🚀 go-pugleaf

>>Quake for DOS does not start properly
>
> unsurprising, xp contains no dos.

Not strictly true.
NT 3.1, NT 3.5, NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP : the 100% 32-bit versions 
of Windows have these things called subsystems.
The subsystems allow different types of executable to run under Windows.

NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 has 5 subsystems
Windows XP has 4 subsystems.

Remember IBM?
It produced  an operating system, which can still be bought, called OS/2.
Originally this was 16-bit but IBM bought out a version that was 32-bit.
And back in 1989, you could use Microsoft C 6.0 to build 16-bit OS/2 
executables.
And you can still produce 16-bit OS/2 executables, to this day, using 
OpenWatcom.
They have a completely different format to 32-bit Windows executable.
So why am I mentioning this?

Well, as an experiment, if you tried running the 16-bit OS/2 executable from 
the command line of Windows 2000, it will run.
An executable format that is 16 years old, effectively obsolete, still runs 
under Windows 2000 (but not XP - Microsoft removed support for OS/2 
subsystem in XP).
What a surprise.

Question: What are the sub-systems for 32-bit Windows?

POSIX Subsystem - capable of running POSIX.1 apps
Win32 Subsystem - runs 32-bit Windows apps
Win16 Subsystem - runs 16-bit Windows apps (that is Windows 3.0, 3.1 native 
apps from 1990-1994)
DOS16 Subsystem - runs 16-bit DOS apps (and that means DOOM and Quake) in 
Virtual DOS Machine
OS/216 Subsystem - runs 16-bit OS/2 1.x character-mode apps

If you look for the following files in Windows System directory

NTIO.SYS     - The equivalent of IO.SYS on MS-DOS machines.
NTDOS.SYS    - The equivalent of MSDOS.SYS.
NTVDM.EXE    - Win32 Application.
NTVDM.DLL or NTVDMD.DLL   - Win32 Application.
REDIR.EXE    - Virtual Device Driver (VDD) redirector for the VDM.

They make up the DOS subsystem.
And if you run Doom or Quake for DOS, it will be NTVDM.EXE that shows up in 
Task Manager.
Now how well it runs DOS programs is another matter :-)

> no-one's mentioned ziggurat vertigo, always a fave of mine.

Good level. I like the low gravity. Unusual.
And the novel idea of swimming through lava to reach a secret.
A lot of shamblers on that level.
I should think it is a reasonable DM level as well.

Stephen Howe