that's because there's the people that download dosbox and want to run the usual Blood or Tomb Raider and expecting an emulator to have a whole proper automatic interface like running their questionably obtained ROMs too. Every mainstream emulator draws in this kind of kiddie (not meaning just the age) crowd. There is no prevention of it, unless a readme check was set (i.e. at the end of readme, ask to set 'ihavereadthereadme = true' in dosbox.conf to remove the startup reminder of the readme).

And then there's that false "use 0.63 its better" advice and suchandsuch that causes us dedicated users of DOSBox to be pissed off. 😀
Abandonware sites suck for attempting to mainstream broken warez for the sake of preservation (which isn't really preserving if you hack it with an ad for the site and save games/preconfigs) with huge ignorance to international copyright laws. Of course this isn't about that, so whoever snowballs into abandonware defense should probably be physically punched in vital areas.

Unfortunately, for some, more obscure stuff, abandonware may be the only way the game has survived. Bit rot and low distributions have condemned many games to that great floppy drive in the sky.

People should understand that the PC is not the NES, Genesis or 2600, nor is it an Amiga, ST, or Apple II. The first were no more complex than inserting a cartridge in a machine and pressing the on button. The second were generally kept to bootable floppies and relatively few configurations.

If you really want to get your mileage out of DOSBox, you need to know about DOS directories, files, drives and commands, memory requirements and types, video and sound hardware features, floppy and CD rom drives, cycles and speed, game installations and running, and become very familiar with CVS, alternate builds and the .conf file.

By comparison to real DOS systems, DOSBox is 1,000x easier to work with.

The second were generally kept to bootable floppies and relatively few configurations.

Not really 100% on topic, but boy, are you wrong about that. The Amiga and ST's were "real" work computers with full blown hd installations and mutitasking OS's when the PC was still stuck with DOS and crappy MFM harddisks. But yes, for the Amiga it's quite true that for gaming purposes only, you could live with booting games from floppies.

What's really funny in my opinion is the fact that DOS is the most crappy platform ever used for gaming, and this will probably stay that way for all eternity. This means that DOSBox will always be problematic for users with little or no DOS knowledge, no matter how "good" or well documented the emulator is. I mean, DOSBox is close to perfection in respect to its techincal "basis", because the user doesn't have to install DOS, configure memory types and stuff. The basic problems of DOS gaming won't be solved anytime soon, so we just have to live with all the "noob" questions.

Well, and i think the "kiddie"-user problem is not too bad here on VOGONS. Ever looked at a discussion board dealing with PS2 emulation?

The only way to solve the issue is for VOGONS to be the packager and the seller of the games since the finding of the games, installing the games, setting up the games is the "hard" part.

Just like GOG we'd have to contact each publisher and get permission.
Setup a payment system through Paypal (and only paypal) and only provide direct downloads.

As we've seen the way other companies handle DOSBox is less than ideal and those that did setup DOSBox properly for their games had to contact us and get us to properly test them before release. So we might as well cut out the middleman and do it ourselves.

Now I've thrown alot of "we's" and "ourselves" in there, obviously I'd like a hand in this and I'm sure others would as well. There's only one problem.....

Almost all of us here only care about testing/developing for DOSBox, not worrying about billing issues and the like. (We've already got the tech support issue down with our kickass forums).

I believe the simplest solution in the short term would be to start a service packaging freeware/shareware games. (Assuming there's no issues with repackaging and distributing these games.)

We could take it slow, mabye create a wiki entry for each game that we package and possibly a forum thread as well to reference that game.

Hehehe... Reminds me of:

Step 1: Package Games
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!

If you want to "package" these games as a service to the community, you'd be welcome, if you ask me. I think a few people would be glad to have "plug and play" DOS games. But i think you severely underestimate the licensing problems, and overestimate the number of people interested in buying that kind of stuff. Even GOG is selling relatively recent games - my guess is that it's these games that keep them alive.

Well I'm betting that the already released games by 2K Games would be easy to get permissions for as well as the freeware games on 3DRealms site.

The Classicdosgames.com and LiberatedGames websites have done alot of work and have the contact info and permission to distribute the games.

I think ClassicDosGames has some 400+ games. We'd have to see what the download stats are for LiberatedGames\ClassicDosGames\3DRealms games are. I'm sure they are peanuts compared to The Sims but even $2 per game for 50 games downloaded a week is $100 in profit.....which is $100 more than VOGONS makes right now......Basically there's nothing to lose except time (which is of course the most important thing).

Obviously bandwidth costs would enter the equation but I'm wondering if Amazon's S3 service could be used for file storage or perhaps bittorent? Those would significantly reduce bandwidth requirements.

leileilol wrote:

And then there's that false "use 0.63 its better" advice and suchandsuch that causes us dedicated users of DOSBox to be pissed off.

I don't know anything about an old version being better. I can get a lot of games running effortlessly in 0.72 that I couldn't before. I have found 2 or 3 games that run more smoothly speed wise in 0.65 than 0.72 with the same settings. However if this is "false" is there something I should try in 0.72 to get them to run as smoothly?

Start a seperate thread posting the games and the conf settings with an appropriate subject title.

Uhm all the ideas sound quite good... My only worry about packaged games and a money contribute is... people already EXPECT to have someone helping them step by step while DOSBox is free, what would they expect when it becomes pay, share-, care-, donate-, cardware?
I also think they should post questions regarding the DOS-specifical commands (although used/needed in dos box) on the DOS branch of the forum, not in the DOSBox one but perhaps that would only create a greater confusion...

For a paid product people expect it to work right of the bat. Since DOSBox is an emulator then any bugs caused by DOSBox in the game would be the same for all computers. (Not counting SDL issues or host performance issues).

As for support a special section of the forum for each game along with the wikipedia entry for each game would be the support section. These sections would be free of the sarcasm/ridcule/harsh treatment of ignorant users that prevale the rest of the forum (which I like btw... 😉 ).

The commands in DOSBox are DOSBox commands....not MS-DOS commands. If you look at the commands in DOSBox they are tailored specifically to DOSBox. Alot of functionality that is not needed for games is not included in these commands. Therefore they belong in the DOSBox forum.