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schellingb / dosbox-pure

DOSBox Pure is a new fork of DOSBox built for RetroArch/Libretro aiming for simplicity and ease of use.
GNU General Public License v2.0
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CD-ROM mounting #114

Closed 71knight closed 3 years ago

71knight commented 3 years ago

Great program! I am using the retroarch core. But do you think you can make it to where we can load content like .bin .cue ISO directly without having to zip the file with a .txt file included in it. Also are you going to include MUNT mt-32 emulation in your build eventually? And how come I cannot type config-wcd to make a dosbox config file that I can tweak. Thank you!

sweatypickle commented 3 years ago

MUNT is included already. DOSBox cfg files aren't supported at this time.

71knight commented 3 years ago

MUNT is included already. DOSBox cfg files aren't supported at this time.

Oh wow! I thought only soundfonts were supported. I'll try to see if I can get it working....Thanks!

schellingb commented 3 years ago

If you start an EXE file through RetroArch, any ISO/CUE files that are in the same directory (or any subdirectory) should automatically get mounted (and if there are multiple disc images, they would become selectable in the Disc Control menu). If the disc image is somewhere unrelated to the game EXE, you can use the Disc Control menu to load any disc image file at runtime as well. There is experimental support for m3u/m3u8 files, though currently that can only load disc images and not mount drives. Maybe it would make sense to extend the m3u file support to allow the first entry to be just a directory path which would get mounted as the C: drive?

As for your other question, dosbox.conf file support and the config tool have been removed from this core. The idea is to have as many things work out of the box and do every detailed customization through the core options. Support for loading conf files might still come at some point. But then it would be something like automatically load any conf file found in the mounted C: drive.

71knight commented 3 years ago

Thanks for your help...

mrmatteastwood commented 3 years ago

Hello, @schellingb or anybody really... I got myself the CD ROM ISO for "The Patrician" from archive.org. Now how do I play it in DOSBox Pure? When I launch the ISO, I (expectedly) get to browse the contents of the CD, and I can also run the installer and install the game on C:.

However, next time I open RetroArch, obviously, C: is blank again and I need to reinstall the game from scratch.

What am I missing? Where is the game installing itself to?

schellingb commented 3 years ago

So when you mount a ISO file named "mygame.iso", it will mount the CD ROM as drive D: and drive C: will be an empty hard disk drive that gets written out into the RetroArch saves directory as "mygame.save.zip".

Now next time you load "mygame.iso" it should get back whatever you saved into C: from that "mygame.save.zip". Curious why that seems to not happen for you. When you go in RetroArch to Settings -> Directory -> Save Files it will tell you where they're stored. Can you look for a ".save.zip" file with the same name as your The Patrician ISO? And can you look into it what is in it?

Truth is, installing games into the save file is not really ideal. This is a flaw of DOSBox Pure's approach that I somehow would like to improve the user experience but have no idea how. Currently you would need to manually take the installed "mygame.save.zip" and - without running it once - move it away and add the ISO file to the ZIP to make something similar to a game rom.

mrmatteastwood commented 3 years ago

Hey @schellingb, thanks so much for your quick reply! :-) I'm sure I'm just doing it wrong, then. You're right, the file patrician.save.zip does indeed appear in my saves directory.

However, when performing the following steps, the game won't launch. Instead, the start menu shows me all the executable files on the CD image:

  1. Re-open RetroArch
  2. Main Menu > Load Content
  3. Navigate to patrician.iso
  4. Launch with DOSBox Pure

These 4 steps are the same I did to install the game in the first place. Are the steps to then run it different from that?

Inside the .zip I find the correctly installed game folder.

btw, I really like that approach of putting the installed files into a .save.zip. file. I just think you'd need to add a step by step guide to the manual for dummies like me ;-)

mrmatteastwood commented 3 years ago

Quick follow-up, if you want to reproduce this issue, these are my steps:

  1. Get Patrician CD-ROM ISO from here: https://archive.org/details/the-patrician-msdos-cdrom
  2. Launch RA
  3. Main Menu > Load Content
  4. Navigate to .iso, launch with DOSBox Pure
  5. From start menu, select D:\START.EXE
  6. Install game to C:\ and exit installer
  7. Quit RA
  8. Repeat steps 2-4

If I understood you correctly, the game should now run properly (or, ideally, the executables from inside the .save.zip file should show, not the ones in the ISO).

EDIT: WAIT, hang on I'm a moron. I installed it to C:\PATR instead of C:. I'll try this again later today and give you an update on what happens then.

schellingb commented 3 years ago

The second time I load the .iso I get the start menu with the game already installed on C: and it lists C:\TP\PATRIZ.EXE which I can use to start the game (I installed into C:\TP). No need to install it again.

mrmatteastwood commented 3 years ago

Aaaaand I figured it out. I reinstalled the game again and this time, indeed, I got all the executables from the ISO, and the ones from the installation in C:\ at the top. Honestly, I probably simply didn't see them before because this game has such a huge list of executables and I was a bit confused about the whole process to begin with.

Thanks so much for your input, it's much appreciated!

schellingb commented 3 years ago

Closing this for now. If there's still a problem with mounting CD images with the latest version, please open a new issue.