GOG-flagged game sometimes isn't able to run DOS game outside of launching through GOG

As reported originally in this thread, I have noticed that, often, a game imported via GOG (having a GOG ID) can’t run the game in DOSBox outside of GOG Galaxy. “Launch games through GOG Galaxy Client (when possible)” is NOT checked.

Situation 1: the game (let’s say Might & Magic 1) has a GOG Galaxy ID, and is set up to run the MM.exe executable directly. It is set to run in DOSBox, and the .conf file is pretty standard. When I attempt to run the game, the launcher appears to run MM.exe directly in Windows, producing a “We can’t verify who created this file. Are you sure you want to run this file?” error. If you say Yes, it produces the “specified executable is not a valid application for this OS platform” error. If I shut down LB, edit the Data\Platforms\MS-DOS.xml file to just remove that <GogAppId>1207661203</GogAppId> from the entry, then try it again, it successfully runs the game in DOSBox normally. I add that GOG ID back in, we get the error again.

Situation 2: same as above, but I leave Application Path blank and instead put the MM.exe executable in the DOSBox .conf file’s autoexec path. This time I get a different error: “The code execution cannot proceed because SDL.dll was not found. Reinstalling the program may fix this problem.” The error then repeats for SDL_net.dll. Again, if I shut down LB, remove the GOG ID from the xml, then try again, it works fine.

Situation 3: I set up MM.EXE to run as an Additional Application, specify it to run via DOSBox (which doesn’t seem to allow me to specify a .conf file, by the way), then set that as the default application. Same result as situation 1.

Situation 4: I have Betrayal at Krondor set up the same in terms of Application Path, DOSBox settings, and so on, but it launches properly. In Additional Apps, it does have a “Play GOG version….” link, which can’t be edited but does seem to properly bring up the GOG Galaxy page for the game. Looking at the XML, despite the fact that LB flags it as GOG, it does not have a GOG ID in the game entry, but it’s getting its GOG flag from an AdditionalApplication entry. Not sure why the import process sets up one game one way, and the other game another, but that seems to be the case.

Comments (7)