eXoDOS v6 is coming and it's incredible

[Mu0n]

I know most people around here know and love Macintosh Garden, which has been around for as long as I've unearthed my Mac Plus back in 2003 and started collecting a few more machines after that. It's mind boggling how organized it is, how special it is and how many people have been helped by it to this day and beyond.

Did you know there was a game specific MS-DOS project that tried to achieve these goals:

-Everything is controlled through a program called LaunchBox to browse, install, launch, etc. After it's installed, you're free to copy it to a vintage PC if you want (which I do, often)

-Make it downloadable through torrent in either minimal skeletal form (download on demand) or full thing right away (closing in on a terabyte)

-Make it so it RUNS the games right away and accompanies you with an emulator already set up for you. It's mainly DOSBOX of course, but there are half a dozen variants of it in order to emulate every feature and special corner cases; all done for you. Asks only a few questions and you never have to edit a config file unless you want to go out of your way to do it.

-Give you options when there are many. Think about games that supported Hercules, CGA, MCGA, EGA, VGA, etc and many sound devices: Game Blaster, Sound Blaster, Roland MT-32, roland SC-55, Gravis UltraSound

-Give you as complete full documentation (manuals, extra fluff book, copy protection wheels, etc)

Now, I became aware of it a few years ago when version 5 was out. There's a discord with quite a lot of activity, but I don't really participate, I find it overwhelming.
There are equivalent projects for win 3.1 games and they plan to do one for Win9x games.

Version 6 promises to be incredible and the main lead behind the team they have has been hard at work putting out incredible feature teasing for it over the last weeks. The planned launch date is either October or November of this year. This will absolutely convince me to wipe off my almost terabyte of data and start over for it, I'm super hyped for it for reasons related to: being to play it, being able to peruse the documentation, being able to experience multiple configurations without turning it into a chore every time for every game (ie mixing mt-32 music with sound blaster sfx when the base game doesn't support it, always a different tough puzzle every time).
Disclaimer, I still collect a handful of games in their big boxes, own close to a hundred titles on Good Old Games and Steam, accrued over the years, but this is just a no brainer, easier way.

Kind of like a Mac Garden for MS-DOS, but games specifically. Narrower focus on the software type, but INCREDIBLY so much more depth for it (trailers, period era catalogs, etc, books, look below!). It's an absolute love letter for MS-DOS users between 1981 to around 1996/7.

This has been 15 years in the making.​

Here's a quick link to his series of videos explaining every NEW upcoming feature of eXoDOS v6:

Here are the direct links in text form, in case you want to check out a specific feature:

Video 01: Overview -

Video 02: Media Pack -

Video 03: Catalog -

Video 04: eXoWAD (extra DOOM levels from the community) -

Video 05: Soundtracks - https://youtu.be/qFzIo-Eu_34?si=DjepycnvO9jsSt9A
Video 06: Game Commercials and Trailers - https://youtu.be/zsG8hvoPf78?si=Pyk5tTHPzOTNVKZP
Video 07: Community Feedback - https://youtu.be/O8d2yPk2sh0?si=ZoGlGvKSszq-ZMPZ
Video 08: Books - https://youtu.be/Xzw-X1dH_u4?si=Iq8_Ecp5Hy68Bl8v
Video 09: Media Pack Videos - https://youtu.be/v2pW_ZXJBzg?si=3pW7Sa9B0OFk8dgE
Video 10: What is eXoDOS v6 - https://youtu.be/r3G_UcC6mOA?si=iNH7yyEpIAwpOR9F
Video 11: eXoZZT - https://youtu.be/wqX5VABxAmc?si=uoE60KfgW-UrCoQL
Video 12: Backend - https://youtu.be/3kDPHiBHL8I?si=rp89XTQfIvtzhKP2
Video 13: Auto CRT Shaders - https://youtu.be/fDyU09r8g5o?si=Ah5wM0jJ4aJmZKQ9
Video 14: Composite CGA Mode - https://youtu.be/AJZtbq8-E9U?si=wvOQOP_vp0sRnER7
Video 15: IBM Music Feature - https://youtu.be/7kLsBv622fk?si=SLLQJGfCqUcjJM5B
Video 16: BBS Door Games - https://youtu.be/uTRH2JY8gN8?si=ac6A-nRvT6XgnfIL
Video 17: Roland SC-55 (Sound Canvas) - https://youtu.be/wMgokkihRyQ?si=-LlORZ66t0NsCcmS
Video 18: Roland MT-32 - https://youtu.be/tBB-uRmJ8xk?si=Y4pOzOc1DaT7_Il0

 

[Mu0n]

Want to plan for storage for all of this? I just found this search result over on the discord:

Base Pack Compressed: 637 gb
Media Pack Compressed: 161 gb
Base Pack Installed: 757 gb
w/ media pack installed: 1.07 gb
size with all games installed 1.75 tb

lite version will be released, a few weeks after the full release
lite version compressed 5 gb

 

[Patrick]

got any links?

all i found was info about V5

 

[Mu0n]

got any links?

all i found was info about V5

The v6 is not out yet. It's slated for a late October or November release. Only the v5 is downloadable for the time being.

 

[Mu0n]

New videos in the series:

Video 19 - Gravis UltraSound:

Video 20 - Win9x emulation and challenges:

Video 21 - Remote Multiplayer:

 

[Mu0n]

exoDOS v6 is now LAUNCHED

eXoDOS

get your beefy hard disks ready!

v6 torrent shows up as 637.5 GB
v6 media pack shows up as 114 GB

Unsure of how big after the installation is done, but the games stay zipped until you've launched/installed them once, so you'll need room to grow its footprint.

I'm putting it in a 4TB external drive....as soon as it's back from a RMA trip.

 

[Mu0n]

v6 release 2 was just released.

If you already had v6 first release, then:

-turn off auto-download in your torrent client FIRST

-get the new torrent file from the website (make sure it's not a cached release 1 torrent file)

-point to the same spot as your first torrent

-then force recheck the torrent

-should start you at 82% when it has verified all files (the forced recheck of files can take more than an hour by itself)


I can confirm this works.
There's also a release 2 for the media pack, same method, pointed to the same base folder. both can be done at the same time. If they are both in forced recheck, one has to finish before the other starts checking. Then of course, when the download of their respective remainders start, both can happen at the same time.

 

[Mu0n]

eXoDOS v6 Lite is now available at www.retro-exo.com

IMPORTANT NOTES!​

• The Lite version is just over 5gb. This is down from the v5 Lite version which was 55gb. If 5gb is still too large for you, then just do us both a favor and go ahead and ban yourself now
  

• The Lite version relies on the seeders of the full version. If you are having trouble getting a game to download, then you have two options. Ensure your ports are forwarded properly (www.portforward.com) or, just be patient. Do not flood the chat channels with complaints about how slow it is or how long it is taking. If you don't want to wait, then pony up a few bucks, buy a new hard drive, and get the full release.

• The Lite version will not receive updates like the full version. There is no way to design the updater to only update games you have installed and know to go back and grab an update you skipped because you installed that game later. Ultimately, the updates are designed to address bugs across all 7,633 current games while adding new games. The Lite version won't benefit from this.

• eXoDOS Lite will get updated when the first torrent roll-up release of eXoDOS occurs. The Lite update will simply repoint it to the new release at that time, that way it isn't perpetually pointing at an old dead torrent.

• The Lite version and the Full version do have differences in their primary files. So you can not download them to the same folder and seed both of them. If you get the Lite version and then decide to update to the Full version later on, you will need to download the entire eXoDOS v6 Full release on top of your Lite release in order to upgrade it.

• The Media Add-On Pack works fine with this release.