Developing DOS games in 2014? Well, why not...
A framework for making 2D DOS games in Lua
11–20 of 20 posts
Re: A framework for making 2D DOS games in Lua
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are gaps in my knowledge, but my understanding is that to address 32-bits of memory requires the use of a "DOS extender". The reason being that DOS is barely an operating system at all- It never provided any 32-bit support but support was possible by monkey patching over part of the operating system in memory. This was possible because DOS had no security measures preventing such horrifying endeavours. Anyway,…
The compiler used is DJGPP, a port of GCC that comes with a DOS extender, a POSIX-compatible C library and pretty much everything else needed to pretend that you're using a Unix system. Basically Cygwin for DOS.
Yeah, DJGPP is great and I think it was one of the first compilers to work in Protected Mode and take (most of) the DOS/Real mode pain away
Re: A framework for making 2D DOS games in Lua
#13I'm rather more of a fan of LOAD81 for things like this, although I don't know if it runs on DOS .. it certainly provides the same degree of sophistication, and includes a great built-in editor:
http://github.com/antirez/load81
(BTW, yes: its written by that antirez .. ;)
Re: A framework for making 2D DOS games in Lua
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
The compiler used is DJGPP, a port of GCC that comes with a DOS extender, a POSIX-compatible C library and pretty much everything else needed to pretend that you're using a Unix system. Basically Cygwin for DOS.
Yeah, DJGPP is great and I think it was one of the first compilers to work in Protected Mode and take (most of) the DOS/Real mode pain away
Either DJGPP or Watcom with PharLap.
But regardless of who was first (they'll be pretty close, '89 or so) it was a huge step forward for programming on x86. The fact that it was free made it even more amazing.
Re: A framework for making 2D DOS games in Lua
#15That's cool. I've often wondered about creating a retro DOS-shareware-style game, as a throwback to Commander Keen and Jill of the Jungle etc. It'd be a challenge working with the limited resources, but since most things run DosBOX, you'd also get cross-platform compatibility for free :)
>> It'd be a challenge working with the limited resources
It's fairly simple until you get into things like different hardware and trying to do things with networking. VGA graphics, keyboard input, that stuff is all pretty simple.
Assuming something like a SoundBlaster, even sound programming could be done with a library.
Re: A framework for making 2D DOS games in Lua
#16Developing DOS games in 2014? Well, why not...
I remember Carmack's statement on DOS from his .plan back around the Quake 2 days
We are not going to do another dos game. No amount of flaming hate mail is going to change my mind on this (PLEASE don't!). The advantages of good TCP/IP support, dynamic linking, powerfull virtual memory, device drivers, etc, are just too much to overcome. Yes, all of those can be provided under dos in various ways, but it just isn't worth it.
Re: A framework for making 2D DOS games in Lua
#17I'm rather more of a fan of LOAD81 for things like this, although I don't know if it runs on DOS .. it certainly provides the same degree of sophistication, and includes a great built-in editor: http://github.com/antirez/load81 (BTW, yes: its written by that antirez .. ;)
Thanks for sharing; I was unaware of the app this tool was modeled after: Codea (Lua on iPad)
Re: A framework for making 2D DOS games in Lua
#18What drove you to make this? It's really cool but very niche
My assumption is that since DosBox simulates the same hardware on different platforms/OSes - it's possible to write a DOS game once and enjoy it on Linux, Windows, Mac, Android etc. Cross-platform games with retro flavor, why not?
Re: A framework for making 2D DOS games in Lua
#19What drove you to make this? It's really cool but very niche
My assumption is that since DosBox simulates the same hardware on different platforms/OSes - it's possible to write a DOS game once and enjoy it on Linux, Windows, Mac, Android etc. Cross-platform games with retro flavor, why not?
Re: A framework for making 2D DOS games in Lua
#20This is cool.
But if you really want to be retro and have fun hacking in a truly constrained environment, try coding for the Atari 2600. Grab Stella (http://stella.sourceforge.net/index.php), read up on Atari specs (http://problemkaputt.de/2k6specs.htm) and have at it. Yep you read that right -- 8bit CPU at 1Mhz, 128 BYTES RAM, max 8K of memory.