PC Games configuration... the best way?

[nintari]

just as topic says looking to see what others have done on this

[djrobx]

I have a "classic PC" section where I have games like Doom, Quake, Descent, etc. I have a dir with .BAT files that launch each game. For the command line I use cmd .exe /c [RomPath]\[RomFile]. GameEx treats the BAT files like ROMs and launches them. The trickier part is getting them to exit when you hit the back/esc button. I wrote my own app to handle it, but Tom has mentioned he might work on a feature that could help with this soon.

DOSBox is very helpful with the older PC games like Wolf3D, Prince of Persia, etc.

-- Rob

[nintari]

I'm going through right now and resetting up my main rig and it is mostly new games and am able to have everything launch from .lnk files and have pics and etc. I dont care about hitting esc and going back to gameex really as many PC games use esc to go to the main menu

would I be better of crating bat files for each of the new games as opposed to he lnk files?

my main problem is gameex not coming back up after tha game is done ... it seems to be loaded but nowhere to be seen (the exe is still running but the program is gone....)

I know it isnt something that is officially supported though

[Tom Speirs]

I'm going through right now and resetting up my main rig and it is mostly new games and am able to have everything launch from .lnk files and have pics and etc. I dont care about hitting esc and going back to gameex really as many PC games use esc to go to the main menu

would I be better of crating bat files for each of the new games as opposed to he lnk files?

my main problem is gameex not coming back up after tha game is done ... it seems to be loaded but nowhere to be seen (the exe is still running but the program is gone....)

I know it isnt something that is officially supported though

Why not just set them up as external applications? Thats what its for.

[djrobx]

If I set them up as external applications they end up on the main menu. That's not where I want them.

The problem with .lnk files is that GameEx has no idea what to wait for. It can wait for cmd.exe to terminate when the batch file finishes.

-- Rob

[nintari]

yeah and I have quite a few games to put back on to my main rig. I like to have the majority of them installed for quick access, kind of my ultimate gaming system setup Access to thousands of games with a simple click!

Of course by thousands that is including emulation

but then again I have more games then movies and I have 280+ DVD movies hehehe

[Smiff]

as people may or may not know you can set the Title of a dos box with "TITLE [whatever]" in the batch file. Could GameEx be made to look for that?

edit: sorry i think i misunderstood what the problem is. i haven't tried to set up PC games yet

[nintari]

I like the idea of the external applications but as mentioned setting them up as emulators works better for organization. I can have one menu for PC Sports Games, one for PC Adventure Games and etc etc....

[djrobx]

as people may or may not know you can set the Title of a dos box with "TITLE [whatever]" in the batch file. Could GameEx be made to look for that?

It could, but waiting for cmd .exe to finish isn't such a big deal. The problem is knowing what app to needs to be killed when you hit esc or the back button. If you notice, you can kill a dos box but the apps it has spawned continue to run. The other problem is some apps launch others and exit, so the dos box closes and GameEx doesn't know the game is running.