I prefer programming DOS applications, and was thinking of making a very simple dungeon crawling game, where you walk in a dungeon and just kill enemies(get from point 1 to point 2,collect stuff etc,but for the time being just walking and killing enemies will be fine.I will work out the other stuff later.)

I was wondering these thing however:
1)Whats the max resolution a DOS program can have? Is it the same a the native OS's screen resolution?(If my Win can run up to 100x800,does the same apply to the DOS program?)
2)What kind of graphics does DOS support? I doubt it could load PNG or JPG files, so should I first convert my images to another file format?
3)How portable would the source of a DOS application would be? I want the program to run on both Win an Linux systems.

THanks in advance for the help.

Hello

if you use Standard VGA max resolution = 640x480 4bit 16colors,
however usually dos game run in 320x200 8bit 256 colors.
If you use Vesa max resolution = 1280x1024 24/32 bit - Mode 011BH -

it depend from your program,it load and convert images to display on the screen,therefore you can load all format file.

if your program use C language is portable to linux with few change ,
if you use Assembly is more complicated , but if you use emulator
don't worry about nothing and it will run falsely on both

For Dos take a look "kelvar unREAL engine" in the examples.

You could also try DexOS as it is Dos like to program on, gives you 1280x1024 24/32 bit high res, libs for jpg or gif files and can be booted from its bootloader or run from MS-Dos and can be run from emulators.
It also designed to run like a console type OS, see here:
http://www.dex4u.com/

But remember the high the res the slower the FPS, if all other things remain the same.

> prefer programming DOS applications



> 1)Whats the max resolution a DOS program can have?

No limits. See FAQ on top of thread. For compatibility, you should support lower and safe resolutions whenever possible: 1024x768, 800x600, 640x480, 640x480x4bpp (VGA).

> Is it the same a the native OS's screen resolution?

NO. DOS has none

> 2)What kind of graphics does DOS support?

None. You have to do the work rather than rely on DOS, see FAQ

> I doubt it could load PNG or JPG files

It can't.

> so should I first convert my images to another file format?

NO. There is no format natively supported by DOS. You have to include a JPG or PNG loader into your game.

Dex4u wrote:

> You could also try DexOS as it is Dos like to program on

OK ... as usual

> 3)How portable would the source of a DOS application would be?

You could support both classical DOS AND DexOS

> I want the program to run on both Win an Linux systems.

But you wrote about DOS just before ? I assume you know what DOS is ?

DOS=Disk Operating System? lol
By saying DOS, I mean commad line, blocky graphics etc,lol.But thanks for your help NTOSK. Really helpful reply.Thanks to all other as well.

Dungeon crawling? Welcome to Moraff's Revenge, Moraff's World, and Moraff's Dungeon of the Unforgiven...

http://zer-un.zeroesunlimited.com/articles/moraff.htm

The best fastest game I ever played was "THE DARKENING" for DOS, back around 1994/5.

You may still be able to get it on ebay.

I ran it on a P160 with a 1MB videocard and 16MB of memory and that sukkah never lagged for a second, no matter how many spaceships there were.
Chaos, total chaos, mass killing and zero lag. It was GREAT fun.
(It used a dos extender, Dos4GW.)

It only ever lagged when the CDvideo bits came on, and at the very end when you had to zap the leaders spaceship.

...then we moved onto crappy windows 95, where you needed a nuclear powered videocard to even get a semi decent game of anything...

> best fastest game I ever played
> used a dos extender, Dos4GW

DOG/4GW is not very good. Could be even faster with DOS/32A

I've been curious about DOS roguelikes recently (see here for links to Linley's Dungeon Crawl).

Anyways, here's the ones you'll most want inspiration from (bold means open source):

• Nethack (most popular roguelike, written in C, comes w/ gfx tiles)
  
• Slash 'EM (newer improved Nethack, comes w/ "better" gfx but 3d didn't work for me on XP or DOSBox)
  
• Linley's Dungeon Crawl (very cool, written in C++ / curses, tiles only in non-DOS OSes, doh)
  
• ADOM (no src or gfx but supposedly very immersive)
  
• Angband (levels regenerated upon every entry unlike some others)
  
• Ragnarok (nice graphics, freeware w/o src but no longer updated)
  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike (has links to all of the above)

Okay, honestly, I've 99% only been playing Dungeon Crawl.

BTW, FreeBASIC (!!!) or DJGPP (C, C++, Ada) or GNU Pascal / FreePascal is probably your best bet for development via either Allegro or other gfx / sound libraries. All of those are portable.