dos games anyone?

Katzkatz · Groupie in Training Joined: 12 Nov 2007 Posts: 55

DOSBOX is great. It saves the disk swapping (although on WinUAE it is easier because you can set up to 4 emulated floppy drives). The PC came stoked up its gaming reputation with VGA and it helped that Soundblaster were making soundcard for it. Civilisation is much better on the
PC because it is installed on the hard disk. Try Heart of China (an adventure game) the PC version is much better than the Amiga version.

If you want a link to DOS games:-

http://www.xtcabandonware.com/

DOSBOX is also great because it can do networked games. Including doing an emulated serial port link up(so you can play Populous I or II, Powermonger, etc).

Does anyone know how to get DOSBOX to fit the fullscreen properly to the monitor. I have a 1024 x 768 display on an ATI card. When I switch to fullscreen the display is too big for my monitor! I have to scroll down to the bottom.

Graham Humphrey · Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2009 4:07 pm Post subject:

Katzkatz · Groupie in Training Joined: 12 Nov 2007 Posts: 55

You can or use WHDLoad! Very Happy

Graham Humphrey · Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2009 8:07 pm Post subject:

Yep that's the best bet of course!
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Jams · Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2009 12:56 pm Post subject:

little big adventure was nice it was fun 2 kick ppl down the stairs

Shawn Dimery · Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2009 1:03 pm Post subject:

Bebokus · Amiga Enthusiast Joined: 20 Sep 2006 Posts: 599

I'm using win 7 (64), and since I've installed it dosbox is not working anymore ;/

Whem I'm playing the game, the screen goes black. Any solution ? I've tried the earlier version of dosbox but it's the same deal.

Oh, and I'm using dfend reloaded too.

Fiery Phoenix · Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 10:44 pm Post subject:

Just managed to get Under a Killing Moon up and running using ISO images on DosBox - man this game is still awesome
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DEQY · Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 3:32 am Post subject:

I've noticed that DOS games' graphics only really surpass the Amiga's (consistently) around 93-95.

Prior to that I rarely see a DOS game that is visually better than its Amiga counterpart.

Bebokus · Amiga Enthusiast Joined: 20 Sep 2006 Posts: 599

That is true, but Dos has so many games that you won't find on Amiga.

DEQY · Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 11:45 pm Post subject:

Fiery Phoenix · Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 9:37 am Post subject:

Rekrul · Groupie Joined: 27 Dec 2007 Posts: 178

With some exceptions, DOS games annoy me.

Somehow, even though I'm used to playing Amiga games in 320x200, most DOS games still manage to look blocky at 640x400. CGA is putrid. Whoever designed CGA must have hated games because they did their best to make them look like crap. EGA isn't much better. Although it has a palette of 64 total colors, I don't think anyone ever used anything other than the default colors, which didn't have a good choice for skin, resulting in all the characters looking like they have a sunburn. I actually prefer the C64's graphics to EGA.

Then there's the controls. First, you can't remap any of the keys inside the game. If you want to remap the keys, you have to exit the game and run a separate program. Next, the only 'controller' that most people had was a keyboard, which is what most games were designed to be played with. Either that, or an analog joystick, which absolutely sucks for action games. It's not so great for anything else either. It would be if it actually worked the way it's supposed to, but it never seems to. No matter what you do, you can never seem to get it centered. Half the time you let go of the stick and the game is still drifting to the side. So you adjust the trim control (which most sticks today don't even have), and then the next time you center the stick, it starts drifting to the right. Not to mention, just plain losing the calibration in the middle of a game. Oh and there's the jitter that all sticks seem to have, no matter what the brand or even if they're brand new, just out of the box.

All of the above is bad, but it pales in comparison to some of the bad choices that DOS game designers made in choosing their controls. Like the original Postal, which looks a lot like the game Commando at first glance, but instead of the tried-&-true method of moving your character with a joystick and firing in the direction you're facing, they chose to give it semi-FPS controls where you move using the keyboard and turn with the mouse. In theory this should allow you to strafe, run backwards while shooting, etc. In reality it leads to confusion where you have to remember that because you're facing down, you need to push up to go down, left to go right, etc. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I don't care if a bunch of other games like Resident Evil, used the same method of 'steering' your character, it's still an idiotic way to control an action game.

And what about all the DOS FPS games which all defaulted to moving the mouse forward/back to run forward/back in the game? Does anyone really want to continuously move the mouse, lift it up, re-center it, move it, lift it up, re-center it, etc? Not to mention that such a control method makes it virtually impossible to traverse narrow ledges, which most games of the Doom era had in bunches. When was the last time you were able to move your mouse perfectly vertical, without any sideways movement? Yeah, I thought so.

Later, FPS games started to include vertical aiming, such as Dark Forces and Alien Trilogy, yet the designers were still too stupid to include the option to use the mouse to look up/down. Alien Trilogy has vertical mouse movement hard-coded to walking, while using the mouse to look up/down is literally the only option that isn't offered by the Dark Forces config program. You can map every function in the game to a joystick (see above), but that one option is left out of the mouse config!

It's as if DOS designers existed in some kind of a bubble where they didn't have access to any other systems and they had to design games and hardware, based on their own assumptions of how it should be.

Shawn Dimery · Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 6:16 pm Post subject:

I occasionally emulate Fragile Allegiance on the DOSBox.
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Anazzau · Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 3:45 pm Post subject:

No matter how good a DOS game is, I have always hated those early computer's beeping sounds. Especially if the soundtrack is based on it. Let's compare Ski or die's ports on Amiga and DOS. The graphics aren't too different, but sounds are. Amiga's ones are awesome, DOS ones just rape your ears in a matter of seconds.

There are two exceptions (among the older DOS-games) that I like - original Duke Nukem and Commander Keen. Despite the PC-speaker sound effects, these ones will always have a place in my heart!