Glad to help! These MSDOS classics are fun, but running DosBox or VirtualMachines can be a big learning curve. EXoDos makes it sooo much easier, and it's a fantastic collection!
I do too, and this makes it super easy to find and play them! I was just blown away with what an excellent and well organized collection it was! Truly a labor of love :-D
Thanks so much :-D I am doing ok. Getting over a bad cold still, but at least I was able to record last night and today. I did start working on a little trivia game, so that will be fun too :-D
It is really cool! I'm a big fan of how well put together this is! I haven't played a ton of games in it yet, but I have installed and launched a bunch, and am very encouraged they will all work. I'm gonna go play some Montezuma's Return now :-D P.S. When you install it, it will ask you if you want to filter out games with sexuality or nudity. There isn't a violence filter, per se, but since you can apply multiple filters, you can set the default filter to have all ratings except M to try to get the most violent content filtered.
That cool. How long long does it take you to download these games compared to other things? I know your internet tends to be on the slow side, but does the torrent slow it down more, or does it feel pretty comparable to other stuff?
It is a little on the slow side bit-rate wise, but the games aren't huge either, so it doesn't take too long. The tiny ones are basically instant, the bigger games (like 700mb) do take like 5-15 min. So a little slow compared to modern download speeds, but nothing insane. The more frustrating range is like 5mb, because while the download it fast, I think they basically make you wait 60 secs so you can do some torrent uploads for them. But it's only on install, not on normal launch
what if we want to play the games not through LaunchBox? (imported into another front end (like retrobat, as an example) - is that possible? or are things too 'baked in' to user Launchbox and the way the setup bat sets things up for you?
The games are definitely portable to other front ends, but the metadata and configuration isn't quite as easy. If you know basic scripting, and knew where your front end of choice wanted images and game files, it would be pretty easy to do a script that just moves files from 1 folder to another. The part that is pretty baked-in is the wizard that prompts you for which version you want to run. Assuming you installed eXoDOS to C:\eXoDOS The Game, Images, Manuals, & Config would be here: C:\eXoDOS\eXo\eXoDOS C:\eXoDOS\Images\MS-DOS\ C:\eXoDOS\Manuals\MS-DOS\ C:\eXoDOS\eXo\eXoDOS\!dos\GAME_NAME\dosbox.conf If you are more adept at BAT scripting, you could get the specific wizards from the same folder as the dosbox.conf, but they use a bunch of environment variables for GameDir & GameName, so it isn't just a simply copy/paste.
P.S. I would say that Launchbox is a fairly lightweight piece of this and just connects the scripts and metadata. So I'd definitely recommend using Launchbox as the best way to experience this particular collection.
I was pretty late to the game, so I'm also a newly excited user of eXo's collection. Such great projects! While it's not identical, a similar project exists for Flash games called Flashpoint Infinity. I've got a video on my channel about it, if you are interested in preserving/playing those games as well :-D
@CynicPlacebo Thanks . I'll definitely look into it .I go as far back as Acorn/ Commodore and spectum computers and onwards . I also played this stuff as a kid and it would certainly bring back memories . Only a few months back I've installed Batocera which I'm also very happy with . Thanks again .
@@Tony65892 I didn't do much from the Commodore/Spectrum days, but I did play a couple things there (Frogger is the only one I actively remember playing as a kid). Most of my retro stuff is from the NES era forward, but I grew up poor, so I would dumpster dive computers, and play whatever they could handle. I remember playing Beast on an old IBM 5150 that I dumpster dived from a bank XD I love Batocera. I haven't used it a ton, but was very pleased with it. I really need to make a video about live boot drives for Batocera, because I think people think you have to dedicate a machine to it, when really you can just boot from USB, use Batocera, and then reboot into your normal OS after.
I find it amusing that both of your examples of downloading VGA versions instead of CGA or EGA clearly have EGA graphics because the games didn't have VGA versions.
Yeah, I tried to minimize my mistake in the edit, but I should have rerecorded the voice over. I tend to do a 1-take live and then just try to do minimal edits to make it work. It's the only way I can crank out the quantity of videos I do, but you are absolutely right that I flubbed that one hard. While I used to play Dos games a lot, it's been a solid spell since I've played any outside of the occasional GOG title. My DOS skills are woefully rusty. I have a couple retro PCs (a 486, a pentium, and a pentium 2, I think), but they are in the basement and I haven't used them since I moved to Oklahoma about 3 years ago. I need to do some more stuff with them, but I'd need a decent camera with an adjustable frame rate to capture things well. I also don't have a CRT anymore, so I'd just have to use an old 4:3 flatscreen.
You can get the larger torrent that has all the games pre-downloaded, but as I haven't used that version (my internet isn't good enough for that large a download) I can't know if they are installed, or if they are more like "Zip ROMs" of DOS games and the first time you try to launch them eXoDOS handles the install (though I suspect the latter)
my configuration isn't working at all every game starts in a giant window which can't be resized. doesn't matter what I select in config. so everything I've tried so far has been unplayable :(
What resolution is your monitor in? If you are using 4K or ultra-wide, I haven't tested that, but I could see it being a problem. Can you try changing your monitor resolution to 1920x1080 and then launching eXoDos and see if that changes anything? (not that it's a permanent fix, but it might help us figure out what is going on and what might need to be configured)
@@CynicPlacebo my monitor res is 1920*1080 doesn't matter what I select in exodos windowed or full, s, m or l it always just makes a big window that I can't even resize.
@@CynicPlacebo Its definitely something not working with exodos, just launched X-com TFTD from steam and it launched fine although weirdly a little laggy which I don't remember happening last time I played but launched the exodos version and giant window that I cant do anything with :( Worst thing is I actually downloaded the full exodos and media pack.
Really cool, but the torrent-based backend kills it for me. I'll just stick to GOG and Dosbox until they allow other means of support, e.g. adding your existing copies. But a very cool source nonetheless. In your vid I saw that they offer the Lord of the Rings FMV version. I've been looking for that for years.
Yeah, I called out the torrent explicitly, as that is definitely non-standard and could cause people concern. It is a clever way to keep all the docs available though. You can do a similar thing on your own with launchbox though. If I ever get off my butt and finish LocalMess, I have a games repo in there that includes DOS. If you watch the welcome video on my channel page you can get a glimpse of it. I've just been so busy I haven't been working on LocalMess. Eventually I wanted to integrate it like Archive.org where you can emulate all sorts of things in the browser, or just download the file and run it on your local machine. It would basically be an all-in-1 home server for games, videos, pictures, books, etc... I had made some really good progress on it, but then I started wanting to rewrite it all in Node JS so I could use Websockets to do Jackbox style games on your own LAN, and then I sort of lost the drive to make it happen and do a massive rewrite. We'll see if I can get back on the horse in 2024 :-D
You don't have to do it all at once. If you do the smaller package, it's only like 5 or 6 gb. Then you can install the games onesie, twosie. That's what I did, so I only have a couple dozen games installed.
Thank you for this video, I’m new to windows and this video pointed me In the direction I needed
Glad to help! These MSDOS classics are fun, but running DosBox or VirtualMachines can be a big learning curve. EXoDos makes it sooo much easier, and it's a fantastic collection!
I am really looking forward to trying this. Love DOS games.
I do too, and this makes it super easy to find and play them!
I was just blown away with what an excellent and well organized collection it was! Truly a labor of love :-D
Had you playing while I worked. Watched a couple of your vids this way. Hope you’re well.
Thanks so much :-D
I am doing ok. Getting over a bad cold still, but at least I was able to record last night and today.
I did start working on a little trivia game, so that will be fun too :-D
This is awesome - thank you!
Oh, and my kids LOVE Keen. :)
It is really cool! I'm a big fan of how well put together this is!
I haven't played a ton of games in it yet, but I have installed and launched a bunch, and am very encouraged they will all work. I'm gonna go play some Montezuma's Return now :-D
P.S. When you install it, it will ask you if you want to filter out games with sexuality or nudity. There isn't a violence filter, per se, but since you can apply multiple filters, you can set the default filter to have all ratings except M to try to get the most violent content filtered.
That cool. How long long does it take you to download these games compared to other things? I know your internet tends to be on the slow side, but does the torrent slow it down more, or does it feel pretty comparable to other stuff?
It is a little on the slow side bit-rate wise, but the games aren't huge either, so it doesn't take too long. The tiny ones are basically instant, the bigger games (like 700mb) do take like 5-15 min. So a little slow compared to modern download speeds, but nothing insane.
The more frustrating range is like 5mb, because while the download it fast, I think they basically make you wait 60 secs so you can do some torrent uploads for them. But it's only on install, not on normal launch
what if we want to play the games not through LaunchBox? (imported into another front end (like retrobat, as an example) - is that possible? or are things too 'baked in' to user Launchbox and the way the setup bat sets things up for you?
The games are definitely portable to other front ends, but the metadata and configuration isn't quite as easy.
If you know basic scripting, and knew where your front end of choice wanted images and game files, it would be pretty easy to do a script that just moves files from 1 folder to another.
The part that is pretty baked-in is the wizard that prompts you for which version you want to run.
Assuming you installed eXoDOS to C:\eXoDOS
The Game, Images, Manuals, & Config would be here:
C:\eXoDOS\eXo\eXoDOS
C:\eXoDOS\Images\MS-DOS\
C:\eXoDOS\Manuals\MS-DOS\
C:\eXoDOS\eXo\eXoDOS\!dos\GAME_NAME\dosbox.conf
If you are more adept at BAT scripting, you could get the specific wizards from the same folder as the dosbox.conf, but they use a bunch of environment variables for GameDir & GameName, so it isn't just a simply copy/paste.
P.S. I would say that Launchbox is a fairly lightweight piece of this and just connects the scripts and metadata. So I'd definitely recommend using Launchbox as the best way to experience this particular collection.
I've only just found out about Exo
I was pretty late to the game, so I'm also a newly excited user of eXo's collection. Such great projects!
While it's not identical, a similar project exists for Flash games called Flashpoint Infinity. I've got a video on my channel about it, if you are interested in preserving/playing those games as well :-D
@CynicPlacebo Thanks .
I'll definitely look into it .I go as far back as Acorn/ Commodore and spectum computers and onwards . I also played this stuff as a kid and it would certainly bring back memories . Only a few months back I've installed Batocera which I'm also very happy with .
Thanks again .
@@Tony65892 I didn't do much from the Commodore/Spectrum days, but I did play a couple things there (Frogger is the only one I actively remember playing as a kid).
Most of my retro stuff is from the NES era forward, but I grew up poor, so I would dumpster dive computers, and play whatever they could handle. I remember playing Beast on an old IBM 5150 that I dumpster dived from a bank XD
I love Batocera. I haven't used it a ton, but was very pleased with it. I really need to make a video about live boot drives for Batocera, because I think people think you have to dedicate a machine to it, when really you can just boot from USB, use Batocera, and then reboot into your normal OS after.
I find it amusing that both of your examples of downloading VGA versions instead of CGA or EGA clearly have EGA graphics because the games didn't have VGA versions.
Yeah, I tried to minimize my mistake in the edit, but I should have rerecorded the voice over. I tend to do a 1-take live and then just try to do minimal edits to make it work. It's the only way I can crank out the quantity of videos I do, but you are absolutely right that I flubbed that one hard.
While I used to play Dos games a lot, it's been a solid spell since I've played any outside of the occasional GOG title. My DOS skills are woefully rusty.
I have a couple retro PCs (a 486, a pentium, and a pentium 2, I think), but they are in the basement and I haven't used them since I moved to Oklahoma about 3 years ago. I need to do some more stuff with them, but I'd need a decent camera with an adjustable frame rate to capture things well. I also don't have a CRT anymore, so I'd just have to use an old 4:3 flatscreen.
also, is there a way to just download this collection all downloaded and installed?
You can get the larger torrent that has all the games pre-downloaded, but as I haven't used that version (my internet isn't good enough for that large a download) I can't know if they are installed, or if they are more like "Zip ROMs" of DOS games and the first time you try to launch them eXoDOS handles the install (though I suspect the latter)
my configuration isn't working at all every game starts in a giant window which can't be resized. doesn't matter what I select in config. so everything I've tried so far has been unplayable :(
What resolution is your monitor in? If you are using 4K or ultra-wide, I haven't tested that, but I could see it being a problem.
Can you try changing your monitor resolution to 1920x1080 and then launching eXoDos and see if that changes anything?
(not that it's a permanent fix, but it might help us figure out what is going on and what might need to be configured)
@@CynicPlacebo my monitor res is 1920*1080 doesn't matter what I select in exodos windowed or full, s, m or l it always just makes a big window that I can't even resize.
@@CynicPlacebo Its definitely something not working with exodos, just launched X-com TFTD from steam and it launched fine although weirdly a little laggy which I don't remember happening last time I played but launched the exodos version and giant window that I cant do anything with :( Worst thing is I actually downloaded the full exodos and media pack.
@@Savagetechie does it happen with all games, or just a certain set of games?
Also, what is your OS? (Win 10, 11, Linux, Mac?)
@@Savagetechie It could just be a DosBox setting. Here is some info about that: superuser.com/questions/1425244/increase-dosbox-windowed-size
Got a link? All im pulling up is Exodus from the Bible
My bad. I'll add this to the description too. Thanks for letting me know I hadn't provided it!
www.retro-exo.com/exodos.html
Really cool, but the torrent-based backend kills it for me. I'll just stick to GOG and Dosbox until they allow other means of support, e.g. adding your existing copies. But a very cool source nonetheless. In your vid I saw that they offer the Lord of the Rings FMV version. I've been looking for that for years.
Yeah, I called out the torrent explicitly, as that is definitely non-standard and could cause people concern. It is a clever way to keep all the docs available though. You can do a similar thing on your own with launchbox though.
If I ever get off my butt and finish LocalMess, I have a games repo in there that includes DOS. If you watch the welcome video on my channel page you can get a glimpse of it. I've just been so busy I haven't been working on LocalMess. Eventually I wanted to integrate it like Archive.org where you can emulate all sorts of things in the browser, or just download the file and run it on your local machine. It would basically be an all-in-1 home server for games, videos, pictures, books, etc... I had made some really good progress on it, but then I started wanting to rewrite it all in Node JS so I could use Websockets to do Jackbox style games on your own LAN, and then I sort of lost the drive to make it happen and do a massive rewrite.
We'll see if I can get back on the horse in 2024 :-D
i love torrents.
but its like 800GB lmfao
You don't have to do it all at once. If you do the smaller package, it's only like 5 or 6 gb. Then you can install the games onesie, twosie. That's what I did, so I only have a couple dozen games installed.