Please add a VirtualBox runner to add Windows OSes such as Windows XP. Sometimes you need to use VirtualBox to get a game to work since Wine will not run it. I think all VirtualBox runners should be classifed as Windows for its platform category. And also be able to choose what virtualbox installation you want to use on your machine.
Wouldn’t that require the VM to start up a Windows session, run the game after user login, and shutdown after the game quits?
Yes but this can be setup by the user. I have made VMs running XP which when they boot up and login they will run the game on startup. Shutting down a VM is like shutting down a computer.
…If you’re going to set up the whole process yourself, you can just as well configure VirtualBox as the game executable and be done with it.
An alternative would be PCemu with win95, which could be easier to plugin to Lutris but system requirements would be higher than VirtualBox. PCemu emulates the entire system and for that to work you need to provide a lot of firmware
To provide the firmware will be hard to do. a VM will be better since those who have used and setup VMs will know what to do. Sure the lutris runner will not work out of the box but this is not possible for a VM runner.
However the VM runner should have options to choose where the VM is stored so it can execute that on launch just like how the linux and wine runners allow you to choose the executable and wine prefix path.
VirtualBox manages VMs by names, so it’s enough to just pass the relevant VM name as an argument to VBoxManage
Is it possible to shortcut to something inside a vm?
Ps
If anyone is curious on how to setup pcemu (https://olistutorials.wordpress.com/2017/02/25/setting-up-pcem-for-windows-95-games/). I haven’t done this myself so, here there maybe dragons.
I’ve just remember reading of another experiment in running win9x, that one use dosbox.
I imagine one would first need to set up guest additions, as well as deal with potential issues before this works. And it probably only works if the VM is running already…