There's nothing preventing it except the hardware companies. On Windows you have drivers. On DOS you don't have those drivers for sound/video so you'd have to either reverse engineer all of that (good luck) or get the hardware companies to provide the specs (good luck) so you can interface with that hardware.

Open Sourced linux driver source code may provide a clue but IIRC for video they only suppot 2D not 3D.

Considering how fast current processors are today you'd be better off just using the processor (porting Mesa3D to DOS and using that).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkUwT9U1GzA
http://bisqwit.iki.fi/jutut/kuvat/programming … example-FAQ.txt

The problem is that all graphics hardware is now proprietary, and noone cares to reverse-engineer it because it can be accessed in a standard way via DirectX/OpenGL.

You could install Linux and launch Windows games in WINE from a terminal prompt :p

That's what I figured. Sigh. Man Windows really messed stuff up didn't it...

No it didn't. That's like saying the invention of the wheel really messed up travelling. Welcome to the 21st century my friend.

In fact, from a gaming perspective, Windows was a revelation. As has been pointed out coders of DOS games had to write their own "drivers" - figure out by themselves how to properly access the PC's hardware, like input, sound, video etc. . They had to work around lots of hardware bugs and quirks and make their code work on a multitude of hardware configs. The fact that DOS was already an ancient OS when "demanding" games (especially 3D games) really kicked off didn't help at all. I mean, i wasn't until the second generation or so of DirectX games where you had real smooth scrolling as a standard in PC games, a feat that machines like the C64 or Amiga had no problem with at all. Windows slowly but steadily eliminated the need for the "custom hardware programming" by introducing various abstraction layers, which lead to the current DirectX.

I'm all for nostaliga and stuff, but saying things like "Windows has messed up gaming" is just silly. Evolution happens, and that's a very good thing.

totally agree with ADDiCT on this one...

I know that. I was only kidding. Sorry it wasn't that evident. I morso meant that it messed things up for my nostalgia. It definitely was better for games and easier on developers.

Here's what the terrified gamer world was forced into in 1995. 😁 I remember being endlessly fascinated by how Win95 found all of my hardware and how much better it was than 3.x (yikes!!), but I didn't have enough RAM (only 8MB). It was a whole new realm of tweaking to explore.

Even without Windows the same thing would have happened eventually. VESA was becoming more cohesive and more widely supported at the hardware/BIOS level, for example, and Glide had a DOS port.

and Glide had a DOS port.

My two favorite Glide games (Descent II and Tomb Raider) were DOS glide games.

I think today's equivalent 'feel' to the old DOS systems, would be a stripped-down linux booting into single-user mode text mode. Its not DOS, but it's command line, and can use proprietary modern drivers. Whatever games or apps you run would be responsible for talking to the graphics driver (using the same interface that X or Mesa would run through.)

This would be about as 'pure' as a game system you could run in today's complex and proprietary hardware world. As for games, no one writes anything like this, so you're on your own for coding something up. Extra credit if you write it in assembly language 😀

ADDiCT wrote:

No it didn't. That's like saying the invention of the wheel really messed up travelling. Welcome to the 21st century my friend.

In fact, from a gaming perspective, Windows was a revelation. As has been pointed out coders of DOS games had to write their own "drivers" - figure out by themselves how to properly access the PC's hardware, like input, sound, video etc. . They had to work around lots of hardware bugs and quirks and make their code work on a multitude of hardware configs. The fact that DOS was already an ancient OS when "demanding" games (especially 3D games) really kicked off didn't help at all. I mean, i wasn't until the second generation or so of DirectX games where you had real smooth scrolling as a standard in PC games, a feat that machines like the C64 or Amiga had no problem with at all. Windows slowly but steadily eliminated the need for the "custom hardware programming" by introducing various abstraction layers, which lead to the current DirectX.

I'm all for nostaliga and stuff, but saying things like "Windows has messed up gaming" is just silly. Evolution happens, and that's a very good thing.

And thank God it's happeing and we're going through it. No one could stand being stuck on 640k RAM forever...

but...but...640k is all you need!

eh the DOS extenders bypassed that conventional memory BS pretty well and even essentially cleared up the old need to eek out as much conventional as possible. As long as you didn't have ~300KB of DOS device drivers and TSRs running, you were in the clear. 😳 😁

A dedicated Dos-platform 3D game would have been great, though. The game will have almost exclusive control of the system resources. (Unlike Windows systems, which use up plenty of them, just for the GUI itself.)

I wonder if it could be pulled off with OpenGL through the HX extender. Stupid unfeasible idea, but... OMG ATI OPENGL IN DOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSS DOS4GW UP UR WARCRAFT3

Malik wrote:

A dedicated Dos-platform 3D game would have been great, though. The game will have almost exclusive control of the system resources. (Unlike Windows systems, which use up plenty of them, just for the GUI itself.)

Wasnt the first Quake such dos-platform 3d game? If it's not, please let me know. Quake 1 was originally a dos game, wasnt it?

no, there were full 3d games before Quake, and 3d accellerated DOS games before Quake as well

temptingthelure wrote:

Malik wrote:

A dedicated Dos-platform 3D game would have been great, though. The game will have almost exclusive control of the system resources. (Unlike Windows systems, which use up plenty of them, just for the GUI itself.)

Wasnt the first Quake such dos-platform 3d game? If it's not, please let me know. Quake 1 was originally a dos game, wasnt it?

Ah yes! Quake's a true 3D dos game. I guess, I was referring more to the native OpenGL or other such rendering in pure dos. I think GLQuake requires Windows 95.

But the software mode does run in Dos. Yes, it's (Quake I) a true dos 3D game. Seeing in this perspective, so are Terminator : Skynet and Terminator : Future Shock. (These games came out BEFORE Quake, and have better mouselook support than Quake I, imho - don't require a depressed mouse button or key for mouselook.)

But the problem now is, no one wants to make one like these, with added support for 3d cards, in pure DOS.

Eh there are many other completely 3D games in DOS going back to the mid '80s.

CPU rendered 3D was no problem. It's when they have to interface with more and more hardware in DOS that it becomes horribly complex.

I'm all for starting a DOS revival community. I'm a fan of DOS 7.10, I have yet to check out the russian modded DOS 8.0. Games that were made for it ran smooth for me. In fact that direct hardware programming allowed game makers to push the limits of the hardware, and also they helped develop the hardware themselves. The only reason Microsoft phased DOS out was to completely remove any possible competition as far as GUI's go. Then they could brand all their own programs and wipe out the market. Now we're stuck with basically what may as well be apple as far as licensing. I think the place to start would be making a new GUI OS layer to run on top of DOS 7.10. It's a pretty good start as it's already 32-bit and has loads of features. Or helping develop the arachne browser so as it can utilize javascript and css. Getting tools made that function with modern data. Maybe contact AMD and see what they have to offer in supporting hardware extensions development on new systems. They do work with linux.