CBoxRun is now available for download here:

http://cboxrun.wordpress.com

Looks nice. What did you make it with?

I'm still thinking of making a crossplatform DOSBox frontend that is based around the idea of defining a hierarchy of DOSBox config file overrides because I find the main killer for me with frontends is the fact that I end up needed to edit the configs for 30 individual games whenever I want to change something globally. My idea would allow me to make some general config categories (like some configs for IBM PC, 286, 386, and Pentium eras) that you could sort individual games into and then configure some more at an individual game level. This would allow the user to both add new games more quickly, and change settings at higher config hierarchy levels and have the settings flow down to all games under a specific category.

So far I've only gotten as far as coming up with an XML spec for defining the possible contents of dosbox.conf (including comments so that I could generate an exact replica of the default config of different DOSBox versions). I should probably pick it up again now that Qt 4.7 is out 😜

hunterz: this should be possible. Since you can "bind" several confs together and following confs add/override the preceeding ones, your idea should actually be doable...

your question with what the OP did it:http://cboxrun.wordpress.com/about/

Thanks hunterz. That's an interesting idea and shouldn't be hard to do.

I store all custom configs in a single directory, so it wouldn't be difficult to allow a user to multi-select them and make a particular set of changes to config settings. Would that be helpful?

The app's written in VB.NET using .NET 3.5, by the way.

Dominus: Doh, I didn't even think of using DOSBox's innate ability to parse multiple conf files. My original thought was to have my frontend dynamically generate a complete one when the user launches a game and feed that to dosbox.

CBoxRun: Might be a decent compromise.

I'm getting this error on Windows 7 x64 when trying to create a new profile:

Program Message: The following unhandled exception was caught during CBoxRunexecution. The application cannot continue. […]
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Program Message:
The following unhandled exception was caught during CBoxRunexecution. The application cannot continue.

Stack Trace:
No se puede cargar el archivo o ensamblado 'Microsoft.VisualBasic.PowerPacks.Vs, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' ni una de sus dependencias. El sistema no puede encontrar el archivo especificado.

en CBoxRun.ProgramWizard.InitializeComponent()
en CBoxRun.ProgramWizard..ctor() en B:\9soft\Projects\CBoxRun\CBoxRun\Dialogs\ProgramWizard.vb:línea 31
en CBoxRun.Program.AddProgram() en B:\9soft\Projects\CBoxRun\CBoxRun\Program Objects\Program.vb:línea 268
en CBoxRun.MainForm.AddButton_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) en B:\9soft\Projects\CBoxRun\CBoxRun\MainForm.vb:línea 153
en System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.RaiseEvent(Object key, EventArgs e)
en System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripButton.OnClick(EventArgs e)
en System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.HandleClick(EventArgs e)
en System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.HandleMouseUp(MouseEventArgs e)
en System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.FireEventInteractive(EventArgs e, ToolStripItemEventType met)
en System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.FireEvent(EventArgs e, ToolStripItemEventType met)
en System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mea)
en System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
en System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
en System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)
en System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip.WndProc(Message& m)
en System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
en System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
en System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

If the program needs extra libraries, such as Visual basic or .NET Framework 3.5 you should warn about it on the homepage. I have .NET 4, which I think offers support for all the programs that need previous versions.

I've got the same problem on my x64 machine.

Thanks for letting me know. My dev environment is a Windows 7 x64 machine too. I didn't realize that I had a reference to a library that isn't included in the standard .NET distribution - it has now been removed.

I've posted an update here:

http://www.filedropper.com/cboxrun_2

If you can test it and let me know how it works, I'd be grateful.

Now it works. 😁

Here's some feedback:

- The loading time of the program is a tad slow. It also seems to freeze the first time you use the profile assistant, while loading the first page. It's fine after that.

- Once there, though, it looks pretty neat. The reader from Mobygames works fine, everything is tidy and well placed. If anything, I'd like the "Search Mobygames" to automatically grab the boxart together with the game info.

- One thing about the profiles. Once you deselect the game-specific profiles, you seem to distinguish between games that will work with DOSBox default options and ones that need specific options.

Creating a profile for a game that needs specific options is a bit hidden right now. You need to create a profile with default options, then right click on it and change the options from the Configuration File Editor, after a prompt.

Let me suggest this behavior instead: Keep the Program Edit Wizard, but incorporate all the options from the Configuration File Editor. And if you want to keep the newbies from becoming confused, make the menus from the Configuration File Editor invisible until the user checks the "My game is not listed here" option or something like that.

- The Configuration File Editor also needs a mounting section.

Hi Neville,

Thanks for the feedback. A few responses:

The loading time of the program is a tad slow. It also seems to freeze the first time you use the profile assistant, while loading the first page. It's fine after that.

It's a bit slower on the first load because it has to download and format the DOS games list from Wikipedia. This happens in the background, but if you click on the Add wizard right away it may pause until the list has been refreshed.

The games list updates every 3 days, but unless you happen to click on Add while it's downloading, you probably won't see this slowness again.

Once there, though, it looks pretty neat. The reader from Mobygames works fine, everything is tidy and well placed. If anything, I'd like the "Search Mobygames" to automatically grab the boxart together with the game info.

I'll try to implement this for the next version. It's a little trickier to do this in MobyGames. For now, the standard (wikipedia) "retrieve info" button should always get box art if it's available.

One thing about the profiles. Once you deselect the game-specific profiles, you seem to distinguish between games that will work with DOSBox default options and ones that need specific options.

Creating a profile for a game that needs specific options is a bit hidden right now. You need to create a profile with default options, then right click on it and change the options from the Configuration File Editor, after a prompt.

Let me suggest this behavior instead: Keep the Program Edit Wizard, but incorporate all the options from the Configuration File Editor. And if you want to keep the newbies from becoming confused, make the menus from the Configuration File Editor invisible until the user checks the "My game is not listed here" option or something like that.

Thanks - that's good feedback. Since I'm not a power user of DOSBox by any means, it's good to know how others want to see this. I'll look into ways to streamline the process.

The Configuration File Editor also needs a mounting section.

I'll add partial support for this in the next version, but there are a lot of options to consider and I probably won't support them all. What are the most common usage scenarios?

CBoxRun wrote:

The Configuration File Editor also needs a mounting section.

I'll add partial support for this in the next version, but there are a lot of options to consider and I probably won't support them all. What are the most common usage scenarios?

The most usual scenario is that you need to mount a folder in your harddrive as a harddrive C:

That's because although most games will work if you use the game folder as C:\, as many frontends do, some of these games check the path and they won't start from C:\. Some later DOS games go as far as checking the folder name as well.

Also needed but less common, mounting a folder as a floppy or adding an additional folder as a CD-ROM.

The most usual scenario is that you need to mount a folder in your harddrive as a harddrive C:

That's because although most games will work if you use the game folder as C:\, as many frontends do, some of these games check the path and they won't start from C:\. Some later DOS games go as far as checking the folder name as well.

Also needed but less common, mounting a folder as a floppy or adding an additional folder as a CD-ROM.

OK, I'm building in support for these drive mounting scenarios, and I'm also adding options to allow Boot from Image. I should have it ready within a week or two - everything is working for "add" mode, I just have to wire it up for "edit". I put some screenshots on the blog and would appreciate any suggestions.

http://cboxrun.wordpress.com/

"Boot from a disk image". I completely forgot about this one, but there are a lot of booter games out there, I forgot about them.

I like your configuration screens a lot, but am not a big fan of launching my games from a separate program - I like to make desktop shortcuts. I presume CBoxRun maintains a .conf file for each entry - is it possible for it to create a shortcut file pointing to it with the command argument "-conf"? If so, this would widen your audience a bit (to me, and likeminded others), as it's a lot nicer to click through things than edit a text file, but not everybody wants a "launcher".

In many languages this is a very easy thing to implement - and if it isn't that easy in your language of choice then you could include a small AHK file to create the relevant shortcut with input data provided by your program (I could make this tiny program for you if you like).

Anywho whether you implement my shortcut-creation idea or no, it's possibly the nicest and most logical launcher I've seen yet.

Hi Yushatak,

Thanks for your comments - I'm glad you like the look & feel of the program.

I presume CBoxRun maintains a .conf file for each entry - is it possible for it to create a shortcut file pointing to it with the command argument "-conf"? If not, this would widen your audience a bit (to me, and likeminded others), as it's a lot nicer to click through things than edit a text file, but not everybody wants a "launcher".

This shouldn't be hard to do, and I'll add it to the list. A few questions about this idea:

1. We don't currently store icon information about each program. (This seemed unnecessary since very few DOS programs include icons). I can add a dialog asking the user to select an icon at the time that the shortcut is being created - if not, the shortcut would use a standard icon. Would this be acceptable?

2. Should these shortcuts be saved into the Start menu, or into a folder that the user selects?

For the icons, that sounds exactly like what one would expect. You could use the DOSBox icon for the "default", so it doesn't look so plain, as well. This is what I do when creating shortcuts if I can't find an icon (until I get around to making one, that is.. 😁)

Personally I like shortcuts to show up on the desktop - that's the typical default behavior on Windows when creating a shortcut from within an application. You could perhaps make checkboxes or some other GUI widget to select location(s) for the shortcut to end up, as some users may have a specific folder they want them in, or want them both on the dekstop *and* in the start menu, etc. You seem very capable with GUI design, however, so I won't make any specific recommendation on how to organize that or which options to pick - I just suggest you provide at least the option to select a folder in some manner. 😀

Thanks for incorporating my idea(s), it's much appreciated and should make your launcher stand out a bit by being multipurpose. 😀