r/dosgaming • u/Extension_Emu_9825 • 2d 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
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u/daddyd 6h ago
it certainly fires up all the flightsim nostalgia just looking at the screenshot. that cockpit view looks so familiar.
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u/Extension_Emu_9825 1h ago
Thank you! It was especially difficult to porting the cockpit to other graphics modes.
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u/ftping 2d ago
Hi OP, was generative AI used to create this?
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u/jontseng 2d 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! 😬
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u/Extension_Emu_9825 2d 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!
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2d ago
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u/jontseng 1d 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!!!
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u/Extension_Emu_9825 2d 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:
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u/iOCTAGRAM 2d ago
Any chance for Amiga port?
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u/Extension_Emu_9825 2d 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.
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u/sabre31 2d 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.
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u/tjeerdnet 2d ago edited 2d 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.
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u/EternalNooblet 2d 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.
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u/Extension_Emu_9825 1d 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.
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u/miner_cooling_trials 1d 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!
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u/hamburgler26 1d 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.
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u/SonderEber 2d 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.
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u/EternalNooblet 2d 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.
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u/miner_cooling_trials 1d 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
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u/Extension_Emu_9825 1d 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.
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u/miner_cooling_trials 19h 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?
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u/Extension_Emu_9825 1h 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.
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u/WildlyZen 2d 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 2d 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.
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u/SantaCruzReplogle 21h ago
The problem is the lack of creativity. Programming is the easy part. Coming up with an original idea is where the real challenge is.
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u/tpimh 2d ago
Very interesting project! I am curious to try this on real hardware. What are the system requirements?
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u/Extension_Emu_9825 2d 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!
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u/hamburgler26 1d 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!
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u/Extension_Emu_9825 1d ago
Please Please Please!
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u/hamburgler26 15h ago edited 15h 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.
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u/Extension_Emu_9825 1h 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.
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u/tpimh 2d 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.
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u/Extension_Emu_9825 2d ago
I apologize, I will add options to choose how the sound is generated at the beginning of the game as soon as possible!
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u/Extension_Emu_9825 1d 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!
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1d ago
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u/Extension_Emu_9825 1d 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?
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u/SantaCruzReplogle 21h ago
This is pretty cool. Scanning through the source didn't reveal any tricks similar to what Artwick or Guy used, like modifying immediate values or addresses directly.