![]() As it stands, I don't know how much space a particular game will require for an install until I've begun the process. The second major hurdle is a need for dynamic images. I'm guessing there are closer to 5,000 win9x games, which would be a terrabyte of duplicated OS data. Across a thousand games that is 200 gigabytes. My math has shown that a Win98 install takes up about 200mb. ![]() This also saves *tons* of space compared to each game having it's own OS install. At one point we had this function in Dosbox-X using qcow2 images, however that left with the old dev. It is more commonly called "differencing". This child image would contain all of the new files, as well as modifications to the parent image. Then, when installing a game it gets installed to a child image. If you want to copy Blade Runner over to a different computer, you just grab the blade runner image versus some win98 image that has 50 other games also installed to it.Ī parent child image relationship would allow there to be a single clean win98 install. This not only accomplishes the goal of each game having a pristine environment to run in, it makes it so each game is portable. The solution is for each game to use it's own windows install. This becomes an exponentially bigger issue when you are dealing with 1,000 games. ![]() Not only that, but some games wrote files to silly places like the OS folder or the root drive, and in general it gets messy when you have a lot of games installed. There is a good chance that if you install 50 games to the same image, you will eventually start breaking some of the first games you installed. They also use different versions of third party software, like quicktime. Different games like different resolutions, drivers, etc. One huge boon would be parent\child images. ![]() Please do not be offended by my over-explanations of anything. I am very aware that there are many technical geniuses here that know way more about it than myself. I am simply hoping that at some point they are added.Īlso, I'm going to explain things as though anyone reading this has never heard of any of these things before, for simplicity sake. I do believe the following things would be beneficial for many people. Please understand, I am by no means asking Sarah to add anything specifically for me. I mean, I am aware that Win98 can be run under dosbox, but the amount of limitations in doing so creates a lot of problems when you look at it from a perspective of preserving a large number of games.Īnyways, I've identified a handful of things that prevent a project like this from going forward at this time. I believe PCem will be at the center of any Win9X project I create going forward, as dosbox simply isn't designed for such a thing. I decided to give PCem a go last summer and was really impressed by it. that is what he said).Īs I've been working on updating my DOS and Win3x projects, I've messed around with Win9x capabilities here and there. At one point I was working closely with a fellow who maintained the dosbox-x port, however he left, and the guy who took over ended up stripping the code in order to rebuild the core (don't ask me. I've had requests for years to start a Win9x preservation project. I started with DOS, and then a few years back I tackled Windows 3.1. I go by eXo and spend a lot of time building retro game packs.
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