Hi Dosbox community,

I am a collector of PC games that have become disillusioned with having to continously install and uninstall games everytime I want to play them. I would like to stow away games as single files, then quickly move them around or play them at the click of a button, the same way you do with media files in a media player or rom-files in console emulators. No install process, no windows messing around with registry files and sh-t. Process: Start the emulator , drag and drop the image file and start. I have an idea how to achieve this but I would like some feedback...

1. What features in Dosbox would allow for this at present and which features would need to be developed? Can it be achieved using non-proprietary and dos-box independent image file formats?
2. What do you see as challanges and obstacles with this approach?

The idea is this:
Run the dos/pc emulator (possibly dosbox or modification to dosbox) of choice using three images:
Image A: This is the read-only image file of a minimum fresh installation of the required operating system and system files including relevant updates/service packs (could be DOS/Win3.1/Win95/Win98/WinXP etc).
Image B: This is a read-only image file of an installation of the game need to be run. In a simple case this would consist of a game folder, but in more complex cases files spread over several different folders i.e. direct x files in a windows folder. The image would only contain paths and files not already present in the System image. When files are present in both the system and game image the emulator should know to select the files in the game image instead of the system image (game image has priority). I don't know exactly how I would go about installing the game into the image in the first place but I am quite sure that is something that could be solved for the majority of dos/windows 95 games.
Image C: A third read-write image would be created as needed to contain any new files or alterations to files in the system and game images, in response to write operations to the disk. When files are present in both Image A, B and C, image C the emulator priorities in the order C > B > A. This would work as a discreet save state file and protect the integrity of the system and game images. The save state could then be simply copied, moved, backed-up, edited as needed or deleted in order to run the game image as if it had been freshly installed.

The essential ideas are these:
- Games should be run from discrete image files at the click of a button without the need for real time installation.
- The format of the game images should be independent from specific emulators or proprietary formats to any degree possible.
- The games and OS images should be protected from modification while executing the games.
- Changes and saves should be written separately also as discreet swappable image files.

If this is already possible please let me know how. If it is not possible today, but you think this is a good idea, please give me your input and I may invest some time into the project. If you want to collaborate on this please let me know what you could do to help.

/ Elusive Creator