Vigil on 17/2/2008 at 14:44
Hello all. A little flagrant self-promotion, if I may:
(
http://boxer.washboardabs.net/)
If you're one of the 5 people in the world who use OS X and want play MS-DOS games, you'll probably know that DOSBox is even more of a pain in the ass to use on the Mac than it is on any other OS. Which is saying something.
I got so frustrated with it that I wrote a little applescript wrapper to try and cure DOSBox's shortcomings and configuration hassles and complete ignorance of OS X's UI conventions; to make it so that I could just click on a damn DOS game to play it.
That effort snowballed into a not-so-little applescript application that I am now releasing publicly. Eventually I want to evolve it into a fully-fledged emulation application but I think it's pretty useful already - particularly if you miss the simplicity of clicking on a Super Nintendo ROM to Just Play It, and if spending 8 hours setting up profiles and fiddling with obscurely-labelled settings for each one of your DOS games isn't your idea of a good time.
So if you're one of those 5 people who want to play DOS games on OS X, give it a try and let me know if it floats your particular boat.
Vigil on 17/2/2008 at 15:21
Oh yes - and if you're fluent in a non-English language and you have the time to translate a couple of pages of interface text for me, please let me know!
jtr7 on 18/2/2008 at 23:19
Pretty cool, Vigil.:thumb:
Vigil on 20/2/2008 at 21:49
<a href="http://boxer.washboardabs.net/">I've since updated it to 0.62</a>, which now automatically detects any CD-ROM you have in your CD/DVD drive and mounts it in DOS, thus saving you
even more valuable time.
Vigil on 17/3/2008 at 01:24
You know how last time I told you I'd saved you even more valuable time? Well that's nothing. The <a href="http://boxer.washboardabs.net">new version of Boxer</a> is clever enough to find any CD-ROM ISOs in a game's folder and mount them automatically for you: preserving you from harrowing minutes spent setting up the bloody things. It also makes your joystick work again, and speaks Finnish. And things.
Get!
june gloom on 17/3/2008 at 01:33
As someone who has friends who are hopeless Mac users this is great for me to foist on them and say "now you assholes have no excuse."
Zerker on 17/3/2008 at 21:17
But... but... what if I like my crazy dos-based menu systems and batch files to automount CDs?
...well, it's already set up anyhow ;) Maybe I'll try it some other time.
Vigil on 31/5/2008 at 17:15
<a href="http://boxer.washboardabs.net/">Boxer has now been updated to version 0.7</a>, which does a number of particularly lovely new things! The most important of which is taking most of the pain and guesswork out of installing DOS games. A full list of the new stuff:
* Install games straight from a CD (or folder of install files) into a new game package
* Better CD-ROM copy-protection support
* Built-in Gravis Ultrasound drivers
* Auto-configuration for a dozen more games
* Support for games that need to be installed into specific subfolders
* More sensible and robust drive-mounting behaviour
* Better fullscreen appearance
* Detection of Windows-only programs
* Fixes for errors under OS X 10.4 and better error-handling overall
* Support for Disk Utility's .CDR disc images
* Clearer and more helpful documentation
* Prettier icons!
Agent Subterfuge on 31/5/2008 at 20:22
Oh man, this is tres cool! Thanks Vigil!
Vigil on 25/10/2008 at 19:04
After a long and courageous battle with release candidateitis, <a href="http://boxer.washboardabs.net/">Boxer has been updated to 0.8. Download it!</a> Unless you don't have a mac, or lack hands with which to interact with your mac, for instance.
This release has a lot of major improvements, all of which are covered in <a href="http://boxer.washboardabs.net/#whats-new">the smarmy what's-new blurb on the website</a>. Long story short: smarter, faster, pointier claws. Also comes with a few sample games, in an effort to get you all to like Commander Keen 4 as much as I do.
See you in another 5 months.
