DOS ain't dead

Hello all!
Just accidentaly I found that today was a new and quite ambicious DOS game released. It is called Gates of integrity and it has Windows version (436MB) and a little bit smaller DOS version (2MB).
Gates of integrity

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DOS-u-akbar!

LOL, a little bit :) Isn't there a demo? I can see only paid DL. From screenshots the 3D maze looks like Wolfenstein 3D and it was also ~2MB :)

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> LOL, a little bit :) Isn't there a demo? I can see only paid DL. From
> screenshots the 3D maze looks like Wolfenstein 3D and it was also ~2MB :)

Well, it is kinda "paid" but you can pay as much as you want. You can pay 0$ and it is OK and you can download.

(what happens if you pay lets say -100$ I haven't tried)

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DOS-u-akbar!

> From screenshots the 3D maze looks like Wolfenstein 3D and it was also ~2MB :)

It looks like Eye of the Beholder.

> > LOL, a little bit :) Isn't there a demo? I can see only paid DL. From
> > screenshots the 3D maze looks like Wolfenstein 3D and it was also ~2MB
> :)
>
> Well, it is kinda "paid" but you can pay as much as you want. You can pay
> 0$ and it is OK and you can download.
>
> (what happens if you pay lets say -100$ I haven't tried)

Hi there, I'm the author of this little game. You are right, you can download it paying 0$, and I am fine with this.
No one tried to pay 100$ yet.

I am currently planning on releasing the game for Amstrad CPC, too. But until now, not a single line of code is written. Stay tuned and watch my itch.io site.

Have some fun,
Oli

> > (what happens if you pay lets say -100$ I haven't tried)
>
> No one tried to pay 100$ yet.

I think they meant what happens if you try to "pay" a negative one hundred dollars.

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l

Hi Tarjan!
Yeah, I paid 5 dollars and I enjoy your beautiful VGA graphic. Respect.
But unfortunately you probably have some bug in your memory manager. The game runs OK in DOSbox (even in DOSbox in DOS ran via HX-DOS).
But on the real hardware it is worse.
Under Windows 98 the game runs, I can create a character and enter a city but then after two steps the game crashes.
Under plain DOS (with XMS and EMS) it even does not eun and exits with system exception 0D.
I suspect some incompatibility with computers with large amount of free RAM. I have 512MB RAM on my FreeDOS/Win98 machine and it seems to be a problem.
But I am not 100% sure as I tried several DPMI hosts and the behaviour was always exactly the same.

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DOS-u-akbar!

> Hi Tarjan!
> Yeah, I paid 5 dollars and I enjoy your beautiful VGA graphic. Respect.
> But unfortunately you probably have some bug in your memory manager. The
> game runs OK in DOSbox (even in DOSbox in DOS ran via HX-DOS).
> But on the real hardware it is worse.
> Under Windows 98 the game runs, I can create a character and enter a city
> but then after two steps the game crashes.
> Under plain DOS (with XMS and EMS) it even does not eun and exits with
> system exception 0D.
> I suspect some incompatibility with computers with large amount of free
> RAM. I have 512MB RAM on my FreeDOS/Win98 machine and it seems to be a
> problem.
> But I am not 100% sure as I tried several DPMI hosts and the behaviour was
> always exactly the same.

Thank you very much for playing and donating! I hope you enjoy the game in DOSBox now.
On your FreeDOS/Win98 machine: I didn't really expected the game to run properly under Win95/98. But in FreeDOS alone (I assume you boot directly into FreeDOS, it should run - I never tested it on FreeDOS though)
Have you tried replacing the built in DOS32A extender with DOS4GW? It doesn't work in DOSBox, but maybe it works for you. Just copy DOS4GW.EXE into the game directory and run DOS4GW GATES.EXE

> > > (what happens if you pay lets say -100$ I haven't tried)
> >
> > No one tried to pay 100$ yet.
>
> I think they meant what happens if you try to "pay" a negative one hundred
> dollars.

Ahh, so this is the reason I only got 240$ for the windows version.

I tried many tricks how to solve the crash under real hardware - DOS4GW, re-stubbing to WDOSX, restubbing to Zurenava, various DPMI servers but nothing helped.
However it works on my other DOS machines with 192MB RAM and with 32MB RAM.

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DOS-u-akbar!

> I tried many tricks how to solve the crash under real hardware - DOS4GW,
> re-stubbing to WDOSX, restubbing to Zurenava, various DPMI servers but
> nothing helped.

Did you test RAM with https://memtest.org/ or https://www.memtest86.com/?

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Forum admin

> Hello all!
> Just accidentaly I found that today was a new and quite ambicious DOS game
> released. It is called Gates of integrity and it has Windows version
> (436MB) and a little bit smaller DOS version (2MB).
> Gates of integrity

Thanks very much for releasing your game. It is excellent! I had no problems running it on bare matal DOS on a "modern" system with huge amounts of memory. It works well without any crashes for me, for what that's worth. What I like most about your game is it's *direct* and oldschool. No fancy, interminable title screen which can't be bypassed, a very quick character creation, intuitive play, and a nice rogueish feel to the whole thing. A very fast load game feature, and in 3 seconds, you're back in action, even from the DOS prompt. Thank you for this leaness. It is so refreshing to have a fun, new, fast DOS RPG in 2022.

What are the differences between the bloated Windows version, and the *fast*, lean, mean DOS version (the only way to play!)? Are there any differences in the size of the maps or the game world?

NB: You seem to have cheats built in ala some kind of "wizard" mode. But so far, I've not figured out how to active it. A hint, perhaps on how to get the (-) key to bring up the cheat menu?

I donated $10 to you.

Solved the game. It's the perfect size, not too long, and not too short.

Also figured out the built-in cheat:

To enable: use the NUMLOCK [-] key
Then function keys F1 to F10 give cheat options. Numlock [+] key = pass game time quickly.

Thank you for playing and donating!
The only difference of the Windows version is the screen resolution (1024x768 window, 32 bit colors) and it's got a soundtrack for every dungeon.
I was pretty lazy when doing the structs for things like spells and items - in the Windows version they use over 150 MB of memory. The hardest part of porting this game to DOS was to reimplement all the structs so the game would run with a few MB of RAM.

> Solved the game. It's the perfect size, not too long, and not too short.
>
> Also figured out the built-in cheat:
>
> To enable: use the NUMLOCK [-] key
> Then function keys F1 to F10 give cheat options. Numlock [+] key = pass
> game time quickly.

btw, we (me and 2 helping guys) are currently tinkering with the idea of an Amstrad CPC 6128 port.

> btw, we (me and 2 helping guys) are currently tinkering with the idea of an
> Amstrad CPC 6128 port.

That would be something. Programming this in 8-bit would be a challenge.

So would a sequel! (hint, hint). Once again, I commend you for releasing the DOS version, and for making it so lean.

Your game reminds of all the great rogues of the late '80s - early '90s. Bard's Tale, of course, but in particular, a game trilogy released by Softdisk publishing for the Apple II called Dark Designs. The first two of these games were ported to CGA on the IBM.