kol

In terms of DOS games, they package a preconfigured DOSBOX with the game so you don't really have to to anything besides picking the icon.

For DOS Based Games, they use DosBox.

Most Dos-era GOGs run with with pre-done DosBox emulation. I'm not sure what they do to the "newer" titles. It probably varies depending on the game. But yes, you should be aware that most Dos games will be running through DosBox (which requires some CPU power). Some select games (like Rise of the Triad or Ultima VII) have fan-made ports, too, and the GOG versions are completely compatible with them.

I should also mention that the first two games I purchased on GOG (Blood and Rise of the Triad) both required some of my own DosBox tweaking to get working properly. Never had a problem since, but don't be shocked if you buy a game and need to configure it yourself.

DOS games do indeed use a DOS emulator called DOSbox. If you've got the original games then you can set it up yourself to much the same effect. In fact, DOSbox makes things so much easier that GOG use DOS versions even when superior Windows versions exist. So there's that downside too.

As for other games, what they do varies on a title to title basis. But a lot of games still manage to work just fine when you get past a hurdle or two (usually involving 16bit installers that simply don't work with modern OS).

Hello, and welcome to the site :-)

Well, GOG uses emulation extensively. All DOS games run through DOSBox, which is bundled with the installer for the game. Basically, the installer does all the work for you. It installs the game, installs DOSBox (individual installation for each game) and configures everything correctly, so that all you have to do is to click the game icon on your desktop.

A few games use the same method, but with ScummVM instead of DOSBox.

Then there are the Windows games. Well, the newer ones work on their own, and I assume that some of the older ones have various configuration tweaks applied to them to make them work.

The thing is (and many people get this wrong), GOG doesn't actually change any of their games. They can't, since they don't have the source code for them. All they can do is what can be done from outside the code itself. This is not to say that GOG doesn't do a fantastic job, because they do. It's just that some people expect much more from them than they can possibly deliver. I've seen people ask them to port old console games to PC (not by emulation, mind you), which is completely outside what they can (or should) do.

Edit: Multi-Ninja'd. I should have known. That's what I get for being long-winded ;-)

Don't want to derail the thread too much, but I'm curious... what sort of tweaks do they commonly do that fix games that won't run through DosBox? Are install files usually the biggest problem, or are there other common issues they have to get past?

On some of the newer older (?) games they provide wrappers that allow the programs to function within a modern OS. A good example is the GOG version of Beyond Good & Evil. When you run it you will see a small "GOG Wrap" program start as well. It basically serves as an adapter between your video drivers and the game. I wish I could explain in more detail, but I'm not entirely familiar with the process so I can only provide that (mostly unclear) explanation.

ikl

Some games don't work well with multicore CPU's so they force core affinity (so that the game only runs on one core), for others I imagine they bundle some older DirectX dll where the games no longer works correctly with the newer versions, some gets bundled with a Glide wrapper, still others require other fixes.

As EC- noted, this is all done through the gogwrap.exe loader (and maybe a dll or two - not goggame.dll though, that one is solely used for Game Explorer integration, unless I'm mistaken). Bypass that and load the game exe directly, and you have nullified GOG's changes.

The DOS titles you don't have to worry about, DOSbox has it covered. The newer Windows titles shouldn't cause too much issues either.

The Windows9x games, those are the ones you should be ready to tweak, since GOG can only do so much, not all of them run their best across a majority of systems.

Huh. I see.

I was wondering about Windows/newer 3D games. DosBox seems pretty capable of getting a good result for most everyone, but with the other games it doesn't appear so simple.

And yes, many people who have problems don't seem to realize that GOG doesn't have access to the source code. This threw at least one person into a frenzy on the DK forum, when they learned that for DK2. :P