AvP is an awesome game, but yeah, never released for DOS 😀[/offtopic]

I think Indenture qualifies.

Thanks!

Also there's the source code for XQuest/XQuest 2 (or, apparently, some intermediate version between these two).

Added Cylindrix and Speed Haste to the list. For Cylindrix downloads (source + Windows binary), head to the Wayback Machine snapshot of an earlier page since the current one has broken links.

Speed Haste is a somewhat obscure shareware racing game from Spanish developer Firendware. I learned about the source code release from the Wikipedia page (didn't expect it to be there in the first place).I don't think anyone did anything with the code yet, which is a shame since the games is pretty nice.

MrFlibble wrote:

Added Cylindrix and Speed Haste to the list. For Cylindrix downloads (source + Windows binary), head to the Wayback Machine snapshot of an earlier page since the current one has broken links.

Speed Haste is a somewhat obscure shareware racing game from Spanish developer Firendware. I learned about the source code release from the Wikipedia page (didn't expect it to be there in the first place).I don't think anyone did anything with the code yet, which is a shame since the games is pretty nice.

Speed Haste looks interesting.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

MrFlibble wrote:

Speed Haste is a somewhat obscure shareware racing game from Spanish developer Firendware. I learned about the source code release from the Wikipedia page (didn't expect it to be there in the first place).I don't think anyone did anything with the code yet, which is a shame since the games is pretty nice.

Speed Haste looks interesting.

I agree with you there, I have the full/registered version installed on both of my DOS computers, it runs pretty smoothly at maxed-out SVGA settings on my Celeron-433 PC. I wonder if one can add VESA resolutions and/or even a Glide renderer with the use of the source code (I'd try to make a source port, but I have very limited experience with coding). 😊

KCompRoom2000 wrote:

(I'd try to make a source port, but I have very limited experience with coding). 😊

The ethos of open source expects that you'll start learning as soon as possible and in a suitable number of years contribute to the project, which will likely still be there waiting for those changes.

It would only have a polished source port if:

1. the game has a massive cultural impact
2. the game was born on a unix mailing list argument
3. the game involves John Carmack in some way as he is (or was) a knight of the linux royalty
4. the game's community is still alive and bustling with positive activity.

Many DOS games that were open sourced for many years haven't recieved a decent source port due to many of these factors even when the data is freed and the game's unique/good. But even if there's a perfect chocolate/vanilla clone of a dos game you'llb e told it's pointless at it doesn't make Gaming On The Linux Desktop(tm) look good by arrogant mailinglist trolls that want to flaunt their own lazy hypocritical clone. You're damned if you and damned if you don't.

One option is to pay someone and get the port. Start at $10000 for the hours spent, depending on this and that. If that fails, either be a good manipulator or arrange for lots of free time for yourself. Waiting for someone to do it won't go far but maybe you're lucky.

Here are some of the issues I encountered when I ported Xargon to Linux:

1. The game was written in an era when portability was rarely considered, so you have things like variables that *must* be only 16-bits wide, because the game logic relies on 65535+1 = 0, or -32768 - 1 = 32767. This is getting harder to achieve on modern machines (especially if you want your port to work on other systems, 32- and 64-bit, etc.) so you have to wrap hundreds of mathematical operations with modulo operators. Likewise loading and saving of data structures is tied to the CPU data format, so unless you are targeting a little-endian 16-bit platform, you need to rewrite all the functions that read and write files.
2. Writing past the end of an array used to do nothing most of the time, but now with all the protection against malicious software it will instantly crash the program, so you have to hunt down and fix many old bugs in the original code.
3. The behaviour of modern code libraries is not necessarily backwards compatible. In Xargon, the random number generator is seeded with a particular value at the start of every level to ensure the enemies behave the same way each time, e.g. so the demo still works because the monsters appear at the same moment every time. But a modern library implements the random number generator differently and produces a different string of numbers, so you need to re-implement your own random number generator from scratch in order to get the same sequence as used in the original code.
4. Sometimes games can be hardcoded all over the place for certain hardware, so you end up having to rewrite the keyboard handling code in a bunch of different places, port the video output code in multiple places (which might conflict with the modern way of updating the screen in only one place), and so on. If you're not careful it can verge away from a port and end up as a rewrite.
5. You have to emulate hardware that's no longer there. If it's a VGA game, you have to emulate the palette which doesn't really exist on modern devices. If it has OPL3 music, you have to emulate the OPL3 synth.

In short, if you're talking about porting a DOS game to a modern system, it's not just a straight port but it requires quite a bit more new code and a number of changes to the original code. It's not enough to just understand the language, but you also need to be familiar with programming techniques of the time, many of which involved directly accessing the hardware.

I suspect the reason why these ports are not so common is that there are fewer and fewer people around who both have the time to spend porting a game for free, and who have experience with programming 1990s-era hardware. Not to mention that younger programmers (who tend to have more free time) tend to use modern web languages like Javascript, so porting an old C or Pascal program really will require a full rewrite after taking the time to learn the language, and it won't just be a quick port.

I planned and went some distance into making an open source port of the closed source rally-sport, having first made several content editors for it which took about two medium-effort months from scratch. It's a simple game too. But no way the port was going to be worth the work. I've yet to see in general my software benefit from being released open source but beyond that the number of expected users is ridiculously small.

You forgot Shaw's Nightmare and it's sequel.

Recently a friend suggested an interesting looking game called WetSpot 2 which was written in QBasic and the source code is available:

• DOS binary: w2exe.zip
• BAS version: wetspot2.zip
• DOS editor binary: wowexe.zip
• BAS editor version: wow.zip

Apparently someone is working on a source port: https://github.com/dmitrysmagin/wetspot2

Most of the Descent or Descent II projects listed earlier in the thread are actually fairly recent developments. Here is some additional information on earlier/other source projects:

Descent

D1X Project
http://d1x.warpcore.org/ (Use the Wayback Machine)

Jeremy Stanley's Homepage (Files for D1X)
http://www.xmission.com:80/~jstanley/d1x.html (Use the Wayback Machine)

Descent II

D2X Project
https://icculus.org/d2x/ (Use the Wayback Machine)

Lloyd Standish D2X-XL Ubuntu-Debian Packages
http://files.lstandish.com/d2x-xl/ (Use the Wayback Machine)

Among open source games, there are some which had not been specifically developed for DOS, but DOS ports were being released up until a certain version. These include (mostly roguelikes):

• Advanced Strategic Command - v1.2.3
• Ancient Domains of Mystery - to v3.3.3 (ASCII version only)
• Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup - up to v0.5.2 (no tiles)
• Nethack - to v3.4.3
• Rocks'n'Diamonds - up to v3.1.0, but it looks like v3.0.0 and above might not work in DOSBox
• Rogue Clone IV
• Slash'EM

Can you name more?

Also it looks like I failed to mention in the original list two games based on the Allegro library which were originally developed for DOS (or rather, DOS running in Windows I guess):

• Arrakis
• KRaptor

The Reconstruction of ZZT surely qualifies?
https://github.com/asiekierka/reconstruction-of-zzt

And maybe Keen Dreams? Things got a little weird with that one.
https://github.com/keendreams/keen

Or the new DOS ports of Sonic?
Re: Ports of Sonic CD, 1,2 remakes to DOS

MrFlibble wrote on 2021-04-18, 19:05:

Can you name more?

Why, Larn, of course. That's what introduced me to roguelikes in the late eighties, so it is a bit special for me.
The RL genre in general has really exploded in the past decade and many of them are open source. Not all of them offer DOS binaries, though.
Perhaps the memory requirements have grown too much or they have some modern frameworks in use that make DOS support difficult.
I would think if Cataclysm:DDA had a DOS port that would see some downloads (that's my absolute favorite of the whole genre, I may be a bit biased here 😀

EDIT: In CDDA's case the code is in C++14, any DOS compilers for that..?
Roguelikes might be good candidates to be run via HX, but since that would use win32 binaries it seems like cheating for this list...

mr.cat wrote on 2021-04-20, 18:15:

Why, Larn, of course. That's what introduced me to roguelikes in the late eighties, so it is a bit special for me.

Yes, I'm quite aware of the DOS ports of roguelikes, I was just too lazy to list more than the few which came to mind straight away in my previous post (in fact, I mentioned more of them, including Larn, in the first post of this thread.

I was wondering if there were more that are not roguelikes. It looks like from the late 90s to sometime around 2006 at least, DOS was still seen as a viable platform for new releases to be made for it, although sometimes this is to the credit of individual DOS partisans, even with roguelikes. For example, it's possible to compile a DOS version of Falcon's Eye, even though the DOS binary is not provided.

But since a lot of FOSS software is originally developed for Linux, and today DOS is often no longer thought of as an active platform and thus delisted from these projects, it's not at all easy to figure out if there were any DOS releases in the first place, unless you check previous releases and the like.

On another note, recently I found this interesting flight sim called Vertigo which is open source and was originally developed for DOS (first release in 1995) but the latest release from 2002 also included Linux and BeOS versions.

There's an earlier open source cross-platform flight sim called Fly8, also originally developed for DOS (latest binaries available here).

KCompRoom2000 wrote on 2018-03-21, 01:36:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

MrFlibble wrote:

Speed Haste is a somewhat obscure shareware racing game from Spanish developer Firendware. I learned about the source code release from the Wikipedia page (didn't expect it to be there in the first place).I don't think anyone did anything with the code yet, which is a shame since the games is pretty nice.

Speed Haste looks interesting.

I agree with you there, I have the full/registered version installed on both of my DOS computers, it runs pretty smoothly at maxed-out SVGA settings on my Celeron-433 PC. I wonder if one can add VESA resolutions and/or even a Glide renderer with the use of the source code (I'd try to make a source port, but I have very limited experience with coding). 😊

Guess what, there's now a remake based on DelphiDoom, with the original source code used for reference.

MrFlibble wrote on 2021-04-26, 21:23:

Guess what, there's now a remake based on DelphiDoom, with the original source code used for reference.

On Doom's engine? That's... crazy and impressive at the same time!
As a fan of the original (not because it's a great game objectively but because it's one of my youth games) I tried it, I wish the author was a member here so we can discuss it.
He has improved the original and provided options that were indeed missing, but he also changed the controls for the worse