to make my own...or, worst-case scenario, just set up a batch file menu.

It looks like the author has not posted here for almost 3 years 🙁 I am tempted to write something open source myself that other people can experiment with. I don't know what forum would be appropriate for discussing that in though, does anyone know?

My preference would be to write something using tools that nobody is going to have to worry about obtaining, e.g. I'm sure lots of people don't mind treating Visual Basic for DOS as abandonware, but maybe not everyone feels that way. Of course using a language and tools that people know how to use would be good too!

doshea wrote on 2022-07-31, 02:03:

It looks like the author has not posted here for almost 3 years 🙁

Yeah, I wasn't really expecting a reply.
I just went ahead and made myself a BAT file: Re: DOS Shell/OS in 320x200?
Programming something would be fun, but this serves my purposes. Arrow key support would be convenient, it looks like it might be possible using another program, but I'm not sure it's absolutely necessary for my purposes. Would be very handy for DOS applications that have limited or no keyboard support.
Either way I'd have to add all the games manually. Not sure how you'd achieve something more automated without making a huge database of games that checks filenames vs. CRC or something.

Actually, I think, if I made my own program, it would be a lot more like a simplified DOS Shell, with a side pane for box art/screenshots, an option to only show EXE/COM/etc. files (and/or something like "hide system files"), and an option to make shortcuts/add files to a "favorites" list.

Maybe a "readme preview" or something, but 320x200 mode would fudge up the formatting, unless I used a small font.
"Image preview" might be neat too, but would probably be a lot of work.

Asaki wrote on 2022-07-31, 12:39:

Actually, I think, if I made my own program, it would be a lot more like a simplified DOS Shell, with a side pane for box art/screenshots, an option to only show EXE/COM/etc. files (and/or something like "hide system files"), and an option to make shortcuts/add files to a "favorites" list.

Maybe a "readme preview" or something, but 320x200 mode would fudge up the formatting, unless I used a small font.
"Image preview" might be neat too, but would probably be a lot of work.

There are a couple of current-ish projects that sound similar to this:

X86Launcher - A DOS Launcher - No Typing!

RLoader: a native 16-bit MS-DOS programs and games launcher with search

Pierre32 wrote on 2022-07-31, 13:12:

There are a couple of current-ish projects that sound similar to this:

Yeah, I've seen both of those before, but it didn't look like either one supported 320x200 mode.

Didn't know the second one was open source, if I had the time I might look into modifying it. Edit: or I could just ask in the thread, which is actually still active... ¬_¬

I just wanted to say that I was thinking of coding something like this myself, but this seems to fit my needs perfectly!

Edit: JFYI, this also runs fine on a HP 200LX palmtop.

This is totally awesome.

I‘d love some Options to strip it down a bit (Remove the Sorting Fields / Edit the Title Window Text etc.) in order to use it as a Launcher for just one title - Several DOS Games had multiple EXE Files to launch Editor, Setup and so on. Also an the Option to change Color Palette would be nice (Although the current one looks slick af).

I hope the Author still works on this. Totally loving it so far.

I decided to try this on PCem, this'll work perfectly for my 486 project; it beats sifting through confusing folders and filenames, that's for sure. I also really like the Windows 3.1-like GUI; I'm unsure if you programmed that part yourself or if you just used a pre-existing library, but it's cool nonetheless. Thanks for the awesome frontend, Jason!

alexparr wrote on 2023-08-03, 01:14:

I also really like the Windows 3.1-like GUI; I'm unsure if you programmed that part yourself or if you just used a pre-existing library, but it's cool nonetheless.

It's Visual Basic for DOS:

jasondavidcarr wrote on 2019-09-10, 15:23:

It's the Visual part of Visual Basic that made it quick to develop.

Ah, interesting. Never used Visual Basic before. Good to know, thanks!