Category Archives: DOSBox

Wolfenstein 3D for DOS/4GW!

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After reading about the Blake Stone compile fixes, as it was a Wolf3d port, I came across a post on the forum Wolf3d Haven about trying to find the source code to something called wolf4gw.  Now wolf4gw is a port of the Borland C source of Wolfenstein 3d to Open Watcom C++‘s 32bit MS-DOS extender DOS/4GW, done by ‘ripper’.

The project eventually gave way to wolf4sdl, and as they say the rest is history.

Sadly it seems that just about all the source copies of wolf4gw were lost, except I did manage to find an ‘improved’ version simply refered to as wolf3dx.  From the blurb:

Tricob has released the Wolf4GW-based source code of WolfDX. Included is a text file called (Tricob).TXT.

So I have been using Watcom 10.0 for Duke Nukem 3d, however, this version relies on the _asm inline assembler which was introduced in Watcom 11.  However Watcom 11c had issues with some of the assembly forcing me to go even further to OpenWatcom 1.3.  For me the install was easy, I used CrossOver to install OpenWatcom for DOS-DOS32bit only, copied the compiler into DOSBox, and played mostly with the makefiles, and finally got a working exe!

Screen Shot 2013-07-12 at 11.57.24 AM Screen Shot 2013-07-12 at 11.58.00 AM

I know it may not look like much, but really it is running in 32bit protected mode!

Since all of this is open/freeware/shareware I can redistribute OpenWatcom, the source to wolf3dx, and the shareware levels of Wolfenstein.  Naturally I’m using DOSBox to compile and test, but you can use anything that can run MS-DOS 32bit stuff.

Download my archive here.

Sourceforge’s project of the month: DOSBox!

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Sourceforge has been running ‘project of the month’ for a while now, and  DOSBox won out!  It is the second time they have actually won.  For those of you living in a cave, DOSBox is a fantastic PC emulator geared at emulating not only early PC’s of the 1980’s and early 1990’s but also includes its own MS-DOS like operating system for running ancient video games.  It also has been ported to numerous platforms, including Java, Android, OS X, Linux and of course Win32.

DOSBox is also used by some big companies (steam, gog) for the continued sale of old MS-DOS games.  Who says old won’t sell?

Anyways there is an interview with the primary authors on the sourceforge page.

Compiling Duke Nukem 3D from source

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Well most of it anyways….

I mashed in all you need to build it for MS-DOS under MS-DOS here.

It should be really simple, just run the Watcom C’s setvars, then go into the duke3d\source directory and run ‘wmake’ … All being well it’ll output some exe’s.  I’ve also included the shareware data files so you can test your executables.

Watcom C/C++ 10.0 on DOSBox

Watcom C/C++ 10.0 on DOSBox

Not bad for being under 10Mb, compressed.

jsDosBox

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Love DOSBox on java, but don’t like java? Love the power of Google’s v8 javascript engine? Well then you’ll love this, introducing jsDOSBox, a port of jDOSBox to javascript!

That’s right, with chrome, it is as simple as click and go!

Doom in dosbox all in javascript!

So how does it perform? well OK OK, its slow, but it sure does have promise!  Then again it could be my laptop.  But wow, emulation in javascript!

Test it here.

sixteen year aniversary of the Qtest1 (quake test) release

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OK, well it actually was 2/24/1996 …

iD still has the download on their FTP server..

Anyways I managed to meet the right people and score a beta copy of Quake! The mysterious 0.8 or ‘beta 3’ version.  So I thought you guys would love it, and what better way to enjoy these old things than jdosbox.

And of course I’ve put up all the versions I’ve been able to find so far.  Now I just need a fun way to network all of this stuff.

Update for jdosbox 0.74.24

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Awesome news that somehow slipped by, jDOSBox has been updated!  Check out these awesome features!

0.74.24 July 2, 2011 
* Fixed some mouse sensitivity issues 
* Reduced flicker 
* Ported Tandy sound 
* Ported IPX

I’ve updated my site, and I’ll have to see what it takes to get the IPX going…!  For those of you who want to run it on your own, download it here.

Update for jdosbox 0.74.23

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Woo new update, and here is what’s changing!

0.74.23 June 5, 2011
* Fixed a serious memory error that mostly affected EGA era games
* Increased performance of the dynamic core a bit
* Improved audio by reducing stuttering on some games

0.74.22 May 29, 2011
* More fixes for Windows 3.11

0.74.21 May 27, 2011
* Fix for Windows 3.11 that affected Freecell

0.74.20 May 27, 2011
* New dynamic core, most games are 2x faster than build #19
* Fixed lots of minor bugs, mainly around installers

Download it here!

So i did update my jdosbox stuff, for anyone that enjoys this stuff. Hopefully it won’t blink like crazy on OS X.

 

Synchronet in a bubble

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Or at least that’s what I’m going to call it.

Click to run!

Basically it’s a super minimally configured copy of Synchronet configured to run on jdosbox.  There is no external ‘world’ to talk to.  There isn’t even any ‘persistence’ all changes will be lost after a simple refresh.

There also isn’t any user id’s it’s completely virgin!

Simply click on the picture, and hit the space bar once the menu comes up and you can login!  Since it’s just console access there is no modem, dialing, tcpip stuff to worry about.  If you can run java you can run this.

So why would I or you bother?  I guess its an importunity to suffer through the BBS experience.  Maybe I’m just leading up to something else, something really involved to setup so for most people this click & go java thing is about as close as they want to go to ‘feel’ it and it doesn’t involve any actual setup, nor any programs to configure.  And of course, you cannot ‘trash’ this thing beyond hope as the moment you refresh your browser, it’ll reload the image and you are back to the start.

And maybe it’s a sign of the times as well.  Comparing a BBS install to any *AMP install of today really shows in some way just how far we’ve come, in terms of installation.  Not to mention back in the BBS days nobody used SQL, everyone wound up writing their own multiuser database.  Actually in retrospect I have to wonder why more were not based around Dbase/Clipper/FoxPro.

At any rate, it’s really impressive to see that Synchronet is not only still going but thriving out there.  And the center of it all is DOVENET.  A quick and easy way of distributing messages easily can make a community…   Which sadly this thing doesn’t have any network IO so … no community.  See it’s like a bubble, easy to pop, and in it’s own little brief world.

For anyone crazy enough to take the plunge you could download version 2 of Synchronet right here. Then you can telnet to vert.synchro.net and setup an ID for your prospective BBS.  The best part is the simplicity of getting messages in & out… FTP!  You can even use ncftp to make scripts to send / get messages.  I cooked up something terribly simple to do that here.

While I did add TradeWars 2002 as a door, but you’ve also got the other defaults Synchronet Blackjack!, Domain Poker,Supernet Centipede..

For all you TradeWars 2002 fans….

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Click to play!

 

I just found out that jdosbox can do the ‘boot’ command.  So as a test here is TradeWars 2002 running in single user mode.  I suppose I could go all out and make a standalone single node BBS with tradewars configured for the ‘full effect’.

But for now this will have to do.

Click the picture to launch! (needs Java).