I remember shrinking windows and knocking down detail levels in a few home computer games. By firing up my 386/33 setup on Dosbox, we can see some of this in action. Not everyone would have had access to a fancy new 486 DX33/66 in '93, especially not if they were playing DOOM on office PCs. - ThreadSky

sharkabytes.bsky.social • 27 days ago

I remember shrinking windows and knocking down detail levels in a few home computer games. By firing up my 386/33 setup on Dosbox, we can see some of this in action.

Not everyone would have had access to a fancy new 486 DX33/66 in '93, especially not if they were playing DOOM on office PCs.

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highscorsese.bsky.social•27 days ago

To get this to install back in the day, I had to create a special boot disk so that there always enough free memory to run it. Then when I was done playing I had to restart the computer 😂

molondrongo.bsky.social•27 days ago

I first played it on a friend's 386 DX. it took low detail and reduced screen (around 25%, I think) to get a decent framerate. I also seem to remember you had to unload the mouse drivers for the game to take over that tiny bit of extra RAM for a slight but significant performance boost.

literallyartemis.bsky.social•27 days ago

This is actually how I do retro streams! I used the signal monitor from Voices of the Void and modified it to fit older games to reduce quality loss!

ghaleonunlimited.bsky.social•27 days ago

Yeah you gotta bump that shit to low detail for sure ;/

This is random but I haven't ever been able to get any DOSbox to run TIE Fighter near what my 486/100 mhz did.

Now that I have a Win98 PC I can restart in DOS my suspicions were confirmed

Am I just setting up DOSbox wrong ??

kumimono.bsky.social•27 days ago

Hmm, one of course recalls in, Rise of the Triad, reducing your play area to postage stamp revealed a cheeky "get a 486 :)" message. Still the wolf3d engine, which ran on a 286. More, stuff.

trevorkevorson.bsky.social•27 days ago

When it first came out my dad's 486sx25 only had 2MB ram. A mate of mine got a 4MB 486sx25 so he would wind me up about how he could play Doom. Eventually we upgraded to 5MB Ram. (Luckily it had 8 SIMM slots).

I remember being so jealous though not being able to play Doom for a while.

hyakint.bsky.social•27 days ago

Everything that had FPS instead of SPF was playable back then 😁

chubbypandadude.bsky.social•27 days ago

I miss old days shareware like doom.

sekretsu.bsky.social•27 days ago

Most PCs I played it on had to tick the screen size down a notch or two. But I had a friend with a DOS PC so old that he had to play it basically at 3DO-port screen size...

Glad *my* first PC was a Pentium II lol

madfoxtimmy.bsky.social•27 days ago

I had The Depths of Doom trilogy on our families 486, back in early 95.

The only problem I ever encountered was the final level of Doom 2.

Too many enemies enter the level and it would run out of memory, & crash! 😅

proscitor.bsky.social•26 days ago

Good times.

eniko.bsky.social•27 days ago

i remember people at LANs basically playing it on the minimum viewport size XD

sharkabytes.bsky.social•27 days ago

xD Yeah, I can see that where blistering speed is needed for that edge.

hamoftruth.bsky.social•27 days ago

That's basically my pc gaming experience for the last decade, and options have just gotten less and less available

btcrobot.bsky.social•27 days ago

There was also a high or low quality gfx. I had to play on low on my similar 386 33mhz in 93 94

lei-lei.bsky.social•27 days ago

PCem can limit the video bus speed (dosbox can't) so the emulated slowdown's a little more realistic. This was generally my early 1994 experience, dmaud/dmgraph'd to death

azzurraleamonde.bsky.social•27 days ago

I had a 286-12 in 93. 💩😭

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