Why not just use the standard config files for each game with shortcuts?

Because it's cleaner.
Anyway that's not the point.

Okido good luck 😀

Just test what commands you can use in dosbox. Normally everything in the config can be set in dosbox itself. Except for some stuff, for example output, that needs to be done on starting dosbox. So try
Timed true or timed false and see whether it gets set (just enter timed to see its status) and whether it was actually applied.

...but you cannot set the 'machine' setting from inside DOSBox. You may want to reconsider using conf files, or maybe take a look at the available frontends (that usually also use a conf file per game).

I tried joysticktype=... bit it didn't work
I dont want to use multiple conf files, and even the single one i use is very simple (autoexec is empty) and i pass the mounting things via command line, to dosbox.
Reason is, i use ykhwong build and we are often advised to start from a fresh conf file (maybe vanilla dosbox as well ?).
Also, I dont wanna use any frontend.

Well, so when stuff like joysticktype doesn't work your only way are config files.
As you can pass multiple config files to dosbox on the commandline you can keep it as simple as the batch files. You only lose the ability to switch during your dosbox session but honestly... with dosbox starting so fast does it matter?
So instead of having batch files you have config files with only the stuff you need for the game, everything else is going to be left at the default, dosbox doesn't need a main config file for keeping the defaults.
So when you start dosbox with the config file with just

1[autoexec]
2mount blabla
3C:
4Cd bla bla
5Game.exe

That's all you need.
I used to think I need batch files but ended up with a nice array of config files that suit my needs better than batch files (because of the stuff you can't change in a batch)

As for your yhkwong worry, if you have stuff in a config file that plain dosbox doesn't know, it will be ignored.

geoslake wrote:

Because it's cleaner.
Anyway that's not the point.

What about incremental conf files then? Seems pretty 'clean' to me.