12/10/2023 0 Comments Dosbox launcher![]() ![]() The library's zip handling routines are also built into the main executable of the program.Īll my DosBox related routines are packed into a class named FileManager. For zip file extraction, I use the SharpZipLib library from Icsharpcode. DosBox is embedded as a zip file among the application's resources. This way, they only have to install one program. To make thing easier for users, I decided to embed the DosBox installer into my application. To keep the code simple and efficient, I used LINQ where I could. This class handles serialization, icon generation, and everything that's related to the game data management. In the future, if I find a decent icon library for games, I will add an option to have unique icons for dos games.Īll management routines are defined in the class GamesManager. If the program is a Dos program, the icon is simply a built-in command line icon, because dos executables don't contain any icons. The executable's icon is not stored, it's generated dynamically. A Boolean flag indicating that the executable needs to be started trough DosBox. ![]() ![]() The XML is produced with XML serialization. The program stores the game configurations in XML format. I added some internet features to the UI, which allow single click cheat search for the game, Wikipedia lookup, or general Google search. In a future version, I might do a full rewrite using WPF, but for now the Windows Forms UI does its job just fine. I know WPF is way better and it's the future, but I can design and code in Windows Forms much faster, than WPF. The application is written in C#, the user interface is Windows Forms. As I was coding the application I decided to add Dosbox support to the program, because I like DOS games too, and I haven't found a decent front-end for it, so that's how Old games launcher was born. I'm a lazy person, so I decided to write an application that does this job for me. All you have to do is close explorer.exe before starting your game and then execute it, when you have finished gaming. So if you try to run Age of empires or any old game, the colors will be messed up. However these games use only 256 bit color graphics. Modern CPUs can calculate these primitive graphics without any speed problem. This is problematic, because since the arrival of DirectX 10 DirectDraw APIs are only emulated, they don't get real hardware acceleration. The problem with these games is that they use DirectDraw API for rendering graphics. Recently, I've been trying to play some good old games like Diablo I, Starcraft, Age of Empires. Download application and source (external link).Download application and source - 2.4 MB. ![]()
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