Universal iDOS 2

Thanks, I might go for it if that's the case. I don't mind a small bit of work with a text editor and ifunbox to play a bunch of games from when I was young. It would be awesome if dosbox had a working non-jail broken iPad app...

I bought it an I'm happy, Xeno, thanks for the picture. I don't think anyone who wouldn't know how to add games on here would buy a dos emulator, but again, thanks for the tutorial, once I saw how the bat file was set up it was a matter of seconds to copy paste the games I wanted.

One more question: does this app not know how to emulate a specific kind of midi sound which produces voices? The games I loaded don't have unit responses and voices where they should...It's a minor gripe considering this means on the go DOS games...but man, it's 1% away from being perfect. It's also a massive battery drain lmao.

 

Got the sound to work, needed to actually run the setup file. Silly fixes.

Now for questions: I'm trying to remap the dpad buttons to other ones, specifically m,a, and b. However, when I change them in the cfg file, and import it, the app crashes. Any thoughts?

 

Xenomorphking, thanks for the detailed instructions. However, i have an issue that when i add new games it wont let me hit #3. I hit it on the keyboard, but the 3 doesnt show up top and it doesnt load anything.

I tried closing the app and disconnecting from my computer, but the result was the same. I'm trying to play One Must Fall 2097. Is it because that game wont work? Or is it related to something else? I can try to post my play.bat file if that helps.

 

I love that they came out with iDos 2, since I missed the original. I found a blog that shows you how to put games on this. It's a bit tedious since you have to edit a file in order to do this. But if it's the same as before then you can play pretty much any dos game. I like that it comes with 2 games to start off. But I guess the first one came with more games. So far I have put on Scorched Earth and Lode Runner! At .99 cents to me it was an awesome deal! Wondering though how long it will be on the App Store before they pull this one! LOL!

 

Well power dos has been on the App Store a long time and is still there

That thread had a lot of useful tips on launching games. I have quite a few and i'm over the moon that Dark Forces works well on my iPhone 6

 

How did you configure your controls to make Dark Forces playable and fun? I'm finding the game pad controls to be a bit of a drag.

 

Stuck with the default gamepad controls. Not great but still on a high about being able to play it ! Frustrating switching over to keyboard if I need to jump though

 

I think I read on one of dosbox's forums that the idos app was rejected at some point for having customizable controls. I don't remeber how old that post was, or where I read it, but if anyone figures out how to change the dpad controls, please post something on here. Mine crashes if I mess with the dpad.cfg file from ifunbox, and doesn't do anything if I change the keys from inside the idos app. Thanks a bunch y'all.

 

ok. I got OMF playing now. Its a bit different, but ill have to write how i did it since instructions arent clear and its not easy to go back to a regular 'C' prompt with this version of idos. Ill try to build upon what Xenomorphking wrote.

 

This may be the same.

 

Ok – here is a slightly more explanatory guide for this specific version of iDos 2. Because it uses a PLAY.BAT structure instead of the usual C prompt found in other versions of Dosbox, I thought it might be helpful to explain the reasoning behind why certain games don’t easily work with the current instructions. I wish it was universal, but not all DOS games are alike and you may have some added steps here and there. Hopefully this guide will cover all of them or at least give you more understanding if you, like me, know hardly anything about DOS.

First off, the basic instructions are laid out in page 2 of this thread by Xenomorphking or on this site: http://ultimacodex.com/2014/11/dosbox-emulator-idos-2-is-back-on-the-ios-app-store-and-i-have-ultima-6-running-in-it/

I don’t want to cover logistics of ifunbox or how to copy files and folders. I want to get into the PLAY.BAT file so you understand how it all works (cuz I didn’t until today). So use the above links to setup ifunbox; copy over your games, put your PLAY.BAT file on your desktop, then come back here.

The PLAY.BAT is really broken up into 2 sections so we will go through those.

First section: The echo

@echo off
goto menu
:menu
cls
echo.
echo Enter a choice with keyboard:
echo.
echo 1 ---- Duke
echo 2 ---- Haunted
echo.
:choice
choice /c:12
if ERRORLEVEL 2 goto haunted
if ERRORLEVEL 1 goto duke
goto choice

All this section does it setup the names on your menu. If you added more numbers, it would show up on boot, but it wouldn’t do anything when selecting them unless you setup the second section (more on that below). You can also name these whatever you want as its just a reference library that the code in the rest of the document connects to. So if you wanted to play Doom on here, you could call it DOOMROCKS. You just need to add it to the appropreiate lines like this:

@echo off
goto menu
:menu
cls
echo.
echo Enter a choice with keyboard:
echo.
echo 1 ---- Duke
echo 2 ---- Haunted
Echo 3 ---- Doomrocks
echo.
:choice
choice /c:123
if ERRORLEVEL 3 goto doomrocks
if ERRORLEVEL 2 goto haunted
if ERRORLEVEL 1 goto duke
goto choice

Pretty simple. All you are doing is adding a new line and numbering it. This is only for your menu calling. The rest of the document does the hard work and gets slightly more complicated (don’t worry, I will explain that too)

Side note: I have not tried going beyond 9 echos. It may not work with 2 digit numbers, but that simply means you have to limit what games you call in a given time. Also, capitals don’t make a differece so in my example I could write DOOMROCKS or doomrocks. Should work the same. I don’t know if space or special characters throw things out of whack. My advice; keep naming simple with one word or simple acronyms.

Second Section: The code

REM ----------------------------------------
:haunted
cd games\haunted
haunted
cd ..\..
goto menu

REM ----------------------------------------
:duke
cd games\duke
cycles 1500
dn1
cd ..\..
goto menu

REM ----------------------------------------
:quit
exit
:end

Slightly more complicated, but still easy. First thing to note, the last REM section is something you shouldn’t ever have to touch; it just ends the program. Each other REM section corresponds to its specific game or echo from the first section. So echo 1 --- haunted connects to the first REM. And any new echo you make needs a new REM. Pretty easy. Now, here is how each REM breaks down (ill use haunted as the example):

:haunted – this is the name that connects to the above echo line. -They need to be identical.- Like for my above example with doom, this line would be ‘:doomrocks’

cd games\haunted – this is the actual location of the executable file. Most are simply ‘cd games\[name of the folder with the exe file]’ but some might have a deeper folder structure. You have to have the exact name(s) of the folders here or it wont run

haunted – this is the name of the executable file in the above folder. It doesn’t need to have ‘.exe’ on the end, but it needs to be the same name as the file

These last two lines shouldn’t need changing.
cd ..\..
goto menu


There are a couple odd ball things like in the game duke that comes with iDos 2. It has a line cycles 1500 which really just controls how fast the computer runs the game. Newer processors would run it too fast to be playable so this controls the speed by simulating an older processor. Only really used for specific games and I believe the Dosbox site can give insight to what cycles to use if your game is running too fast. Not a line you will need too often.

My only other note is that some games require you to run an extra executable first to do things like install or configure sound/video devices. These are important to run first before your game can be played. I had a case of this with the game One Must Fall. It needed to run a setup file first so I really just made a separate echo for it, ran it, then deleted the echo from the list (you only need to run it once in most cases). Then I had to find the location of the new executable file and put it in the ‘cd games...’ line of the One Must Fall REM. Hopefully you don’t need to do that often, but when you do that’s the best way to do it. It may require you to hook your device back up after running a setup.exe or config.exe to find where and what the main executable is called, but it should only need to be done once.

Last comment – from what others have said and what I gather about this emulator, it will run just about any DOS game that the current version of dosbox can run. So as long as the game you are trying to play is marked as ‘supported’ in this compatibility list: http://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?letter=a It should run. Just try harder or ask some others who know how to get it going.

Hope that helps those of us who next to nothing about code or DOS. Enjoy!

 

really don't understand why so many tribulations here!!!

you must have PowerDOS, is exactly the same emulator but with normal prompt, even was free (2 bucks now) and still supported by the devs!!!

in addiction, if you don't want to type every game folder and exe everytime, you can use the trick i've posted in PowerDOS thread for an easy access to them, is a matter of create a simple txt file and rename it .bat

copy on a .txt doc

cd name of folder (ex: cd MONKISLA) (or whatever you want use)
name of exe (ex: MONKEY)
cd \

then save it as name of folder.bat (ex: MONKISLA.bat) and throw it on main Documents folder, so you'll need only to type the name of .bat (ex: MONKISLA) in the prompt... and press enter!

 

Gwarmaxx I actually don't have PowerDos, but recently saw and heard about iDos 2 and tried it. Im not totally sure on the differences of the emulators, but I still think its worth explaining this for those that do use it. Sure its not too difficult, but not much instructions was given anywhere so I wanted to offer what I found through trial and error after downloading it yesterday.

For those savvy enough, I'm sure PowerDos is just as good or better to most.

 

sorry scape, my post was not for you, i'm speaking overall for those who go out of their minds trying to figure out how to run games on iDOS 2, while in the same store there's the same emulator with another name, more user-friendly and still supported with regular updates.

i have both iDOS2 and PowerDOS, and can tell you that is the same app, except for the free classic DOS prompt in PowerDOS which make it more friendly.

in any case, thanks for your contribution pal, didn't mean to offend you

 

Not offended at all; just wanted to explain why i did it. I think i will have to pick up PowerDos myself. I thought iDos 2 came out on the market after it and was an upgrade so you helped me to know its not really an upgrade....kind of a downgrade

 

In the powerdos thread someone also created some code to add your own games to a menu (where you then use the 'mouse' to select it). Works really well, got about 15 games on it

Totally forgot you couldnt save your progress during a level in the original Dark Forces (pain!). It only saves it at the end once you've completed the mission

 

Anyword on 8.3 and how to put dos games on? I heared that enterprise ipa are not effected and will allow files to be transferred. If i download idos 2 from pp25 and install it will ifunbox detect it? I purchased and backed up idos 2 why cant i use it!!!

 

Because you upgraded instantly to ios 8.3 without waiting to see if there's any issues !!

I'll be surprised if there's an update to idos 2. Hopefully but I doubt it

 

I didnt actually update to 8.3 im not sure why you assumed that. But eventually everyone will have to have something past 8.2 . And thus the problem no sandbox access to put games on. The devolper may not be able to add itunes file sharing because apple are morons, but maybe drop box for "save game access" which might slip by. And then we can use it to dump games on

 

What's the problem then ? If you've purchased it and backed up your apps you'll still have idos 2 on iTunes

Yes eventually we might all upgrade to iOS 8.3 but by the time I'll upgrade I hope there'll be a fix or a jailbreak available. Quite happy waiting a long time. Ios 8.3 has nothing I need urgently