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First post, by EldritchNexus

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So I was playing Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons, and I found a file called "CK-HINT.EXE" in the directory, which is basically a Hint page in the form of an EXE file, containing information on everything within the game's three episodes. I found a similar one for Duke Nukem 3D, called "DN3DHELP.EXE."

I'm using a Macbook running on Snow Leopard and DOSBox, and I was wondering if there was a way I could create one of my own, in that specific format, for the other games I have (such as Doom, The Elder Scrolls: Arena, etc.). It's for a project I'm working on, which is a DOSBox wrapper that opens a batch file linking to not only a game, but to a file containing instructions on the game so that I don't need to close DOSBox in order to read the pdf file for the game's manual. Can this be done?

Reply 1 of 7, by BeginnerGuy

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I'm pretty sure those .exe files you're talking about were generated using some reader software, so what you're seeing is that actual "cheat" specially formatted text file bundled with the reader software into a single executable. The name is on the tip of my tongue but I can't think of it right now. Scroll through the document and see if it says what it was created with for now.

It would be interesting to know if that ever went rogue on the net.

As an aside, can edit.com (microsoft edit) be loaded into dosbox? You could just use that to read plain text in worst case.

Last edited by BeginnerGuy on 2018-12-10, 05:11. Edited 2 times in total.

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Reply 2 of 7, by dr_st

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These executables are basically simple text viewers for a hardcoded text file. I think some of them contain the text built into the executable, and some merely open a .TXT file with a specific name.

Any generic DOS-based text file viewer + .TXT file with instructions will meet your goals; no need to create your own programs.

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Reply 3 of 7, by EldritchNexus

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Any good ones you can link me to that are free, full, and "view only"? I'm trying to find some, but the only ones I can find that might fit that description aren't in English so I can't figure out what they really do.

Edit: Okay, I found View and List Plus. Unfortunately, they won't start when I select them from the batch file. They work just fine from both Boxer and DOSBox, and I have the batch file properly configured from what I can tell, so I can't figure out what's going on.

Reply 4 of 7, by LSS10999

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dr_st wrote:

These executables are basically simple text viewers for a hardcoded text file. I think some of them contain the text built into the executable, and some merely open a .TXT file with a specific name.

Any generic DOS-based text file viewer + .TXT file with instructions will meet your goals; no need to create your own programs.

I recall many Apogee & 3D Realms games featured such exe files for viewing help/hint documents. They're just like what you said, a text viewer with a document embedded in it, but still I don't know what utility could be used to create those exe files back then.

I do recall using ViewS (a text viewer for DOS) for reading FAQ/Guides obtained from GameFAQs (txt file), as they conform to the 80 character line width standard and ViewS could display them perfectly.

Reply 7 of 7, by root42

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ripsaw8080 wrote:

Moving this topic to Milliways, as the connection to DOSBox is fairly indirect.

Here are more options: https://www.bttr-software.de/freesoft/txtutil1.htm

Yes, it mentions Vernon D. Buerg's LIST program. That one raises nostalgic feelings.

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