Dos gaming shell for actual dos?

[Krejlooc]

I've assembled a 486DX gaming machine for the purpose of outputting to an NTSC TV. My intention is to primarly run DOS games on the thing (One Must Fall, Jazz Jackrabbit, Epic Pinball, etc). I have a gravis gamepad that I wish to use as a primary input source, essentially treating the PC like a console.

The problem is figuring out a way to launch games. Looking around the net for gaming-purposed dos shells leads to lots of DOSBOX frontends, but very little that would actually run on a 486 computer. Can anybody recommend a good shell to launch games from? Preferably one that could take controller input.

[Krejlooc]

LOL, After about an hour of searching, I make this thread and then immediately stumble upon what I was looking for:

http://www.dribin.org/dave/game_launcher/downloads.html

Game Launcher, a light weight game launching frontend intended primarily for emulator use but also supports batch launching. Has a native dos port and will run on just about anything, with support for screenshots and everything. Plus, it supports PC gamepad input.

Badass, the exact thing I was looking for. I'll boot up into this and use it to select games.

[Anapan]

Thanks, I'm gonna start using that.
I always just had autoexec load Notron Commander.
It should make Dosbox on original XBOX unpainful.

[Nyukki]

Awesome! A dedicated "DOSBox" for your TV sounds like great use of an old computer. Been meaning to add a DOS wheel to my Hyperspin but haven't got round to looking into it.

One thing I've wondered when setting up a GUI launcher for DOS games, if you're using one joypad, like a Gravis or 360 or whatever, won't it be a pain in the ass setting up control schemes for each individual game? Since DOS games will have keyboard inputs that differ for each game. Don't suppose there's some sort of trick to automate things?

I guess with the Gravis, being oldskool, there's a chance the games will recognize and configure accordingly, the same way modern games recognize the 360 controller. If that's the case, is there something like a Gravis Gamepad emulator for other USB controllers?


DOS noob, so there!

[Krejlooc]

Awesome! A dedicated "DOSBox" for your TV sounds like great use of an old computer. Been meaning to add a DOS wheel to my Hyperspin but haven't got round to looking into it.

One thing I've wondered when setting up a GUI launcher for DOS games, if you're using one joypad, like a Gravis or 360 or whatever, won't it be a pain in the ass setting up control schemes for each individual game? Since DOS games will have keyboard inputs that differ for each game. Don't suppose there's some sort of trick to automate things?

I guess with the Gravis, being oldskool, there's a chance the games will recognize and configure accordingly, the same way modern games recognize the 360 controller. If that's the case, is there something like a Gravis Gamepad emulator for other USB controllers?


DOS noob, so there!

I actually bought a couple of other old PC controllers after posting earlier that I had when I was younger, including an intract pro 6 and a capcom fighter 6 that came with a copy of Megaman X.

Gravis was sort of the early standard, and several games, namely id or apogee or epic mega games openly supported it with in-game graphics. Jazz Jackrabbit came with the gravis gamepad at one point and had ads for the controller in-game. Once its early popularity died down, nothing really replaced it for a while, but the PC gamepad standard was widely available. 2 axis, 4 button. That was essentially the basic pc controller.

Once you configure a game to use the gamepad, you shouldn't have to do it again the next time you launch the game. Of course you may still need the keyboard to confirm an exit or something.

[marurun]

Are you using authentic MS DOS or FreeDOS? The latter is supposed to be pretty darn compatible at this point.