Boxer

Developer diary: plans and progress reports.

Greetings Daggerfall fans (a new beta) Friday 10th July 2009

Edit: a special not-crashing-at-startup edition is now available! Download 0.86-20090711-1 here.

This beta includes DOSBox 0.73 and has a laundry list of improvements to game installation, compatibility and overall cleverness. Which is fortunate, because Daggerfall was just released for free by Bethesda today, and Boxer 0.85 has drive-space issues that can prevent it from installing.

As intimated in previous posts this version is not related to the 0.9 betas, but is instead a maintenance update to the 0.8x branch. That means there's no shiny Cocoa UI or friendly DOS I'm afraid. 0.9 beta users will probably want to download this anyway though, since DOSBox 0.73 gives significantly improved game performance and compatibility. An update to the 0.9 branch will be along soon hopefully.

This beta is not ready for primetime release, as it still needs localising and a lot of testing. Please report any crashes you find or other bugs you notice, and be sure to mention if a game that was working in 0.85 now isn't.

Commentary

  1. Hey Alun--

    That new beta seems not to have broken the install process as I like to do it. Nice work.

    Also, I actually will fully admit to installing the DFCD folder into my DOS Games folder using your "Open A Command Prompt" program. Holy cow, that makes running these sorts of installers FAR too easy (for someone like me, who likes command prompts like in the old days of DOS, of course).

    I'll do the customary "run everything to see that everything works" and get back to you re what works vs what does not.

    BJ

    BJ Wanlund Saturday 11th July 2009

  2. All games that were working for me in 0.85 are working now in the 0.86 beta, so that's a good sign, I guess.

    Now all we can do is wait for Blizzard/Activision to put out their older PC games on these services, and actually use DOSBox or what have you so we can play those games with little to no problems in Boxer.

    BJ

    BJ Wanlund Saturday 11th July 2009

  3. Ah, a new Boxer, I'll take it for a test run later today (it's actually midnight now and I'm still behind my Mac) Anyway, I'm here to tell you that, -if you want- I could test Boxer on Mac OS X 10.3.9 (10.2 coming soon). I don't know if you want it, I think I've seen in the code that you already disabled it (using display alert etc. but that can be like dialog for 10.3 and alert for 10.4 and later). So far I haven't got Jaguar working but it will come along, I'm sure, Panther didn't install smoothly either. I also know this wouldn't work with the 0.9 betas since they won't work on Tiger. Anyway, I installed 10.3, 10.4 and 10.5 on an external disk so I can test my app on backwards compatibility. I plan to make it work on at least 10.3 and if possible 10.2. If you don't want Panther testing, I won't do it because we both know it won't work without changes under the hood.

    -Jef

    Jef Sunday 12th July 2009

  4. So does the Daggerfall huge-install work, or just those under 100MB? I've known the space-limit problem to nip me in the butt a few times.

    Ben Sunday 12th July 2009

  5. Well, at this point it's difficult to say - installation of any size from CD or ISO works just fine in Boxer and always has, but I haven't been able to get Bethesda's freeware release to download properly in 5 tries in order to test it.

    From what I've seen of their (20-step) DOSBox instructions however, Bethesda have released it in the absolute most difficult way possible, and it won't install cleanly in Boxer without some config-file tweaking or folder renaming.

    (I have no idea why they didn't just distribute an already-installed version! It would have made everyone's experience so much easier.)

    Alun Bestor Sunday 12th July 2009

  6. 10.3 testing isn't necessary Jef - I already know it won't work ;) Boxer's applescript is syntax-incompatible with 10.3, and Boxer's Cocoa code is library-incompatible. Fortunately almost nobody still uses 10.3.

    Alun Bestor Sunday 12th July 2009

  7. Doesn't work at all on snow leopard (crashes with or without rosetta and display a report that says: "-1700, Can’t make scriptsResource of «script» into type string.")

    Weedy Weed Smoker Sunday 12th July 2009

  8. Yup, 10.6 is still broken and unsupported until I can get quality development time on a Snow Leopard installation I'm afraid.

    Alun Bestor Sunday 12th July 2009

  9. Well, unfortunately, I had to go about finding an ISO of Daggerfall because the DFCD installer did NOT work (much as I could try), so that's a partial warning right there. If you're willing to go into serious configuration, then go for it. Me, I just want the darn thing to work (hey, I'm an Apple fanboy, after all)!

    BJ

    BJ Wanlund Sunday 12th July 2009

  10. Hi BJ: one part of the problem is that they named the folder "DFCD" and not "Daggerfall", which is the appropriate disc label and what the game is actually looking for. I think I'll release another beta today that special-cases that name (and always imports the install files regardless of installation size), just to get the damn thing to install cleanly.

    Alun Bestor Sunday 12th July 2009

  11. For those still wrestling with Daggerfall, this worked for me with the new beta 0.86-20090711-1. Huge thanks to Alun. Boxer is fantastic!

    After doing the Huge install:

    1. Open the DFCD package that Boxer created (when you ran the installer) and create a new folder in it called Daggerfall.cdrom

    2. Copy everything from the DFCD (installer) folder into it.

    Run by double clicking the package Boxer created.

    XLM Sunday 12th July 2009

  12. Hi XLM, thanks for posting those instructions! I'll be releasing another beta soon that does exactly that (automatically imports the DFCD folder as Daggerfall.cdrom), to streamline the installation process as I've been getting a lot of support emails about the game.

    Note that after installation you should also apply the Daggerfall 2.13 patch, which is included in the download from Bethesda. The easiest way is to copy the DAG213.EXE file into the DAGGER folder inside the game package and then doubleclick it to run it.

    Alun Bestor Monday 13th July 2009

  13. I've tried everything above, and I can't get the thing to install at all, I just keep having the disk space error. Any ideas? I'm using the latest beta.

    Bryan Monday 13th July 2009

  14. Ah nevermind, I found the -freesize option for mount.

    Boxer is a really fantastic app, Thanks for the time and effort you've put into it!

    Bryan Monday 13th July 2009

  15. Quick question, Alun.

    Do *.gog files work the same as .iso or .cdrom files inside Boxer, or am I remembering incorrectly there?

    BJ

    BJ Wanlund Tuesday 14th July 2009

  16. Boxer treats .gogs as renamed .cue/.bin images (which is what all the examples I've seen have been). This seems to be Good Old Games' convention for DOSBox-driven games, since .cue/.bin is the only format that allows for both data and audio tracks. I'm assuming they will stick with this for future releases, but it doesn't matter much since if the .gog turns out to be ISO format instead then Boxer will still handle it properly - it just feeds the filename to the IMGMOUNT command, which works out what to do with the file.

    Alun Bestor Tuesday 14th July 2009

  17. Thanks Alun! I guess I could then include a *.gog file inside a Boxer package if I so chose?

    BJ

    BJ Wanlund Tuesday 14th July 2009

  18. You can, yes... this support is to make importing games from Good Old Games installations as seamless as possible, without renaming files or customising mount commands; it's not really intended for manipulation of individual .gog images themselves. Most of the time you should be able to drag one of GOG's game folders onto Boxer's installer droplet and the game Should Just Work when it comes out the other end (albeit the game package may be full of unnecessary dosbox crap).

    Alun Bestor Tuesday 14th July 2009

  19. Hey Alun. Never commented here before, but I absolutely adore Boxer. It just makes everything simpler, yet you're allowed to do everything manually if need be.

    A friend of mine is writing a DOSBox tutorial for the older Elder Scrolls games on UESP, and asked if I would lend a hand with providing Mac OS X instructions. I thought I would include instructions with Boxer as well. Using the newest build provided in this post I'm having difficulty getting Daggerfall to work properly. When I get to the Province select screen I click on a province and it errors out with:

    Daggerfall has encountered an Internal error at 0. The error reported was: Code: 210 not found in

    I installed everything like I would normally, and added the CD into the game's package, applied the patch, and renamed the folder to "Daggerfall.cdrom". Everything works fine until I get to that point.

    Dustin Wilson Wednesday 15th July 2009

  20. Can I ask you something Alun? What's up with the 'Resources Disabled' folder and the 'Scripts old' folder?

    Jef Wednesday 15th July 2009

  21. Hi Dustin, I'm afraid I'm not sure what the problem is there - I'll see if I can reproduce it, but Daggerfall has a lot of potential crasher bugs of its own that are nothing to do with the arrangement of the game files themselves. Did you also apply the Daggerfall 2.13 patch?

    EDIT: Also, hold tight on writing a tutorial as I'm about to release a new Boxer beta that has vastly smoothed the Daggerfall installation process. I hope to have this uploaded tonight.

    Jef: those are just leftover development files. They'll be cleaned up when I do a proper release.

    Alun Bestor Thursday 16th July 2009

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