How were graphical DOS Games written?

graphics dos
Mustafa picture Mustafa · Sep 18, 2011 · Viewed 24.2k times · Source

I always wondered how the DOS games like Sky Roads, Turbo, Aladdin, Duke Nukem, Commander Keen 6 were written. I cannot find a good source. If I write a console application in C#, C++, Java etc.. It is always displayed and remains still. And it is always Text.

  1. How did they generate graphics?
  2. Were there any libraries to use?
  3. What languages they used?

Any good source will be appreciated.

Answer

Prof. Falken picture Prof. Falken · Sep 18, 2011

Assembler, Pascal and C were popular languages. Graphics were generated by directly interfacing with the display hardware, for instance the Color Graphics Adapter. (CGA)

Probably there were libraries, but not like today, and libraries were often not shared outside a company.

A resource which would have been relevant in say, 1988, can be found here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170910230837/http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/languages/c/programming-bbrown/advcw1.htm

Related questions

How do I position one image on top of another in HTML?

I'm a beginner at rails programming, attempting to show many images on a page. Some images are to lay on top of others. To make it simple, say I want a blue square, with a red square in the upper …

Read More
Setting background color for a JFrame

Just how do you set the background color for a JFrame?

Read More
How to read the RGB value of a given pixel in Python?

If I open an image with open("image.jpg"), how can I get the RGB values of a pixel assuming I have the coordinates of the pixel? Then, how can I do the reverse of this? Starting with a blank …

Read More