They are. You'll need to download the latest ver of DOSBox and replace the old version of STEAM uses.

You'll also need to tweak the dosbox.conf to fit your needs.

GOG does better at optimizing their games with DOSBox but you'll always need to tweak.

The Sierra Collections on Steam still use the same stupid launcher that the VU collections used with the dosbox.conf hard coded into it. The DOSBox 0.63 dosbox.conf does not work with 0.73, so it does not work to simply replace the included 0.63 with 0.73. Someone on the Steam forums found a way around it, but it is still easier to just apply my patch and patch the games themselves at the same time.

Thanks for the replies. I ended up purchasing a few titles last night and found exactly that - the Sierra collections have a launcher with dosbox nowhere to be found. boo.

collector, could you tell me more about your patch? I'd love to use my own version of dosbox if possible. I suppose I could just copy the data files myself into my own dosbox environment. They all seem to be there.

I did find with game supported by scummvm, that they don't work because steam took out resource.000 files. Not a big deal. The default settings used by steam were pretty bad.

sierahelp.com

thanks!

Specifically here.

Not all DOSBox games on Steam are released like this. It seems to depend on the publisher that supplies them. I got a few DOS games when I purchased the "LucasArts Premier Pack" during a special sale, and they are actually organised very well:

Within the usual "Steam\steamapps\common\<game>" subdirectoy for each game, there lies the dosbox.conf file that you can edit at will. There are two additional subfolders: Game with the installed game data that is to be mounted, and a separate DosBox folder that contains a mint DOSBox installation, which is easy to replace with any updated version.

static- wrote:

I did find with game supported by scummvm, that they don't work because steam took out resource.000 files. Not a big deal. The default settings used by steam were pretty bad.

LucasArts encoded the "000" type files for each game into their respective Windows executable. Using a hex-editor, it is possible to "extract" the original files out of them so that ScummVM can run the titles (though with Steam's Loom you'll likely get no speech/music since SVM doesn't acknowledge the new CDDA.SOU file so far) - I did write up about the necessary offsets to go to and which "blocks" to save into a new file but have yet to write a proper guide for it and upload it somewhere...... one of these days I'll get round to it. 😉

cool, ya I figured that's probably what they did. Good to know it can be extracted 😀

I just copied the game directory of my Dosbox enables games from Steam to my own Dosbox directory with my own dosbox.conf and deleted the game from Steam afterwards.

And I also used collector's patches on my Sierra compilation dvd's and afterwards copied everything to my own Dosbox too (as collector's patches are a bit strict. Very good patches, but a little strict).

How do you mean strict? I warn to not install in the %ProgramFiles% because of the known problems that the restrictive permissions on Vista or Win7 of this system folder causes with these legacy games, but I don't prevent the user from installing there, if they wish. It is true that the first versions of the patches didn't allow the user to use anything other than the default VU install directory (I was just learning to use NSIS, then), but that has not been the case for the past few years. I have become much more proficient at NSIS scripting since. The only thing that I don't give an option for is the location of DOSBox, but this is so the shortcuts don't get broken when the user upgrades to a new version of DOSBox and I don't have to redo all of my patches and installers whenever a new version comes out.

If the patch you are using does not allow you options for installing, you have very outdated version of the patches. Always get them from my site to be sure that you have the latest.

My bad, then I think I had an old version. I used them roughly a year ago and I had to use the default VU directories indeed. But I got it working the way I wanted and I'm happy for everybody else that your NSIS skills increased.
Now, your patches are the most important download for everyone who bought those VU collection which were actually pretty badly organised.

t0mme wrote:

Now, your patches are the most important download for everyone who bought those VU collection which were actually pretty badly organised.

They were so badly prepared and mixed up that I suspect that the origin of the collections was from some abandonware group that got caught by VU and VU hired them to finish them. If they had just started with the '97 KQ collection, replaced the installer with a new one to set them up to use DOSBox by someone that knows the sierra games and DOSBox, they would have ended up with a far better release. It took them months to produce a crap release. I could do a near ideal package in a couple of days. they all had many of the same problems, The most badly botched was the KQ collection. If you wish to see a list of all that was wrong with the KQ collection, see this thread.

Shocking...

Let's hope that gog.com contacts you when they release the Sierra adventures (through their Activision deal).

Think alot of those they would just use ScummVM where ScummVM supports them.

t0mme wrote:

Let's hope that gog.com contacts you when they release the Sierra adventures (through their Activision deal).

I thought the Sierra assets were still fully owned by VU, so how does Activision figure into that picture? Obviously it does somehow, as they already released Phantasmagoria and Space Quest 4-6. Is Activision part of VU as well?

Space Quest 4-6 from GOG.com use DOSBox by the way, not ScummVM.

Anamon wrote:

I thought the Sierra assets were still fully owned by VU, so how does Activision figure into that picture? Obviously it does somehow, as they already released Phantasmagoria and Space Quest 4-6. Is Activision part of VU as well?

Activision and VU merged in 2007 and became Activision Blizzard, and is now the largest game publisher in the world.