DOS Appreciation

[Anonymous No.544332]

Do you miss her as much as I do?

[Anonymous No.544342]

>>544332
OSes are really more of a /g/ subject.

[Anonymous No.544351]

I do I miss actually having to be competent with a computer to do anything. Everything felt like an accomplishment on dos. It was extremely simple to use though just a lot to memorize. Dos 5 was so great.

[Anonymous No.544358]

>cd doom
>doom
>glorious

[Anonymous No.544382]

There are some things that i just try to forget.

>pic related

[Anonymous No.544378]

>>544342

Obviously we're meant to focus on great DOS games.

[Princess Sevenleaf !AnVbXjgZco No.544390]

>>544358
>not having batch files for all your Doom wads

[Anonymous No.544408]

>>544390
>all that DeuSF patching

Damn.

[Anonymous No.544428]

>>544332

>>>/g/

reported

[Anonymous No.544435]

>>544351

You had to know something. It kept casuals away.

[Anonymous No.544442]

>>544428

Dude we're talking about DOS games. Perfectly legitimate subject.

[Anonymous No.544496]

>>544428
>>>/v/

[Anonymous No.544513]

>Having to input a command to play a game.
I really don't miss it to be honest. I didn't have many games for it anyway and sadly I now can't remember any of the commands to access said games.

[Anonymous No.544509]

>those late nights with MOO, MOM and Civilization

Also I miss turn-based RPGs, of which there were a good bunch on DOS

[Anonymous No.544550]

>>544513

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEStsLJZhzo

[Anonymous No.544662]

>>544390
>2013

Yeah, we're talking about the 90s here, sweetie.

[Princess Sevenleaf !AnVbXjgZco No.544695]

>>544662
>batch files didn't exist in the 90's

Are you retarded? Seriously, are you this fucking ignorant?

[Anonymous No.544714]

>>544435
yes it sure did, I was 4 years old when i learned how to use DOS I could barely read but oh god I wanted to play those games soooooo bad

c:\>
cd c:\keen
c:\keen>keen4e.exe

:D

[Anonymous No.544727]

>>544714

I started on the originals. The first game I probably ever played was Commander Keen on a monochrome computer at my local smalltown Ohio library where my Dads was doing schoolwork. I know those feels.

[Anonymous No.544728]

>>544695
No, I'm talking about having collections upon collections of individual wads. Some of us kids grew up only knowing the original episodes, and that post was meant to signify the first time playing the game.

[Anonymous No.544745]

>>544727
Yeah Kings quest 5 was my first Dos game LOL but keen4 is just the command I really remember most prominently. My mom had bought me a joystick and it had keen on the driver disk. mfw free game with that sick joystick you just got.

[Anonymous No.544767]

>>544745

We never had joysticks when I was a kid. I sadly wouldn't even know how to run one under DOS. Though I think I can figure it out.

[Anonymous No.544778]

I was just trying to get sound working on my DOS machine today. When I boot to DOS the volume is set to minimum, when I start Windows (98 SE) Windows breaks sound support for DOS, full stop.

Fucking Windows, no matter what era it fucks your shit up.

[Anonymous No.544782]

>>544767
I begged my mom for one for sooooo long man, you needed to have a gamecard or most soundblasters usually game with gameports on them. Luckily I had a soundblaster, you just had to plug it in and install the drivers on the disk thats all there was to it. Commander Keen with a joystick is actually awesome jumping around is 20x more fun.

[Anonymous No.544779]

>using command prompt in school
>OMG ANON'S HACKING
>TEACH ME TO HACK ANON

[Anonymous No.544786]

>>544778

We waited for so long to switch to Windows because we just hated how fucking casual it was. I'm still not totally sold on it. Would rather have a command line interface.

[Anonymous No.544794]

>>544332
>miss her
>not bumping that shit daily
shiiggy

[Anonymous No.544801]

ipconfig is the closest i ever get to dat pussy on a regular basis

[Anonymous No.544802]

>>544782

Never used a joystick for anything but flight sims. I never used any of the early home computers where you practically had to have some shit joystick to play any game.

[Anonymous No.544804]

>>544513
how does it feel like being a technologically impaired person

[Anonymous No.544821]

>>544390
>Having Doom and Doom2 in serperate directories
>Not using BAT files to run all IWADS from a single \doom dir
Who's the pleb now?

[Anonymous No.544819]

>>544802
Kiloblaster with 2 fire button gravis stick = god tier gaming.

[Anonymous No.544840]

>>544821

>tfw have a sudden thought that the Doom people are the jocks of /vr/

[Anonymous No.544860]

>>544840
Just 'aving a giggle, mate. I'm sure the guy I was replying to was as well. Sick batch file skillz aren't really something worth bragging about.

[Anonymous No.544871]

>>544821
maybe he's playing vanillia ones

[Anonymous No.544882]

I miss loading a boot disc for a game, that once I turned my computer on it automatically sent me on that path to start playing said game instead of waiting for the whole computer to boot up

[Princess Sevenleaf !AnVbXjgZco No.544907]

>>544728
Oh, okay.

>>544821
That's cuz they're the vanilla EXE's, and having them in the same folder would unnecessarily complicate things. The folders themselves are already messy as fuck, without them having to share a room together.

[Anonymous No.544996]

>>544907
doom.exe runs doom2.wad. Putting it all in the same dir works you just need to have batch files rename the wads.

1:
rename 1 doom.wad
doom
rename doom.wad 1

2:
rename 2 doom2.wad
doom
rename doom2.wad 2

That sort of thing. Basically it means you have only a single config file to worry about and save precious kilobytes on your 200 meg hard disk.

[Anonymous No.545048]

>>544801
heh

[Anonymous No.545154]

>>544332
Miss what?
Having to manually tweak and optimize AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS in order to get enough conventional memory to run any game while still having the necessary drivers loaded to get CD-ROM, mouse and sound?
Always having to run games booted from an optimized bootdisk?
Having trouble getting sound in many games because the soundcard for some reason decided to use a non-standard IRQ of 10, which was not a selectable option in most games?

No, I can't say I do.
I miss the quality of games from that era, but not really DOS itself. DOSBox actually makes it orders of magnitude easier to get anything to run correctly than it was to actually get it to run on the original thing.

[Anonymous No.545715]

>>545154
Thank god for modernization of old software technology.

[Anonymous No.545729]

I've been playing this sucker lately. It kicks my ass, but I finally beat episode 2 just now. The boss fights are pretty easy compared to the rest of the game

[Anonymous No.546007]

>>544786
>Windows+R
>Type in cmd and then press enter
>Enjoy your command line interface

[Anonymous No.546025]

>>544358
>>544714
I swear I remember not having to type cd in DOS.

[Anonymous No.546028]

>>544786
there's always linux

[Anonymous No.546685]

Dis is one half.
Press any key to continue…

[Anonymous No.546709]

Lemmings and Jazz Jackrabbit were the first DOS games I ever played.
Hard to believe it's already been 19 years.

[thoughtless celestial !!Mw3JLMISabd No.546718]

>>546025
you probably had a shortcut in your root.

[Anonymous No.546732]

I still have my original DOS only computer. She's my baby. I have megs of games on there!

[Anonymous No.546738]

>>545154
>Complaining about the fact that old games gave gamers a working understanding of how their computers worked
>Wishing everything was icon-based drag-and-drop hand-holding babby OS
Probable Macfag detect.

[Anonymous No.546753]

>>546738
Dammit you underage idiot, I was schooled as a child on CONFIG.SYS modification. PCs are so much easier to set up and use now it's not funny. Nobody misses that or adjusting jumper blocks on sound cards or finding out that Windows 3.1 won't boot because you have an outdated BIOS. Nor do they miss VHS tapes or dial-up Internet.

[Anonymous No.546776]

>>546738
There are seriously people like you who orgasms to every tedious shit they do and try to polish it as the epitomy of mental achievement. It's scary how much you faggots can delude themselves.

[Anonymous No.546794]

>>546753
VHS tapes and dial up don't teach you jack shit. Problems trying to get DOS games to run do teach you about how the system works. Sorry your fingers are too fat for switching jumper blocks, though. I'd recommend some needle-nosed pliers.

[Anonymous No.546801]

>>546776
It's not that I'm saying massaging the AUTOEXEC and CONFIG files makes me a mental genius, but I am saying that doing this started my education on how computers work. Which is something that most retard babbies today have no clue about. They stick in the CD and the game auto-installs and they play. No clue how any of the system works for the vast majority of them.

[Anonymous No.546813]

>>546776
I told you, he's probably 15. Anyone who actually lived through the DOS era never ever wants to do that again.

[Anonymous No.546825]

>>546794
>Problems trying to get DOS games to run do teach you about how the system works

>Spectrumfags
>HURR COMMODE 64 HAS A TERRIBLE RUBBISH BASIC I HATE USING POKES FOR EVERYTHING
>C64fags
>But Spectrum-san, it helps you learn assembly language faster if you have to directly manipulate the sound and video registers in your BASIC program

[Anonymous No.546823]

>>546738
Nope. Never had a mac. I was using DOS back in those days. How else did you think I knew about all the bullshit you had to struggle with to get anything to run back then?

[Anonymous No.546830]

No.

Everything is easier now.

[Anonymous No.546837]

>>546825
Go to bed, Yurop

[Anonymous No.546840]

>>544779
I know that feel.

Today's kids just see CMD running and they think that you are hacking the pentagon or something.

[Anonymous No.546850]

>>546794
It doesn't really teach you anything except how to optimize the configuration on an old DOS system. Knowledge that is completely useless today, and that I've largely forgotten due to not having had to do it in over 10 years.

[Anonymous No.546856]

>>546823
No I mean you're a mac user today. That way you don't have to think about anything. Just plug-and-play.

>>546813
It wasn't that big of a deal after you knew how to do it. If you're so concerned with the mental strain of it, all you'd have to to do is write a batch file for whatever game you needed to change the settings for.

[Anonymous No.546858]

>>544513
I agree with it being tedious. Setting up Norton Commander was a godsend.

[Anonymous No.546870]

>>546850
No it teaches you system structure. And it really wasn't that big of a deal. I'm amazed at how turned off you guys are by it. This must have really traumatized you as kids.

[Anonymous No.546878]

>>546840
Big deal, sameshit in the 90s. I once pissed off a teacher when I...nvm

[Anonymous No.546883]

>>546870
Honestly I didn't even know what NOEMS meant as a kid, only that it had to be removed or Day of the Tentacle wouldn't work.

[Anonymous No.546904]

>>546883
Maybe it's just because my dad was in IT and he explained everything he was doing when I was younger so pretty soon I didn't have to ask any questions at all. The vast majority of games were really quite straightforward to get working if you knew what you were doing.

[Anonymous No.546909]

I didn't hack, I just wanted to go into DEBUG and type this program but the teacher was all like no

mov dl,1
mov ah,2
int 21
jmp 102

[Anonymous No.546957]

>>546856
Nope, like I said, I never had a mac. I'm just saying that that those things don't really teach you anything that is useful today, and I don't miss having to do them in the slightest.

[Anonymous No.546974]

>>546856
>It wasn't that big of a deal after you knew how to do it.
The config editing wasn't a big deal. It was more the having to boot from a boot disk every time you wanted to play a game, meaning that back then I probably spent 99% of the time booted from a floppy, making windows essentially useless.

[Anonymous No.547000]

>>546870
>No it teaches you system structure
... for a system that is now long obsolete.

No, i didn't really have a big problem with it back then, but looking back at it from a modern point of view I realize how utterly retarded it was that you even had to do that.

[Anonymous No.547947]

>>547000
there's still hardware and stuff that you can only configure with CLI

[Princess Sevenleaf !AnVbXjgZco No.548170]

>>544779
>playing Nethack with ASCII graphics
>their faces when I tell them what I'm playing

[Anonymous No.548210]

>>547947
Yes, but that CLI isn't MS-DOS 6.22.
In most cases it will be some sort of *nix shell, which are infinitely superior to DOS, and which I actually use quite frequently myself to manage servers.

[Anonymous No.552105]

don't really have much nostalgia about DOS. there was so many issues you could run into: sometimes a game wouldn't support your soundcard, some games had weird memory management where i had to have a specific weird reboot just to get it to run. it was a pain in the ass for the most part to be honest.

[Anonymous No.552118]

>>552105
The dummies ITT who argue otherwise are probably underage or something and didn't actually live through those days

[Anonymous No.552119]

>>544382
>sh*t

[Anonymous No.552209]

Well, if anyone wants it, I have a DOSBox folder full of good shit, including a ton of DOS games, applications, and even a full installation of Windows 3.11 set up and ready to use, with a bunch of Windows games installed.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?f90ca995xwt3lkp

I really ought to update it, though. I've since got even more games and shit.

[Anonymous No.552394]

>>546840
I swear to god, a kid in my freshman year of high school told me EXACTLY that when I was just screwing around with qBasic on a school computer. For those who don't know, qBasic is just an IDE/Interpreter for a variant of QuickBASIC. But, to be honest, the only DOS I grew up with was using it through Windows 98. My father, as I was growing up, taught me basic DOS commands on the family computer, and it really sparked my interest in computers when I started using it more. Nowadays, I prefer bash. I couldn't happily go back to DOS after using bash.

[Anonymous No.553186]

The blue Norton GUI was the bomb. I loved that shit.


>vesa driver

[Anonymous No.553215]

>>553186
Hell yeah motherfucker.

[Anonymous No.553238]

>>548210

The point is that it required a level of knowledge and dedication that kept casuals out.

[Anonymous No.553283]

fuck endless hours tweaking autoexec.bat and config.sys. i ended up with a menu system on boot that favoured highmem or extended and had a few game-specific tweaks

[Anonymous No.553292]

>>552209
Thanks. Appreciate it. Just played MW2 with the SGM-V2.01 soundfont. Sounds great.

[Anonymous No.553303]

>>553215
which reminds me to clean up my dos folder

[Anonymous No.553309]

>>553303

I still wish computers used command-line interfaces on which you could overlay GUIs like this.

[Anonymous No.553316]

>>553215
>dose games

[Anonymous No.553326]

>>553316
That dog is fucking cute.

The president isn't bad either.

[Anonymous No.553343]

>>553316
I know it's propaganda to make Putin seem badass and also kind/generous/benign, but goddamn it works.

[Anonymous No.553346]

ITT: A bunch of 16 yo hipsters who weren't alive for the DOS era, but think adjusting CONFIG.SYS files makes you a l33t hax0r

[Anonymous No.553380]

“You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.”

[Anonymous No.553415]

After that, it turns out the puppy is a hairy midget with dyed hair sent by the CIA. He will be broughtd to a hidden death camp in siberia, where he will be tortured mercilessly with a blowtorch and a frozen cucumber. Because that`s what you get for fucking with glorious Mother Russia.

[Anonymous No.557210]

I loved how in The Matrix, using DOS was called "hacking" and the DOS consoles couldn't perform simple tasks like "del *.*"

[Anonymous No.557258]

Honestly I was so young when dos was huge, I don't think I ever got a chance to work with it as a kid. Had windows 95 but I didn't really get into pc gaming until windows 98.

That being said, I'm pretty fluent in using Dosbox though it's not very hard.

Started collecting dos games a few months ago.

Honestly this board really helped put me in the right direction with my gaming, so many games on my backlog over the years.. now finally being played.

Feels good to play any game I want through dosbox on windows 8 never have any issues.

[Anonymous No.557269]

I still have my old IBM 330 486 somewhere, boots to DOS -> NC in something like 3 seconds and that's including memory check.

So it didn't matter that I had to edit autoexec.bat on a per-game basis (load mouse.exe for Dune 1, load mscdex for heroes 2, comment out both for Pinball Fantasies because it needs more memory, etc). The machine rebooted super fast so it wasn't much of an issue.

One time the PSU failed in my main setup, and I was also at home being sick, so I spent an entire week playing Dune 1 and Heroes 2. Good times.

[Anonymous No.557431]

>>546878
Please go on anon!?

What happened to your teacher?

[Anonymous No.557654]

>>544332
Ah, yes, I remember the 32X Doom's ending quite vividly.

[Anonymous No.557693]

>>552394
What happened to the kid Anon?

I too remember DOS. Hell I still keep a Spanish Win98 with MS-DOS in my closet in case I ever feel like breaking out my retro PC vidya.

[Anonymous No.560601]

>>557693
>not using DOSBox

[Anonymous No.564076]

bampu

[Anonymous No.564708]

cd..

[Anonymous No.564837]

Not really

But don't take that in an offensive way, I'm just saying that because I'm also coupling together all the other bullshit problems that came around that era, like crazy bullshit computer/ computer component prices and having to get super specialized things just to run games at decent rates

[Anonymous No.565129]

>>564837

All that was frustrating but it kept casuals away. Back then you knew that if someone could play computer games, they were good enough to be in the club. Therefore no quality-diluting casual market.

[Anonymous No.565178]

>>553309
>GNU Midnight Commander

[Anonymous No.565474]

>>546753
I actually miss most of those things. Not VHSs though. Fucking hated VHS. Something about the quality, especially if the tape was old and used a lot, made me feel stomach sick.

[Anonymous No.565993]

Sometimes I miss DOS because it felt like you had to be more involved with what you're doing. I suppose it's kind of like why some people prefer stick shifts to their cars.

But in the end Windows is just easier and less of a hassle.

[Anonymous No.566661]

>>544332
>DOS

By GOD, no. I'll gladly use dosbox for the games but I'm glad it's gone. Sadly some of it still lives in Windows.

[Anonymous No.566687]

>The_C_Prompt_by_blackevilweredragon

[Anonymous No.569372]

Anyone even remember this fucker?
Planning on making a thread about this one some time this week.
I remember kids telling me about this when I was young, I was sure they were making it up because I didnt believe a game like that could exist at the time.

Seriously, allow me to tell you why this is one of the most underappreciated games ever.

> came out months before Wolfenstein 3D
> Had 3d graphics that were in many ways more advanced than even Doom's, as for instance you can actually have bridges you can walk over and under
> Multiple ground breaking action rpg innovations like the paper doll system
> attacks consisting of a weapon/missile physically moving through the 3d space, where damage is calculated by force of impact
> lots of backstory and quests linking all the many factions of NPC's living throughout the levels of the Abyss
> Everything oozes with atmosphere, right from the intro onward
> earliest game to combine the best of so many genres, action rpg, 3d platforming, survival, adventure game, dungeon crawl, even FPS at some points
> basically Deus Ex done in early 1992
> really just an overall masterpiece that got so many things spot on, never to be paralelled again, pushing the limits of what was technically possible at the time

The only reason this game is being ignored like it is is that the original version had glitches that were hard to avoid and so game ruining they made you piss blood from your jimmies. And that they needed very high end machines to even run at the time.
Seriously, give me any good reason why DOS gamers always talk about Doom and W3D and not this one.

[Anonymous No.569381]

Hard disks were rare in the time of scanlines on the DOS prompt. It would be better as "A:\>_", and ideally it should be green or amber.

[Anonymous No.569386]

>>569372
>Anyone even remember this fucker?
I most certainly do.

>the original version had glitches that were hard to avoid and so game ruining they made you piss blood from your jimmies
IIRC, it ran fine on the 386 I had back then (1993 or 94?), and I never encountered any major gamebreaking issues. Then again, I also never fully beat it back then, so I guess they could have been further in. I think the furthest I made it was level 6 or 7.
I did replay it in 2008 or so though, and ended up beating it even though I hadn't originally planned to.

[Anonymous No.569392]

>>569372
Hell yeah mah nigga. Bought it when it was new. I loved the Ultima games (well, until Pagan).

[Anonymous No.569394]

>>569381
>Hard disks were rare in the time of scanlines on the DOS prompt. It would be better as "A:\>_", and ideally it should be green or amber

VGA monitors had very visible scan lines

[Anonymous No.569406]

>>569394
I never noticed any visible scanlines unless I put my face against the screen.

[Anonymous No.569414]

Naw, I'm fucking lazy and it was kind of a pain in the ass.

I miss the games but thanks to dosbox I can still experience them.

[Anonymous No.569416]

>>569381

What about MS-DOS?

[Anonymous No.569418]

>>569386
I only seriously got into playing all those games that had been poking my eyes out with envy when I was a kid after 2000. Anyways, I tend to stack up quite a hoard and the very first version of the game didnt respond very well to it, something to do with memory limits being programmed into the game. Once you cross a certain line with massing objects in one confined space and you reenter that level, objects in your inventory simply start morphing into other objects. This also happens to some of the unique objects you need to win the game...
You had a patch for that but accounts on its actual effectiveness vary. I played the GoG CD version which also has a much smoother feel to it (which arguably takes away from the retro charm but oh well) and that didnt have the problem.
Oh, and there is also a japanese playstation version (ultima is apparently very popular in japan) which still has this bug lol

[Anonymous No.569423]

>>566687

I don't change the names of files when I add them to my folder, you autist.

[Anonymous No.569427]

>>569416
What about it?

[Anonymous No.569421]

>>569406
not same guy, but you apparently describe monochrome monitors as having visible scanlines when they did not. Only CGA is low enough resolution that you can see obvious lines

[Anonymous No.569434]

>>569394
>>569406

This really depended on both the monitor and the video mode you were running in. 720x400@70Hz could indeed produce scanlines with the right kind of screen. Brightness/contrast, phosphor size, and CRT technology (AG? shadow mask?) all were factors.

[Anonymous No.569449]

>>569421
Well, it also depends on the monitor. Most monitors from the mid-90's to the 2000's (when they began to be phased out by LCDs) only had somewhat noticeable lines at 640x480, and even then not so much if it was a smaller monitor and it was a common dot triad type.

That said, I had a W900, which was a 24" Sony Trinitron behemoth of a monitor, and at 640x480, the lines were almost as noticeable as a TV's.

Anyway, pic somewhat related.

[Anonymous No.569456]

>>569418
>Once you cross a certain line with massing objects in one confined space and you reenter that level, objects in your inventory simply start morphing into other objects
Ah, I think I know what you mean.
I never experienced any objects morphing, but when I played it in 2008, I remember encountering an issue where I'd see a bunch of items I had in my inventory lying around on the ground (and possibly even floating in the air) on Level 3 (I think), even though I still had them in my inventory. IIRC, picking them up caused them to also leave my inventory.
I avoided that problem by simply leaving them alone.

I also remember getting a weird error message when saving, which I found a patch that was supposed to fix. I don't think the patch got rid of the error message, but it never seemed to actually cause any problems, and I was able to finish the game without any problems, or as far as I know, losing any items.

Don't remember encountering any of those things back in the 90s though.

[Anonymous No.569476]

>>569449
I don't recall ever noticing scanlines on any TVs or monitors, even from the early 90s. I'm sure they were there if you looked closely enough for them, but you're not really intended to sit that close to the screen, and from afar they'd just be a technological artifact that your eyes would just tune out anyway.

[Anonymous No.569492]

i played gta before it was cool B-|

[Anonymous No.569502]

>>569492
>dat beautiful, immaculate pixel art

[gunh No.569534]

No, I don't miss DOS. I'll tell you what I do miss, good ol pic related.

[Anonymous No.569539]

>>569502
>>569492
EGA hi-res mode. This was quite common in shareware games but commercial titles rarely used it outside of SimCity.

[Anonymous No.569541]

>>569534
Go to bed, Yurop

[gunh No.569548]

>>569541
>8.52am
But I just woke up.

[Anonymous No.569561]

Just to be clear: with old DOS resolutions like 320x200 and 640x350, these are meant to be displayed in 4:3 just like NES and SNES are supposed to be 4:3 even though they are like 256x240, correct?

[Anonymous No.569591]

>>569534
What did you even need Workbench for?
IIRC, all the old Amiga games launched directly off floppies, and most Amigas didn't even have a harddrive or any kind of permanent storage.

[Anonymous No.569594]

>>544332
...kind of.

>dos/4gw protected mode run-time version 1.97
copyright (c) rational system inc. 1990-1994

[Anonymous No.569597]

DOS thread? Fuck yeah.

[Anonymous No.569608]

>>569597
>HUGO games
Man, I need to replay those some day...

[Anonymous No.569618]

>>569597
>agent
...i-is it him?
>right in the feels.

[Anonymous No.569627]

>>569618
Damn right it is

[Anonymous No.569643]

>>569561
On an actual EGA monitor, 640x350 would fill the entire screen but VGA leaves visible borders.
>>569591
Depends. Some Amiga games were self-booting, others were meant to be launched from Workbench.

[Anonymous No.569647]

>>569561
Google Mode 13h
Learn about nonsquare pixels

[Anonymous No.569648]

>>569627
dem graphics

[Anonymous No.569660]

>>569627
>dat game.
>DAT GAME

[Anonymous No.569664]

>>569648
So obviously by the guys who did Bio Menace

[Anonymous No.569668]

The best Duke

[Anonymous No.569670]

scorched earth games in computer class

memories

[Anonymous No.569678]

>>569670
mah niggah

[Anonymous No.569679]

>>569670

'The Mother of All Games'

Did anyone else spend a lot of time adding new death/victory lines to the file that contained all of them?

I'm the OP btw, proud of this thread.

[Anonymous No.569684]

>>569664
Apogee. They made a shitload of great PC games in the early-mid 90s. BioMenace, Major Stryker, Mystic Towers and Raptor: Call of the Shadows among others.

[Anonymous No.569692]

>>569668
>I'll be done with you and still have time to watch Oprah!
BEST DUKE EVER.

[Anonymous No.569718]

>>569684
I'm very aware. Bio Menace was the most obviously similar in art style, though, probably since they're both platformers.

>>569679
I thought I was the only one who did that! If you use non-alphanumeric characters, it can glitch the game a little bit. I had one line as cartoon swearing: "%*#$%@!?!"
It came up a little funny ingame, part of a button showed up in the word balloon.

[Anonymous No.569721]

I know there was some kind of bypass for this

[Anonymous No.569726]

>>569721
But.. I can't remember it ;_;

[Anonymous No.569738]

>>569643
Is that so? I've heard VGA line-doubles 320x200. I had no idea what it did with 640x350, though.

So basically, 320x200 gets line-doubled, and 640x350 just has a black border?

[Anonymous No.569746]

>>569721
...there were programs that 'cracked' the code protection for most games, if I remember correctly...

[Anonymous No.569747]

>>569684

>tfw the apogee or interplay logos were seals of assured quality to me as a kid

Does Interplay still exist? Apogee I know became/was consumed whole by ID, but I'm not sure about Interplay.

'By Gamers, For Gamers'

[Anonymous No.569751]

>>569738
320x200 is line-doubled and 640x350 leaves black bars on the top and bottom of the screen

[Anonymous No.569754]

>look at me I can launch a game in a command line interface

[Anonymous No.569759]

>>569721
Thank me later, dude
http://wiki.stunts.hu/index.php/Copy_protection_system

[Anonymous No.569760]

>>569759
Nice!

[Anonymous No.569763]

>>569760
Oh, and also...
http://www.ultimatestunts.nl/

[Anonymous No.569776]

>>569754

>being this jealous

[Anonymous No.569775]

>>569751
Actually on an original EGA system the 640x350 mode would have nonsquare pixels.

As an example, look at this EGA screenshot on your monitor (presumably 1:1 pixel ratio). Notice how the 'circles' are elliptical.

[Anonymous No.569789]

Dear god, the time I spent on this...
>Dynamic Lighting
>1988

[Anonymous No.569802]

>>569775
Right, so I'm guessing on an emulator, a more proper representation of EGA would be to squish it so it's more like 467x350, right?

Only downside to that approach would be nearest neighbor scaling artifacts. It'd probably necessitate some kind of filtering like bilinear to mask it.

[Anonymous No.569805]

>>569789
>645x428

[Anonymous No.569813]

>>569805
...weird indeed. Google images.

[Anonymous No.569824]

Apogee never made a bad game.
Prove me wrong.

[Anonymous No.569828]

>>569802
No, you would stretch it vertically, to restore the aspect ratio to 4:3.

[Anonymous No.569835]

>>569775
The aspect ratio there is incorrect. It would look like that on VGA, but real EGA monitors the picture is stretched to fit a 4:3 screen area, thus it would be nearly square and not rectangular.

If you started MS Paint and set a 640x200 screen, it would be _really_ long. Now you know of course that doesn't actually look that way on a real PC, so you have to stretch it to 640x400 to get the correct aspect ration.

[Anonymous No.569836]

>>569597
Why is Alien Carnage, Raptor and OMF missing?

Fucking faggot.

[Anonymous No.569841]

>>569828
Well, hold on now. How many lines were there on an EGA monitor? Was it 350? Because in that case, the image would be squished horizontally, not stretched vertically.

[Anonymous No.569842]

>>569718
>Bio Menace was the most obviously similar in art style
Personally, I'd say Crystal Caves more closely resembles it.

BioMenace uses an engine more similar to Duke Nukem, although it's quite probably that it was developed based on the older Crystal Caves engine.

[Anonymous No.569843]

>>569835
Yes child, that is what I meant when I said it would have "nonsquare pixels".

[Anonymous No.569847]

>>569835
VGA renders 640x350 with those borders for technical reasons. Since it's running at 31Khz, you have a 400-line picture. 200 lines is half of 400, so the scanlines just get doubled. 350 isn't an even multiple of 400, thus it can only be displayed by placing the picture in the middle of the screen and leaving the top and bottom blank.

>>569841
It is 350 because EGA syncs to 23Khz

[Anonymous No.569848]

>>569841
>being this new

[Anonymous No.569849]

>>569843
>Yes child
>>>/v/

[Anonymous No.569852]

>>569747
>Apogee I know became/was consumed whole by ID
They were not AFAIK.
They actually changed their name to 3D Realms sometime around the time Duke Nukem 3D came out, and after that they pretty much stopped releasing anything as far as I know. I guess they were working on the original Duke Nukem Forever, which as we know never came out in its original form.

[Anonymous No.569853]

>DOS thread
>Aspect ratio/resolution "discussions"
>Any emulator thread
>Filter shitflinging

Why guys? Why?

[Anonymous No.569854]

>>569847
I've never seen a real EGA monitor running, but I have seen monochrome monitors in action and they're also 350-line and the picture does fill the whole screen with no border.

[Anonymous No.569858]

>>569848
Admittedly, there are gaps in my knowledge of older computer technology, as I grew up in the VGA era. I'm asking this because I'm trying to learn and fill those gaps. But ok, I guess that makes me "new".

>>569853
There has been zero emulation or filter shitflinging in this thread. As for the resolution stuff, some of us like to have a more in-depth discussion of the tech behind the programs and games we grew up playing. Stop shitposting.

[Anonymous No.569861]

One other thing:

CGA and EGA modes don't quite work properly on VGA because of another problem: the refresh rate. On real CGA/EGA, this would be 60Hz but VGA is always 70Hz in 400-line modes (640x480 is 60Hz). Thus some games run choppily.

[Anonymous No.569864]

>>569848
>Being this much of a prick.
Not everybody 'gets' CRT technology. How about taking 30 seconds of your precious time to explain what was going on rather than 10 to act like a complete cunt-smear. This isn't /v/.

[Anonymous No.569870]

>>569858
>Admittedly, there are gaps in my knowledge of older computer technology, as I grew up in the VGA era

So did I. But I'm apparently more well-read than you.

>As for the resolution stuff, some of us like to have a more in-depth discussion of the tech behind the programs and games we grew up playing

I've never played or used any of the stuff mentioned in this particular thread.

[Anonymous No.569865]

>>569853

[Anonymous No.569871]

>>569841
There's such a thing as an "EGA monitor"?
When were those common?
I always thought CGA, EGA and VGA only referred to the different resolutions that were common back in the early 90s. I'm pretty sure even the ancient 14" brick of a monitor that came with my first PC back in 1991 or so was able to handle 640x480 (VGA) and 800x600 (SVGA).

[Anonymous No.569875]

>>569870
Good for you, I guess. Sorry I have yet to get to all of the material explaining these nuances. I have read about these things, but some details were left murky in my mind, so I thought I'd ask so as to clarify.

[Anonymous No.569884]

>>569871
>There's such a thing as an "EGA monitor"?

Of course. First there was CGA, then there was EGA, and finally VGA.

The monitors were never that common as they were expensive and EGA cards also supported CGA and monochrome displays (at the expense of not being able to use 640x350 graphics)

[Anonymous No.569887]

>>569871
Yeah, we're talking about 80's monitor tech here. I actually have a CGA monitor that I have absolutely no use for because nothing I own outputs a digital 15KHz RGB signal from a 9-pin connector, which is what these relics ran on.

[Anonymous No.569901]

>>569884
...uh, weren't CGA/EGA/MCGA/Hercules/Tandy, just...graphics adapters?

[Anonymous No.569907]

>>569901
And most of those had monitors to match said standards.

[Anonymous No.569908]

>>553215
Holy shit, is that some xtree? Bringing back some memories.

[Anonymous No.569909]

>>569871
CGA, EGA, and VGA refer to the different IBM color graphics adapter standards (color, enhanced, video). Thus, they also refer to the common resolutions, as well as corresponding monitor frequencies, that those cards could output. "CGA" monitors were 15KHz, for displaying 200-active-line graphics. "EGA" monitors were 15KHz for back-compatibility, and also supported 22KHz for new EGA modes with 350 active lines. "VGA" monitors were 31KHz, and could display 200-line CGA graphics line-doubled (using a compatibility mode on the VGA card) or 400/480 lines natively at 70hz/60hz respectively.

Lots of DOS VGA games used the VGA card at 256 colors (VGA feature) but with the display at line-doubled 320x200 or 320x240. The 320x200 games (like Doom) had non-square pixels and a 70hz refresh, making them particularly ill-suited to modern displays.

[Anonymous No.569910]

>>569901
Hercules was a video card manufacturer I believe. The first three refer to video modes, and apparently also types of monitors. Not sure about Tandy.

[Anonymous No.569913]

>>569871
>back in the early 90s
EGA dates to about 1984

[Anonymous No.569919]

>>569884
That screenshot shows KQ3 which runs in EGA 320x200x16 mode. This is 200-line, but the monitors are dual-sync and run at either 15Khz or 31Khz. Refresh is 60Hz on color displays and 50Hz on monochrome.

EGA cards have DIP switches on the back to select the monitor type. If CGA is selected, it outputs a 15Khz signal and uses 8x8 text. You can only use 200-line modes and 16 colors.

If monochrome is selected, it runs at 23Khz and in 640x350 resolution, but with no color. You can only use text mode and Mode E, which is 640x350x2 graphics.

If EGA is selected, it runs at 23Khz and in 640x350 resolution. All video modes can be used plus the extended color palette (but only in 350-line modes)

[Anonymous No.569921]

>>569909
...ok, so I guess I only used VGA monitors (first home pc came in 1992).

Now that I think, tho, my cousin had an old epson 286...with EGA and a weird switch on the screen (to change color temp, I think...)

Shame it went into the trash when he switched to 486

[Anonymous No.569925]

>>569908
Norton Commander, actually. It's in my DOSBox folder linked earlier in the thread.

[Anonymous No.569932]

>>569913
Makes sense then. The only place I've ever seen EGA mentioned is relating to old games that run in 16 colors, sometimes as a selectable option.

[Anonymous No.569927]

>>560601
DOSbox is nice for convenience but it's a terrible replacement for an actual DOS PC, and that's coming from someone who recently stuck all of his retro stuff up in the loft in favour of emulation.

[Anonymous No.569937]

>>569884
EGA monitors are also compatible with CGA cards and will operate at 15Khz if connected to one. They will not work on monochrome cards.

[Anonymous No.569938]

>>569921
>with EGA and a weird switch on the screen
Might have been to switch the horizontal frequency (for 200 or 350 lines), or to change between digital and analog signal input.

[Anonymous No.569940]

>>569909
When VGA is used in 400-line modes, it's at 70Hz and there's small borders on the screen. 640x480 runs at 60Hz and has no borders.

[Anonymous No.569941]

What fascinates me about CGA is how developers actually found ways to get around the color limitations, even going as far as to make clever use of composite color fringing and shit to produce a much bigger color gamut, although the image quality suffered.

[Anonymous No.569949]

>>569919
Forgot to mention. in 350-line modes, EGA text is 8x14.

[Anonymous No.569958]

>>569938
No, no, I fairly remember it...enhanced the color temp somewhat...there where basically three states: normal, very pale colors, and full force red.

Needless to say, it was huge as fuck (maybe even bigger than 14")(...huge for its time, of course)

[Anonymous No.569960]

>>569901
>>569907
Tandy was just extended CGA though, it didn't have its own monitor type

[Anonymous No.569962]

>>569938
Did it switch between Amber and Green?

[Anonymous No.569963]

>>569940
>small borders on the screen.
Source? I've always been under the impression that both modes were full-screen. A quick calculation using the respective ratios of active video lines to total video lines shows that the 70hz picture should be about 97% the height of the 60hz picture.

(I used to have an original IBM VGA monitor, but only ever used it in Windows at 640x480...)

[Anonymous No.569968]

>>569962
>>569958
oops, never mind

[Anonymous No.569969]

>>569963
It does but they're tiny. CGA/EGA have large borders because they're running at 15Khz.

[Anonymous No.569973]

>>569969
>CGA/EGA have large borders because they're running at 15Khz.
Again, source please? CGA modes are just straight line-doubled from 200 lines to 400 lines.

[Anonymous No.569980]

>>569973
(Or I may have misunderstood - yes, a 15KHz monitor showing a 200-line picture will have large borders)

[Anonymous No.569981]

>>569973
I meant on real CGA/EGA you have large borders. Obviously not on VGA since it uses 400-line mode for them.

[Anonymous No.569989]

>>569981
So hold up. There's one more thing I'm confused about. What about scanlines? Did CGA monitors playing CGA games not have them?

[Anonymous No.569990]

>>569981
When would you have these supposed borders on CGA?

[Anonymous No.569991]

...yup, I think it was this series here.

[Anonymous No.569993]

>>569861
>CGA and EGA modes don't quite work properly on VGA because of another problem: the refresh rate. On real CGA/EGA, this would be 60Hz but VGA is always 70Hz in 400-line modes (640x480 is 60Hz). Thus some games run choppily

If you try any number of CGA games on VGA, this choppy animation becomes immediately visible while real CGA gives completely smooth 60Hz animation (assuming the game was written properly and synced to the vertical refresh)

>>569989
If you are using a real CGA or EGA monitor, you will have visible borders because the scan frequency is 15Khz, same as NTSC.

[Anonymous No.569996]

>>569989
>Did CGA monitors playing CGA games not have them?
CGA game on a CGA card/monitor -> visible scanlines
CGA game on a VGA card/monitor -> line-doubled, no scanlines

[Anonymous No.570001]

>>569993
For example, look at any computer designed to use composite video like the C64. It has very visible borders because 200 lines on a 15Khz signal.

[Anonymous No.570002]

>>570001
Albeit that C64 seems to be a PAL model, because NTSC has smaller borders

[Anonymous No.570028]

>>569539
Otherwise 640x350 was mostly only used by applications

[Anonymous No.570029]

>>569993
>>569996
Ah, ok, I was wondering about the scanlines thing for a while, because I saw several DOSBox screenshots with a scanline filter or some shit, and I was wondering if DOS games ever looked like that, with prominent scanlines akin to those on console games on a CRT.

[Anonymous No.570035]

>>570029
The scanlines are much more noticeable on CGA/EGA/Tandy than VGA

Note that here >>569884 you can easily see them

[Anonymous No.570038]

>>569884
>The monitors were never that common as they were expensive

IIRC, the IBM 5154 monitors cost like $700

[Anonymous No.570056]

>>570029
If they're playing a VGA game with big fat scanlines, that's not something that ever actually happened.

[Anonymous No.570071]

>>570029
>with prominent scanlines akin to those on console games on a CRT.
Console games on a CRT TV never had prominent scanlines, unless you were sitting 30cm in front of the screen.

[Anonymous No.570076]

>>570071
Maybe not on the piece of shit tubes we had in the late 80's/early 90's, but newer Trinitrons display them quite prominently. At least mine does.

[Anonymous No.570078]

>>570071
If the TV is large enough (25" or up), you'll see them

[Anonymous No.570091]

>>570076
>but newer Trinitrons display them quite prominently
Okay, I'll admit I never had a Trinitron, but I was under the impression that Trinitrons were supposed to be pretty good.

>>570078
I'm pretty sure we've had at least a few CRT TVs over the years that were at least 25" and I never noticed them except when sitting really close, but maybe it varies between different TVs.

[Anonymous No.570105]

>>570091
Size, quality, focus, and convergence are all factors on whether you'll see scanlines visibly or not. Sony PVMs, which are among the epitome of CRT tech, have extremely visible lines, while a crappy old 19" Zenith from 1991 will probably have them be almost invisible.

[Anonymous No.570110]

>>570105
Oh, and signal quality also matters.

[Anonymous No.570112]

I've got a 13" Sears set from 1978 and you can't see any lines unless you're like one inch from the screen

[Anonymous No.570159]

>>570105
>Sony PVMs, which are among the epitome of CRT tech, have extremely visible lines, while a crappy old 19" Zenith from 1991 will probably have them be almost invisible.
Hence why I find it strange. Logically it should be the other way around. You'd think if they were conscious of image quality, they'd avoid using technology that results in visible scanlines that would likely cause annoyance among the users.

[Anonymous No.570173]

>>570159
It's a consequence of the technology. 240p, or "double strike mode" as it's sometimes known, is actually not that common a mode, and is actually not even a part of the NTSC standard. Pretty much only video games made widespread use of it.

That said, I don't mind it at all.

[Anonymous No.570245]

Fucking Lemmings. Although I played the SNES version more growing up.

[Anonymous No.572453]

C:\DOS
C:\DOS\run
run\DOS\run

[Anonymous No.572530]

>>570245
Ok I'll bite, what's with those weird black squares around the pixels?

[Anonymous No.572535]

>>572530
you mean other pixels?

[Anonymous No.572624]

>>572530

That's what it looks like.