Hi! I have a few old DOS games that run under DOSBox (Duke Nukem1, Duke Nukem 2, Wolfenstein 3d, etc). Is it difficult to make them more like GOG where I have a game icon that simply starts the game in full-screen mode? Or is it a much more complicated process of embedding a game in DOSBox ,or vice versa?

If the game already works well under DOSBox, you can just make a custom shortcut, like explained here.

What Thiev said, although I like to do custom configuration for each game because I like tinkering with DOSBox.

It's relatively easy. You need to make a copy of your .conf file for each game and then add whatever commands you use to start the game to the [Autoexec] section at the end of the file. As an example, here's what's at the end of my Theme Hosptital .conf file:

@Echo Off
mount C C:\Dosbox2\C-drive
imgmount D C:\hospital\hospital.cue -t iso
C:
cd hospital
cls
hospital
exit

You then create a shortcut similar to what Thiev linked to but it doesn't need the "C:\Games\Game\Game.exe" type bit because that's taken care of by the .conf file. The way I do it, I also set the "Start In" part of the shorcut to the game folder because that's where the .conf file is and it means you can use relative paths in your mount commands. This allows for easily portability (I could run it off a pendrive with a batch file if I wanted).

This is the method GOG uses by the way so I hope that helps. If you have any questions I'd be happy to go into more detail.

I use DOSBox Game Launcher to make the whole DOSBox process even easier. It includes the function you want of creating shortcuts, too.

Cheating!

:P

The only issue with the process that I've experienced is you can't add the shortcuts to Steam. Other than that: boo-yeah.

Adding DOSBox shortcuts to Steam is easy, although you need to do it manually as far as I know.

I support this message.

I have issues with DBGL shortcuts. Here is what a shortcut for Crusader is:

Target: G:\Games\DOSBox\DOSBox.exe -conf "G:\Games\DOSBox\dosbox.conf" -conf "G:\Games\DOSBox Game Launcher\profiles\163.conf" -noconsole

Start in: "G:\Games\DOSBox Game Launcher\dosroot"

When I input this in for a Steam shortcut, I get this message.

Aren't command-line arguments/switches in steam added in another box? Also, I doubt you should specify more than one conf file.

EDIT: Ah, no, apparently there isn't another box for command-line arguments for not-steam-game shortcuts.

That's just the way DBGL makes shortcuts. Is there another way to do what that shortcut stuff is doing?

Yeah, AutoHotkey can make a separate application that does the same as the shortcut, only it doesn't expose any command-line arguments to Steam.

Make an AutoHotkey (something.ahk) script containing the following: (for other games, just edit the line "Run, <Command>, <Start in>")

Then run that file through the ahk2exe converter that you get with autohotkey (in that application you can also assign your new script/program an icon if you wish), and finally assign your new exe file to a steam shortcut. Steam won't know of any args and the exe should otherwise work just as if you've double-clicked the shortcut that DBGL creates.

Wow, thanks. This is great!

This is exactly the way I do it. Do it just right and you don't have to even worry about command line paramaters, just run DOSBox.exe.

Bonus to this is that you can copy the game to any directory and it'll run just fine, including if you share it between computers (say, between your desktop and laptop) with something like Dropbox (stay legal and ethical with this of course).

Any DOS gamer should get to know the DOSBox.conf. GOG's very good about getting games to run well with DOSBox, but there's always something you can do better to tweak it just the way you like it (especially with regard to rendering algorithms).

I was just going to suggest he drops one of the -conf arguments, but this is really cool! I can think of loads of applications for this.
Yeah, I like tinkering with the GOG configurations too. I run Zork with the machine type set to vgaonly, which renders text mode at 720x400 instead of 640x400. This looks great on my 16:9 laptop.