DOS and Windows DATs for DOSBOx-PURE playlists.

[alexb3d]

Hi @RobLoach
I come with another request for the playlist.

DOS emulation in RetroArch was precarious, DOSBox core and SVN were very complicated and buggy. I think its existence is to serve as a base for PURE.
DOSBox PURE is innovative, easy to use and .zip compatible, which makes it easy to make playlists. But PURE has something else, it is compatible with Windows 9x, so almost any pre XP game can be run.

Will it be possible to add these DATs to the database to get the names right and start adding the thumbnails?

Redump "IBM PC compatible".
from 1988 there are DOS games on CD, and since 1993 almost all of them were released on CD and many of the old ones were re-released. And Windows 9x games were on CD.

TOSEC has Floppy disc TOSEC/IBM/PC Compatibles and CD TOSEC-ISO/IBM/PC Compatibles/CD

The Good Old Days, is a preservation project (and I think the only one) of floppy disk images of DOS games, similar to Redump.
https://www.goodolddays.net/diskimages/

eXoDOS shares preconfigured files, these packages give problems in PURE, but considering the fame of this one in particular, it will possibly make it compatible. it has an important database, but no dats.
The names of the games are like "Secret of Monkey Island, The (1990).zip", then they will not display correctly and will not support thumbnail download. If there is no other option, I can make an xml/dat, fix the names and upload it here for the database.

Total DOS Collection shares native files, no preconfiguration. It has a giant database, although it is a mess of organization, it would be important to have it. I already saw that there is a DOS database for this project, but it doesn't load for me, when I select DOS it doesn't recognize the names. If I try to load the DAT from libretro or the TDC page, RetroArch closes.

[RobLoach]

We currently index Total DOS Collection, as it provides a .dat with CRCs for the executable files. The script that's used to port it is over at https://github.com/robloach/libretro-database-dos .

Would love to be able to index the .zip files. It is tricky though, because a .zip file can change size, even when its contents is the same.

[alexb3d]

The Good Old Days verifies the SHA1 and CRCs, this is the line of each .img:
<rom name="000001_battle_isle_2/disk1.img" sha1="40899c1316e7b924e2e17812ce64951a73339c36" crc="C88F956B" size="1474560" status="good" />
The problem I see with them, that the only source is in .7z and PURE is not compatible, it would have to be compressed as .zip. Maybe it will support .7z in the future, but I doubt it.

Redump IBM-PC is vital, because many DOS games were released on CD, or had a later release, but are present. Windows, almost everything.
TOSEC, I don't think it's worth having, because it supports Floppy and CD.

If this is too complicated, can one option be to make lists by name only? In order to have the correct names and download the thumbnails. The list of DOS and Windows 9x games is huge, bigger than all the consoles and arcade games handled by RetroArch.

About Total DOS Collection. They have 3 types, executable zip, installable zip and disk images. The Floppy ones are taken from The Good Old Days and the CD's from Redump.

The DAT, that's the one I used and I got the same error.
The page you gave me has two links, the top one works the bottom one does not.

The first error I had was doing a Scan Directory to a folder with The Secret of Monkey Island, I have 18 versions, none listed in DOS, but it opens a ScummVM list with 4 games.
If you scan manually without DAT, it shows the names of the zip files without correcting.
I tried a Manual Scan, with the original DAT from TDC (45MB) and it closes RetroArch, I tried it with the DAT (3.9MB) you gave me and it closes too.

With Jazz Jackrabbit, Scan Directory works, but I found two bugs.
I downloaded all the TDC ones, there are 10 zip of them.

• Version 1.3 shows it twice, it takes the file FILE0001.EXE as the Christmas chapter.
• The only version (Installer) does not show it.

[RobLoach]

The Secret of Monkey Island

Probably best to use ScummVM for ScummVM games. The script that builds the ScummVM dat is over at https://github.com/RobLoach/libretro-database-scummvm , sourced from Grubby's Adventure Pack.

With Jazz Jackrabbit, Scan Directory works

The script to detect the correct executable is hit or miss, but for most games, it picks the correct executable. You'll see that it skips a bunch of file names that are setup or installer scripts at https://github.com/RobLoach/libretro-database-dos/blob/master/lib/rejectNames.json .

Redump IBM-PC

We could add that in, but the problem is that these are the raw disc media files. If you run Redump's Jazz Jackrabbit CD in DOSBoxPure, for instance, what will happen?

retroarch -L dosbox_pure.so "Jazz Jackrabbit (USA) (Rerelease).bin"

In general, you want to run the installed copy of it, not the installer itself.

[alexb3d]

I think we have a confusion. I apologize, I'm going to be a little long.
It's not about which is a better option or what I would like to execute, those are subjective issues. I am referring specifically to two points.

There is a lack of playlists for PURE and the one that is there is malfunctioning.

Probably best to use ScummVM for ScummVM games.

To run a game in ScummVM you need to prepare the files. You have the easy option, get a torrent or you have the official option, perform a series of steps to set them up. In addition to this, in RetroArch you have to perform several steps in order to generate playlists.
This means that the list generated by Directory Scan for ScummVM is useless.

In PURE, just load the zip file (with the executable files or disk images) and run MONKEY.EXE. And you can use all variety of settings, if you want to run the game in Hercules with internal sound, you can.

The script to detect the correct executable is hit or miss, but for most games, it picks the correct executable.

I'm ignorant when it comes to technical aspects, my brain just doesn't get it. But the version 'Jazz Jackrabbit v1.3 (En)(De)(Fr)(Es) [SWR] (1995)(Epic MegaGames, Inc.) [Action].zip' reads the two executables (JAZZ.EXE and FILE0001.EXE) and places them as different games, (Jazz Jackrabbit and the Christmas bonus scene) although it is the same.

Edit: this is not necessarily a mistake, FILE0001.EXE is an extra chapter they were giving away, and possibly TDC highlights it. What is a mistake is that the Monkey Island games do not appear.

retroarch -L dosbox_pure.so "Jazz Jackrabbit (USA) (Rerelease).bin"

Why do you load the .bin? it is not .cue. When I try to load a .bin from RetroArch, it is not even listed in the Cores.

If you run Redump's Jazz Jackrabbit CD in DOSBoxPure, for instance, what will happen?

PURE can read floppy or CD images directly, but it is not used that way. They are loaded in a .zip file, because that way a virtual disk is created where everything will be installed.

When you load disk images from a .zip file, they are loaded as virtual drives. Floppy drives are loaded in A: and CDs in D: in DOS or E: in Windows. And you can change it from the disc menu.

When you load "Jazz Jackrabbit (USA) (Rerelease)" (from a .zip) it mounts to a virtual drive D:. It is installed in C: (only the saves) and executed from the CD with JAZZ.EXE.

In general, you want to run the installed copy of it, not the installer itself.

It will be better to use an installed copy? it depends...
It is very handy but if you want to install extras like patches or expansions, it is better to have an installer.

The original DOS formats were very varied,

• At the beginning, games were run directly from the floppy disk, because hard disks did not have enough space.
• Then mixed games started to come out, they could be run directly or installed on the disk, as is the case of "The Secret of Monkey Island (EGA)".
• Then there were games that were just installed.
• Many games ran from the floppy disk or CD, but installed the saves on the hard disk, as in the case of Jazz Jackrabbit CD.
• Others were mandatorily installed in a particular language or with special hardware requirements.

Files with a pre-installed copy of the game came out much later, as a way of sharing on the internet.

PURE handles all native formats and it is very convenient to have a zip with an executable, but this is not always the case. Windows installs natively, as if it were original hardware and has DirectX support. You can run almost any Windows 95, 98 and ME game. All are on CD.

I guess PURE scanning has to be more diverse than just .exe's.
It should read floppy CRCs, as if it were an Nes rom, and read CD CRCs, as if it were a PSX game.

But in the case of PURE it will be more complicated to scan the CRCs of CDs, because it does not support multi-bin cue+bin disks, you have to convert it to single bin with chdman and change the CRC. In the short term there are no plans to support multi-bin disks.

But I guess in this case you can do like with the Arcade lists. Access the manual scanner.
But with the addition that you don't have to load external dats. To have the names corrected and to be able to download the thumbnails.