Post by louve in Visual DOS 2024 Professional Standard comments

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well, maybe this just isn't a game for me :V

i've been using DOS prompts since the early 00s and linux command lines aswell, this one is very frustrating (why do i have to add EXE after each program name? i remember DOS automatically running .COM and .EXE if it was part of PATH... which FIXTEXT seems to be since it works no matter which folder i'm in. so i'm not sure what's happening here).

Up arrow does not work most of the time, TAB breaks the game by changing focus on the webpage :(

I got stuck very early - typing FIXTEXT.EXE (sic) HELP.TXT prints a series of gibberish in big characters and then says "Bad command or file name", but does not prompt me for any further interaction. I do not see what else I can do with the system and I have been unable to combine commands to produce anything else (am I supposed to combine the PEM with the TXT file to decrypt it? is FIXTEXT supposed to take any other argument?

FIXTEXT.EXE /? does nothing, HELP FIXTEXT doesn't do anything either. I'm stuck at trying to understand how anything in that system works, at least coming from MS-DOS it feels extremely foreign.

Hopefully a later update makes it a bit easier to pick up and I will be happy to return to it, right now it's unfortunately a frustrating experience

Abbie Gonzalez185 days ago(+1)

I used a vax for long enough where I sometimes forget/don’t consider that DOS adds .EXE 😬

I don’t have a good solution for Tab at the moment.

I got stuck very early - typing FIXTEXT.EXE (sic) HELP.TXT prints a series of gibberish in big characters and then says “Bad command or file name”,

The gibberish big text is a cryptogram puzzle. Each letter has a text field. If you type a letter in it, it will fill it in for all the same letters to help you solve it faster. Once the puzzle is solved the story progresses and another puzzle is presented.

The news command contains additional story, and includes a hint or two on the final puzzle.

I definitely could make the description and in-game help better.

Abbie Gonzalez185 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

While working on making the in-game help better, I realized I really needed to update a few things that are very deficient. And since you let me know to begin with, it makes sense to let you know. :D

First: many of the system commands only have a reference in my printed help. I forgot to place them in the appropriate areas. Some commands like cd and catalog would be part of a COMMAND.COM and not show up in a system folder. Others should have really been in there, and they will be soon:

CleanShot 2025-05-25 at 16.49.50@2x.png

I also obviously can’t tell people to use the man command if it doesn’t work for some commands… my bad 😬. I’m working on adding more commands to it.

CleanShot 2025-05-25 at 16.54.14@2x.png

Once you know the stuff you need to know, the game is playable at least. And I should hopefully have this updated across platforms by end of tomorrow.

many of these are in the development logs, but they really needed to be properly shown in the game too. Otherwise theres no way to know man or restart work.

louve124 days ago(+1)

thanks for the update! Maybe i will give this another try one day ❤

Regarding TAB: you can definitely grab it in javascript and preventing it from changing focus. Ive had the same issue in a game of mine (advnture.louve.systems)

You have to `document.addEventListener("keydown", ...` and then on the event object call `event.preventDefault();` if it's a TAB key. This way it will be prevented - you can do this for any key you want :)

Good luck!

Abbie Gonzalez124 days ago

Sweet! I’ll give that a try.

I’ll try it first on Tech Preview: its an OS running under an emulator, and the emulator is prevented from regaining focus entirely on some platforms. There’s no save (yet) because i haven’t finished the file system, so losing focus can be pretty catastrophic.

I also have the interpreter in tech preview written better so it supports a dynamic man command, and also the /?to get help, and a help commands command to list all available commands.

itch.io

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