Hello all,

I have a rather uncommon operating system (FreeBSD), which supports DOSbox though.

Can I still safely purchase, download and install DOSbox-powered games on GOG?

Case in point: System Shock (1994)

Note: GOGGalaxy won't work for me.

Best,
Holger

Of course you can pay for them and download them, whether or not you install who knows.

Just test their free games

These both use dosbox.
https://www.gog.com/en/game/tyrian_2000
https://www.gog.com/en/game/shadow_warrior_complete

It should be possible to play these games on FreeBSD. If you can get the game installed, playing it is easy. The problem, of course, is installing the game in the first place. There are a few solutions that might work:
* You can run innoextract on the installer.
* I believe FreeBSD has a Linux compatibility layer that could work to run the installer, and you could then take the resulting files and run them through native DOSBox. Also, I hear that, apparently, the .sh files are just zip files with extra stuff at the start, and therefore a tool like unzip might work on them. Of course, this only works if GOG offers a Linux installer for the game, which is only offered for some games.
* WINE has a FreeBSD version, so you can use that to run the installer, and then just use native DOSBox to run the game once it's installed.
* If all else fails, you can just run the installer on a system running a more common desktop OS (or a virtual machine running such an OS) and copy the files over.

Also, I second the idea of checking out the free games and seeing if you can get them to work. In addition to those Swissy88 mentioned, there's Ultima 4 and the two Worlds of Ultima games, and I think Jill of the Jungle might also be DOS.

FreeBSD isn't obscure, it's just a red headed stepchild of Unix.

But more to the point, Dosbox should have a binary that's native to your system. Especially Dosbox Staging, since it definitely does.

You can't necessarily "install" the games by using the GOG Windows-installers, but you can usually extract the game files (either with innoextract, or installing the game on a Windows PC or virtual machine, and then copying the game files from the installation) into FreeBSD DOSbox.

For some games, at least floppy based MS-DOS games, it shouldn't need more than that. Then just run the sound card setup and the game from relevent .EXE files.

For some CD-based games, you may need to check which of the files is the CD ISO image that you have to mount in DOSBox. You should check the .conf files that come with the GOG version, if you can't figure it out otherwise.

Then there is the sound card support. If you are fine using just Adlib or Soundblaster music, then you are all set because I presume FreeBSD DOSBox emulates Adlib/Soundblaster internally.

However, if you want to hear the superior Roland MT-32 or General MIDI music that many MS-DOS games support (System Shock included), I am unsure how FreeBSD handles it. I think the generic DOSBox just passes any MIDI messages that the game produces to the operating system, and then the operating system either does or doesn't something with them. E.g. in Windows you can use an external Windows program, Munt, to emulate a Roland MT-32 MIDI module to play those MT-32 MIDI messages, while for General MIDI messages, the internal Windows MIDI player should recognize them and play them.

I haven't tried it but I think there are ways to play both Roland MT-32 and General MIDI music (in DOSBox games) in e.g Linux, so maybe it is possible also in FreeBSD.

Thank you all for your help!

I created a virtual machine with Windows 10 (btw: using the Bhyve-Hypervisor available on FreeBSD, works great!) and will use that to run the installer.

Best,
Holger

FYI, you don't need to do that, since you can use innoextract to unpack any windows installer. The DOS game directory is generally all you need for DOSBox (maybe the .conf file as well, for reference), so installation is a bit superfluous anyway.

Thanks for the hint! Innextract is even available as a standard FreeBSD package. Will try that next time!
Hi again,

It worked: I downloaded the game in my Windows 10 VM and found the relevant files in

C:\Programm Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\System Shock - Classic Edition\CD

Important was to chose the “Classic”-edition, not the “Enhanced” one.

I copied the whole “System Shock - Classic Edition” folder to my host PC using WinSCP.

I digged around in that folder and found the relevant DOSBox configuration files.

Worked like a charm (see screenshot) :)

Thank you all again!

Best,
Holger