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A comment on A framework for making 2D DOS games in Lua. Parent comment

Re:A framework for making 2D DOS games in Lua by TheZenPsycho on Friday June 20, 2014 @01:10AM (#7919595)
There are gaps in my knowledge, but my understanding is that to address 32-bits of memory requires the use of a "DOS extender". The reason being that DOS is barely an operating system at all- It never provided any 32-bit support but support was possible by monkey patching over part of the operating system in memory. This was possible because DOS had no security measures preventing such horrifying endeavours.

Anyway, I see no reference to a dos extender here so I don't know how it could be anything other than a 16-bit program.

If the author of this framework is looking for a dos extender, I think HX seems like a good choice: http://www.japheth.de/HX.html

unlike other DOS extenders, that provide idiosyncratic apis for allocating 32-bit memory, HX imitates as much as possible standard windows apis, and is able to run some windows applications in plain DOS- including, strangely enough, DOSBox.

(I have nothing to do with HX by the way.)

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Re:A framework for making 2D DOS games in Lua by pdw on Friday June 20, 2014 @04:13AM (#7919925)
The compiler used is DJGPP, a port of GCC that comes with a DOS extender, a POSIX-compatible C library and pretty much everything else needed to pretend that you're using a Unix system. Basically Cygwin for DOS.
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Re:A framework for making 2D DOS games in Lua by raverbashing on Friday June 20, 2014 @06:25AM (#7920157)
Yeah, DJGPP is great and I think it was one of the first compilers to work in Protected Mode and take (most of) the DOS/Real mode pain away
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Re:A framework for making 2D DOS games in Lua by jacquesm on Friday June 20, 2014 @06:49AM (#7920204)
Either DJGPP or Watcom with PharLap.

But regardless of who was first (they'll be pretty close, '89 or so) it was a huge step forward for programming on x86. The fact that it was free made it even more amazing.

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