Performance in js-dos is really great. I was actually curious about developing (4K) dos programs in 2020. And the best out there is compile with gcc and pray ;)
MSDOS Development With GCC
7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser
71–80 of 85 posts
Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser
#72Bummed that a lot of the games I want to play are hidden behind 'Decoders' or special key decoding systems that used to physically ship with the game. Anyone know a way around these kinda things?
Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser
#73I wonder if something like this will ever happen to xbox 360, ps4, etc games. Or if they'll be long unplayable either technically or legally.
Standalone emulators are continuing to make progress for each of these platforms, but there's still quite some way to go. Once we get those to a level where most games are playable without issues at full speed porting them to the browser would theoretically be possible (no idea about the speed hits though), though I don't expect that to happen for several more years. As for the Internet Archive itself, they recently…
> porting them to the browser would theoretically be possible
Even then I don't see it working in practice due to the bandwidth and storage requirements.
Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser
#74Wow, I didn't know this existed. I had the itch to play some of the games of my childhood a while ago (mostly roguelikes and interactive text adventures), but was too lazy to set up Dosbox. To be able to run them from my browser is just great.
Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser
#75Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser
#76Stunts was so good. Ran it on my 1MB 386. You could record games and play them back from different angles. You could design your own tracks and I remember finding a glitch if you raced the indycar at top speed towards the biggest ramp where it would fly into the air and be bound only by the top of the coordinate system. Great times (and I don't even like car games...)
I love stunts so much I did a song using only dosbox recorded stunts wave files as samples.
https://soundcloud.com/flipbit03/stunts
also check out the song's pixel artwork, a remix of the main game screen.
Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser
#77It's so easy these days to play old DOS games, it's great. Not just because of The Internet Archive's fantastic work in recent years with getting these onto their website, but also the work put in by the Dosbox and ScummVM people. These old games are more accessible now than they were back in the day, when you had to configure your AUTOEXEC.BAT, get all your IRQs in order and make sure you have enough memory and what…
Street Rod is an amazing game. Thanks for sharing this. I remember getting shareware disks at the local mall and spending hours trying to get games working as a kid. “Dad, what is a Fat32? I deleted Lotus Symphony to make room for Leisure Suit Larry...”
Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did the same! Honestly don't remember how I figured all that stuff out without internet and stack overflow. Also, my friends would call me and ask for the secret code to start Doom. I'd begin: "cd doom2"....
I can't quite remember how those things were figured out either, but I think it was probably partially word of mouth. Games also had tips for memory configuration in their readme files or manuals. There was also at least one book I had at home that my father had bought that had all kinds of details on the workings of DOS (and PCs of that era in general).
The good old days of floppy disk swapping!
I used to spend a bit of time browsing Computer & Game magazines at the local newsagency and library. I think some of what I picked up came from the likes of PCMag, C+VG and a lot of trial and error.
Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
20 years ago I would have considered the idea of being able to play every dos game ever made directly in a browser without waiting science fiction. I guess it will happen eventually; I think the biggest concern with preserving games now is the amount of functionality provided server side that is lost (maybe forever) when the game company switches their servers off.
While that may be true (looking at the history of other games) you can also pretty much count on somebody reversing the server side and putting up a reverse engineered server then. A great deal of online games of the Dreamcast era (so early 2000s) are being resurrected exactly through this method and people are enjoying them to this day: https://www.dreamcast-talk.com/forum/app.php/page/onlinegame...
I considered fan efforts etc, but things like the audio from BS Zelda relies on someone having saved it in the first place.
Re: 7k MS-DOS Games playable in the browser
#80Bummed that a lot of the games I want to play are hidden behind 'Decoders' or special key decoding systems that used to physically ship with the game. Anyone know a way around these kinda things?
Almost all of those will have cheat sheets or reproductions or scans or even patches/cracks somewhere if the game had a big enough following.