I've just bought Albion through GoG and I've been trying to make both the DOSBox and native Windows port to work for comparison purposes.

However they appear to have issues with pathing in setup.ini.

GoG's version NEEDS the line "SOURCE_PATH=D:\ALBION\", I'm guessing because it's loading the game ISO in D:\ but the port needs a real direct path.

Has anyone found a solution other than keeping two copies? (or recreating a D:\Albion)

If you do what's written in readme-Windows.txt (in Windows port), then you should be able to use the Windows port and DOSBox to play the game. (That means: install Albion into C:\Games\ALBION for example, create directory C:\Games\ALBION\ALBIONCD and copy the content of ALBION directory from the CD image (game.gog) into it, in file SETUP.INI set the line which begins with SOURCE_PATH= to SOURCE_PATH=ALBIONCD\)

First of all, thank you very much for taking the time to answer to my question.

However, I do believe I already mentioned that I did, and it does't, and I thought explained why it doesn't.

I can get the DOSBox version to work OR I can get the Windows port to work BUT making one of them work means making the other one NOT working.

The way GoG has setup their DOSBox version it mounts the game in D:\Albion. It doesn't matter where it is ACTUALLY installed, it is a virtual mounting and I can't find WHERE it is to change it. So the moment I change the PATH line in the "setup.ini" to something else then the GOG version won't work.

HOWEVER, the Windows port doesn't like absolute paths and ONLY works with relative ones.
I.e. "PATH=D:\ALBION" win NOT work with the Windows port. It needs a path like "PATH=\ALBIONCD" or "PATH=."

What I need to do is get access to the file that instructs DOSBox which virtual path to mount and change it so that it will work with the relative one I need to enter in order for the port to work.

Thanks!

Look at the GOG DOSBox shortcut. You will see the two .conf files used. It's in them and likely the _single one.

I forgot that Albion has a CD check, because I removed it years ago.

To remove the CD check, download this zip file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByS3DU4n3Ke0ZHVmYWZrWlZiX1U
Extract it to Albion directory and run patch.bat, it should create a file MAINnocd.EXE.
Backup the original MAIN.EXE and rename MAINnocd.EXE to MAIN.EXE.

Now both DOSBox and Windows version should run when SOURCE_PATH=ALBIONCD\