[HN Gopher] DOS_deck: Play DOS games in the browser with full co...
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DOS_deck: Play DOS games in the browser with full controller
support
Author : wsc981
Score : 236 points
Date : 2023-11-16 09:52 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dosdeck.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (dosdeck.com)
| icemelt8 wrote:
| I love jazz the jackrabbit, thanks for this. Any way to save the
| game
| thristian wrote:
| The site says all the games offered are shareware, freeware, demo
| versions, or "liberated" (i.e. officially released as freeware
| after they became commercially unviable). Most of the currently
| listed games are shareware from id Software or Apogee (or both),
| and I recall hearing about Command & Conquer being released as
| freeware at one point, but I'm surprised to see Dune II and The
| Black Cauldron on that list -- I feel like I would have heard
| about Dune II being released, and I can't imagine The Mouse
| giving up any control over intellectual property, even something
| as mostly-forgotten as The Black Cauldron.
| speps wrote:
| A few of these are still for sale on gog.com and should
| probably be removed as you say it doesn't seem super legit
| right now.
|
| If I was the author, I'd make it clear it's all demo versions
| and actually source these versions instead of full games. Shows
| the proof of concept without entering legal issues.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| The ones I tried (Jazz Jackrabbit and Epic Megagames) were
| not full versions. So nothing wrong there.
| prmoustache wrote:
| See also, based on same js-dos code
|
| https://dos.zone/
|
| https://js-dos.com/v7/build/docs/
| vanderZwan wrote:
| On my machine both websites seem to run the emulators much
| choppier in Firefox than in Chrome. Does it use any JS features
| that Firefox is known to be slow at, or should I suspect a
| difference in hardware acceleration of rendering the image?
| chem83 wrote:
| Would love to see more of these websites implement the JS-DOS
| on-screen keyboards configurations to allow games w/ key
| shortcuts (like, say, Civilization) to be played on touchscreen
| devices.
| findthewords wrote:
| Extremely responsive interface on Firefox and Chromium. How do
| you achieve that? Well done.
| wigster wrote:
| very slick - i'd forgotten the horrible heretic music
| saturn8601 wrote:
| Its MIDI though so it depends on the sound card being used.
| They are using Adlib emulation so its not the best sounding.
|
| Using something better like a Roland SoundCanvas it does not
| sound that bad:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if6n3QIJqbs
| bonton89 wrote:
| Really? I always thought the e1l1 track was banging.
|
| Doom has more memorable music overall though.
| teddyh wrote:
| The image is distorted and squashed, because the aspect ratio is
| wrong. It should be 4:3, but it is closer to 16:10.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I'm not so sure about it. Yes it's 16:10, but a few games I
| played, they look fine to me, not squashed.
|
| Without a solid reference it's hard to tell, but the cursor in
| C&C is definitely a perfect circle:
| https://i.imgur.com/f3SZD3t.png so it's at least not squashed
| at canvas/screen level.
|
| And stretching any screenshots to 4:3 (I tried a few in
| Photoshop) definitely is more distorted.
| sgt wrote:
| As far as C&C is concerned, that looks correct.
| vapidness_is wrote:
| Very cool! I've built a similar platform for GB, GBA and SNES at
| https://afterplay.io I've thought about adding DOS support in the
| future. What emulator did you end up using? Very nice
| implementation :)
| Sarkie wrote:
| There's an About tab.
|
| DOSBox allowed these classic games to run, but it required
| installation on a computer, limiting accessibility.
| Fortunately, the magic of modern web technology came to the
| rescue. Some ingenious individuals managed to make DOSBox run
| within a web browser, giving rise to the marvelous software
| package known as JS-DOS.
|
| DOS_deck is built upon the foundation of JS-DOS, which, in
| turn, relies on DOSBox. Together, they breathe new life into
| MS-DOS games by bringing them to your browser. However, there's
| a twist. Games from that era were designed for keyboard and
| mouse input, without established standards for interaction or
| control patterns. Here at DOS_deck, a tremendous effort was put
| into creating a seamless experience, enabling you to
| effortlessly navigate and play these games, ideally with the
| comfort of a controller in hand. Rediscover a golden age of
| gaming with DOS_deck. It's the bridge between the past and the
| present, connecting you to a world of digital memories and
| timeless adventures.
| AntoniusBlock wrote:
| Your site is great. I've signed up and I'm using it now to re-
| play EarthBound. Thanks.
| vapidness_is wrote:
| Thank you so much. EarthBound is awesome. I played it for the
| first when I added SNES to Afterplay. Are you playing on
| desktop or mobile?
| AntoniusBlock wrote:
| I'm playing on desktop. I tried to play in Firefox's
| private mode, but the emulator didn't load. I don't know if
| this is intended or a bug, but just thought I'd let you
| know.
| amne wrote:
| supaplex is in there. I wanted to write this 2 hours ago. help!
| voxadam wrote:
| Great! It's only been five minutes and I'm addicted to Dune II
| again.
|
| I'll never understand what it was about that game that made me
| play it for hours on end as a kid. I suppose if I had learned
| more about, even rudimentary, real-time strategy games I may have
| ended up more of a gamer.
| Beijinger wrote:
| https://play-cs.com/
| queuebert wrote:
| This is amazing. I've always wanted to go back to Commander Keen
| with a gamepad.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| The pogo stick jump in Keens 1-3 took a lot of getting used to
| and one still tended to fail at it quite a bit, on keyboard. I
| hadn't thought about it before, but yeah, I bet it's much
| easier on a gamepad.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| It's so weird how much better these games looked in my memory
| (e.g., Dune 2, C&C). I guess when the graphics were so primitive,
| your imagination filled in the rest. When I look at them now, I
| realize that units were just a handful of pixels. Then again, I'm
| looking at it on a 6k 30" LCD screen, when back then I had an 18"
| CRT.
| apetresc wrote:
| The CRT effect makes a night-and-day difference. The art was
| not designed with perfect, crisp square pixels in mind at all.
| You can reproduce the effect in Dosbox with Auto-CRT; if you're
| so inclined, eXoDOS just released v6 a few weeks ago which
| bundles CRT shader configurations for every single game in the
| collection. Or if you know how to use ReShade.
|
| Ironically, you would need something like an 8K display at
| 144Hz+ to fully reproduce the visual effect of a CRT, which
| basically doesn't exist yet. But even with just 4K the filters
| make a huge, huge difference.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Cool, I'll try that out.
| claar wrote:
| This feels like a case where real-time upscaling would make a
| world of difference.
| knodi123 wrote:
| "Zoom. Enhance."
| malkia wrote:
| There is a device (for $750) that is probably worth buying -
| https://twitter.com/8bitesquire/status/1724518121174618281
| halyconWays wrote:
| Why buy a $750 FPGA that emulates a CRT when you can buy a
| $20 CRT?
| QuadrupleA wrote:
| Or a $0 pixel shader?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| You can still find a complete Pentium computer for even
| less.
| koonsolo wrote:
| I remember playing Dune 2 and having a blast. Later played the
| c&c series and also had a blast.
|
| Then went back to Dune 2, and oh boy those controls were
| terrible! You get used to new things so fast that you forget
| how it was before.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Curious what the future looks like for DOS and old Win95
| emulation. I cant seem to run some old games from back then with
| just dosbox.
|
| I don't try hard and there are likely solutions, but given what
| has happend with AI and how that has transformed other data
| hording, I'm excited about the future.
| Narishma wrote:
| PCem or 86box, though they have much higher system
| requirements.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| I can wait patiently for better hardware. :)
| thom wrote:
| The name got me excited, but I'm definitely in the market for a
| smoother platform for DOSBox on my SteamDeck. The machine is
| genuinely excellent for retro gaming because it's so easy to map
| the mouse and various keyboard shortcuts to its many buttons, and
| that's increasingly become how I use it instead of more modern
| games out of Steam. Only issue is there is some faff involved at
| the moment (but faff that I'm delighted is even possible, it
| being a full Linux machine and all).
| xjlin0 wrote:
| I wonder how can I disable the command key on my mac....
| swozey wrote:
| Possibly karbiner but I've never looked into doing specifically
| that, so I may be wrong https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/
|
| I use it to map a ton of stuff on my Moonlander layers and my
| razer tartarus.
| umtksa wrote:
| cant play heretic on desktop :/ because on mac when you shoot and
| press left or right mac os bring all windows front of you like
| you press F3
| Dwedit wrote:
| Now the question is how do you do effective profiling for this
| kind of project? The performance is a little iffy.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Related: https://dos.lol
| malkia wrote:
| Lots of games can be played on archive.org too
| https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games like
| https://archive.org/details/Keen4e-sw
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(page generated 2023-11-16 23:01 UTC)