Software Library: MS-DOS Games | Hacker News Reader

Software Library: MS-DOS Games

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169 pointsdavedx62 comments

DOS was a great platform for developing games. It was simple. It was constrained. We could write code in QBASIC and compile it to EXE and distribute it. It could run on any DOS machine then.

Is there an equivalent like that now for game development? What I am looking for is a simple and constrained environment. Has support for graphics and audio. But in this age, I would like something that works uniformly across Windows, Linux desktop (such as XFCE, GNOME, KDE), and macOS. Is there something like this to create small games like that in the DOS era?

I don't have any experience with it personally, but from what I understand, Unity comes pretty close.

Though it's not particularly constrained, as far as I know.

PICO-8 harkens back to limited colors and resolutions, and includes a chiptune editor. It exports to a web player, so should work anywhere.

https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

If you want to make an adventure game, you can make a hypercard-like text game in Twine which also exports to the web. You could even draw on old DOS fonts like at https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/ and style your game like it's 1990!

https://twinery.org/

PICO-8 seems to cost $14.99: https://www.lexaloffle.com/games.php?page=updates

Is this not open source? Are there any open source alternatives to PICO-8? The idea of PICO-8 is really good and I really liked it but I would like this to based on something open source so that I know that the platform will not disappear at the whims of the vendor and that I can hack on the platform itself if necessary.

One that I've kicked around with is TIC-80: https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80

A bit more generous with the system resources, but PICO-8 does have a bigger community and "carts" to download and poke around with.

There are multiple Open Source implementations of the PICO-8 "console", such as https://github.com/Gigoteur/UnicornConsole (formerly "PX8").

You can have a look there: https://github.com/paladin-t/fantasy

These exist! Yes.

- You can still use QBASIC and compile it to an EXE. Distribute your game with a copy of DosBox, and it will work uniformly across Windows, Linux, and macOS.

- If you like Lua, go for Pico8 or LÖVE. Pico8 is fairly constrained, and LÖVE is a bit more general.

- If you like JavaScript, write a game that uses the 2D canvas and Web Audio API. You can upload this to your website and play it on any computer.

- Haxe (look it up, I don’t know it well enough.)

- If you like something more capable, try out a game engine like Unity. You can hack together a simple game following tutorials and create Windows, Linux, and macOS builds at the touch of a button.

I think it’s worth discussing why people like “constrained” systems in a bit more depth, because some of the things I’ve mentioned above are definitely not constrained.

As you get older and more experienced, you develop opinions about how software should be developed, and most can’t turn these opinions off at will. These opinions range from ones about the programming experience (compile times, type systems, testing) to the user experience (small downloads, no unnecessary libraries, support for specific targets, etc.)

Spend some time with a kid in high school who loves making video games. Let me tell you, even though I am 100% a better programmer and better software engineer than the high school kids I meet, I still get a fresh dose of humility when I work with them on game projects.

They simply don’t care about type systems, testing, or library dependencies yet. They just want to put cool things in their game and share it with other people. The tools for making that happen, and making it happen easily and quickly, are better than they have ever been. The tools are also free (as in beer), once you have a computer and internet connection.

So if you want to rediscover the experience of programming like a kid again, try rediscovering the wild and eager mindset of programming like a kid, and you’ll find that the modern tools are pretty damn cool.

>I think it’s worth discussing why people like “constrained” systems in a bit more depth, because some of the things I’ve mentioned above are definitely not constrained.

I am the CTO of an edu org, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. I would say that from our perspective, it's people aware that they're paralyzed by choice. Unity is a bad choice for kids because there's SO MANY OPTIONS on how to build your game, so many plugins, so many choices!

QBasic was great because it was limited. You had to do a lot of the work yourself, sure, but you could start with a simple text game and not have to think about which input library to use, or font choices, or whatever.

We start kids with Scratch. Most of them build a cute toy and get bored - we break out python (a document with a few imports and a window that opens with a moving sprite included) for the ones who start getting frustrated with the scratch gui (because it's too limiting).

> I would like something that works uniformly across Windows, Linux desktop (such as XFCE, GNOME, KDE), and macOS.

Löve [0] has a great approach to cross-platform deployment [1]. It's not exactly constrained when you compare it to QBasic, but of course using only a subset of its modules is no problem :)

Of course the closest equivalent is … DosBox! Runs on basically every system, does graphics and sound and not much else :) Btw., Watcom in Open Source now [2]. IIRC Retro City Rampage 486 was made with that.

[0] https://love2d.org/ [1] https://love2d.org/wiki/Game_Distribution [2] https://github.com/open-watcom/open-watcom-v2

Godot Engine exports to all these platforms with the click of a button.

It is mostly lauded for its 2D capabilities. 3D can be hit or miss.

Can you point me where are docs on Godot Engine export for MS-DOS?

Sorry if I'm mistaken, but I was answering to the comment by yori[1], and he/she did not request for MS-DOS support.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21773396

I see.

BTW, there was one such request:

> inb4 users ask for an MS-DOS port of #GodotEngine

[0] https://mastodon.technology/@GodotEngineBot/1008056996922345...

Errrrr... dosbox?

What's wrong with dosbox? Please elaborate.

> Is there an equivalent like that now for game development?

dosbox is your equivalent.

https://www.dosbox.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOSBox

Yes, I know what dosbox is, thank you. That's ... why I mentioned it ...

https://www.portal.qb64.org/ https://www.freebasic.net/

QB64 maintains compatibility with QuickBasic (mostly) and can compile to DOS. FreeBASIC has newer bits added for a more modern approach.

Target the NES or SNES. Emulators are tiny and work on all platforms. Bundle one.

Here's a somewhat obscure one that fits your description: http://www.headcannon.com/HCGE/

>The Headcannon Game Engine, HCGE for short, has been in development for over a decade by an '80s kid raised with classic computer and game console hardware. Borne from a deep fascination with these machines and a thorough respect for the developers who could make the best of them, HCGE is highly specialized for getting the most out of the 2D realm on today's hardware; Retro sensibility meets modern raw power!

I love Stunts! No other game that I know of has made an incredibly clunky gameplay and controls so fun. When I was a kid, I would make custom tracks for hours and hours. I wish some game could capture it's spirit and make a modern version, since Stunts hasn't aged well.

did you check the trackmania series?

Played TrackMania Nations Forever so much when I was younger. It was a great time to relax and chat with people from all over the world.

That game struck an interesting balance between trying to improve your lap times and just socialize and hang out. The tracks playing in the background added a lot to the sense of everyone hanging out in the same place. Always looked forward to the current map changing, they always managed to keep it interesting.

Agreed! Stunts was one of my go-to driving games. Driving was fun, track making was fun. Playing against crazy characters like Bernie Rubber or Helen Wheels was great. Heck, the music was great too.

Syndicate. Now there was a damn good game.

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Syndicate_Plus_1994

Ooo, Dangerous Dave is on there. Playing that game and watching stick man animated comics at the local library as a kid is a large part of why I ended up becoming a developer. These games sparked the love of technology in millions of people. It's good to see them being archived like this

> Dangerous Dave

That game is awesome. The upside-down levels blew my mind as a young kid!

OMG. Got stuck in Prince of Persia but I am not much of a prince anymore without the "megahit" :)

Interesting, I was browsing something on the Wayback Machine today and shortly after stumbled on this collection. Made me wonder about the legality of it, and left me frustrated because TIE Fighter doesn’t work - gets stuck on an installation loop.

MinerVGA is interesting! I never realized what Motherload's inspiration was.

It's nice that my childhood favorites are there: Descent, Jazz and Tyrian.

Check out Overload if you like Descent.

I’ve already played a lot of it. Try it in VR if you want a real physiological challenge.

6DOF games are hard to come by. Evochron is a decent example of one. I spent 20 hours just figuring how to pilot the damn ships then “finished” the game in a few hours. There’s something there, maybe. Idk. It has trouble gamefying it’s space simulation.

I'll just say wow. It feels like every game I wanted to play all in one collection.

Does anyone remember 'spot' such a fun little game at the cost of only being 1 meg or 2. When the size of the game mattered.

Wonder if they have a c64 section. There was a great soccer game where you fought up leagues.

Does anyone remember a MS-DOS game where one could select different characters to battle (there were a lot of them). They all had strange names (strange to me at 10 years old), maybe Greek-like? I played this a friends house late 1980s, have been looking to find it again without much luck.

Can you tell us anything else about the game? Was it a sidescroller? A fighting game (1v1)? Isometric? Any other details about the gameplay?

My memory is pretty fuzzy unfortunately. I recall that one would choose their fighter, which would have different abilities (magic or fighting etc). Then both would enter the screen from opposite sides to battle. The graphics were not the best. That's about all I remember. Not much to go on!

Yeah the closest I can see is what genpfault posted as a reply: Archon: The Light and the Dark. Hope that's it, otherwise I can't find much, either.

Appreciate the help!

Shamelessly hijacking your question because I too am trying to find a pair of games. They were text adventures that had some primitive graphics running in a low res mode. One was set on Mars exploring an abandoned(?) Base in a sci fi setting. The other was exploring an underground(?) Goblin city in a fantasy setting. Both games were probably made by the same developer because the UI was very similar between the two.

They were distributed on the cover disks of a British magazine called What Personal Computer in the early 90s.

The first one sounds like a few different games. Did it happen to be "Monuments of Mars"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monuments_of_Mars

If you like games like that, this one's not Mars but you might also enjoy Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sentinel+worlds+future+magic

Nah, it was much more of a text adventure, just rendered in a low resolution graphics mode with some primitive graphics.

Sentinel Worlds looks cool, I'll check it out!

Given nothing more than your descriptions, the first game sounds like a description that could be somewhat applied to Infocom's Leather Goddess of Phobos, and the second sounds similar to a description that could be applied to Infocom's Zork series.

Both are pure text adventures however, no graphics.

Archon: The Light and the Dark[1]?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archon:_The_Light_and_the_Dark

That may very well be it, thanks! I watched a video and the battle scene looks very familiar.

Well there goes my productivity for today

Happy to see this :)

But sad to see my childhood favourite game Deluxe Ski Jump lagging. There seems to be a comment from 2015 with a fix guide for the admin but no indication if they have tried the steps. Hope it will get fixed. Boy I've been missing that game!

I don't see The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery, I really would like to finish that game. Not sure what happened to the CDs, but I must have lost them during a move.

Also, VGA Planets! Setup a server someone!

You can buy that Gabriel Knight game from GOG for $6:

https://www.gog.com/game/gabriel_knight_2_the_beast_within

It doesn't seem to be playable online, but they have this: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Gabriel_Knight_2_-_The_Bea...

> VGA Planets:

https://planets.nu/

There's some awesome stuff there (Monkey Island! Doom! Dune 2! Catacomb 3D!), but I do wonder how legal this is - a lot of these games are still sold on all kinds of platforms.

Move along. There's nothing to see here..

...where's the turbo button though?

Ctrl+F11/F12 decrease/increase CPU cycles (at least in "proper" dosbox, not sure if that comes through the browser to the WebAssembly version running there)

This brings back a lot of memories! Is there any trick for getting sound, though?

Can you not download these games locally to play through DOSBox?

It is quite possible by simply using the "Network" tab of the browser's developer tools to save a local copy of the ZIP file that the in-browser emulator downloads. The legality of doing so is questionable to say the least.

all these games have been curated by eXo: https://exodos.the-eye.us/ where you can also download them. (un?)ethically considered "abandonware", i suppose. you can find a good lot of the more popular games for sale on GOG.

Not in any supported/official way, though obviously it's possible to use developer tools to extract the file it's downloading. My understanding is that the Internet Archive operates under the legal theory that this model does not constitute "distributing copies".

OMG, digger!!!!

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