I play quite a few GOG games now - and was wondering about the necessity of keeping the DosBox programme in the folder of every single dowloaded game. I understand why it's done like this, and it does make for a quick and trouble free start up. However, as I now have several games using the program, would it not be possible to keep a single copy of DosBox. Would I have to move other files (such as .conf) to the DosBox directory or would DosBox find them anyway?

Feel free to tell me I'm stupid :D

The earlier installer DID have the option to use a centrally installed DOSbox - there was just one problem, the installer would not accept an older version of DOSbox than was bundled and would not recognise a newer one so you had to have the exact same installed, add that games bundled different version of DOSbox, and you can understand that the option was of very little use (it was later removed).

You can, of course, try to use your own DOSbox install if you wish, but it does require some messing around, and doesn't save all that much space anyway (DOSbox isn't very big). Just point the shortcut to the DOSbox you want to use, and to the correct conf file(s).

Example: Duke Nukem 1+2.
Target:
"C:\path\to\DOSBox.exe" -conf "C:\location\of\dosbox_duke.conf" -conf "C:\location\of\dosbox_duke_single.conf" -noconsole -c exit

Start in:
"C:\location\of\DOSBOX"

Change C:\path\to to where your DOSBox exe is, and change C:\location\of to where the game is installed (not where DOSbox is).

Several games use the GOG launcher which fetches information (such as install path) about the game from the registry, so it may not be directly apparent what the values need to be, but it can be figured out.

You could use a frontend such as DBGL to have all your DOSBox games in one handy interface, but you would have to manually add all the games and their configurations.
At least that's the way with DBGL, although you could probably replace the config file that DBGL creates with the GOG one and edit that.. but it's probably easier to just make the config using DBGL since GOG very rarely makes special configurations anyway.
You wouldn't save a lot of space, but it does give you a nice launcher which is especially useful if you have a lot of DOS games installed.

Thanks for the replies - I see the complications now - and you're right! DosBox doesn't take up much space and since I have a 500 gig additional hard drive with hardly anything on it yet I'll stick with the status quo for now. I'd be sure to bugger up the config files anyway :D

The main problem, I think, is that GOG uses different custom builds for some games. A bit mendatory considering some games still have problems and there hasn't been a new official version of DOSBox for 3 years. I think that's the main reason why they dropped the idea of using an existing installation of DOSBox.

That makes me wonder though if there is a new version being developped. I've watched the forums and I've seen tons of custom builds to add new functions (and improve compatibility), but nothing about a new version. And there's so many SVN and custom builds that it makes my head spin.