Djgpp

Quake used Djgpp. Doom, the earlier game from Id Software, used the commercial Watcom C/C++ compiler. Watcom was the go to solution for most 32-bit DOS games during 90s.

I used DJGPP quite a bit for several projects at work a few years ago. Worked really well. I was happy to use modern versions of C++ compilers for DOS apps.

Found this: "Build DJGPP cross compiler and binutils on Windows (MinGW/Cygwin), Mac OSX and Linux"

https://github.com/andrewwutw/build-djgpp

Perhaps some folks will find this useful.

That's how I learned programming in the mid '90s, after a brief time on some 16bit turbo c++ version.