I have a proposal I'm working on at the moment for a wrapper format, where all the files for a game are stored in a single file (a bit like a .zip file but with .dos extension.) DOSBox and other emulators would be able to access the file directly, so you just double-click on the .dos file to play your game, no install needed.

Unfortunately not many people seem interested in this sort of thing (perhaps as it doesn't really matter if you have good DOS skills) and it would probably only be of benefit to places that sell DOS games or archivists who collect DOS games. So I will probably have to implement it all myself in DOSBox and then persuade the devs to include it, which they may decide not to if they consider it unnecessary. But who knows, maybe they will support the idea if they can see it working 😀

Well considering the ops post you could understand why the devs wouldn't be super enthusiastic for it.

Really though all someone has to do is pack a non-zipped game with DBGL already configured and then zip up the entire package. Done. No unofficial patches or special DOSBox builds required. (and this is how it's already done if you know how to google)

I could see such a patch included in DOSBOX if there was a hash function that checks against a database and pops up a message that states: "Full version of software detected. No hash match for all official versions in database. This software may have been illegaly downloaded. If not report false positive to blah@blah.com".....but that would likely be beyond the scope of DOSBox but hey mabye if you got Qbix or Harekiet drunk enough you could probably convince them of anything. Another thing is I don't see why they would want to make GOG's, Steam, etc job even easier that they already have it. Finally, that functionality in no way increases the main goal of DOSBox which is to get games working in DOSBox. Yes it makes it easier to play the game but any time this topic comes up it's usually because someone wants to download and play a game for free which is fine as long as the game is actually free to download.

Of course no one has to wait for the DOSBox devs to add it to the official ver of DOSBox. Download the DOSBox source, add the patch and do whatever as long as you abide by the license. IIRC, the Internet Archive is using the functionality on their website.

@Malvineous -- that is a great proposal, and it is sure to have some use. However yes the desire to use that util for large amounts of illegally free stuff is staggering. Heck I would even be tempted to make a giant pile of Dos games into a batch and torrent it 🤣.

@DosFreak -- yes I'm sure it's obvious I can't use the search function in a search engine -- but hear me out. This game is available as freeware in any corner of google, I have a boxed copy on my bookshelf (along with Zork Trilogy), but I am just not sure if I want to spend the couple days figuring DosBox all out just to make a game that I don't even know will work in DosBox in this manner.

I was able to torrent a wrapped exe for Zork as an example, but nothing for Yukon Trail. Zork is obviously a much more popular game, hitting mainstream as a part of Black Ops if you type the right things into the terminal at the beginning of the game.

I'm not even sure why I must play Yukon Trail every so often haha. Hmmm.

And that mindset is exactly the reason...
Just because it is available does not mean it's free in the sense of legal. The dosbox developers don't want to partake in pirating of games/apps.

Yes that was why I said it that way 😀

However Yukon Trail is still a game I own. I just wanna play it.

Either buy somewhere Windows 3.x and follow my install guide, or use virtualbox to set up XP since you own that...

Thanks for the feedback! I'm not really sure how the proposal would assist with piracy though. You can already find huge torrents of games all zipped up ready to play and abandonware sites are everywhere, so it wouldn't really make it that much easier than it already is. I guess it would let you double-click instead of unzipping then double-clicking, but I don't think that should count as "assisting pirates"!

This kind of reasoning is wrong. Just because there are hundreds of thousands Volkswagen reporting wrong emissions doesn't mean you should assist.
Think about it what OTHER use would your thing do but assist piracy? Who else got use for an easy dos games installer but pirates?
for own usage? Perhaps but if you go through your collection once to wrap them up why not just store it unzipped instead of zipped/wrapped?

If you are unable to find a legal copy of Windows 3.1, there is also ReactOS. A OS that intends to be binary compatible with Windows NT that may run it...
https://www.reactos.org/

Interesting - but I see your argument a different way. It's like saying why bother with environmental guidelines, because companies like VW will just cheat to pass the guidelines anyway, so you'll be making it easier for these companies to claim their cars are environmentally friendly when they aren't. The guidelines are a good thing, even if some people cheat. You should target the cheaters, not the guidelines!

This is getting a bit off topic now, but one of the reasons behind the format proposal was for easier distribution of shareware games and mods. Over at the Commander Keen Wiki, there are hundreds of (perfectly legal) mods, but they can be tricky to set up and play, and you can't play them in your browser. Especially the modded versions of the commercial games, because you can't distribute the underlying game files. If there was a .dos format like this, it would be easy for people to download the mod, double-click on it (or even play it in the browser), and the local .dos version of the commercial game would be picked up, for those who own it. There would be no need to distribute the commercial game, and as well, it would remove the need to have hundreds of copies of the correct version of the same game, explain to people how to copy files and overwrite things, how to use the command line in DOSBox, etc.

So there are other uses for this sort of thing, for people who aren't pirates!

All of that you want to do would be easy enough to do by scripting with NSIS or similar without needing DOSBox to be changed or have features added. NSIS even lets you make and apply binary difference patches. If you know how to apply a mod manually you can do it via NSIS.

NSIS is Windows-only though, so it wouldn't help Mac or Linux people. Fair enough if you're one of the people who don't need something like this, but there are definitely a few use cases where nothing else can quite manage the job. It's not really any different to other emulators which use ROMs - either way you have just one file that contains everything the emulator needs to run a game.

Things can be scripted for Mac and Linux too, even if not with NSIS (AppleScript, etc.) You need to look at solutions outside of DOSBox itself. You could modify the DOSBox source on your own, but it would never be implemented in official DOSBox.

That might be doable, but then you have to maintain three different scripts, one each for Mac, Linux and Windows, and then all the other platforms that run DOSBox are left without any solution. I guess you're thinking of installers, simplifying the task of installing games, whereas my goal is more about managing the games you do have in a way that's extensible (e.g. compatible with mods.)