Desktop Icons for Classic Adven Games? Best DOSBox Frontend?

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pbpb33
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Desktop Icons for Classic Adven Games? Best DOSBox Frontend?

#1 Post by pbpb33 » Sun May 23, 2010 10:33 am

I was recently reading an old reply on here by MusicallyInspired where he was explaining to someone how to create shortcuts to launch old DOS games so that the games will start and run in DOSBox just by clicking on the shortcuts. I created shortcuts this way (works great and is so much better than typing "mount" all the time), but now I would like to select special icons for the shortcuts.

Does anyone know of any collections of classic adventure game-related desktop icons out there which might be available for download? It would be neat to have a little custom bloody dagger (with the letters CB on it) icon for Colonel's Bequest, for example. I thought maybe some Sierra or LucasArts fan at some point, somewhere out there might have already designed little graphics to be used as icons for many of the old games.

Also, how do most of you launch your old DOS games in DOSBox? Do you have special ways of organizing the game lists? Do you use a DOSBox frontend? Which frontend do you like best? I tried using D-Fend ReLoaded, and couldn't get it to load the games properly. However, I only spent about 30 seconds trying to get it to work... and I should give it another try. What's the advantage of using a frontend program to launch games as opposed to just creating shortcuts? Special configurations saved for each game?

EDIT: I just found this -- see below. It's a picture Spikey posted of his desktop awhile back. Taking a look at his icons, which look great, it seems like it wouldn't be too hard to just create little icons using game screenshots, cover art, etc. We just have to convert the image to bitmap and keep it under a certain size, right? Geez, his desktop is so much better organized than mine!!

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MusicallyInspired
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Re: Desktop Icons for Classic Adven Games? Best DOSBox Frontend?

#2 Post by MusicallyInspired » Sun May 23, 2010 6:24 pm

Most of those icons Spikey has came with the various Quest Collections that Sierra used to sell. The only advantage to using frontends is to make it easier. I personally like to do all the work myself and personalize everything, er...personally without the need for an extra program.

There's a thread at the ScummVM forums where many people (myself included) have contributed to some HQ icons for different games supported by ScummVM.

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Re: Desktop Icons for Classic Adven Games? Best DOSBox Frontend?

#3 Post by pbpb33 » Mon May 24, 2010 10:19 am

OMG, these are amazing!! Very nice work.

YES, I hit the mother lode with this page!!! See here: http://thanius.com/pixmaps/scummvm/
I'm still trying to figure out if all the ones on that page will work with Windows 7... I see there is a link on the page to a zip file with some of the icons converted to be usable with Vista (which I assume would mean those ones at least would work with Windows 7).

I wonder whether this Thanius HQ icon-making project is now on hiatus. Will more be coming? Laura Bow's 1 and 2, perhaps? LSL games? King's Quest 4?

Thanks so much for the tip!

Here's a sample of these beautiful HQ icons:
Image

MusicallyInspired
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Re: Desktop Icons for Classic Adven Games? Best DOSBox Frontend?

#4 Post by MusicallyInspired » Mon May 24, 2010 1:52 pm

It kind of slowed down the past few months. Someone just posted a KQ5 one a couple weeks ago. Now that ScummVM has SCI support, there will probably be more Sierra icons eventually.

I believe they are Vista/7 compatible because that's the reason they were made. I don't think you can have icons this big in XP or earlier, can you? I used to use these for Linux when I was running it.

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Spikey
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Re: Desktop Icons for Classic Adven Games? Best DOSBox Frontend?

#5 Post by Spikey » Tue Jun 01, 2010 5:54 pm

MusicallyInspired wrote:Most of those icons Spikey has came with the various Quest Collections that Sierra used to sell. The only advantage to using frontends is to make it easier. I personally like to do all the work myself and personalize everything, er...personally without the need for an extra program.

Actually, I made a lot of them myself I think! The Qfg ones I picked off of the internet. There's a few official icons, like GK3 and DOTT, Maniac Mansion and maybe Simon and Al Emmo, Woodruff, 7th Guest & 11th Hour. The rest I made with game art and official artwork.

I could upload them if anyone is interested?

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