IA Launcher

A DOSBox frontend for the Internet Archive MS-DOS games collection

IA Launcher is a graphical games launcher for all those gorgeous MS-DOS games from yestermillenium. It uses the Internet Archive to download games on-the-fly and DOSBox to play them offline. Visit the IA Launcher website for a list of all the included games.

Features

• Batteries included! Thousands of games playable out-of-the-box.
• Graphical user interface for quickly browsing through title screens.
• Seamlessly downloads games from a curated library of game URLs.
• Custom startup logic for all included games.
• Saves state such as savegames and settings for each game.

Installation

First of all, get yourself a snazzy retro-looking PC. Or just use your current computer running your operating system of choice. Start by installing the following dependencies:

• Python version 3.12 or higher
• DOSBox version 0.74 or higher

New! DOSBox Staging is now also officially supported! The Windows installer even comes with DOSBox Staging included inside the box!

Then, install IA Launcher using pip3:

pip3 install ialauncher

Finally, start the program with the ialauncher command. To see the available options, use ialauncher --help.

Special Keys

• Space: start slideshow
• Arrow keys: navigate through the games list
• A-Z: start filtering
• Backspace: clear the filter
• Enter: launch the selected game
• Shift-Enter: reset game state before starting game
• Alt-Enter: open DOSBox without starting the game
• Ctrl-Enter: toggle whether the selected game is one of your favorites
• Tab: toggle between showing all games and only your favorites
• Minus: zoom out
• Plus: zoom in
• Esc: quit

During gameplay, you should also be familiar with the DOSBox Special Keys. The most important key is Ctrl-F9, which exits DOSBox and returns to IA Launcher.

Troubleshooting

Help, my game doesn't run correctly / has no sound!

Welcome to the world of MS-DOS where you are constantly fighting with IRQ values, memory managers and setup programs. Thankfully, the default DOSBox configuration runs nearly all DOS games perfectly out of the box. Also, all the games in the games directory have custom DOSBox configurations (where needed) and startup commands in their metadata.ini files. However, you will certainly end up in situations where you have to reconfigure a game. Try the following:

• Press Alt-Enter to start DOSBox with the game directory mounted as the C: drive.
• Use the dir command to see which files are present.
• Use the cd command to change to the game subdirectory, if needed.
• Look for a file named install.{bat,exe,com}, setsound.{bat,exe,com} or setup.{bat,exe,com} and execute it.

Hopefully, the setup utility will allow you to change the sound card parameters. For starters, try these values:

Sound card: Sound Blaster 16 and/or AdLib
Address/port: 220
IRQ: 7
DMA: 1

Help, my game doesn't run at all!

Each game's metadata, including the command that starts the game, is stored in the game's metadata.ini file. In many cases IA Launcher provides the needed commands to install and set up the game when run for the first time. However, in other cases the commands listed in metadata.ini assume the installation was already done with default settings. In these cases, try the following:

• Press Alt-Enter to start DOSBox with the game directory mounted as the C: drive.
• Type dosbox.bat and press Enter. This attempts to start the game.
• Type type dosbox.bat to see how IA Launcher attempts to start the game.
• (Optional) Type mount a . to mount the game's directory as the floppy drive, because many games assume they are being installed from a floppy disk.
• (Optional) Type a: to switch to the mounted floppy drive.
• Type install and follow the installation procedure, accepting all the default values.

After the installation has finished, try launching the game again and hopefully the default startup command will now work. If not, keep reading...

Help! The default startup command is incorrect!

Here is how you can change the command(s) that launch a game. Read carefully, this will be on the exam:

• Press Alt-Enter to start DOSBox with the game directory mounted as the C: drive.
• (Optional) Type echo cd [directoryname] > dosbox.bat to put the cd command in the file named dosbox.bat.
• Type echo [command that launches the game] >> dosbox.bat to append the command that launches the game to the file dosbox.bat.
• Execute dosbox.bat and verify that your game now launches correctly.

When you exit the emulator, IA Launcher will save the contents of dosbox.bat to the emulator_start variable inside the game's metadata.ini. The next time you launch the game, the dosbox.bat file will be run automatically.

More advanced logic can be created with batch file syntax. As an example, here is the contents of emulator_start for the game SimCity 2000:

if exist sc2000 goto run
mount a .
a:
install
:run
cd sc2000
sc2000

You can also mount CD images and get CD audio while playing:

imgmount d Quake.cue -t iso
if exist quake goto run
d:
install
:run
cd quake
quake

If you used Git to clone this repository, you will notice that the previous steps will leave unstaged changes in your working tree. You are encouraged to create a pull request for those changes, so together we can make IA Launcher even better!