We are starting with the emulation of dos, because it is the easiest one to start when it comes to emulation in my opinion.
For dos emulation you want to use http://www.dosbox.com/
It is used by GoG, because it is easy to configure a "customized" exe for any game, so you don´t have to change the options around. The most recent version has a lot of auto detect systems in it, so you don´t even need to make customized exes.
1. Setup
The setup is super easy. Just install dosbox where-ever you like. Run it once and you are already done.
2. Starting a game
There are 2 ways to start a game, we will first look at the easier one.
Simply get the game you want to play and drag and drop the exe of the game on your dosbox exe. It works in 90% of all cases.
Way number 2 is that you mount a drive as your "dos harddrive"
To do this you will first have to figure out where your games are located. You can do this by navigating to where the game is installed. Then simply click in the top row where your directory structure is shown and you can copy whatever you have there.
In my example it would be: "D:\Emulatoren\DOSBox-0.74\Games"
Now, to mount this in your dosbox you would simply type in:
mount C D:\Emulatoren\DOSBox-0.74\Games
Now to see whether it worked or not you can try to type in C:\ which then hopefully brings you to the now mounted C drive. Next type in "dir" to see what is in C:\. If everything went right, you should see the contents of the folder. Next thing you need to do is figuring out what is the executable you want to use. There are 3 different kinds. The most common one is exe as we still know it, but in earlier days people where also using bat and doswig executable. So look for one of these 3. When you found one, type in whatever it is called for example game.exe and the game should start.
3. Advanced options
Some games might run too slow (or even too fast) and you have 2 ways of improving the speed:
- Changing cycle speed
This changes the processor power that is being used by dosbox from your system. You can change it by pressing
ctrl+F12 for speedup and ctrl+F11 for slow down
- Frameskipping
This simply skips frames. Be aware that this might make animations look choppy.
Ctrl+F8 for increased frame skip and ctrl+F7 for a decreased one
I would ALWAYS go for cycle speed over frame skipping unless you have a really awful computer.
-With Alt+Enter you go into fullscreen mode and back
There is a file called "dosbox 0.74 options.bat" if you start this you can do some settings but the important part is at the end. There is something called [autoexec]. Everything that is underneath this will automatically run when you start the dosbox. So instead of typing "mount C D:\Emulatoren\DOSBox-0.74\Games" every time you start the dosbox, you can simply add it after autoexec and it will be run for you.
This would also be the place to mount a CD drive is needed. You would do the same as you did for mounting a hard drive, but you would write the following instead:
mount D E:\ -t cdrom
Where E would be the letter of your preferably virtual CD drive that you mounted the CD in.
Now for the games:
I really like http://www.abandonia.com/ because they offer games that are no longer under any copyright.
Notable dos-games that I really like include, but are not limited to:
Albion
Blood/Doom
Carmageddon
Heroes of Might and Magic
Jazz Jackrabbit
Populus
Rise of the Triad
Syndicate
KKND
For dos emulation you want to use http://www.dosbox.com/
It is used by GoG, because it is easy to configure a "customized" exe for any game, so you don´t have to change the options around. The most recent version has a lot of auto detect systems in it, so you don´t even need to make customized exes.
1. Setup
The setup is super easy. Just install dosbox where-ever you like. Run it once and you are already done.
2. Starting a game
There are 2 ways to start a game, we will first look at the easier one.
Simply get the game you want to play and drag and drop the exe of the game on your dosbox exe. It works in 90% of all cases.
Way number 2 is that you mount a drive as your "dos harddrive"
To do this you will first have to figure out where your games are located. You can do this by navigating to where the game is installed. Then simply click in the top row where your directory structure is shown and you can copy whatever you have there.
In my example it would be: "D:\Emulatoren\DOSBox-0.74\Games"
Now, to mount this in your dosbox you would simply type in:
mount C D:\Emulatoren\DOSBox-0.74\Games
Now to see whether it worked or not you can try to type in C:\ which then hopefully brings you to the now mounted C drive. Next type in "dir" to see what is in C:\. If everything went right, you should see the contents of the folder. Next thing you need to do is figuring out what is the executable you want to use. There are 3 different kinds. The most common one is exe as we still know it, but in earlier days people where also using bat and doswig executable. So look for one of these 3. When you found one, type in whatever it is called for example game.exe and the game should start.
3. Advanced options
Some games might run too slow (or even too fast) and you have 2 ways of improving the speed:
- Changing cycle speed
This changes the processor power that is being used by dosbox from your system. You can change it by pressing
ctrl+F12 for speedup and ctrl+F11 for slow down
- Frameskipping
This simply skips frames. Be aware that this might make animations look choppy.
Ctrl+F8 for increased frame skip and ctrl+F7 for a decreased one
I would ALWAYS go for cycle speed over frame skipping unless you have a really awful computer.
-With Alt+Enter you go into fullscreen mode and back
There is a file called "dosbox 0.74 options.bat" if you start this you can do some settings but the important part is at the end. There is something called [autoexec]. Everything that is underneath this will automatically run when you start the dosbox. So instead of typing "mount C D:\Emulatoren\DOSBox-0.74\Games" every time you start the dosbox, you can simply add it after autoexec and it will be run for you.
This would also be the place to mount a CD drive is needed. You would do the same as you did for mounting a hard drive, but you would write the following instead:
mount D E:\ -t cdrom
Where E would be the letter of your preferably virtual CD drive that you mounted the CD in.
Now for the games:
I really like http://www.abandonia.com/ because they offer games that are no longer under any copyright.
Notable dos-games that I really like include, but are not limited to:
Albion
Blood/Doom
Carmageddon
Heroes of Might and Magic
Jazz Jackrabbit
Populus
Rise of the Triad
Syndicate
KKND