Keep it clean
If you believe that a wish duplicates another one or is not meant for the category, use Options button above to report a duplicate or spam.
Add your wish
If there is an item you wish to have on GOG.com and it’s not yet on the wishlist, please add your wish
Include SETUP.EXE in DOS games
Added by
mgiuca Most DOS games originally came with a SETUP.EXE or similar, allowing the player to configure sound settings, etc. GOG users typically have no need of these programs, because the games come pre-configured to work with the included version of DOSBox. Therefore, GOG does not include these programs. But advanced users may wish to experiment with sound settings (for example, to play the games in PC speaker mode), or other settings. Some games, such as Duke Nukem 3D, may be hard to set up as a multiplayer game because you would usually go through the SETUP program. For completeness, it would be good if GOG included these programs.
orzene Would love to take these games and bring them to an authentic DOS machine/Win3.1 machine -- Been wanting to get some of these classics on an old 486
joppo Sure, why not? Not that it ever affected me as I tend to play post-DOS games, but I think it wouldn't be any extra work for them, it harms no one and giving customer more choice is a good thing.
@Cavalary: if someone breaks something by messing with config they could fix it just by reinstalling the game, so it is not a reason to avoid this.
Quirinus42 Yes, make it so. I don't want to play the game with the wrong sound card music. Some sound horrible compared to others, and I have no control over it if you remove setup.exe
throAU even better, please include the option to run setup from the GOG Galaxy menu.
Some of the choices made by GOG may not line up with the choices the user wants. For nostalgia purposes, the user may want to run sound with PC speaker or MT-32, or may want to run the graphics in EGA or CGA to reminisce about how things were back in the day or to show others about how far things have come.
Part of the point of owning and running old games is for the memories, and if those are not possible due to the inability to reconfigure the game they lose their value. Include a "Reset to GOG defaults" option if you must, but please make it easier to reconfigure stuff.
PhilsComputerLab I noticed that some games now have SETUP options REMOVED. Ultima Underword is such a game. I have a backup from October 2014, and it has the program to change sound cards, but if you download the latest installer it's missing :(
It frustrates me that, once again, those who turn to abandonware or pirated software, get a better product.
igrok Absolutely important.
ansionnach This has to be done. It doesn't make sense to butcher the GOG releases by removing these executables that novices won't even run. It also irks me that other executables are missing from some games, e.g. the DOS or Win 9x .exe where a game ran in both DOS and Windows. GOG only includes the executable they want to use (e.g. Fallout, Dungeon Keeper) or none at all (Broken Sword running in ScummVM).
LachlanThomas I'm a Mac user and I've got a few games that mention setup files in their documentation, Tyrian 2000 and Hocus Pocus come to mind. I wish I could set up Tyrian so it uses FM sound as opposed to what I believe is Roland Sound Canvas emulation, I mean, not everyone in the 90's had a Sound Canvas or MT-32 device or similar. Of course it gets difficult when you're playing games like Dragonsphere, which, as far as I can tell from the setup instructions, only allow you to chose the sound hardware you want to use during installation and after the fact. I men, when I start Duke Nukem II for example, I see a screen that allows me to play the game or view the "on disk technical support", I don't see an option that allows me to change game settings in Tyrian 2000 or Hocus Pocus. I remember playing the shareware version of Hocus Pocus from a CD-ROM, and because I didn't know about setup files when I was 12, Hocus Pocus would use the PC speaker on my Dad's PC, it used the sound card for music only. So I don't know how this would work for games like Dragonsphere or Silpheed, if GOG were to ever carry it, but for games that allow you to set up the hardware after installation, it should be easy for them to do. I men when you run Tyrian, you can either play the game or go to the level editor, how easy would it be for them to add an option that allows you to run the setup program?
TheRetrodude This would be great. I especially want this for my DOS games that default to Adlib but have a General Midi option, since I love how my midi sounds with a certain soundfont.
Unzki Addenda: K, sorted out some things... Changing the music to Roland is what causes the slowdown AND endgame fudging, so can't be helped even if GoG does include the Setup options. Still, I'd rather have it without having to jump loops through Win7, DB and the game itself.
Unzki I agree. Trying to set up Duke3D keyboard and sound (GUS for FX and Roland for music) was annoying, just copied it to my regular DOSBOX dir and played from there. Why then am I asking for GoG to include the setup options to begin with? Well, MoM and MoO ran slow as molasses in loading screens when I ran it in my regular DB and adding cycles and fast forwarding isn't enough to make it as fast as with GoG DB. Couple of other problems why I'm not satisfied with either: In addition to sound and graphics options, I want to access keyboard settings easily in my GoG games since as a Scandinavian user I don't have a US keyboard which is the default in GoG games and which screws up some keyb shortcuts. Also can't just run (for example) MoO on my usual DB, since there's an annoying bug which fudges up the end-game screens, resulting in me always seeing the human diplomatic victory instead of a proper race- and method-one. GoG, please enable those of us who wish to change the game settings to easily do so!
ComputerMystic Would be handy if they ever got Command and Conquer on here, those games had awesome install sequences.
npalsensei A number of games in GOG DO have setup/install.exe in their directories. All GOG needs to do is either add sound options in the existing GOG Display configuration program or add another DOSBox shortcut that runs the setup/install/sound.exe file. Minimum issue there, and it WILL help some of us, because most cards today CAN emulate the superior General MIDI instead of sticking to SoundBlaster for music.
StoneFrog This would be of great benefit to those enthusiasts among us who have a dedicated DOS directory, or even an entire machine from the 90's set up for playing old games. I fall into the first group and generally uninstall GOG games after copying their contents to my primary DOSBox setup, because I like the added experience of installing and configuring them myself as opposed to having twenty instances of DOSBox on the computer. This should be relatively painless to implement, and would contribute greatly to the authenticity of the experience - especially since GOG already provides manuals and other original content.
DCT In quest for glory 1-5 there install.exe the ones for QFG 1 EGA and Trial by fire work outside of dosbox, just hit esc when it asks for you a drive to install to. For 1 vga, 3 and 4 just copy the Dosbox configs for the games and alter the autoexec part of the copy config to boot up the install.exe for said game then create a short cut that will load out dosbox and the "installer" config you just made.
Expack Actually, the Ultima Underworld and Ultima Underworld 2 installers can be found on the CD contained in the game's folder. The CD is called game.gog, which would normally have to be forced to be read by such image mounting programs as Daemon Tools, but you can simply rename the extension from .gog to .iso. This will let you launch the CD as normal. (Also, be sure to rename a copy of game.gog, not the original - the game's DOSBOX config files are designed to read the .gog file, not the .iso file.)
WhoKnowscs In the case of wing commander I believe it may be called install.exe but yes please let us modify our games without hex editing.
v o i d | flower They don't include the setup for Ultima Underworld and Wing Commander, I already knew that, but are any other games missing them? He mentions Duke Nukem 3D for instance, look in the Duke 3D folder, it's in there.
fisk0 No, Fuzzyfireball, they don't include them, which was really noticeable in the Wing Commander 1+2 pack, as the games had been preconfigured to use a sound card (MT-32) which Dosbox doesn't fully support, and you had to manually change a random number in the game's configuration file to make them use adlib sound instead.
Cavalary The thing is that it'd be very easy to break compatibility if the settings are changed. Depending on exactly what's been done to make said game compatible with newer operating systems and drivers, they may simply not work at all on any other settings. On the other hand, it's always a good idea to give people choice, even if with strong warnings not to mess with things if that's the case.
v o i d | flower Dude. Look in the game's folder. They already include them.
21 comments about this wish