Jonathan's Webstream

One of the main reasons I was looking for a launch bar was that I created a menu for all my DOS games, using mygtkmenu. Once you create this menu, it just cries out for somewhere to attach it, and wbar fits the bill perfectly.

I have a bunch of old DOS (redundant much?) games that I decided to install. In addition to the ones I own (including the priceless Definitive Wargame Collection), the wonderful Good Old Games site ships several of theirs using DOSBox and even Steam uses it for classics like "X-COM : UFO".

First I would create a short script file to run the game. Due to a bug in the X.org driver, it required a work around; namely, telling SDL (the library used by DOSBox) to not "DGA" mouse (or draw directly to video memory). It seems to be fixed so i took it out.

#! /bin/bash
#export SDL_VIDEO_X11_DGAMOUSE=0
cd /mediax/games/MAGIC
dosbox -conf dosbox.conf

Then I would either grab a screenshot from the game (using Ctrl-F5) or search the web for an icon. And then edit my gamemenu.xml file and add an entry like this:

item = Master of Magic
cmd = "/home/jdarnold/bin/mom"
icon = /home/jdarnold/icons/masterofmagic.jpg

For my Definitive Wargame Collection, I created a slightly more generic batch file:

#! /bin/bash
cd /mediax/games/WARGAMES
dosbox -conf dosbox.conf $1/$2 -c "cd $1" -exit

Here I cd into the WARGAMES folder and it gets passed a directory and an executable, so mygtkmenu entry looks like this:

SUBMENU = Definitive Wargame Collection #1
	icon = /home/jdarnold/icons/CompleteWargameCollection.jpg

	item = Complete Games Menu
	cmd = "/home/jdarnold/bin/wargames"
	icon = /home/jdarnold/icons/CompleteWargameCollection.jpg

	item = Decisive Battles of the Civil War
	cmd = /home/jdarnold/bin/wargame1 ACW DB.EXE
	icon = /home/jdarnold/icons/DecisiveBattles.png

So I've created a sub-menu off the main menu and I pass in the sub-directory and the executable for the app. In a later installment, I'll talk a little more about DOSBox, which is a really nice program. Here's a couple of shots of the final product:

Related articles

• The 16 bit DOS Legacy: What Ever Happaned? (suite101.com)
• Wing Commander released for free via DOSbox? Maybe (news.bigdownload.com)
• iDOS brings your favorite DOS games to iOS (mobilecrunch.com)