"As long as you are under my command you are forbidden to die, moredhel."
I did something a little bit different this time.
There are tons of games on GOG that I absolutely love, and it kinda kills me that I'm not able to give them the sort of treatment that I can with stuff that isn't there. Few games exemplify this more than Betrayal at Krondor - a game whose praises I take any and every opportunity to sing. But I got to thinking... maybe I can still work some magic on them.
This was an experiment to see what I could do in terms of creating a patcher that can be used in conjunction with the install from GOG that will take the necessary files from it and pipe them into my own version, which I'm calling Betrayal at Krondor: Definitive Edition. The game files themselves are not included - you have to have the GOG version beforehand, and then just place my folder parallel to the GOG one; so something like C:\Games\Betrayal at Krondor and C:\Games\Betrayal at Krondor (Definitive Edition). The GOG one does need to be in a folder named "Betrayal at Krondor" (it is by default) as that's what the patcher will look for. I have some instructions in the readme, but it's about as simple as it can get - it's literally two steps. Extract the folder. Start PATCH.bat. Done. Everything is portable, so if you decide you want to uninstall the GOG version afterwards, move the folder for the Definitive Edition somewhere else... go for it. It'll still work.
I have the install and a quick demonstration here:
It should be noted that the bezel and shader won't look right if it's not viewed at 1080p and at full size... (and even then Youtube compression still butchers it quite a bit). You can find a full comparison gallery here. Middle click the images to open them in a new tab by themselves, then zoom to full size, and then switch between tabs to compare.
Anyway, the patch includes:
-DOSBox Daum and Retroarch
-My custom shaders and bezel for Retroarch
-Controller support for both Daum and Retroarch via Antimicro
-The FluidR3 soundfont for higher quality music*
-Patches the game to be able to play both midi and sound effects at the same time (it can't do this by default)
-ASuite for management/configuration
*DOSbox Daum is setup to use the FluidR3 soundfont out of the box. In order to get it to work with Retroarch, you'll need external midi device software like VirtualMidiSynth, which is what I would recommend as it's what I use. It's really simple to set up. I have some instructions in the readme if you're interested.
The controller mappings are as follows (based on a 360/XB1 controller):
Left stick: arrow keys
Right stick and dpad: mouse movement
RB: swaps left stick and dpad controls
Right trigger: left mouse button
Left trigger: right mouse button
Start: ESC
B: Space
X: Enter
Back + LB: Quit
Anyway, I'm not sure how many of these I'll do and I'm not sure how I'm going to handle these on the site - whether I'll make a dedicated section specifically for them or what. I'm not even sure how many people would actually be interested in something like this, but at the end of the day I guess I just look at it as something that I would end up doing for myself anyway, so might as well share it. There are definitely a number of titles that I'd like to give this treatment. Dungeon Hack, Gabriel Knight 1 and 2, Harvester, Lands of Lore I and II, Last Express, Lost Eden, Noctropolis, Phantasmagoria... It's probably worth mentioning that I should be able to do the same thing for the Steam version, but I'd need to see some specific files/directories, because there are some files in the GOG one that I know are specific to GOG. I don't have Betrayal at Krondor on Steam, so I don't have access to that information currently.