DOSBox Launcher

The DOSBox Launcher by Xyem provides a global launcher for all DOSBox based games, automatically setting up unionfs in ~/.gog for user-specific savegame and configuration. Currently it is a rather primitive shell script that takes $1 and $2 variables for defining the GOG to be played and configuration file.

##Usage gog-dosbox-launcher [GAMENAME] [CONFIGURATION FILE]

Both GAMENAME and CONFIGURATION FILE must be defined, there are no default values. GAMENAME must also correspond to the directory name of the game as it appears in /opt/gog, while the CONFIGURATION FILE is the full name of the .conf file in /opt/gog/GAMENAME/dosbox. So if I wanted to play Heroes of Might and Magic I would run gog-dosbox-launcher heroes_of_might_and_magic homm.conf as /opt/gog/heroes_of_might_and_magic is the full path to the HOMM installation directory and /opt/gog/heroes_of_might_and_magic/dosbox/homm.conf is the full path to the configuration file.

##Savegames and modding The gog-dosbox-launcher uses unionfs to store volatile data in your home directory. Unionfs is used to create a 'copy' of the game's base data at runtime in ~/.gog/GAMENAME, preserving all data that has been written or modified while the game is running. As such, savegames are stored here.

Unionfs also won't attempt to overwrite any data already present in ~/.gog/GAMENAME. So if a mod for a game requires that files be replaced or placed in the game's installation directory, they should be placed here. Alternative configuration files may be created in the same way, although the user will need to cp and chmod config files from /opt/gog/GAMENAME/base first unless they wish to create them from scratch.

##Todo Currently the DOSBox launcher still needs work. Absolute names for $1 and $2 will quickly grow tiring for the user so these need to be replaced with more intelligent command line parameters or perhaps even supplemented by a simple GUI.

None of this is particularly important until well after the main project announcement, however.