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Almost everyone in the DOS world built their own little GUI toolkit, implementing exactly as much was needed for each app. That was part of the charm IMO. We ha
by tpmx 4y ago
Almost everyone in the DOS world built their own little GUI toolkit, implementing exactly as much was needed for each app. That was part of the charm IMO. We had a Cambrian explosion of graphical and interaction styles. Then things got gray, uniform and boring with Windows 3.1/95, and then fun again with the early web. I'm looking forward to the next fun UI style period - perhaps it will start with AR.
The GUI "toolkit" used by that CTF game (1993) looks like it was partially "inspired" by Borland's OWL for Windows 3.x (1991).
Comparison:
CTF Game: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Capture-the-Flag-modem-play-1440x900.png https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Captu...
Borland OWL: https://sourceforge.net/p/owlnext/wiki/Replacing_usage_of_BWCC/attachment/Bwcc1.png https://sourceforge.net/p/owlnext/wiki/Replacing_usage_of_BW...
- tssva 4y agoI wonder if it used Graphics Vision which was a GUI toolkit for DOS graphics mode that was compatible with Borland's Turbo Vision text GUI library. It resembled the look of OWL.
- tpmx 4y agoI had a fun mini hunt. I couldn't find anything earlier than 1995 - but I absolutely did not exhaust the search space. The bitmaps for OK/Cancel don't match here: https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~mkoeppe/mkm/gv210-1.gif https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~mkoeppe/mkm/gv210-1.gif (From https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~mkoeppe/mkm/ https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~mkoeppe/mkm/) I say - still likely.