
Software Library: MS-DOS Games - davedx
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games
======
yori
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?

~~~
klodolph
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.

~~~
TrentLarr
>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).

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haolez
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.

~~~
alxeder
did you check the trackmania series?

~~~
therein
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.

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grendelt
Syndicate. Now there was a damn good game.

[https://archive.org/details/msdos_Syndicate_Plus_1994](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Syndicate_Plus_1994)

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konfusinomicon
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

~~~
bananamerica
> Dangerous Dave

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

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

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Mobius01
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.

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willis936
MinerVGA is interesting! I never realized what Motherload's inspiration was.

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

~~~
ahartmetz
Check out Overload if you like Descent.

~~~
willis936
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.

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wolco
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.

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bg4
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.

~~~
yrro
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.

~~~
cestith
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](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](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sentinel+worlds+future+magic)

~~~
yrro
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!

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excalibur
Well there goes my productivity for today

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raptorraver
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!

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dade_
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!

~~~
smacktoward
You can buy that _Gabriel Knight_ game from GOG for $6:

[https://www.gog.com/game/gabriel_knight_2_the_beast_within](https://www.gog.com/game/gabriel_knight_2_the_beast_within)

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AskMeAboutLoom1
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.

~~~
martin1b
Move along. There's nothing to see here..

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l0c0b0x
...where's the turbo button though?

~~~
johannes1234321
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)

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

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dallen33
Can you not download these games locally to play through DOSBox?

~~~
distantsounds
all these games have been curated by eXo: [https://exodos.the-
eye.us/](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.

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l0c0b0x
OMG, digger!!!!

