gog.com question

After purchasing games from gog, is it possible to play them in pure DOS? I understand they come bundled with DOSBox, but is it possible to copy the gamefile diretories only and install them on a DOS system? I ask simply because the old games look bad on bigger monitors and I have a DOS machine with a smaller one set up in the basement for my retro gaming needs (I sequester myself downstairs and crank up the 80's station for my trips down memory lane sadly enough).

Thanks

I think it is probably better to ask this question on the GOG forums...

You sure can. It comes with the game and the pre-configged DOSBox but that doesn't mean you have to use the DOSBox parts.

To be completely honest though, old games don't look bad on bigger monitors. DOSBox has great scalers and I find many games look fantastic in it.

That said, GOG is bad. They buy rights of games in bulk from people who bought up dying game companies, you're not supporting developers or anything, you're supporting a sea of middle-men basing their business model on exploitation.

The answer is both yes and no. I just checked three of my games M.A.X., Stonekeep and Beneath a Steel Sky. M.A.X. has all the regular executable files in addition to something called 'gogwrap'. That's what they use to launch the game in Dosbox for M.A.X. However, Beneath has no executable. It is solely dependent on ScummVM to launch the game and Stonekeep has a the file 'stonekeep.gog' instead of the regular exe. Although it does have a 'dos4gw.exe' file so maybe that would run it.

My advice would be to ask them before you buy any game.

@darkling Are you serious? You could not get these games anywhere else except on abandonware sites. If a company like GoG wants to offer these games again to the public then I say it's about freaking time.

darkling said:

That said, GOG is bad. They buy rights of games in bulk from people who bought up dying game companies, you're not supporting developers or anything, you're supporting a sea of middle-men basing their business model on exploitation.

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They have to buy the rights from those, who own them. So they have no choice, from whom they buy. So your statement about them being "bad" is complete nonsense.

Another option would be to simply swap monitors when you're playing one of those games. Would only take a few minutes to bring your old monitor upstairs and hook it up.

The .gog file in their Stonekeep is an ISO. Rename it and mount it and you can copy everything out. It contains the game EXE but I can't tell if the directory structure is usable as is or not.

Between the scaling in dosbox (which I think only goes to 3x built in, but you can force 4x in) and running the games in a window instead of a full screen (I usually open a completely black bmp in the back ground though), I've found most games look pretty good, certainly very playable.

bkrueger said:

They have to buy the rights from those, who own them. So they have no choice, from whom they buy. So your statement about them being "bad" is complete nonsense.

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No doubt. So what that you are buying from middlemen. Those middlemen paid the previous owners (often the creators). That's a source of revenue for the previous owners, you want to deprive them of that?

darkling said:

The .gog file in their Stonekeep is an ISO. Rename it and mount it and you can copy everything out. It contains the game EXE but I can't tell if the directory structure is usable as is or not.

Click to expand...

You're right it is an iso. There is still no stonekeep.exe, but it seems to have all the files and my savegames inside it plus something called engage.exe. That probably would launch it in Dos.