I have a rather cherished ancient MS-DOS game HHGTTG [aka, [i]Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy]. A few months ago i discovered i can still use it in Linux, via the program dosemu [DOS Emulator]. This works really well - yay. However i’m now looking into whether i can semi-automate the launching of my game, which would enhance the user-experience, given 1. i am lazy, 2. i have a bad memory, 3. no, i really am very lazy!, 4. I have 38 more of these [get it? :P].
Here’s my current fully manual way [which as stated, works fine]:
01. Install *dosemu*
02. Launch it
03. Note that now */home/gooeygirl/.dosemu* has been created
04. Navigate to */home/gooeygirl/.dosemu/drive_c*
05. Copy completely my *HHGTTG* directory [from [i]/hdd/Software/Windows pgms/OLD Stuff/HHGTTG] into this location
06. In the *dosemu* window, at its *c:\* prompt, observe the directory structure via "*dir*"
07. Access my *HHGTTG* folder therein via "*cd hhgttg*"
08. Observe the directory structure via "*dir*"
09. Launch the game via "*hitchhik*"
10. Yay!! What a hoopy frood.
Here’s v1 of my attempted bash script file, which does successfully launch dosemu, but [as i expected] does not then pass the subsequent DOS commands into the dosemu window for execution:
#!/bin/bash
dosemu
**cd hhgttg**
**hitchhik**
Obviously i did try some online research, but didn’t find anything that seemed relevant… although to be honest i found it difficult to know what keywords would be best to search for in this objective. Does anyone here have any ideas please?
I’d think that once in DOSEMU you have to run a DOS batch file inside it to start the game. Probably the emulator supports an AUTOSTART.BAT or similar at the filesystem folder. I’m pretty sure that DOSBOX does.
Ah, ok, thanks. In that case, at this point, given it’s only 2 DOS commands, there’a probably no point me trying to solve this… i suppose i’ll just need to keep doing it manually.
Btw, well done in “solving” my [not even slightly difficult] riddle rotfl!
As the saying goes, being lazy requires some effort. There’s a filter setting in Gimp that reverts to default every time gimp is started, and I use it a lot with a different setting, so obviously I looked at:
Changing the filter settings default: there’s no such thing in gimp settings.
Changing the filter’s default: nope, it seems to be “hardwired” at build time, or whatever.
Create a macro: yes, I suppose, but I’d have to learn macros in gimp, and I’m to lazy for a “only-use-once” investment of my time.
Solution (ugly, wasteful* workaround): change KDE window settings to not allow closing the gimp window (there’s no close button in the title bar). So I only set the filter once a each boot, and that take days or weeks to happen.
(* but with 24 GB RAM in this box it’s not relevant in practice)
On Thu, 31 Aug 2017 04:06:01 +0000, GooeyGirl wrote:
> Hi
>
> I have a rather cherished ancient MS-DOS game HHGTTG [aka, -Hitchhikers
> Guide to the Galaxy-]. A few months ago i discovered i can still use it
> in Linux, via the program -dosemu- [DOS Emulator]. This works really
> well - yay. However i’m now looking into whether i can semi-automate the
> launching of my game, which would enhance the user-experience, given 1.
> i am lazy, 2. i have a bad memory, 3. no, i really am -very- lazy!, 4. I
> have 38 more of these [get it? :P].
Something that might work as well (or better) is to use the frotz Z-code
interpreter; grab the data files off the original distribution, and point
frotz at it.
I believe it’s available in a repo on software.opensuse.org - but the
search seems to be broken at the moment.
Thanks Jim. I’ve never heard of that before so will be interested to give it a try. As you said though, the Search is still broken; returns a 404 error when i try searching for either frotz Z-code interpreter or just frotz. I assume this is collateral damage from the recent/current oS server failure?
Thanks Wolfi. I installed frotz into one of my TW VMs, via the One-Click file downloaded from your link. I read the relevant files in /usr/share/doc/packages/frotz [that was a challenge even just to find where any of its files were]. I re-read Jim’s…
grab the data files off the original distribution, and point frotz at it.
No matter how much i scratched my head & rubbed my eyes, i remain absolutely clueless about what to do.
I think it’s best that i just stay with dosemu for HHGTTG, given that at least i can successfully make that work.
On Sat, 09 Sep 2017 10:06:02 +0000, GooeyGirl wrote:
> Thanks Wolfi. I installed -frotz- into one of my TW VMs, via the
> One-Click file downloaded from your link. I read the relevant files in
> -/usr/share/doc/packages/frotz- [that was a challenge even just to find
> where any of its files were]. I re-read Jim’s…
>>
>> grab the data files off the original distribution, and point frotz at
>> it.
>>
>>
> No matter how much i scratched my head & rubbed my eyes, i remain
> absolutely clueless about what to do.
>
> I think it’s best that i just stay with -dosemu- for HHGTTG, given
> that at least i can successfully make that work.
As I recall, you either launch Frotz in the directory or you run frotz
and supply the data file on the command-line. It’s been a little while
(and I don’t have the files handy at the moment - which might be
surprising), but my memory was that it was pretty straightforward.
If I have time later today, I’ll see if I can dig up the data files
myself and install it.
Does your game run on DOSBOX?
It has some useful options for configuring and auto-running apps, usual configuration file is ~/.dosbox/dosbox-{version}.conf, if you only care about one app you can edit that.
You can make custom copy of original conf file and pass to dosbox via -conf {path to conf file} parameter.
There is an autoexec section at the very end of configuration file.
This is how it looks like in my config, I use DOS navigator as my gateway app:
[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
# You can put your MOUNT lines here.
mount c /home/ugnius/.dosbox/drive_c
c:
cd dn
dn.com
Here mount is used to mount folder with all my apps as a C drive.
For complete laziness, you could make a fourty-two.desktop file and put it in ~/.local/share/applications.
On Mon, 11 Sep 2017 15:49:49 +0000, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 09 Sep 2017 10:06:02 +0000, GooeyGirl wrote:
>
>> Thanks Wolfi. I installed -frotz- into one of my TW VMs, via the
>> One-Click file downloaded from your link. I read the relevant files in
>> -/usr/share/doc/packages/frotz- [that was a challenge even just to find
>> where any of its files were]. I re-read Jim’s…
>>>
>>> grab the data files off the original distribution, and point frotz at
>>> it.
>>>
>>>
>> No matter how much i scratched my head & rubbed my eyes, i remain
>> absolutely clueless about what to do.
>>
>> I think it’s best that i just stay with -dosemu- for HHGTTG, given
>> that at least i can successfully make that work.
>
> As I recall, you either launch Frotz in the directory or you run frotz
> and supply the data file on the command-line. It’s been a little while
> (and I don’t have the files handy at the moment - which might be
> surprising), but my memory was that it was pretty straightforward.
>
> If I have time later today, I’ll see if I can dig up the data files
> myself and install it.
Yep, it’s just:
frotz <filename>
You just need the data file for the game (that’s what I was trying to say
but apparently failing at ). If you’ve got it on your system to run
in DOSBOX, then you already have it with the DOS executable.
As I suggested, you might also take a look at kwest, which is based on frotz but has a KDE(3) based GUI. I.e. you click on the file open button and choose the data file in the KDE file dialog.
Never used frotz directly myself, on Linux at least. (I did use it on my Amiga, that port comes with a GUI as well, one of the games I ran in it was HHGTTG of course… )
). If you’ve got it on your system to run