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IA Launcher

A DOSBox frontend for the Internet Archive MS-DOS games collection

IA Launcher is a graphical games launcher for all those georgeous MS-DOS games from yestermillenium. It uses the Internet Archive to download games on-the-fly and DOSBox to play them offline. Visit the IA Launcher website to see a list of all the included games.

Hurrah! IA Launcher now has its own Windows installer! You can download it here.

You can also install IA Launcher using pip3 install ialauncher on any operating system. Continue reading for detailed instructions.

Screenshot of IA Launcher

Features:

  • Batteries included! Thousands of games playable out-of-the-box
  • Graphical user interface for quickly browsing through title screens
  • Easily add new games to the list (if you do, please send me a pull request!)
  • Automatically downloads game data from archive.org
  • Saves state such as savegames and settings for each game

Installation

First of all, get yourself a snazzy retro looking PC. Or just use your current computer running your operating system of choice. Start by installing the following dependencies:

  • Python version 3.8 or higher
  • DOSBox version 0.74 or higher

Now you can install IA Launcher using pip. Open a command-line window and type the following command:

pip install ialauncher

Depending on your system, you might have to use sudo and/or the pip3 command instead of pip. If the previous command didn't work, try this one:

sudo pip3 install ialauncher

You can now launch the interface using the ialauncher command. To see the available options, type ialauncher --help.

A useful option is --slideshow X which turns IA Launcher into an awesome screensaver, displaying a new DOS game title screen every X seconds!

Special Keys

  • Arrow keys: navigate through the games list
  • Enter: launch the selected game
  • Alt-Enter: open DOSBox without starting the game (useful for debugging, see "Troubleshooting" below)
  • Shift-Enter: reset game state before starting game (warning: you will lose your save files!)
  • Space: jump to a random game
  • A-Z: Jump to the first game that starts with the letter A-Z
  • Esc key: exit

During gameplay, you should also be familiar with the DOSBox Special Keys. The most important one is probably Ctrl-F9, which immediately exits DOSBox and returns to the games menu.

Troubleshooting

Help, my game doesn't run correctly / has no sound!

Welcome to the world of MS-DOS where you are constantly fighting with IRQ values, memory managers and setup programs. Thankfully, the default DOSBox configuration runs nearly all DOS games perfectly out of the box. Also, all the games in the games directory have custom DOSBox configurations (where needed) and startup commands in their metadata.ini files. However, you will certainly end up in situations where you have to reconfigure a game. Try the following:

  • Press Alt-Enter to start DOSBox with the game directory mounted as the C: drive.
  • Use the dir command to see which files are present
  • Use the cd command to change to the game subdirectory, if needed
  • Look for a file named install.{bat,exe,com}, setsound.{bat,exe,com} or setup.{bat,exe,com} and execute it

Hopefully, the setup utility will allow you to change the sound card parameters. DOSBox emulates all kinds of sounds cards, so try the following and it will probably work:

Sound card: Soundblaster or AdLib
Address/port: 220
IRQ: 7
DMA: 1

Help, my game doesn't run at all!

Each game's metadata, including the command that starts the game, is stored in a file called metadata.ini. In many cases IA Launcher provides the needed commands to install and setup the game when run for the first time. However, in other cases the commands listed in metadata.ini simply assume the installation was already done with default settings. In these cases, try the following:

  • Press Alt-Enter to start DOSBox with the game directory mounted as the C: drive.
  • Type mount a . to mount the game's directory as the floppy drive (many games assume they are being installed from a floppy disk)
  • Type a: to switch to the mounted floppy drive
  • Type install and follow the installation procedure, accepting all the default values

After the installation has finished, try launching the game again and hopefully the default startup command will now work. If not, keep reading...

Help! The default startup command is incorrect!

Here is how you can easily change the command(s) that launch a game:

  • Press Alt-Enter to start DOSBox with the game directory mounted as the C: drive.
  • (optionally:) Type echo cd [directoryname] > dosbox.bat to put the cd command in the file named dosbox.bat
  • Type echo [command that launches the game] >> dosbox.bat to append the command that launches the game to the file dosbox.bat
  • Execute dosbox.bat and verify that your game now launches correctly

When you exit the emulator, IA Launcher will save the contents of dosbox.bat to the emulator_start variable inside the game's metadata.ini. The next time you launch the game, the dosbox.bat file will be run automatically.

More advanced logic can be created with batch file syntax. As an example, here is the contents of emulator_start for the game SimCity 2000:

if exist sc2000 goto run
mount a .
a:
install
:run
cd sc2000
sc2000

You can also mount CD images and get CD audio while playing:

imgmount d Quake.cue -t iso
if exist quake goto run
d:
install
:run
cd quake
quake

Did you get a previously not-working game running by changing the emulator_start variable? Or did you add a new game and captured a nice title screen? Please send me a pull request!