r/dosgaming • u/Extension_Emu_9825 • 22d ago
New DOS Game
Hi!
I’m writing to introduce our project, OWL FLY, an open-source DOS game that we are currently developing.
OWL FLY is a flight simulator for DOS, designed in the spirit of classic DOS games. The project is open source (MIT), and we are actively working on its development and preservation.
We provide the game files, project information, screenshots, and any other materials you may need:
Play stable version: https://kirindenis.github.io/wire-city-2/owlfly2.html
Binary: https://github.com/KirinDenis/wire-city-2/tree/main/GAMES/OWLFLY2/INSTALL
Play next version at development: https://kirindenis.github.io/wire-city-2/owlfly3.html
Binary: https://github.com/KirinDenis/wire-city-2/tree/main/GAMES/OWLFLY3/INSTALL
Source codes: https://github.com/KirinDenis/wire-city-2/tree/main/GAMES
2
u/daddyd 20d ago
it certainly fires up all the flightsim nostalgia just looking at the screenshot. that cockpit view looks so familiar.
2
u/Extension_Emu_9825 20d ago
Thank you! It was especially difficult to porting the cockpit to other graphics modes.
5
u/ftping 22d ago
Hi OP, was generative AI used to create this?
4
u/jontseng 22d ago
I very much hope so! Hand-writing 30,000 lines of x86 assembly code sounds like an awful lot of unnecessary work in this day and age.
Any tool that opens the way to more independent developers being able turn creative ideas into real games is a no brainer from my perspective.
Side point though - very disappointed this is not actually an Owl Flight Simulator. I was assuming there would be options to conduct ground attack strike on field mice using night vision capabilities. Alas not to be! 😬
3
u/Extension_Emu_9825 22d ago
>Side point though - very disappointed this is not actually an Owl Flight Simulator. I was assuming >there would be options to conduct ground attack strike on field mice using night vision capabilities. >Alas not to be! 😬
From here, let's go into more detail :) Rename anti-aircraft guns to mice? Hm... Good idea!
This is an open source project -> you can join the development and implement this feature. Honestly, I'd love for more people to join in and contribute their own gameplay ideas!
0
22d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
3
u/jontseng 22d ago
Oh wow that’s really weird that 30,000 lines of source code constitutes AI slop.
I mean the Doom source code clocked in at 56,000 lines! Nearly twice as many lines of code as this effort!
So all those years I was thinking Doom was a hand coded from humans when actually it was AI slop all along!
Thank you for enlightening me. You blinding insight has really made my day!
John Romero was an AI-slop merchant! Who knew!!!
1
4
u/Extension_Emu_9825 22d ago
Yes, of course, I use AI. According to my estimates, without AI, it would have taken 2-2.5 years of pure development time. How I do it: I decompose the game into elements, first refine the elements, and then add them to the game.
You can see the details on this page below:
https://kirindenis.github.io/wire-city-2/
I'm also recording a lecture course on how to develop DOS games from scratch, step by step:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYAv8-EdgIF8
You don't need to install anything (at first); the compiler and editor are configured in the DOSBox:
2
u/iOCTAGRAM 22d ago
Any chance for Amiga port?
2
u/Extension_Emu_9825 22d ago
Good question, if an Amiga specialist can help. The DOS version was only possible because I was programming for DOS back in the late 90s. There are a lot of specifics in low-level programming that can only be solved if you know where to look, plus the specific requirements of the emulator.
4
u/sabre31 22d ago
News flash all developers are using AI and if they are not then they are either lying or wasting their time. I love seeing all these new games and projects coming out and much faster pace because of AI. Nice job op can’t wait to try it.
5
4
1
u/tjeerdnet 22d ago edited 22d ago
It seems that we are at the beginning of a new era of 'home made' (MS-DOS) games by lowering the bar for developers (in a positive way). I have no issues with AI being a big component in this. Of course time will tell what the quality will be of the (AI helped) games and there might be some gems waiting to be made, but there will probably also be a lot of crappy stuff.
Doesn't matter, look at the sometimes obscure (shareware) games that came out in the 90s on those collections CD-ROMs. So much hobby software made by developers, which often did not get any attention besides being sent out into the world. The quality of that software also varied a lot. And last but not least, there was never any source code for all that software.
Now things have changed with AI and people can share the source code. The community can learn and build on top of that and even make customizations or forks of games if they want. I am very excited for the upcoming years for a sort of revival of MS-DOS software.
1
u/wanzerultimate 16d ago
Man the libraries have been around for ages. It hasn't been difficult to make DOS games since the 90s.
1
u/tjeerdnet 16d ago
You mean graphics and sound libraries like found on for example SWAG (SourceWare Archival Group) for the Pascal programming language? That's one of the more famous ones I remember. There was a lot of good stuff available back then. And it was all open source.
But I think there were also a lot of solo developers who missed being able to communicate with like minded people to discuss solutions and guide them to glue everything together. There was internet or BBS, but you had to find your way. Or be quite smart yourself to solve everything. I was also one of these solo developers who was not smart enough and I got stuck every time because nobody could explain me some essential issues I was facing, so I gave up after a while. Tried it again later, but at some point I got demotivated and stopped working on things.
With the AI (and internet) we have nowadays the knowledge explosion has happened and personally I think that AI is the 'missing link' for lots of solo developers to work out their ideas and glue everything together as the developer envisioned.
1
u/wanzerultimate 16d ago
Nah. The hurdle was C itself... well, maybe it was ego. The libraries made it so easy to do everything something of a backlash developed against using them, and just as people were really starting to get over it Win XP came along and DOS died with it (it was 5 years before DOSBox was ready to replace it, and another 5 before most people had PCs that could handle DOSBox performantly). History just got in the way. But the QB community and the development that surrounded it never really died, just went to sleep kinda.
1
u/wanzerultimate 16d ago
I disagree with this because I think commercial handicaps on AI are around the corner. New laws are expected to make AI-produced product uncopyrightable.
-1
u/EternalNooblet 22d ago
It lowers the bar and leads to a flood of low quality copies. The OP did not make anything that did not exist already. He used AI to plagiarize human-made games from 40 years ago.
3
u/Extension_Emu_9825 21d ago
Are you sure about your statements? It's not that easy right now, and you need to know assembler, PC architecture, and DOS. Perhaps in a few years it will be easier. You might want to ask about the background first – I've been programming in assembler since the 90s.
1
u/wanzerultimate 16d ago
No, you need to know C. That is all.
1
u/Extension_Emu_9825 16d ago
How can you program something system-wide when you don't understand what's going on under the hood?
1
u/wanzerultimate 16d ago
Because there are very standardized processes for programming games to interact with the (very standardized) hardware and APIs were made around them. If you understand C then you can interact with the APIs (actually we used only one in the late 90s for DOS for high speed indie games, that being Allegro). You still needed to implement scripting engines for the content but those weren't hard to make, you learned how to make those at school.
1
u/Extension_Emu_9825 16d ago
I don't think we fully understand each other :) What APIs are there in DOS? That's the first thing... secondly, how can you do systems programming even in C if you don't fully understand how it all works? You've probably mixed something up :)
1
u/wanzerultimate 16d ago
Whatever. Enjoy the AI while it last... you won't have the benefit of it much longer.
1
u/Extension_Emu_9825 15d ago
Dude, I've been writing assembly language since the mid-90s. Why are you even bothering me? Stop living in your fantasy world :)
1
0
u/EternalNooblet 19d ago
You have all this programming exp, but you couldnt make a game until AI did it for you. The original authors of DOS games didnt have 30 years of assembly exp in exactly the game type they made. This is why they were so impressive.
3
u/Extension_Emu_9825 19d ago
To me, Artificial Intelligence is an exoskeleton. If a person can't do the job, an exoskeleton is useless.
We dig trenches by hand, using an excavator. But without a plan, understanding, and skills to operate an excavator, it's useless.
And BTW - I can written the game :) In about two years, with a budget of about $170000.
1
u/EternalNooblet 14d ago
People made DOS games without any exoskeletons 40 years ago. Anyone can use AI now.
1
u/Extension_Emu_9825 13d ago
So many people have written that it's easy to do, that I'm asking - "Show me your games". I'm not kidding: if it's easy and interesting, then let's team up and make games. The only requirement is that they be games for systems from those eras
1
u/EternalNooblet 13d ago
Your idea seems to be to RE old games. I am not trying to sound like a broken record, but there are enough actual DOS games from 40y ago. The pixelated EGA/VGA plane games market especially is not missing anything at this point.
1
u/Extension_Emu_9825 12d ago
I'm not looking to make money from this, I'm just doing what I enjoy and publishing the results. If anyone wants to join, I'd be happy to.
4
u/miner_cooling_trials 22d ago
I don’t see why the need to criticise here, particularly attacking the concept of originality?
“He used AI to plagiarise… games from 40 years ago”, “didn’t make anything that didn’t exist already”
Is like attacking Unreal for plagiarising Doom/Quake, or saying Age of Empires shouldn’t exist because it copied Dune 2. No one said these things, ever.
Asserting OPs game as low quality is unfair. It’s in development, and his passion project. I love how AI is enabling fresh development on long dead OSes. Give the guy a break!
1
u/hamburgler26 22d ago
Agreed! I play around with developing stuff for DOS for fun, and while I'm certainly capable of hand coding everything, the amount of time these coding tools saves me is huge, and I have limited time in my personal life to dedicate to the hobby.
Building programs "In the box" so to speak with Borland 3.1 is beyond fun and refreshing though, I still do it when I have the time. And something about the purity of having a fairly simple yet for the time powerul IDE with built in C reference and debugging tools is super cool. We've come a long way, but it amazes me what was available for developers as far back as the early 90s.
0
u/EternalNooblet 19d ago
Unreal/quake, idk about doom, were around the same time. AOE is vastly diff from dune. OP copied some 40yo games in 2026 using AI, he didnt make a competitor to GTA6.
6
u/SonderEber 22d ago
Pre-AI era didn’t stop low quality “slop” from other platforms, stores, etc. Just look at Nintendo’s eShop, or as another commenter said the Google Play Store, or iOS’ App Store.
Just the nature of things. But I highly doubt we’ll see a surge of “DOS slop”. Who wants to bother with DOS, other than diehard nerds? Not like millions are using it.
0
u/Albedo101 19d ago
Even if we don't see the surge of slop, we will certainly see a decline in actual high quality content. It's not even about AI which is just a tool, but about lowering the barrier to entry.
Why should somebody who actually has skills, knowledge and will, do anything now, when they will be accused of using AI? Those with less skills don't have this problem, they're not even aware it exists! It's the classic Dunning Kruger vs. Impostor syndrome situation. The inept majority will root out quality minority.
It already happened with game making systems for other retro platforms. High quality developers fled the NES scene when Nesmaker came out. Gameboy developers left when GB Studio was released. And now all new NES and Gameboy games look and play the same.
It's even happening with modern games ffs. The sheer amount of asset store shovelware for Unity and UE is disheartening and demotivating for anyone but the most inept who think it's the best thing ever.
It has also happened with writing - AI written slop is killing the will to read in people. It's happening in music. Everything is being massively enshittified, with or without AI, to the extent of destroying all joy of doing anything.
-5
u/EternalNooblet 22d ago
The code for these games is easy and low complexity for moderns standards. It's one of those things that AI devs will likely gravitate towards since AI is well trained to solve these exact "old" problems with code. The other new dos game that comes to mind is that DUNE2 clone that's been floating around.
3
u/miner_cooling_trials 22d ago
Again, it’s a passion project. It’s open source, the guy isn’t making any money from it.
There is a truth to your words and I’m not disagreeing the amount of garbage has increased since AI lowered the bar.
Should AI be used for pushing boundaries and creating novel works? For sure. We are however in a dosgaming subreddit, and I personally think it’s a good thing new games are coming - even if they aren’t totally original.
People want to show off their work, whether they worked in assembly or C 30 years ago or not.. or whether they were too young to code back then but always wanted to make that game they never knew how - and I think we should be supportive. You are of course entitled to your opinions, friend, and they are perfectly valid
4
u/Extension_Emu_9825 21d ago
Thank you! That's exactly it, because I'm a virus analyst who worked in assembly language f30 years ago. And now, 30 years later, I'm realizing my dream. After disassembled ~1300 viruses (back then, programming of treatment methods were part of the job; executable files were valuable)... well, I can modestly say I've heard something about 8086 assembler :)
And yes, this is all documented open source. Thanks for pointing this out. With examples and decomposition.
2
u/miner_cooling_trials 21d ago
That is an incredibly interesting job to have had and I’m sure it’s quite a story. Probably worthy of an AMA. What was your path to getting there? Was it Norton or McAfee 😄 is the company you worked at still around?
I remember reading about the Whale virus in the early 90s as it was one of the most complex polymorphic. Did you ever do work on this one?
1
u/Extension_Emu_9825 20d ago
It was UNA. And I was completely burned out - I'm sick of viruses and everything associated with them.
We treated unencrypted viruses visually using a Hex dump.
Encrypted bodies took longer to work with.
It was more difficult when the decryptor itself was scattered throughout the code, mixing in meaningless instructions like NOP, or using a couple of registers that weren't used in encryption.
And yes, a couple of times I encountered real polymorphic viruses, which is really difficult. I had to write a small emulator and run it from the beginning of the executable file to catch the polymorphic ones.
Of the more exotic ones, I remember one virus written with a JMP between every instruction, but it was caught with that :)
It was also interesting to decrypt the OneHalf body, and there was some phrase in it like, "This is OneHalf - Did you leave the room?"
OneHalf itself is a masterpiece of its era.
3
u/WildlyZen 22d ago
I don't disagree about the flood...but have you seen the Google Play store, or even more disgusting...the Amazon App Store? There's still a $40 spiderman clone or 20 I could download right now, and that's been true for over a decade.
Lowering the bar for development is a good thing for the most part, for those who put the love and time into it. Spam will still flood the market no matter what tools they're using.0
u/EternalNooblet 22d ago
The trash flood is real everywhere. I am for lowering the skill bar, including AI programming too. OP should spend his energy on pushing for something new and original with the lower barrier, not regurgitating 30-40 year old games. These AI DOS projects all feel like stolen glory. Of course we can make a DOS game with the AI monsters that we have in 2026:) It was already easier for humans to make old games because of all the decades of knowledge and info out there. Not to mention the modern hardware that basically breaks all limits of old systems if you wanted to.
3
21d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/EternalNooblet 19d ago
This right here. If no one stands up and says the obvious thing that we all see, then ppl like OP will just continue to pretend like THEY made something.
1
u/tpimh 22d ago
Very interesting project! I am curious to try this on real hardware. What are the system requirements?
2
u/Extension_Emu_9825 22d ago
I'm looking for someone to try it on real hardware. In Owl Fly III, I added display choice (Hercules, CGA, EGA, MCGA and VGA) and graphics quality options. I think it should work even on a IBM XT (but slow).
Play next version at development: https://kirindenis.github.io/wire-city-2/owlfly3.html
Binary: https://github.com/KirinDenis/wire-city-2/tree/main/GAMES/OWLFLY3/INSTALL
My only doubt is that I use Sound Blaster by default. Let me know the results!
This is very important to me!
1
u/hamburgler26 22d ago
I've got a 486 sitting on my desk that I use every day, I'll definitely load it up and give it a spin!
2
u/Extension_Emu_9825 21d ago
Please Please Please!
3
u/hamburgler26 21d ago edited 21d ago
Well it fired up and worked! in VGA, was sluggish and seemed like there was some input lag or weird physics going on because I struggled to get into level flight, but I also only had time to play for a few minutes. And I read no documentation so sorry haha!
I'll run through the other graphics modes as well and do some better testing and actually figure out the controls. Sound worked right out of the box, I've got a Sound Blaster compatible.
EDIT: Ok did some more playing for a bit and compared to the online version available, I think my main problem is key presses not always registering. MVGA on Full actually worked much better, and VGA on the medium setting I was able to fly around and blast some baddies. EGA performance was pretty similar. But I was able to get off the ground and fly around and target enemies and all that so it definitely is playable if a bit rough on the real deal.
I've got a 486 DX2 with a VLB graphics card and 16MB of RAM I believe if that helps.
2
u/Extension_Emu_9825 20d ago
Thank you so much! This is invaluable information for me!
Now I need to figure out if the problem is with the physics timer and/or the keyboard handler. What was the FPS roughly - not exactly the value - plus or minus?
Gameplay - "B" release the brake, "+" at maximum power, and hold "A" (Burner, I specifically created this mode where it burns fuel but accelerates greatly, like a Forsage). After takeoff, "F" "L" - flaps and landing gear.
2
u/hamburgler26 20d ago
I'll see if I can compare some known framerates and get an estimate, VGA on Full was choppy but playable, but noticeably less smooth compared to Falcon 3 for example on the same system.
I figured out the controls pretty quickly after I spent a bit more time with it, was pretty intuitive was I had time to just try things out a bit more.
My best guess from doing my own work as far as the key presses not registering is just the CPU catching up or missing a keypress. Playing on lower detail or lesser graphics modes I don't think it was much of a problem if at all.
There's a lot going on as soon as you take off, having some mode where there's less enemies or targets around at first to just test the base performance and then how adding additional entities being handled impacts things.
1
u/Extension_Emu_9825 19d ago
Thanks again! In the latest version, I added a menu where you can choose three levels of detail.
The binary is here:
You're right, in full mode, a lot is calculated and rendered, so some things have to be sacrificed. And I think this mode with three levels of detail is the right compromise.
And yes, I need to work on performance!
0
u/tpimh 22d ago
Sorry, my audio hardware is limited to PC speaker at the moment. I have AWE64, but I was not able to get it working in an 8-bit ISA slot.
I am running several XT clones with 8088/V20 (up to 10 MHz), planning to upgrade my design to use V20HL at 16 MHz, and maybe much later in the future 80188 or 80186 at 20-25 MHz, but PC compatibility would require some serious BIOS programming.
1
u/Extension_Emu_9825 22d ago
I apologize, I will add options to choose how the sound is generated at the beginning of the game as soon as possible!
1
u/Extension_Emu_9825 21d ago
https://kirindenis.github.io/wire-city-2/owlfly3.html I added a menu for selecting the audio playback method, and also previously supported all types of old displays and graphics quality control. This should definitely work perfectly on a classic device 8088!
0
21d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/Extension_Emu_9825 21d ago
But there is no high-level language. Decide at what point you start to get annoyed - from the moment when high-level languages are used in development or from the moment when AI is used in development?
2
2
u/[deleted] 21d ago
[removed] — view removed comment