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Feature Request: Built in system for dosbox conf files

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First post, by Thraka

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As time goes on, hopefully you'll be adding more and more support for changing config on the fly (scalers, audio card settings ect...) (really i don't know what you do support at this point)

What would be really cool is if you put a dosbox.conf file in the same directory as the EXE you're running, dosbox would read config out of it and change it's environment to match, then execute the executable.

Currently I'm slowly building up a .conf library for all my games. But switching between games requires pulling up explorer (XP) and sifting through the shortcuts until I find what i want and executing that way. Usually I end up just going into DosBox and viewing the directories in there and deciding that way (just like old dos 😀)

So it would be really awesome if I could provide a game specific settings file in the directory of the game and when I went in and ran Keen1.exe it would read the settings out of the file, either change them on the fly, or shutdown\open dox box seemlessly with the new config.

Thoughts?

Reply 1 of 8, by collector

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You can just make a DOSBox shortcut that loads the game executable AND specifies a config file. For example:

"C:\Program Files\DOSBox\DOSBox.exe" "C:\OLDGAMES\KEEN\KEEN1.EXE" -conf "C:\OLDGAMES\KEEN\dosbox.conf"

You can also add other switches to these shortcuts such as -noconsole or -exit. if the game requires the CD, you can mount it in the AUTOEXEC section of the config file. You can also change the icon to something game specific, too.

I don't use a GUI for DOSBox, but if there were one like Launchpad for VDMS that only created a DOSBox shortcut like this on a right click of a games executable, I would use it. Now if I were only a programmer...

The Sierra Help Pages -- New Sierra Game Installers -- Sierra Game Patches -- New Non-Sierra Game Installers

Reply 2 of 8, by `Moe`

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What you describe already works. DOSBox reads it's config file from the current working directory. So just make sure you start DOSBox from your game directory.

Reply 3 of 8, by wd

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No, i think he means something different: you start some executable,
like keen4e.exe and dosbox runtime-changes the configuration according
to the name of the executable.
Don't think this is a good idea, as many games have a start.com/exe
or comparable, so it'd require a much more sophisticated approach to
decide what configuration should be used.

But the method moe mentioned works just fine.

Reply 4 of 8, by Qbix

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with the current config system you can even create a bat file that changes the configuration runtime

Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!

Reply 6 of 8, by `Moe`

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Those are very few, and most not neccessary. Enable all sound in your dosbox.conf and you won't encounter problems with runtime reconfiguration. Well, one exception: machine=tandy would be useful but doesn't work yet.

Reply 8 of 8, by HunterZ

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I don't recall being able to change any of the video settings (scalers, resolution, hardware scaling factor), and I'm not sure if changing the core at runtime is an official CVS feature (I remember someone having an unofficial patch for it though).

Not that I've tried those things recently...

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