Jorpho wrote:

jwt27 wrote:

For a decent PCM audio library maybe you could check out MPXPlay. Its audio library (i think it's called MIDAS) supports:

So, does this mean someone out there has actually written a DOS game using the MPXPlay library? I wasn't aware it could do something other than serve as a standalone music player.

I didn't say that (and don't know either), but I figured this would make a good starting point since it already supports many different file formats and sound cards.

Wasn't the Quake 1 engine free to use?

q1source.zip didn't ship with DOS makefiles.

For sound and music, there are several open source libraries:

AIL 2.0 (Audio Interface Library)
AIL/32 (Audio Interface Library for protected mode)
DIGPAK/MIDPAK
BWSB (Bells, Whistles and Sound Boards)
DSIK (Digital Sound Interface Kit)
HMQ (Housemarque Sound System)
SEAL (Synthetic Audio Library)
STK (Diamondware Sound ToolKit)
STMIK (Scream Tracker Music Interface Kit)

I have myself tried AIL 2.0 and found it convinient enough.

I somewhat resent the OP's track record of asking obscure/inane questions and then leaving the discussion with no follow up. But to get back to the point...
Wikipedia actually has a list for older game engines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Creation_System which are not necessarily open source, but pretty much all abandonware. Open Source wasn't really a thing back then, it was shareware/freeware which I think wasn't as cultural/political/ideological at the time.
Pie in the Sky Software's engine can easily create games like Wolfenstein 3D with higher resolution textures.
Modern "engines" for "dos gaming" would probably fall along the lines of Zork text adventures or ASCII Roguelike tools.
.flac support would be anachronistic, since the audio files would be disproportionately larger than the game's core. Wouldn't .wav be an ok substitute?

Auzner wrote:

.flac support would be anachronistic, since the audio files would be disproportionately larger than the game's core. Wouldn't .wav be an ok substitute?

.wavs can easily be twice the size of a .flac, depending on the quality.

Auzner wrote:

.flac support would be anachronistic, since the audio files would be disproportionately larger than the game's core. Wouldn't .wav be an ok substitute?

It wouldn't be. Have you ever had a pre-1997 mixed-mode game CD where there was a <10mb game and the rest are used for huge uncompressed audio tracks?

There's also a few old games that skip the WAV header stuff completely and stream raw samples at a hardcoded sample rate/bits/channel to work around both the mixed-mode access restrictions and keeping the read buffer lower than otherwise.

Auzner wrote:

Pie in the Sky Software's engine can easily create games like Wolfenstein 3D with higher resolution textures.

One generic "shoot bullets" enemy type in a level only. Also it's not protected mode, which leave a ton of restrictions to the potential creativity. It's a real memory fussy engine, and that's definitely not an engine you want to go 'high resolution' on when you've got the 640kb restriction.

The engine only got better by 3.0 (~2001, Windows only) which was too little too late and stopped being 'easy' to use.

Jorpho wrote:

Auzner wrote:

.flac support would be anachronistic, since the audio files would be disproportionately larger than the game's core. Wouldn't .wav be an ok substitute?

.wavs can easily be twice the size of a .flac, depending on the quality.

Yeah, but would MS-DOS or a contemporaneous machine support flac? 😵

leileilol wrote:

Auzner wrote:

.flac support would be anachronistic, since the audio files would be disproportionately larger than the game's core. Wouldn't .wav be an ok substitute?

It wouldn't be. Have you ever had a pre-1997 mixed-mode game CD where there was a <10mb game and the rest are used for huge uncompressed audio tracks?

Yes and the audio fidelity was usually lower than what would be expected from CD. Usually it was optional or I didn't always have the CD form of games or played sometimes without the CD and would end up with midi. I remember this of Warcraft 2 and Heroes of Might and magic 2 at least. Anyways I have to point out that "flac support in MSDOS" falls in-line with the OP's past queries. If you have some whiskey they are fun to read through from the beginning.

leileilol wrote:

One generic "shoot bullets" enemy type in a level only. Also it's not protected mode, which leave a ton of restrictions to the potential creativity. It's a real memory fussy engine, and that's definitely not an engine you want to go 'high resolution' on when you've got the 640kb restriction.

Relative to Wolf3d, the textures were higher in resolution. Personally it was just the only game engine I ever tried back then and could make any comment at all about from experience.