Hey nice to see reply, do not hold back all input is welcome. I do try to game, I have this early demo of Carmageddon. It runs fine on DosBox-X where I was able to run custom program named Display and it installed somehow FLI/FLC codecs and bind them to DOS environment search path. When I run Carmageddon early demo on DosBox-X while this DOS media player is installed game can start show intro smk (smack video format) and display user interface menu that is FLI/FLC image files.
Now DosBox 0.73 does all the same except it is undable to install custom program Display and therefore it lacks these FLI/FLC file extension association in global DOS path variable.
I have no idea how old days was done this "open files with extension always with this program". That custom program Display somehow does that it sets itself up as a media player for many formats that that era games used. There is nice open source story behind its program creator:
Copyright (C) 1993-1996 by Jih-Shin Ho. All rights reserved.
!!! Permission to use and distribute DISPLAY(Executable format) !!!
!!! for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provied !!!
!!! that you don't make profit from DISPLAY directly. That is, you !!!
!!! can use DISPLAY to create things you like and sell them, but !!!
!!! !!!
!!! you CAN'T sell DISPLAY. !!!
!!! !!!
!!! For BBS and software distribution sites, some handling charge !!!
!!! is allowed. !!!
!!! This software is provided "as is" without express or implied !!!
!!! warranty. The author is not responsible for any damage caused by !!!
!!! this program. !!!
(1) Introduction
================
This program lets you READ, WRITE and DISPLAY images/movies with different
formats. It lets you do some special effects (rotation, dithering, ...)
on images as well.
Features:
Includes simple file management system.
Supports 'slide show', 'batch conversion', 'contact sheet making',
'image preview'.
There is NO LIMIT on image size.
This program supports 8, 15, 16, 24 bits display.
+ Supports movie files (DL, FLI/FLC, RAW, MPEG, AVI, GL, IFF/ANIM, QT).
Supports FLC making.
Tiny screen saver.
CD player (including Volume control for Sound Blaster).
+ Supports sound for AVI, QT; MPEG, FLI/FLC, DL, RAW with WAV file.
+ Simple WAV, AU player.
Supports mouse.
This Program is MEMORY-GREEDY. If you do not have enough memory, its
performance is poor.
It is like Windows Media Player or https://mpc-hc.org/ player MPC-HC is an extremely light-weight, open source media player for Windows®. It supports all common video and audio file formats available for playback. We are 100% spyware free, there are no advertisements or toolbars.
Only thing that creator of custom DOS program Display Jih-Shin Ho wanted was from year 1989 was:
(13) About the author
=====================
I am a student in National Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan, R.O.C.. Why do I
write DISPLAY ? Because I can't find any viewer in DOS world which can fulfill
my needs. I want to have a viewer for my personal use, so that I can do any
experiment I want to do. It is obvious that the easiest and best way is to
write a viewer by myself.
The first thing I think of is which compiler I should use. Turbo-C ? No, I
don't want to bother with segment and offset any more. Watcom-C ? No, I don't
have money to buy it. DJGPP ? YES, it is a 32-bit C compiler with good
reliability becuase the engine is GNU C compiler. The most important reason is
that it is FREE.
I develop DISPLAY on 486DX-33 with 16MB ram, So memory is not a problem. I
decide to write program in UNIX style, because DJGPP emulates the UNIX
environment. Thanks to the virtual memory function in DJGPP, I don't need to
worry about the memory allocation. In the initial stage, I just write DISPLAY
for my persion use. Finally, I want to hear others' opinions, so I release it
to the Net. Many people give me suggesitons, encouragement and bug reports.
They all help to keep DISPLAY growing. The role of DISPLAY also changes from
plain viewer to multi-purpose viewer. Now DISPLAY is not just my program
because it includes many ideas from the users.
Finally, if you think that DISPLAY is good enough and would like to write a
postcard to me, my physical address is :
[...] Room 1410, Graduate Student Dorm., National Chiao-Tung University,
Hsin-Chu 300, Taiwan, R.O.C.[...]
a postcard from year 1989 for custom DOS program that rivals at that time Autodesk Animator PRO on five floppy disks that was holy grail of FLI/FLC editing and playback software.
Acknowledgments:
I should like to thank the authors of XV and PBMPLUS for their permission
to let me use their subroutines.
Also, I thank the authors of the TIFF and JPEG libraries.
Thank you DJ. Without DJGPP I can't do anything on a PC.
The author would like to thank Olivier Dumas, Oliver Weyand, Ben Jos Walbeehm,
Bryan Woodworth and other users for their advices and suggestions.
Thanks Bernhard Maerz, Paul Melman for giving me suggestiions continuously.
The author would like to thank NCTUCCCA for offering a place for DISPLAY.
custom DOS program named Display author Jih-Shin Ho a programmer student from Taiwan University from year 1989. Does that story isn't story of all of us?