I have Dark Forces on Steam. Cool. Unfortunately here in 2019, we have Catalina. Because of Catalina, I am no longer able to launch DF (and many other applications) through Steam because the executable is 32 bit (Catalina dropped 32-bit application support). Luckily the Steam version of DF is mostly a simple DOSBox wrapper around the original ga…

darkforces-launcher.sh

#!/bin/sh

###############################################################################
# DARK FORCES DOSBOX LAUNCHER
###############################################################################

# This quick-n-dirty script assumes you already have dosbox installed via brew 

# create tmp file handle
tmpconf=$(mktemp /tmp/dosbox.darkforces.conf.XXXXXX)
#echo created temp file: $tmpconf

# path to darkforces game files (installed via steam)
GAMEFILES='~/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/Dark Forces/Star Wars Dark Forces.boxer/C.harddisk'

# custom dosbox.conf settings to overwrite your default (set in ~/Library/Preferences/Dosbox-something-something)
cat << EOF > $tmpconf
[sdl]
fullscreen=true
# replace with resolution of your choice or 'original'
fullresolution=2560x1440
output=opengl
[render]
aspect=false
scaler=normal3x

[autoexec]
mount c "$GAMEFILES"
c:
DARK.EXE
EOF

# launch dosbox

# if Dosbox.app installed, used that
if [ -d /Applications/dosbox.app ]; then
    echo "/Applications/Dosbox.app is installed"
    /Applications/dosbox.app/Contents/MacOS/DOSBox -conf "$tmpconf"

# fallback: if brew dosbox installed, then used that
elif command -v dosbox >/dev/null 2>&1; then 
    echo "dosbox is installed view brew"
    dosbox -conf "$tmpconf"

# fallback: if brew dosbox NOT installed, but brew installed, try installing that, then launching game
elif command -v brew >/dev/null 2>&1; then 
    echo "dosbox is not installed. however brew is; installing dosbox via brew..."; 
    brew install dosbox
    brew link dosbox
    echo "dosbox installed succesfully"; 
    dosbox -conf "$tmpconf"
else
    echo "dosbox is not installed and brew is not installe, unable to launch..."; 
fi

# clean up tmp file handle
exec 3>"$tmpconf"
rm "$tmpconf"

This snippet could be forked/altered to act as a dosbox launcher for any game you might want and with any settings you might want.