A short guide to play Dosbox game (based on aifreedom's article)

Thanks for article from aifreedom. (在 GameShell 上玩仙剑奇侠传 – aifreedom)

I believe information in his article is 100% correct, but I did meet some problem before I fix it.

first, I would recommend to seprate commands into single lines, it will be easier for beginner.
such like this:

ssh cpi@192.168.1.123 ‘mkdir -p ~/games/DOSBOX/Pal95/’ && scp -r ./Pal95 cpi@192.168.1.123:’~/games/DOSBOX/’

better to be changed into:
ssh cpi@192.168.1.123 ‘mkdir -p ~/games/DOSBOX/Pal95/’
scp -r ./Pal95 cpi@192.168.1.123:’~/games/DOSBOX/’

other operation:
ssh cpi@192.168.1.123
(then input cpi as password)
mkdir -p ~/apps/Menu/21_Indie\ Games/20_Pal
nano ~/apps/Menu/21_Indie\ Games/20_Pal/Pal.sh’

and then, paste following information into the editor:
#!/bin/bash
retroarch -v --libretro ~/.config/retroarch/cores/dosbox_svn_libretro.so ~/games/DOSBOX/Pal95/PAL!.EXE

and then, press Ctrl+X, press y and enter to save
then you refresh menu, and game should ready to play.

something important to explain:

  1. ssh line is connecting to gameshell, and make a folder there
  2. scp is transfering your actual dos program into that folder
  3. then you connect to gameshell again and create a folder for menu.
  4. nano is an editor I prefer, of course you can choose the way you want to create an empty file named Pal.sh and paste all those text in it.
  5. bin bash stuff is about to allow you execute “the following statments”
  6. be careful, core name can be changed when it’s in different version of retroarch.
    in aifreedom’s article, it was dosbox_libretro.so, but now it’s dosbox_svn_libretro.so.
    you can confirm that by access that folder with:
    cd ~/.config/retroarch/cores/
    ls
    you will find a dosbox-like filename if you have installed that core correctly.
  7. location of remap:
    aifreedom had mentioned remap file. now it’s located in ~/.config/retroarch/config/remaps/DOSBox-SVN
    you can access it by:
    cd /home/cpi/.config/retroarch/config/remaps/DOSBox-SVN
    nano DOSBox-SVN.rmp

and paste his script into it.

Hope it’s helpful, good luck and have fun!

4 Likes

it was an example game Paladin(仙剑奇侠传), I have also tried another famous game called 金庸群侠传. they were both most popular games in the end of 1990s’. but unfortunately, the second one has no English version, because the background and story is really hard to be translated.
anyway, you can use this to fix all the keyboard based dos games.
who didn’t really have a favorite game in the heart? :slight_smile:

if you have any question or want that article related information been translated into English, please let me know. I can rewrite a full instruction instead.

here again, thanks Aifreedom, I cannot fix my retroarch setting without his article.

1 Like

Thank you for updating it! Some of the information in my post might already not work in the new image. I found some issues when I upgraded from v0.3 to v0.4. With the latest image (and maybe the new retroarch), I believe there are new broken things.

You are right that it could be easier to edit the confit files locally and scp them to GameShell. I was trying to save some steps in the setup. But it did backfire. If I ever update it again, I’ll do it the other way.

1 Like