DOS ain't dead

DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 (Announce)

posted by Zyzzle, 01.03.2026, 05:29

> meanwhile I continued some developments, then got the Idea to port it to
> SDL Lib. Then Dust Ultimate Game Library is born
> DUST - DUGL hoping that SDL
> DOS/DJGPP port will happen.
Are you aware of the DOS Diablo port?

https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=22726

This has some or all of an SDL port to DOS, I think. But not SDL2. It worked for me, but brightness / gamma is screwed up (too low).


>
> I among the poeple that sill beleave that DOS has all potential to go back
> main stream, not just retro gaming/dev inside a VM. all what we need now is
> a successfull VSHDA/CSMWRAP, a missing good PTHREAD lib with capability to
> use all CPU Cores (new DUGL is up to 300% faster thanks to rendering with 4
> cores), maybe also a better HDD/SATA/SSD drivers that bring full speed ..
> Well that's not going to be easy, but I'm here to contribute as much as I
> can, and without a doubt this is a long term hobby

I agree. DOS is going to become more and more powerful in a world of bloat and abstraction layers and walled gardens. What we also need is a "universal" vBIOS which fixes broken vBIOSes on cripped "newer" systems, such as from 2010-2019. Like VSBHDA, but for modern onboard video. The project Scitech Univibe 25 years ago was the idea. But it died on the vine in 1998 before onboard video became popular and Intel started chopping away at low-resolution VGA and proper VESA support (eg, 15-bit and 16-bit modes and low-resolution VESA support). This in tandem with CSMWrap and a solution of running 16-bit legacy code in post-2020 systems.

Supporting SMP in DOS is difficult, but will become necessary since most modern CPUs do not have strong single-core performance relative to the 2005-2010 timeframe when things were more optimized and single-core clockrates were higher.

Complete thread:

• DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha2 - FFK, 28.02.2026, 04:59 (Announce)
  • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - rr, 28.02.2026, 12:57
    • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - FFK, 28.02.2026, 22:47
      • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - Zyzzle, 01.03.2026, 05:29
        • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - FFK, 01.03.2026, 10:50
          • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - DOS SMP - mceric, 01.03.2026, 12:27
            • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - DOS SMP - FFK, 01.03.2026, 21:50
          • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - RayeR, 01.03.2026, 15:52
            • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - FFK, 01.03.2026, 17:58
              • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - RayeR, 02.03.2026, 18:20
                • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - FFK, 02.03.2026, 23:21
          • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - Zyzzle, 03.03.2026, 02:25
  • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - Zyzzle, 28.02.2026, 14:48
    • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - FFK, 28.02.2026, 23:20
      • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - Zyzzle, 01.03.2026, 01:43
    • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - FFK, 02.03.2026, 02:15
      • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - RayeR, 02.03.2026, 05:14
        • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - FFK, 02.03.2026, 09:08
          • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - RayeR, 02.03.2026, 18:25
            • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - FFK, 02.03.2026, 23:30
              • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - Zyzzle, 03.03.2026, 02:15
                • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - RayeR, 03.03.2026, 02:33
                • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - FFK, 04.03.2026, 12:26
              • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - RayeR, 03.03.2026, 20:59
                • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - FFK, 03.03.2026, 22:13
                  • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - Laaca, 05.03.2026, 07:00
                    • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - RayeR, 05.03.2026, 17:30
      • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - Zyzzle, 02.03.2026, 10:58
        • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha1 - FFK, 02.03.2026, 16:59
  • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha3 - FFK, 26.03.2026, 02:47
    • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha3 - Zyzzle, 05.04.2026, 20:37
      • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha3 - FFK, 06.04.2026, 17:28
  • DUGL Player 1.0 Alpha4 - FFK, 13.04.2026, 03:30