DOSBox Games From a Thumbdrive?

[MusicallyInspired]

Ah yes, that makes sense.

[Zin]

Hi everyone! First post here after literally years of lurking, spying and hiding in the closet.

I am currently searching for a way to use Collector's installers for the Space Quest and Quest for Glory Collection Series (1997 editions) but cannot complete the installation process because the installers ask for a CD-ROM drive letter. You see, all my Sierra games are actually stored on a Flash USB drive; all files were simply copied to it from the original CDs. The reason why I'm doing this is because my current PC at home has no mechanical drives to speak of. I went for a "No mechanical parts except the fans" approach, i.e. a single 500GB SSD and that's it. I built this computer exclusively for Steam and GOG.

Anyway, my question is: Would this Thumbdrive utility discussed here would enable me to use Collector's installers and choose a specific directory on my USB Flash drive when asked, for instance, to select a CD-ROM drive letter? If not, would there be a way for me to do this without resorting to Daemon Tools or something like that?

This would be especially awesome for games like GK2 and other large titles, where I already have all the discs backed-up on Flash cards.

Many thanks in advance!

[Collector]

If what is on your thumbdrive are one-to-one copies, you could create ISOs of them, install a CD emulator like Daemon Tools and mount the images to use with the installers. Otherwise, you could install the games on another PC with a CD-drive with your original CDs and then transfer the installed files with a thumbdrive. If you use the same paths on both PCs, you won't even have to edit anything.

[Zin]

Thank you! I didn't know it was possible to transfer the installed files directly. That's great, I'll just do that then.

[audiodane]

So how is this coming along? Collector, did you look into cursor placement? That wouldn't help for the character in the lower-right-hand-corner of the screen (it would shift the whole screen up one as the wrap occured), but would solve all the other problems (Acceptably, at least, without requiring something fancier than a script). Did DOSBox ever get revved to support the self-reconfig?

Reviewing this thread again makes me really jealous that you're doing all this-- it's exactly what I was wanting to do for a while and then you just hop up and get'r'done!

Looking forward to the finished product! My own SierraStick was put on hold when you started this thread (why duplicate effort).. no rush though, the way things have been going at work..

[Collector]

It has been put on indefinite hold until the next version of DOSBox. In the mean time, I have gone through the installers to make them more relative path based. The batch files that launch the games is simply called "DOSBox.BAT" for all DOSBox games. The only absolute path in it is the one to DOSBox. Until the new version of DOSBox, you could install a game with the new installers and edit the path to DOSBox in DOSBox.BAT to "..\DOSBox.exe" and drop a copy of DOSBox with its dependencies in the base of the thumbdrive. The DOSBox.BAT is not game specific, so you can edit it once and drop a copy in each game's folder. It would have no menu, so you would have to start each game separately.

[audiodane]

Understood.. Hadn't checked to see if DOSBox had been updated yet, or its anticipated update timeline. I knew that feature had been mentioned for the next update.. Thanks!

[Collector]

It is in the developmental build, but I would not look for the next stable release anytime soon. If you try the new version of any of the installers to put on a thumb drive and modifying the DOSBox path in the DOSBox.BAT, let me know if you have any issues.