Wow! Thanks for all the information. I don't know what changes could be made to the original program I used to make this which is LOVEDOS as I didn't write it, but it is open source. Still a lot out of my league to change it though. I have been looking into other ways to make native DOS games, even going so far as to look into Assembler (scary), but this was a quick and somewhat dirty way to get a taste of the dream of making a true DOS game.
Perhaps next I'll remove the middle man and make something directly in C and compile it myself to see if I can squeeze a lot more out of the little room I have to work with.