Ditch the headache. Play your favorite DOS games on the Steam Deck with DOSBox!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ค. 2024
- Add your favorite DOS games to the Steam Deck with DOSBox! I'm really proud of this tutorial and I hope you find it useful.
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00:00 - Intro
00:20 - Install Heroic Game Launcher
00:51 - Install your games
01:13 - Install DOSBox & Flatseal
01:38 - Give DOSBox permissions
02:24 - Add game to Steam Client
03:11 - Specifying DOSBox conf file
03:33 - Launch the game
04:12 - Advanced method: make a shell script
04:50 - Write the script
05:47 - More on configuration files
06:34 - Finding the correct path names
07:43 - Fixing sound in some games
08:09 - What about Luxtorpeda or BoxTron?
#DOSGaming #DOSBox #ClassicPCGames - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
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I saw people saying the dos games wouldn't work. I knew there was a native version of Dosbox. Glad you made a tutorial. Wish Steam could do this automatically for their installs of steam dos games instead of using proton to run the windows version of dosbox.
Actually I found out that earthworm Jim works perfectly except the Linux script somehow pass to DOSbox the working directory and mess the running command with the config file. Probably never checked because some game worked perfectly.
Just about every DOS game ever written has a dosbox config written for it. Dude called eXo has been making them for just about every DOS game ever made. They run in one of about four versions of dosbox under Windows. No idea which ones might not work under Linux, but all the major stuff certainly does. If you've got a fair number of GOG's DOS games, you've almost certainly already used eXo's configs since GOG tends to, uh, "borrow" them wholesale without crediting him or his project.
He said he's not salty though, since they kinda can't. He's … put more than config files out there. He's not hiding it, but they can't exactly shout him out or anything in the credits! Still, the configs being out there means any game you've got, be it from GOG or otherwise, if it's DOS you can probably make it work.
I prefer the DosBox-Pure core on retroarch, that way I get streamlined gamepad controls, savestates and rewind. Plus setting that up makes it more portable so it works wherever retroarch works. You can even install a Windows 98 image and run Win98 games on DosBox-Pure.
me too
now that's a tutorial id like to see. so long as you can have each game show up on steam as an individual game for steam input remapping of course.
DosBox-Pure is great when it works. However, some very rare titles I have tried work better with DosBox-X. While I do prefer Pure, it is helpful to know how to get around in regular DosBox and DosBox-X.
I may try that, this seems far too complicated to get dos games to work for me
I'd pay for a tutorial that goes through this in detail all the way to configuring controllers per game.
Good walkthrough. Steam is not an end all but having linux as the base opens the door to sooo many possibilities. Folks like you make the community great!
I finally got to order my Steam Deck and it is being prepared for shipment. The DOS games I want to play on my Steam Deck are; all the Zork games, incl. Return to Zork, Zork Nemesis and Zork Grand Inquisitor; The Flight of the Amazon Queen; Simon the Sorcerer Series; Beneath the Steel Sky; Broken Sword Series; Space Quest series; Kings Quest series; and Dungeon Keeper 1 & 2.
Im going to save someone some headache getting a game to work fullscreen on the steam deck. Here is your dosbox conf.
fullscreen=true
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=desktop
windowresolution=800x1280
output=overlay
scaler=normal2x forced
Enjoy.
"What DOS games do you want to play on your Steam Deck?"
Well i have all the old tomb raider games in my gog library so i would like to try those out.
Sweet! Always wonder why we need flatseal even if we're not installing on SD card, this video explained rigth to the point! Thanks so much!
Now I can play Mega Man DOS on the go
Games I'd play: Little Big Adventure 1/2, Jazz Jackrabbit, Commander Keen
Method I'd use: RetroArch, Dosbox Pure core, Steam rom manager
Did you know the "little big adventure" games got ported to windows by the devs. The steam versions (at least)
@@retrochomp yeah! It's also been renamed slightly to Twinsens Little Big Adventure too. Thanks for reminding me, I should throw it on the wishlist!
sooo, now I'm curious about LAN in DOS games on two steam decks :)
Even in older windows games the lack of IPX is probaply quite a pain to solve. Packet loss over wireless is going to kick some things too. Quite a challenge.
@@thoreberlin Doxbox features built in IPX emulation over TCPIP
"ipxnet startserver" and "ipxnet connect xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx"
can be typed manually at prompt or added at the bottom of CONF file
@@danielberrett2179 if there is a tool to automate this before launch this could be a solution. But i doubt getting multiple people to edit conf files in desktop mode on the fly is a much enjoyable experience ;) if done, i'd like to see 8 player shadow warrior deathmatch with nukes in close combat.
So got distracted by the Epic Pinball music theme playing over part of this video....
I have been following this channel since I got my Steam Deck and THIS VIDEO is exactly what I have been waiting for. Thank you! I struggled for about 3 weeks with Heroic Games Launcher before a later update improved compatibility so now most games run. However, I still have issues with some Windows 95/98 games like Warcraft 2 and Diablo 1 and Interstate 76. I imagine these will get fixed in time as more people get their Decks. I would highly recommend people actually use the Heroic Bash Launcher instead of manually adding the executables to Steam. Heroic Bash Launcher automatically imports the artwork to make it look nicer and works with your non-DOS games too on GOG/EPIC.
You could get Diablo running with the native linux version of devilutionX
@@danielberrett2179 Yes I did get DevilutionX working too but I was hoping to get the native install to work
For anyone new to DOS who would like to spend a lot of time playing DOS games, it's well worth trying the Norton Commander. This was the famous twin-pane blue file manager that provides a simple and powerful semi-gui interface that has been cloned dozens of times by projects like Midnight Commander. I have it running automatically in my dosbox autoexec lines, and use it to browse through games in one continual session. It was great back in the day, and it's still great to use now.
To elaborate on that, the name for user interfaces that take over the terminal as a whole like Norton Commander does is "TUI."
CLI - Command Line Interface (bash, powershell, ipython, text adventures, etc.)
TUI - Terminal User Interface (ncdu, htop, vim, Norton Commander, etc.)
GUI - Graphical User Interface (the kind most people will ever use)
Some applications also support or embed multiple kinds of interfaces, like Emacs which has a TUI and GUI, or Norton Commander which integrates a CLI.
And a lot of programs also have no real user interface, and are meant to be used from a CLI or some other application.
Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk.
THANK YOU! :D
I also managed to get DOS games running on the Steam Deck through RetroArch. I just had to download the DOSBox Pure Core for it. Note that the version of RetroArch I downloaded was from the flatpak, not through Steam itself; the Steam version doesn't seem to allow for the download of the DOS core.
Any core can be added to the Steam version by downloading the cores/info files separately, or pulling them from a standalone install, and dumping them in the steam retroarchs core folder.
I like running DOS games through RetroArch. Not only it's easier and faster, it also binds controller automatically and has its on-screen keyboard that can be opened with a key combo.
Do you think you could do a video for helpful advance tricks for the steam deck? Maybe short tricks on how to park or disable cores, maybe your favorite third party plugins?
Great tutorial. Personally, I'm using the DOSBox-pure core on Retroarch and use it to play, mostly, action games
Great video Gardiner. Thinking outside the box (pun intended) I'm having some success with DOSBox-X running a simple GUI called DosShell. My DOS games are in a "dos" folder on the desktop. In game mode, once DOSBox-X is running, a simple batch file called x.bat runs and loads up DOSShell. All my DOS games are presented in the usual scrollable way and can be selected and run with a double press of R1. Exiting a game returns me to DOSShell ready for another game or a DOS quit.
If I'm not mistaken, for sound, the Dosbox config file in the games' directory can be edited to specify stuff like the IRQ for that specific game, which overrides the Dosbox default, so it should be possible to make sound work for any game if you know what the game expects.
Thank you!
You rock dude :)
9:03 "What DOS games do you want to play on your Steam Deck?"
Touhou 1 through 5, but not so much that I've put any work towards it!
That is, beyond figuring out that I'll probably need DOSBox-X for PC-98 emulation.
there is a pc 9800 core on retroarch
Doom, Blood, Dark Forces, Redneck rampage, Warcraft 2, CnC Red alert and other games that I can't recall right now
Perfect!
Great video, love your stuff. Question why are you using a dead cat in studio?
I will vote for EmuDeck (I think it is EmulationStation for the Steam Deck using DosBox-Pure core on retroarch). If we go with your method with scripting files, I will suggest to create a scripting file that creates the scripting file for every Dosbox games that is installed under a certain folder. I know it's tricky with Dosbox with different extensions (bat, bin, exe), but it isn't impossible to create a good script for it. It just takes some time :)
Star Wars: Dark Forces? Thanks for this needed video and for all of your great content! Does the process work differently on the Steam Deck if it is a game in your Steam library? I'm struggling with Star Wars: Dark Forces, which I downloaded from my Steam library. Valve lists the game as "Playable" on Deck with the need to input text and configure video settings, but the game seems misclassified since I can't even get it to launch. The game starts to load DosBox and then crashes. (FYI - I had the problem on both the stable channels of the OS and Steam and the beta channels.)
@Fart Zilla Thanks! I tried a version of Proton 5 and it worked! Now if i could just figure out how to open a door using SD controls...
Wow… dos box days.. lol.. I thought I left that time period Forever!
Masters of Magic - that is the most important dos game
Interesting approach, i will give that a try.
Maybe that will help me with a lot of incompatiblies / black screens for dozens of my DOS games from GOG.
With heroic launcher only, i can only play a handful of games from my GOG collection 😞
Be sure to have compatibility set to none (disabled) in the game properties. I accidentally made it enabled (Proton Experimental) and the dosbox didn't run because of that. I was having headaches from trying to fix it and then I found out it's the compatibility.
I prefer DOSbox Pure in RetroArch and ScummVM's flatpak for my classic DOS and adventure games. Both can be used in gaming mode.
OMG OMG OMG! Got my reservation email today! The estimator said 7/11.
Great vid! 👊🏻
Maybe a dumb question, but…Dos games were usually for keyboard & mouse. Does DosBox change this to Steamdeck controls, is that manually required, or straight up a no go?
First thing I will try to install on my Steam Deck will be "Ultima Underworld 1 & 2".
so if you already have purchased dos games, you have to buy them again to use heroic installer?
If only i could get this one xp era game working.
my game launches but then says it I must enter a cd in the CD-Rom drive to play the game. Is there a fix for that?
Av8b super vga was my fav flight sim in the dos days…it would be great to get it to work on my soon to come steamdeck…with my virpil cmos too…hard to believe the whole game came on 2 floppy disks….I think it will run on dosbox…
Never heard crunch bang, I always heard "shuh-bang." Great vid though! Any tips on getting controller support through dosbox?
What do you think about letting retroarch do dosbox?
For some reason I hadn't considered using RetroArch
@@gardiner_bryant using bosbox pure for a better experience
i would say don't use just normal dosbox use dosbox pure from retroarch it is a better version auto mounting cd's better controller support & opening a zip as a folder & running games from that & because it uses retroarch the settings are easy to find & change but dosbox normal is still good with pure you can even run windows 9x on it
I've never heard a Shebang called CrunchBang
I hate to say it but I'd start by asking if the game is available on another platform before trying to get a DOS game going. All three here are (Playstation/SNES/MegaDrive).
Many games I got on gog don't load or crash after the cut scenes. Dungeon keeper, dungeon keeper 2 don't play and crash, startrek elite forces....many several more.... Only gog games that has dual install windows and Linux work
Cool if it can run all the old DOS software like Lotus 1-2-3, DOSSHELL, and WordPerfect 5.1 in DOSbox
Some of the very best dos games ever without a doubt !!
why has the steam deck not Kate preinstalled?
Because it's not really necessary for its main usecase.
It's a system streamlined for gaming and most people might not even want to go into desktop mode, ever.
It doesn't even come with the man command installed and you could argue that KDE Plasma and Firefox being installed by default is already bloat enough.
i figured out an way to install mugem on linux...
well, actually i didnt i just found an mugem instalation that worked on linux and replaced the config files with the configs of another mugem...
i also figured out that most renpy games compiled exclusively for windows should work as well, you just need one working version and do the same trick, or open the game as if it was an project.
im not sure if that explanation was clear
I've tried multiple games and managed to run them. Although, in desktop mode, it's in windowed small screen, but the buttons work correctly. In gaming mode it's in full screen but the buttons don't work...Anyone got a fix for this?
What day did you reserve your steam deck? Mine was on July 17th, 2021 and I’m just trying to ballpark when my email might come in : )
I ordered within the first hour and a half of reservations opening.
Thanks for the response!
Please help. I don't see a .bat file for the game Bio Menace. Which file should I use??
[name of game].exe is another one.
WOW
Failed to get Epic Pinball and Jill 'o The Jungle working this way. :[
Can't seem to get Dinosaur Safari to work. This has gotten me farther, though!
hoping this works for wolfenstein 3d and star wars dark forces
The vanilla dosbox is very broken on modern systems. Why not use the much better dosbox staging?
even better dosbox pure
Instead I prefer following a study that actually gets me some food on the table, if you don't mind..
For some reason, NONE of my DOS games play at all in either Heroic or Lutris. They just complain about missing libraries.
Dosboxpure only needs the zip file of the entire game and works way better. To think you have to do all this to play dos games on a handheld with no physical keyboard per game. Ridiculous.
I want to play my copy of DUNE2 on the Steam Deck.
*buys over 400$ device* Time to play DOS games 💪💪💪💪💪
1:26 tchx84
84 written, but 64 said
can you do F1GP2 by Geoff Crammond Please G
Why not waydroid?
Just got to say, I never heard it be called a crunch bang, I've always heard it be called a shebang.
Edit: I just looked it up, and Wikipedia says that in Unix systems (which includes Linux), it has been called a shebang, sharp-exclamation, sha-bang, hashbang, pound-bang, and hash-pling. The only thing that comes up when I search Crunchbang is Crunchbang Linux, a discontinued Linux Distro. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebang_(Unix)
retroarch does this, launchbox on windows does this. its not a steam deck exclusive.
i want a guide to launch them from emudeck, i don't want more clutter on steam....
Has anybody tried GTA1 Dos?
What if GOG made a GOGDeck 🤔
Why would they?
Then I would find a way to play steam games on it..
I can't find the 'smash' button.
Good guide, but to much tinkering. As a pc dev it is easy yes but for everyone else it’s to complicated
We should have these automated scripts that make the install easy and accessible for everyone. Which Github repo is a good place for sharing and developing them?
First
You speak wayyyyy too quickly for a tutorial. I know we can slow things down on youtube but you need to slow down and post the command lines on the screen so we can see it. Its a pain to follow your tutorial otherwise. Slow it down. Regardless, thank you.
Just slowdown playback speed
This tutorial should be for installing GOG games, a MUCH easier way of playing DOS games are to dump your collection after Emudeck is installed into /roms/dos/ and let EmulationStation launch it using DOSBox pure. Then you highlight .exe and go.
I can’t get INTERESTATE 76 from GOGÓ from heroic !! =(