Mods runnable in shareware versions?
Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 22:04
Hey all,
Nowadays there are various websites letting you play DOS games in your web browser, but they're all limited to the official releases and don't make it easy to edit the files involved like you can if you were to download the games instead. So I recently pieced together a javascript mod loader which loads a DOS game using standard js-dos code, then applies a levelpack/mod to that game by replacing some number of files, mostly level files. This works really well for something like Jazz Jackrabbit 1, which can run any custom levels in the shareware version and has lots of individual external files--it's less desirable with something like Hocus Pocus or Clyde's Revenge, which have single data files that contain absolutely everything (and whose layouts vary across versions).
What are some other games like Jazz 1 that this would be useful for--shareware/freeware DOS games with lots of available mods where those mods can ideally be applied just by replacing a few files? I found some Cosmo levels, for instance, but they claim to only be compatible with the registered version of the game.
Nowadays there are various websites letting you play DOS games in your web browser, but they're all limited to the official releases and don't make it easy to edit the files involved like you can if you were to download the games instead. So I recently pieced together a javascript mod loader which loads a DOS game using standard js-dos code, then applies a levelpack/mod to that game by replacing some number of files, mostly level files. This works really well for something like Jazz Jackrabbit 1, which can run any custom levels in the shareware version and has lots of individual external files--it's less desirable with something like Hocus Pocus or Clyde's Revenge, which have single data files that contain absolutely everything (and whose layouts vary across versions).
What are some other games like Jazz 1 that this would be useful for--shareware/freeware DOS games with lots of available mods where those mods can ideally be applied just by replacing a few files? I found some Cosmo levels, for instance, but they claim to only be compatible with the registered version of the game.