The name is kind of misleading, because is not a port to DOS of my ubox MSX lib, but I call this sort of library “ubox” when I’m building them –even if it is for internal use; they exist for Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum–. I hope it doesn’t cause any confusion.
After I released Gold Mine Run! I knew that if I wanted to make another game for DOS, I had to extract what I had written for this game and make it a library.
It is true that I could have made part of the work when I wrote the game, but I decided early on during the development of the game that I wouldn’t waste time thinking about abstractions or reusing code when it wasn’t clear that I would be able to finish the game. Now that there is not uncertainty –the game is finished!–, it is time to do the boring stuff.
And it is done, so I have published a repo with ubox lib for DOS. It is pretty much what I used for the game, with some extras –like an asset manager– and, in some parts, cleaner code.
I don’t know if it can be useful to anybody else, but I guess that now that I have the library, I will have to make at least another game to justify the effort. What I’m sure that I’m not going to do is maintain the library as a project to facilitate people to make DOS games; because I did that with the MSX library, and I haven’t enjoyed the experience too much.
So there isn’t documentation, although the library is tiny, so anybody should be able to read the code and figure out how it works, and even adapt it if needed. I’m happy for people to send bug reports and fixes, but I don’t want it to grow in directions that I don’t like –or, specially, that I don’t use–. Feel free to do whatever you want with your version of it, respecting the license (that is).
Regarding what I’m going to do next for DOS, I’m still undecided!