I think they have a lot of excess files in those GOG downloads.
Search for a folder with .EXE/.COM files, and try to copy that one.

I really recommend checking out sigboe/pie-galaxy.

You can install any game in your library without having to care about anything.

HoMaM 2 needs their own files, some files present on the CDROM and (optional) the CDROM audio tracks. Look into dosbox cfg files (on the same folder as HoMaM 2) to check how the CD image was loaded.

Some time ago, I made it work in my DOS machine, following this steps.
- Copy the game files into a folder.
- Make a new folder inside it (HEROES2X).
- Mount the game CD image and copy the everything to HEROES2X folder (or at least the HEROES2 folder... it should look like HEROES2X\HEROES2).
- Make a bat that mount HEROES2X folder as a CDROM. I wanted to run in my DOS machine, so I used FAKECD. FAKECD will work in real DOS and DOSBOX, but if your target is only DOSBOX you can use mount (and you'll be able to use audio tracks).
- If you used FAKECD, or you didn't copy the audio tracks, please configure HoMaM2 so it uses MIDI audio instead of CD audio.

The folder/files to copy are:

1<DATA>
2<GAMES>
3<HELP>
4<JOURNALS>
5<MAPS>
6<SOUND>
7HEROES2.CFG
8POLCAMP.TXT
9README.TXT
10H2CAMP.TXT
11MANUAL.PDF
12NETBIOS.EXE
13INSTALL.EXE
14EDITOR2.EXE
15HEROES2.EXE

(Note that MANUAL.PDF is not needed, but I like to keep manuals. Also maybe NETBIOS.EXE is not required.)

So, apart from deleting those GoG files, you need to look for dosbox.cfg files to check if any disk image (usually a big .gog file, but in earlier releases GoG used .iso extension) is being loaded... and then make a .bat file that mimic those mounting commands.

hellricer wrote on 2020-11-03, 14:36:

I really recommend checking out sigboe/pie-galaxy.

You can install any game in your library without having to care about anything.

Awesome! That helps a ton.

hellricer wrote on 2020-11-03, 14:36:

I really recommend checking out sigboe/pie-galaxy.

You can install any game in your library without having to care about anything.

Unfortunately, that project no longer functions because it relied on Wyvern which isn't hosted on the same website that the install script references. The dev left a message for Wyvern's dev a while back but it appears he was never answered.

held wrote on 2020-11-03, 12:55:

I think they have a lot of excess files in those GOG downloads.
Search for a folder with .EXE/.COM files, and try to copy that one.

Yeah, they're pretty bloated. And if you have a lot of DOS games from GoG and Steam you have that many copies of DOSBox taking up space.

@Zup Yeah that's actually the game that made me think this would be helpful. Thanks for the tips!