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103-526: Adventure Game Studio was created by British programmer Chris Jones in 1997 as an MS-DOS program entitled "Adventure Creator". Jones was inspired by Sierra On-Line 's adventure game interface, specifically as showcased in Space Quest IV . The first version of Adventure Creator allowed users to create only low- resolution keyboard-controlled games. Lassi Quest was released as the first complete AGS game in late 1999. The engine gained popularity with

206-458: A relocatable format using the filename extension .CMD to avoid name conflicts with CP/M-80 and MS-DOS .COM files. MS-DOS version 1.0 added a more advanced relocatable . EXE executable file format. Most of the machines in the early days of MS-DOS had differing system architectures and there was a certain degree of incompatibility, and subsequently vendor lock-in . Users who began using MS-DOS with their machines were compelled to continue using

309-618: A 1994 settlement agreement limiting Microsoft to per-copy licensing. Digital Research did not gain by this settlement, and years later its successor in interest, Caldera , sued Microsoft for damages in the Caldera v. Microsoft lawsuit. It was believed that the settlement ran in the order of $ 150 million , but was revealed in November 2009 with the release of the Settlement Agreement to be $ 280 million . Microsoft also used

412-448: A DOS startup disk on Windows Vista , the files on the startup disk are dated April 18, 2005, but are otherwise unchanged, including the string "MS-DOS Version 8 Copyright 1981–1999 Microsoft Corp" inside COMMAND.COM . Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 can also create a MS-DOS startup disk. Starting with Windows 10 , the ability to create a MS-DOS startup disk has been removed, and so either a virtual machine running MS-DOS or an older version (in

515-516: A Graphical User Interface (GUI) on top of MS-DOS. With Windows 95 , 98 , and Me , the role of MS-DOS was reduced to a boot loader according to Microsoft, with MS-DOS programs running in a virtual DOS machine within 32-bit Windows, with ability to boot directly into MS-DOS retained as a backward compatibility option for applications that required real mode access to the hardware, which was generally not possible within Windows. The command line accessed

618-416: A continuation of the series with all new episodic games and multiple series. It was intended to preserve the back story of King's Quest , and fit into the established canon. It was intended to include the challenge and possibilities of death of the original games, but the gameplay was going to be adapted to relieve some of the frustration present in the original games. Telltale approached Roberta Williams,

721-755: A copy of the Windows Me boot disk, stripped down to bootstrap only. This is accessible only by formatting a floppy as an "MS-DOS startup disk". Files like the driver for the CD-ROM support were deleted from the Windows Me bootdisk and the startup files ( AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS ) no longer had content. This modified disk was the base for creating the MS-DOS image for Windows XP. Some of the deleted files can be recovered with an undelete tool. When booting up an MS-DOS startup disk made with Windows XP's format tool,

824-688: A few centuries in our past. Many of the classic Sierra games series had in-jokes, cameos, or homages to characters, situations and elements of the King's Quest series. Cedric from KQV was often the brunt of several jokes found in Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist , Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness , and Space Quest VI . Rosella has appeared in or was mentioned in the Leisure Suit Larry series, Police Quest II , and Quest for Glory series. Graham

927-541: A forceful letter to PC Week (November 5, 1990), denying that Microsoft was engaged in FUD tactics ("to serve our customers better, we decided to be more forthcoming about version 5.0") and denying that Microsoft copied features from DR DOS: "The feature enhancements of MS-DOS version 5.0 were decided and development was begun long before we heard about DR DOS 5.0. There will be some similar features. With 50 million MS-DOS users, it shouldn't be surprising that DRI has heard some of

1030-410: A game known as Peasant's Quest , mostly based on King's Quest I but with allusions throughout the game to King's Quest II , King's Quest III , King's Quest IV , and The Black Cauldron . In 1996, Next Generation listed the series as number 79 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", commenting that, "humor, story telling, and classic puzzle implementation make the King's Quest series

1133-448: A higher price. Executable programs for CP/M-86 and MS-DOS were not interchangeable with each other; many applications were sold in both MS-DOS and CP/M-86 versions until MS-DOS became preponderant (later Digital Research operating systems could run both MS-DOS and CP/M-86 software). MS-DOS originally supported the simple .COM , which was modeled after a similar but binary-incompatible format known from CP/M-80 . CP/M-86 instead supported

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1236-458: A large share of the business computer market. Microsoft and IBM together began what was intended as the follow-on to MS-DOS/PC DOS, called OS/2 . When OS/2 was released in 1987, Microsoft began an advertising campaign announcing that "DOS is Dead" and stating that version 4 was the last full release. OS/2 was designed for efficient multi-tasking and offered a number of advanced features that had been designed together with similar look and feel ; it

1339-721: A new playable character into the series (which started with Connor), which probably would have had similar impact in future games in the series had she had the chance to develop them. Rosella was still a possibility for use in future games, and Williams tossed out the idea that Connor might even meet the princess. This idea grew to include the idea that Rosella would possibly fall in love with Connor, or Connor would fall in love with Rosella and initiate some kind of love triangle between them and Rosella's other love interest, Edgar ( KQIV / KQVII ). In addition she had ideas to add multiplayer as early as KQVIII early development, but these were cut and she hoped to introduce them into future games in

1442-407: A particular model), or per-copy (a fee for each copy of MS-DOS installed). The largest manufacturers used the per-processor arrangement, which had the lowest fee. This arrangement made it expensive for the large manufacturers to migrate to any other operating system, such as DR DOS. In 1991, the U.S. government Federal Trade Commission began investigating Microsoft's licensing procedures, resulting in

1545-505: A prototype for a King's Quest game at some point before Telltale Games acquired the rights. This information was released to the public through documents on the Silicon Knights suit against Epic Games . Telltale Games' take on the ninth installment of the King's Quest franchise was first announced at a press event on February 17, 2011. Telltale said that they had entered into an agreement with Activision, then current owner of

1648-430: A resolution of 320×200, to truecolor games with any higher resolution supported by the player's graphic adapter and an alpha channel . It also supports graphics filters : nearest-neighbor interpolation (2x, 3x, and 4x), and hqx (2x and 3x). Version 2.61 supports the following multimedia formats: mod , wav , xm , MIDI , ogg , mp3 , avi . Version 2.72 also supports Impulse Tracker and S3M . The AGS community

1751-481: A slave of the wizard Manannan; he escapes by using the wizard's magic against him, and ultimately discovers he is really Alexander, the long-lost son of King Graham and Queen Valanice and brother of the Princess Rosella. After Alexander restores the magic mirror and saves Rosella and the kingdom from the ravages of the dragon, Graham is taken deathly ill; to obtain a cure for her father, Rosella must travel to

1854-513: A standard Microsoft kernel, which they would typically supply on disk to end users along with the hardware. Thus, there were many different versions of "MS-DOS" for different hardware, and there is a major distinction between an IBM-compatible (or ISA) machine and an MS-DOS [compatible] machine. Some machines, like the Tandy 2000 , were MS-DOS compatible but not IBM-compatible, so they could run software written exclusively for MS-DOS without dependence on

1957-602: A variety of other computers based on various other processors were in serious competition with the IBM PC: the Apple II , Mac , Commodore 64 and others did not use the 808x processor; many 808x machines of different architectures used custom versions of MS-DOS. At first all these machines were in competition. In time the IBM PC hardware configuration became dominant in the 808x market as software written to communicate directly with

2060-450: A variety of tactics in MS-DOS and several of their applications and development tools that, while operating perfectly when running on genuine MS-DOS (and PC DOS), would break when run on another vendor's implementation of DOS. Notable examples of this practice included: All versions of Microsoft Windows have had an MS-DOS or MS-DOS-like command-line interface called MS-DOS Prompt which redirected input to MS-DOS and output from MS-DOS to

2163-456: A virtual machine or dual boot) must be used to format a floppy disk, or an image must be obtained from an external source. Other solutions include using DOS compatible alternatives, such as FreeDOS or even copying the required files and boot sector themselves. The last remaining components related to MS-DOS was the NTVDM component, which was removed entirely in Windows starting with Windows 11 as

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2266-424: Is King's Quest: Mask of Eternity , where the protagonist is Connor of Daventry, a tanner (and a knight like Graham from the first game) who is unrelated to the royal family. The later sequels have more elaborate storylines, more complicated puzzles, and more original and well-developed characters. Technologically, the series pioneered the use of animation and pseudo-3D environments in graphic adventure games, so that

2369-501: Is also the generic acronym for disk operating system ). MS-DOS was the main operating system for IBM PC compatibles during the 1980s, from which point it was gradually superseded by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), in various generations of the graphical Microsoft Windows operating system. IBM licensed and re-released it in 1981 as PC DOS 1.0 for use in its PCs. Although MS-DOS and PC DOS were initially developed in parallel by Microsoft and IBM,

2472-721: Is based on the AGS Forum, the AGS Internet Relay Chat channel and Discord channel. There are real-world meetings of the community each year, known as "Mittens". The AGS Awards were founded in 2001 and are awarded annually to the best games created with AGS, in multiple categories. The AGS Awards were once an important barometer for indie adventure games, receiving coverage from sites like Destructoid , Rock, Paper, Shotgun , IndieGames and GameSetWatch . Thousands of games have been produced using AGS, among them commercially successful games such as Al Emmo and

2575-449: Is important to use all one's character's senses to gather all the information available: look, listen, smell, taste, or touch whenever possible. The "King's Quest" (for which the series takes its name) usually involves becoming a king or the adventures of members of the royal family of Daventry in other lands to save their kingdom. Often, the quest is given to the protagonist through the realm's magic mirror (the first game involves obtaining

2678-412: Is mainly for education and experimentation with historic operating systems and for new programmers to gain an understanding of how low-level software works, both historic and current. According to program manager Rich Turner, the other versions could not be open-sourced due to third-party licensing restrictions. Due to the historical nature of the software, Microsoft will not accept any pull requests to

2781-511: Is mentioned in or appears in several of the Space Quest , Police Quest , and Laura Bow games. The games in the series have been released together in several collections or bundles through the years (often packed with bonus material). Quest for Daventry is a King's Quest V themed pinball board in Take a Break! Pinball , one of the first pinball games for Windows. Other boards in

2884-487: Is missing entirely from the story), Castle Daventry, or saving the kingdom of Daventry (only a small portion of the land is shown briefly in the introduction), nor the magic mirror. Rather, the plot involves the dual protagonists Queen Valanice and Princess Rosella attempting to save the realm of Eldritch from the evil enchantress Malicia. Rosella ultimately finds a romantic interest in Prince Edgar, whom she rescues with

2987-518: Is often called the MS-DOS Prompt. In part, this was the official name for it in Windows 9x and early versions of Windows NT (NT 3.5 and earlier), and in part because the SoftPC emulation of DOS redirects output into it. Actually only COMMAND.COM and other 16-bit commands run in an NTVDM with AUTOEXEC.NT and CONFIG.NT initialization determined by _DEFAULT.PIF , optionally permitting

3090-441: Is still used in embedded x86 systems due to its simple architecture and minimal memory and processor requirements, though some current products have switched to the still-maintained open-source alternative FreeDOS . In 2018, Microsoft released the source code for MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0 on GitHub , with the source code for MS-DOS 4.00 being released in the same repository six years later. The purpose of this, according to Microsoft,

3193-541: Is the first game that does not include the magic mirror. King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow follows Prince Alexander's attempt to save his true love, marry her, and ultimately becoming the king of the Land of the Green Isles. The magic mirror pointed him in the right direction to finding the kingdom. King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride is the only game in the series that does not involve King Graham (he

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3296-548: The Andrew Lang's Fairy Books . Many creatures, characters and situations from world mythologies, fairy tales, folklore and classic literature are encountered within the world of King's Quest . Many of the puzzle solutions are inspired by various tales so that a player with knowledge of the stories beforehand would have an advantage. The concept of the King's Quest series was derived from ideas first established in Wizard and

3399-591: The Intel 8086 and 8088 processors, including the IBM PC and clones, the initial competition to the PC DOS/MS-DOS line came from Digital Research , whose CP/M operating system had inspired MS-DOS. In fact, there remains controversy as to whether QDOS was more or less plagiarized from early versions of CP/M code. Digital Research released CP/M-86 a few months after MS-DOS, and it was offered as an alternative to MS-DOS and Microsoft's licensing requirements, but at

3502-581: The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO). On March 25, 2014, Microsoft made the code to SCP MS-DOS 1.25 and a mixture of Altos MS-DOS 2.11 and TeleVideo PC DOS 2.11 available to the public under the Microsoft Research License Agreement , which makes the code source-available , but not open source as defined by Open Source Initiative or Free Software Foundation standards. Microsoft would later re-license

3605-739: The Windows NT -derived 32-bit operating systems ( Windows NT , 2000 , XP and newer), developed alongside the 9x series, do not contain MS-DOS compatibility as a core component of the operating system nor do they rely on it for bootstrapping, as NT was not with the level of support for legacy MS-DOS and Win16 apps that Windows 9x was, but does provide limited DOS emulation called NTVDM (NT Virtual DOS Machine) to run DOS applications and provide DOS-like command prompt windows. 64-bit versions of Windows NT prior to Windows 11 (and Windows Server 2008 R2 by extension) do not provide DOS emulation and cannot run DOS applications natively. Windows XP contains

3708-748: The "pre-announcement" of MS-DOS 6.0 again stifled the sales of DR DOS. Microsoft had been accused of carefully orchestrating leaks about future versions of MS-DOS in an attempt to create what in the industry is called FUD ( fear, uncertainty, and doubt ) regarding DR DOS. For example, in October 1990, shortly after the release of DR DOS 5.0, and long before the eventual June 1991 release of MS-DOS 5.0, stories on feature enhancements in MS-DOS started to appear in InfoWorld and PC Week . Brad Silverberg , then Vice President of Systems Software at Microsoft and general manager of its Windows and MS-DOS Business Unit, wrote

3811-440: The 1990 remake of King's Quest I , the prospect of officially remaking and re-releasing the sequels was scrapped. Between September 1996 to January 21, 1997, due to criticism over the content in King's Quest: Mask of Eternity and Phantasmagoria by Davidson & Associates , a team of managers was assigned to work above Roberta Williams. They began creating their own version of KQVIII while ignoring her version. Their version

3914-451: The 1994 release of MS-DOS 6.21, which had disk compression removed. Shortly afterwards came version 6.22, with a new version of the disk compression system, DriveSpace, which had a different compression algorithm to avoid the infringing code. Prior to 1995, Microsoft licensed MS-DOS (and Windows) to computer manufacturers under three types of agreement: per-processor (a fee for each system the company sold), per-system (a fee for each system of

4017-561: The DOS command line (usually COMMAND.COM ) through a Windows module (WINOLDAP.MOD). Windows NT-based operating systems boot to a kernel whose purpose is to load Windows and run the system. One cannot run Win32 applications in the loader system in the manner that OS/2, UNIX or consumer versions of Windows can launch character-mode sessions. The command session permits running various supported command-line utilities from Win32, MS-DOS, OS/2 1.x and POSIX. The emulators for MS-DOS, OS/2 and POSIX use

4120-524: The IBM 5150 or the IBM PC . Within a year, Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to over 70 other companies. It was designed to be an OS that could run on any 8086-family computer. Each computer would have its own distinct hardware and its own version of MS-DOS, similar to the situation that existed for CP/M , and with MS-DOS emulating the same solution as CP/M to adapt for different hardware platforms. To this end, MS-DOS

4223-663: The Lost Dutchman's Mine , The Cat Lady , or The Journey Down . Wadjet Eye Games is an indie game developer that has created most of its commercial titles using AGS, such as the Blackwell series of games . They also publish AGS games by other developers, such as Primordia by Wormwood Studios, Resonance by XII Games, and Gemini Rue by Joshua Nuernberger. Development teams AGD Interactive and Infamous Adventures have remade and updated King's Quest and other Sierra releases. LucasFan Games have done

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4326-470: The MS-DOS Prompt, or, in later versions, Command Prompt . This could run many DOS and variously Win32, OS/2 1.x and POSIX command-line utilities in the same command-line session, allowing piping between commands. The user interface, and the icon up to Windows 2000, followed the native MS-DOS interface. The Command Prompt introduced with Windows NT is not actually MS-DOS, but shares some commands with MS-DOS. The 16-bit versions of Windows (up to 3.11) ran as

4429-434: The MS-DOS name for all versions but the IBM one, which was originally called "IBM Personal Computer DOS", later shortened to IBM PC DOS . (Competitors released compatible DOS systems such as DR-DOS and PTS-DOS that could also run MS-DOS applications.) In the former Eastern bloc , MS-DOS derivatives named DCP ( Disk Control Program  [ de ] ) 3.20 and 3.30 (DCP 1700, DCP 3.3) and WDOS existed in

4532-405: The NTVDM and can therefore no longer natively run DOS or 16-bit Windows applications. There are alternatives such as virtual machine emulators such as Microsoft's own Virtual PC , as well as VMware , DOSBox etc., unofficial compatibility layers such as NTVDMx64, OTVDM (WineVDM), Win3mu and others. The introduction of Windows 3.0 in 1990, with an easy-to-use graphical user interface , marked

4635-597: The PC hardware without using standard operating system calls ran much faster, but on true PC-compatibles only. Non-PC-compatible 808x machines were too small a market to have fast software written for them alone, and the market remained open only for IBM PCs and machines that closely imitated their architecture, all running either a single version of MS-DOS compatible only with PCs, or the equivalent IBM PC DOS. Most clones cost much less than IBM-branded machines of similar performance, and became widely used by home users, while IBM PCs had

4738-574: The Princess ( Adventure in Serenia ) which was an early forerunner of the series. The game versions followed the exploits of an unnamed hero known only as the "wanderer", in later versions said to be a time traveler from the future. The game's connection to the King's Quest series led to its inclusion as one of the King's Quest trivia questions. The fifth King's Quest game marked a return to Serenia,

4841-520: The Windows GUI; this capability was retained through Windows 98 Second Edition. Windows Me removed the capability to boot its underlying MS-DOS 8.0 alone from a hard disk, but retained the ability to make a DOS boot floppy disk (called an "Emergency Boot Disk") and can be hacked to restore full access to the underlying DOS. On December 31, 2001, Microsoft declared all versions of MS-DOS 6.22 and older obsolete and stopped providing support and updates for

4944-424: The background for loading Windows 9x . MS-DOS was a renamed form of 86-DOS  – owned by Seattle Computer Products , written by Tim Paterson . Development of 86-DOS took only six weeks, as it was basically a clone of Digital Research 's CP/M (for 8080/Z80 processors), ported to run on 8086 processors and with two notable differences compared to CP/M: an improved disk sector buffering logic, and

5047-496: The beginning of the end for the command-line driven MS-DOS. With the release of Windows 95 (and continuing in the Windows 9x product line through to Windows Me ), an integrated version of MS-DOS was used for bootstrapping , troubleshooting, and backwards-compatibility with old DOS software, particularly games, and no longer released as a standalone product. In Windows 95, the DOS, called MS-DOS 7, can be booted separately, without

5150-666: The code under the MIT License on September 28, 2018, making these versions free software . Microsoft later released the code for MS-DOS 4.00 on April 25, 2024, under the same license. As an April Fool's Day joke in 2015, Microsoft Mobile launched a Windows Phone application called MS-DOS Mobile which was presented as a new mobile operating system and worked similar to MS-DOS. Microsoft licensed or released versions of MS-DOS under different names like Lifeboat Associates "Software Bus 86" a.k.a. SB-DOS , COMPAQ-DOS , NCR-DOS or Z-DOS before it eventually enforced

5253-472: The code. Users, however, are allowed and fully encouraged to fork the repository containing the MS-DOS source code and make their own modifications, and do whatever they like with it. King%27s Quest King's Quest is a graphic adventure game series, released between 1980 and 2016 and created by the American software company Sierra Entertainment . It is widely considered a classic series from

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5356-476: The fairy land of Tamir (after learning about it through the magic mirror) and vanquish the witch Queen Lolotte. King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! returns to the King in his attempt to rescue both his kingdom and family from Mordack, Hagatha's and Manannan's brother and also an evil magician, who is seeking revenge against Alexander for Manannan's downfall, in the land of Serenia. This

5459-408: The first game, he learns of the beautiful Valanice captured by the witch Hagatha in the land of Kolyma. The follow-ups King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human and King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella do not star Graham, but involve the protagonists who ultimately end up saving the king and/or the kingdom from threats such as a dragon and untimely death. Gwydion begins as a peasant of Llewdor and

5562-584: The game are also based on Sierra game characters like Larry Laffer , Gir Draxon, Willy Beamish, and Roger Wilco. The pinball game follows a narrative story with objectives based on the KQV adventure game. The board transforms adding new locations as the player finishes missions. Short cut scenes are shown near the ticker when certain objectives are met, and the ticker lists narrative or objective information. This game contains both King Graham and Rosella as opponents. They both are able to communicate with other players in

5665-460: The game's final release (due to loss of time and funding), which was already hurting from other technical issues caused by Dynamix engine development problem and others. There have been several attempts to create a ninth installment in the King's Quest series, all of which have been canceled before going into production. All three development attempts never went past announcement or concept stages nor received official titles. They were described as

5768-855: The game, discussing various topics related to the Kingdom of Daventry. One notable aspect of the stories of the characters is that it introduces Rosella's Great-Grandfather, who "slew the Dragon of Herenna". Another discussion between the royal family and Roger Wilco establishes that Roger once crashed a spaceship into Castle Daventy's moat (a nod to an Easter egg in Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter ). Graham and Rosella along with two King's Quest villains Mordack and Lolotte would go on to appear in Hoyle 3: Board Games , although they are not nearly as interactive, only commenting on moves in

5871-511: The game. In Hoyle's Classic Card Games only Graham returns as an opponent representing the series' characters, again comments were limited in interactivity, but it contains fully digitized speech. Most of the games of the series came with manuals that included short stories or recap of the series. The manual for KQIII included the spellbook needed to solve the puzzles in the game (the spells were reprinted in The King's Quest Companion ). Often

5974-506: The golden era of adventure games. Following the success of its first installments, the series was primarily responsible for building the reputation of Sierra. Roberta Williams , co-founder and former co-owner of Sierra, designed all of the King's Quest games until the series' reboot in 2015 . The King's Quest series chronicles the saga of the royal family of the Kingdom of Daventry through their various trials and adventures. The story takes place over two generations and across many lands as

6077-433: The heroes and heroines fight villains such as evil witches and wizards. The world of King's Quest encompasses many different kingdoms and supernatural realms. The main characters in the series are King Graham, originally a knight of Daventry who won the throne of the kingdom through questing, and members of his family: his wife Queen Valanice and his twin son and daughter, Prince Alexander and Princess Rosella. The exception

6180-511: The host's window in the same way that Win16 applications use the Win32 explorer. Using the host's window allows one to pipe output between emulations. The MS-DOS emulation takes place through the NTVDM (NT Virtual DOS Machine). This is a modified SoftPC (a former product similar to VirtualPC ), running a modified MS-DOS 5 (NTIO.SYS and NTDOS.SYS). The output is handled by the console DLLs, so that

6283-489: The implication that they may marry in the future. King's Quest: Mask of Eternity is similar to King's Quest I , in that it involves a young knight attempting to save King Graham (who stands in place of Edward), Queen Valanice, and the kingdom of Daventry from harm. Again the magic mirror shares a prominent role in telling of the doom that befell the kingdom. Much of King's Quest was inspired by fairy tales , which designer Roberta Williams loved reading, in particular

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6386-751: The introduction of FAT12 instead of the CP/M filesystem . This first version was shipped in August 1980. Microsoft, which needed an operating system for the IBM Personal Computer , hired Tim Paterson in May 1981 and bought 86-DOS 1.10 for US$ 25,000 in July of the same year. Microsoft kept the version number, but renamed it MS-DOS. They also licensed MS-DOS 1.10/1.14 to IBM, which, in August 1981, offered it as PC DOS 1.0 as one of three operating systems for

6489-456: The land first seen during the game. The game's backstory was further tied into the King's Quest history through The King's Quest Companion . According to the Companion , in various periods of history people from the real world withdrew to Daventry, which explains how historical and mythical elements exist there. In most of the series, it is said that the games take place, 'a long time ago'

6592-699: The late 1980s. They were produced by the East German electronics manufacturer VEB Robotron . The following versions of MS-DOS were released to the public: Support for IBM's XT 10 MB hard disk drives, support up to 16 MB or 32 MB FAT12 -formatted hard disk drives depending on the formatting tool shipped by OEMs, user-installable device drivers, tree-structure filing system, Unix-like inheritable redirectable file handles, non-multitasking child processes an improved Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) API, environment variables, device driver support, FOR and GOTO loops in batch files, ANSI.SYS . Microsoft DOS

6695-402: The limits of their contemporary hardware. Very soon an IBM-compatible architecture became the goal, and before long all 8086-family computers closely emulated IBM's hardware , and only a single version of MS-DOS for a fixed hardware platform was needed for the market. This version is the version of MS-DOS that is discussed here, as the dozens of other OEM versions of "MS-DOS" were only relevant to

6798-522: The magic mirror, which becomes an important feature in the later games). In King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown , the young knight Sir Graham is sent by the dying King Edward on a quest to destroy the wicked witch Dahlia and find three treasures in order to become the new king. In King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne , the quest is for King Graham to find his queen. Through the magic mirror, retrieved in

6901-401: The main character could, for example, walk behind objects on-screen. The primary way in which characters solve puzzles and advance through the game is by using items found earlier in the game and stored in their inventory. Other puzzles include the mapping of labyrinths, deserts, or other inhospitable places; solving riddles ; and tasks involving the use of logic or lateral thinking skills. It

7004-477: The manuals contained information used for copy-protection schemes. The manual for KQVIII contained assorted information concerning the lands, enemies, and potion and health items in the game. Three original novels have been published by Boulevard Books: In 1990 the developers at Sierra redeveloped King's Quest with a new interface and up-to-date technology. The plan was to redevelop King's Quest II and King's Quest III but due to rather disappointing sales of

7107-514: The next game in the "King's Quest" franchise in known released information. King's Quest 9 or Kings's Quest IX are more unofficial designation for being the next game in the franchise used by the media in regards to released information. The idea of a King's Quest 9 goes back to some of the discussions with Roberta Williams after the release of King's Quest: Mask of Eternity . The King's Quest: Mask of Eternity Prima's Official Strategy Guide by Rick Barba made reference to King's Quest IX as

7210-441: The next title in the series if a new one was made (or at least as a description of the ninth game in the series). Roberta Williams offered a few ideas for a King's Quest IX in 1998–1999, her version never saw development. The ninth game has been in development four times since then with three different developers, Vivendi Games , Silicon Knights , and Telltale Games between 2001 and 2013, and eventually The Odd Gentlemen rebooted

7313-561: The operating system dropped support for 32-bit processors in favor of being solely offered in 64-bit versions only. This effectively ended any association of MS-DOS within Microsoft Windows after 36 years. MS-DOS 6.22 was the last standalone version produced by Microsoft for Intel 8088 , Intel 8086 , and Intel 80286 processors, which remains available for download via their MSDN , volume license, and OEM license partner websites, for customers with valid login credentials. MS-DOS

7416-419: The originator of the series, and one of the designers on all of the original games, to see if she was interested in working on the new one. While she declined by saying she had retired from games, she did offer the development team advice, which was "very valuable", according to developer Dave Grossman. In May 2012, Dan Connors confirmed that Dave Grossman was in charge of the King's Quest project, and Telltale

7519-600: The period when Digital Research was competing in the operating system market some computers, like the Amstrad PC1512 , were sold with floppy disks for two operating systems (only one of which could be used at a time), MS-DOS and CP/M-86 or a derivative of it. Digital Research produced DOS Plus , which was compatible with MS-DOS 2.11, supported CP/M-86 programs, had additional features including multi-tasking, and could read and write disks in CP/M and MS-DOS format. While OS/2

7622-519: The peripheral hardware of the IBM PC architecture. This design would have worked well for compatibility, if application programs had only used MS-DOS services to perform device I/O. Indeed, the same design philosophy is embodied in Windows NT (see Hardware Abstraction Layer ). However, in MS-DOS' early days, the greater speed attainable by programs through direct control of hardware was of particular importance, especially for games, which often pushed

7725-455: The platform without Microsoft and sold it as the alternative to DOS and Windows. As a response to Digital Research 's DR DOS 6.0 , which bundled SuperStor disk compression, Microsoft opened negotiations with Stac Electronics , vendor of the most popular DOS disk compression tool, Stacker. In the due diligence process, Stac engineers had shown Microsoft part of the Stacker source code. Stac

7828-524: The playable character were leaked to the public. The renders show what looks like an older and bearded King Graham, wielding a giant sword, wearing full armor, and having the ability to flip in the air, suggesting that it may have been a third-person action-adventure game, similar to the 3D Legend of Zelda games. This, like later attempts at producing a new game, were described as the new King's Quest , and not necessarily KQIX (though news media referred to it as King's Quest 9 ). Silicon Knights worked on

7931-492: The program at the prompt ( CMD.EXE , 4NT.EXE , TCC.EXE ), can see the output. 64-bit Windows has neither the DOS emulation, nor the DOS commands EDIT, DEBUG and EDLIN that come with 32-bit Windows. The DOS version returns 5.00 or 5.50, depending on which API function is used to determine it. Utilities from MS-DOS 5.00 run in this emulation without modification. The very early beta programs of NT show MS-DOS 30.00, but programs running in MS-DOS 30.00 would assume that OS/2

8034-545: The release of Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw 's Rob Blanc and Philip Reed's Larry Vales games in 2000-2001. Version 3.0 in January 2008 included a complete rewrite of the editor using the .NET Framework and an update to the game engine to support 3D hardware acceleration. On 26 October 2010, Chris Jones released the source code for the editor under the terms of the Artistic License , version 2. On 27 April 2011,

8137-415: The rights to the classic Sierra On-Line adventure franchises, to create new episodic games based on those series. The first Sierra intellectual property they intended to work on was King's Quest . As development never went far, the game never received a title beyond the reference to the franchise name. The game was to follow the format of previous Telltale Games series such as Tales of Monkey Island , as

8240-408: The runtime engine code was released under the same licence. By 2015, community developers were maintaining and improving the engine and IDE, and began to implement cross-platform capabilities as well as support for more modern screen resolutions (4:3, 16:9 and custom high resolutions). The editor and runtime engine were originally designed for Microsoft Windows operating systems; the runtime engine

8343-424: The same requests from customers that we have." – (Schulman et al. 1994). The pact between Microsoft and IBM to promote OS/2 began to fall apart in 1990 when Windows 3.0 became a marketplace success. Many of Microsoft's further contributions to OS/2 also went into creating a third GUI replacement for DOS, Windows NT . IBM, which had already been developing the next version of OS/2, carried on development of

8446-476: The same with LucasArts adventure games. MS-DOS MS-DOS ( / ˌ ɛ m ˌ ɛ s ˈ d ɒ s / em-es- DOSS ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System , also known as Microsoft DOS ) is an operating system for x86 -based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft . Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS , and a few operating systems attempting to be compatible with MS-DOS, are sometimes referred to as "DOS" (which

8549-411: The series in 2015. Following the release of King's Quest VIII ( Mask of Eternity) , Roberta Williams occasionally alluded to ideas if she was allowed to make the follow-up game or ideas that would influence the direction of any follow-up games, or ideas that were cut during the process of KQVIII that she would have liked to have introduced in the following game. Though she was generally tightlipped on

8652-496: The series. Some of the ideas were an MMO (massive multiplayer online) adventure game, with the ability for players to collect and swap items to help each other solve puzzles, or fight monsters together. There was a ninth installment in development by Vivendi Games (under the Sierra branding) between 2001 and 2002. It was canceled before going into production. The game never made it past the prototype stage. Images of two renders of

8755-521: The shared features of its "single-user OS" and "the multi-user, multi-tasking , UNIX -derived operating system", and promising easy porting between them. After the breakup of the Bell System , however, AT&T Computer Systems started selling UNIX System V . Believing that it could not compete with AT&T in the Unix market, Microsoft abandoned Xenix, and in 1987 transferred ownership of Xenix to

8858-420: The subject when it came to the next game, there are a few details. These never evolved into anything, however, and the game was neither started nor canceled. Primarily it was decided during the production of KQVIII that Graham was now too old to go on adventures, and that Alexander would be less likely to go on adventures as he now had his own concerns as king of the Green Isles. This led to Roberta introducing

8961-401: The system. As MS-DOS 7.0 was a part of Windows 95, support for it also ended when Windows 95 extended support ended on December 31, 2001. As MS-DOS 7.10 and MS-DOS 8.0 were part of Windows 98 and Windows ME, respectively, support ended when Windows 98 and ME extended support ended on July 11, 2006, thus ending support and updates of MS-DOS from Microsoft. In contrast to the Windows 9x series,

9064-519: The systems they were designed for, and in any case were very similar in function and capability to some standard version for the IBM PC—often the same-numbered version, but not always, since some OEMs used their own proprietary version numbering schemes (e.g. labeling later releases of MS-DOS 1.x as 2.0 or vice versa)—with a few notable exceptions. Microsoft omitted multi-user support from MS-DOS because Microsoft's Unix -based operating system, Xenix ,

9167-662: The two products diverged after twelve years, in 1993, with recognizable differences in compatibility, syntax and capabilities. Beginning in 1988 with DR-DOS , several competing products were released for the x86 platform. Initially, MS-DOS was targeted at Intel 8086 processors running on computer hardware using floppy disks to store and access not only the operating system, but application software and user data as well. Progressive version releases delivered support for other mass storage media in ever greater sizes and formats, along with added feature support for newer processors and rapidly evolving computer architectures. Ultimately, it

9270-474: The use of Win32 console applications and internal commands with an NTCMDPROMPT directive. Win32 console applications use CMD.EXE as their command prompt shell. This confusion does not exist under OS/2 because there are separate DOS and OS/2 prompts, and running a DOS program under OS/2 will launch a separate DOS window to run the application. All versions of Windows for Itanium (no longer sold by Microsoft) and x86-64 architectures no longer include

9373-478: The version customized for their hardware, or face trying to get all of their proprietary hardware and software to work with the new system. In the business world, the 808x-based machines that MS-DOS was tied to faced competition from the Unix operating system; the latter ran on many different hardware architectures. Microsoft itself sold a version of Unix for the PC called Xenix . In the emerging world of home users,

9476-612: The version number and the VER internal command reports as "Windows Millennium" and "5.1", respectively, and not as "MS-DOS 8.0" (which was used as the base for Windows Me but never released as a stand-alone product), though the API still says Version 8.0. The creation of the MS-DOS startup disk was then carried over to later versions of Windows, with the majority of its contents remaining unchanged from its introduction in Windows XP. When creating

9579-455: Was designed with a modular structure with internal device drivers (the DOS BIOS ), minimally for primary disk drives and the console, integrated with the kernel and loaded by the boot loader, and installable device drivers for other devices loaded and integrated at boot time. The OEM would use a development kit provided by Microsoft to build a version of MS-DOS with their basic I/O drivers and

9682-515: Was fully multi-user. The company planned, over time, to improve MS-DOS so it would be almost indistinguishable from single-user Xenix, or XEDOS , which would also run on the Motorola 68000 , Zilog Z8000 , and the LSI-11 ; they would be upwardly compatible with Xenix, which Byte in 1983 described as "the multi-user MS-DOS of the future". Microsoft advertised MS-DOS and Xenix together, listing

9785-657: Was in control. The OS/2 emulation is handled through OS2SS.EXE and OS2.EXE, and DOSCALLS.DLL. OS2.EXE is a version of the OS/2 shell (CMD.EXE), which passes commands down to the OS2SS.EXE, and input-output to the Windows NT shell. Windows 2000 was the last version of NT to support OS/2. The emulation is OS/2 1.30. POSIX is emulated through the POSIX shell, but no emulated shell; the commands are handled directly in CMD.EXE. The Command Prompt

9888-410: Was ported to Android , iOS , Linux , Mac OS X and PlayStation Portable after the release of the source code. Prior to AGS 2.7, an MS-DOS engine was also available; this has since been discontinued. It is not yet possible to run the editor on operating systems other than Windows without an emulator or API wrapper such as Wine . AGS can create games with a graphical range from 256 colours and

9991-499: Was purged of combat, violence and possibly religious themes . While Williams continued to work on her own ideas including its own script and puzzles, the Davidson's team of managers began to design their script and puzzles for their own version of KQVIII . Davidson's intervention was ultimately stopped (Davidson left the company in January 1997 ) and Williams reasserted her control, but this was not without its damage to her version of

10094-1212: Was released through the OEM channel, until Digital Research released DR-DOS 5.0 as a retail upgrade. With PC DOS 5.00.1, the IBM–Microsoft agreement started to end, and IBM entered the retail DOS market with IBM DOS 5.00.1, 5.02, 6.00 and PC DOS 6.1, 6.3, 7, 2000 and 7.1. Localized versions of MS-DOS existed for different markets. While Western issues of MS-DOS evolved around the same set of tools and drivers just with localized message languages and differing sets of supported codepages and keyboard layouts, some language versions were considerably different from Western issues and were adapted to run on localized PC hardware with additional BIOS services not available in Western PCs, support multiple hardware codepages for displays and printers, support DBCS, alternative input methods and graphics output. Affected issues include Japanese ( DOS/V ), Korean, Arabic (ADOS 3.3/5.0), Hebrew (HDOS 3.3/5.0), Russian ( RDOS 4.01 / 5.0 ) as well as some other Eastern European versions of DOS. On microcomputers based on

10197-507: Was seen as the legitimate heir to the "kludgy" DOS platform. MS-DOS had grown in spurts, with many significant features being taken or duplicated from Microsoft's other products and operating systems. MS-DOS also grew by incorporating, by direct licensing or feature duplicating, the functionality of tools and utilities developed by independent companies, such as Norton Utilities , PC Tools ( Microsoft Anti-Virus ), QEMM expanded memory manager, Stacker disk compression , and others. During

10300-517: Was the key product in Microsoft's development from a programming language company to a diverse software development firm, providing the company with essential revenue and marketing resources. It was also the underlying basic operating system on which early versions of Windows ran as a GUI. MS-DOS went through eight versions, until development ceased in 2000; version 6.22 from 1994 was the final standalone version, with versions 7 and 8 serving mostly in

10403-506: Was under protracted development, Digital Research released the MS-DOS compatible DR-DOS 5.0, which included features only available as third-party add-ons for MS-DOS. Unwilling to lose any portion of the market, Microsoft responded by announcing the "pending" release of MS-DOS 5.0 in May 1990. This effectively killed most DR DOS sales until the actual release of MS-DOS 5.0 in June 1991. Digital Research brought out DR DOS 6.0, which sold well until

10506-592: Was unwilling to meet Microsoft's terms for licensing Stacker and withdrew from the negotiations. Microsoft chose to license Vertisoft's DoubleDisk, using it as the core for its DoubleSpace disk compression. MS-DOS 6.0 and 6.20 were released in 1993, both including the Microsoft DoubleSpace disk compression utility program. Stac successfully sued Microsoft for patent infringement regarding the compression algorithm used in DoubleSpace. This resulted in

10609-476: Was working on how to proceed. The game was confirmed to be canceled by Telltale senior vice president of publishing, Steve Allison, on April 3, 2013. There have been several fan-created King's Quest games both original and retellings of the original games that have been released by various developers. Mike and Matt Chapman , creators of the Homestar Runner series of cartoons and games, have created

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