Help with Pentagram U8 on mac

[LPS]

I'm hoping someone knowledgeable about Pentagram can help me. I purchased u8 from GOG and installed it on my mac. I'm trying to configure the pentagram.ini file but I'm having trouble because there is no directory that contains U8.exe. I went into the ultima 8 app directory and there's lots of stuff in there, but no windows executable files. Does anyone have any idea how to make this work?

[Dominus]

The game is further hid in the app. Look for something like ultima8.boxer or so.
I'll look it up later.

[Dominus]

it's in

Ultima\ 8\ Gold.app/Contents/Resources/Ultima\ 8\ Gold.boxer/C\ Ultima\ VIII\ -\ Pagan.harddisk/English

or with quotes which probably works better in Pentagram than the "\"

"Ultima 8 Gold.app/Contents/Resources/Ultima 8 Gold.boxer/C Ultima VIII - Pagan.harddisk/English"

(or German or French if you prefer one of those)

[LPS]

Thanks! I'm still new to macs and not totally used to Apple's bizarre inability to distinguish between files and directories...

[Dominus]

It's actually a great feature to have folders behave as programs

[LPS]

What are the benefits? I don't doubt you are correct, I just don't know much about this. I wish that when I searched for u8.exe, the search would have looked inside these program/folders, but in general I think that problem is less to do with the file structure and more to do with the Finder app, which in lots of ways seems to come up short to what I'm used to (Nemo or Dolphin)...

[Dominus]

Yes. Definitely use something else. I really like ForkLift, it's more in the spirit of Norton Commander (or Total Commander).

[monotremata]

Reading Dominus's responses, its not a Finder problem at all really. Sounds like GOG is using Boxer as its front end for running DOSBox in there. Instead of having a separate DOSBox install, along with a folder they are mounting as the C: drive, they used Boxer to make a self-contained '.boxer' file which, like an application on Mac OS, is actually a folder with the .boxer extension which contains the DOSBox app, along with the C folder, which was saved as a .harddisk image. DOSBox just mounts the .harddisk image as C: as opposed to a folder, and the images autoexec is probably set to run U8.bat (or whatever it was called for Pagan). DFend Reloaded on Windows, and DBGL (multi-platform java based frontend) can both do this as well, to create 'one click packages' for your DOS games, its just a self-contained DOSBox install that is set to launch a single game for ease/portability. The way GOG puts these together for the Mac is like an 'app', within an 'app' within an 'app' hehe.

Looking at it, actually seems kinda shady of GOG for simply taking open source emulators and front ends, putting them together, and making money off of it. But then again Im not very familar with GPL or the licensing terms used with both Boxer and DOSBox so who knows.. Assuming I had the rights to legally distribute U7, seems like it would be the same as me, taking Exult and stuffing an entire U7/U7 Pt. 2 install inside the Exult app and pointing all the config files to a directory inside the app, and then charging people for it..

[Dominus]

Well, GPL allows that. You only have to provide the source when asked for and they comply with that.

[monotremata]

Ahh so thats how that whole thing works!

Not that Im complaining, I have the free Ultima 4 they released and bought 1-7 pt 2 from em even though I have the Ultima Collection cd still along with my Apple/IBM copies. I just wish I wouldve thought of packaging them up like that first haha. I thought about doing that with my Exult as well, but that would make things a pain everytime I download a new snapshot haha. I have enough trouble transferring my database and screenshots from DBGL everytime I update that because all that stuff is stored inside the app..