We are doomed..

Jeff Lait a écrit :
> On Jan 11, 12:19 pm, Gamer_2k4 <gamer... DeleteThis @gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Jan 11, 8:50 am, Gerry Quinn <ger... DeleteThis @indigo.ie> wrote:
>>
>>> Well fair enough. But if you have ambitons beyond ASCII, DOS is
>>> irrelevant.
>>> - Gerry Quinn
>> Many graphical programs were written for DOS. The first two Descents
>> and the first two Warcrafts both ran in DOS.
>
> I am as eager to recreate the glory days of performing the correct
> series of out instructions to dump my video card into the
> "un"documented Mode-X as I am to return to a segmented memory model.
>
> (And yes, I do know of what I talk: http://www.zincland.com/jmlait/gfx.htm.)
>
> My joy over the death of DOS cannot be written in mere words. We live
> in a glorious age of flat memory and 64 bit pointers. Now if only
> compilers were to make ints 64bit, I'll be able to finally rest.
>
> SDL is a much more sensible path to go. It abstracts a framebuffer
> *much* better than "write every fourth vertical column to 0xa0000 and
> use this instruction to switch which columns you are using". If you
> restrict the amount of SDL you use, it will remain trivial for future
> people to re-implement the required components.

This is rather unfair for DOS and seems to be ignoring the most "recent"
developments on that front. Dos Extenders allowed you to run painlessly
32bit mode code with a flat memory model above DOS. VESA drivers were a
reallity and some games indeed required them to work. VESA 2.0 in
particular added a neat little thing called a flat framebuffer which
also required a 32bit dos extender to work, at the same time it added an
easy way to access many video modes. And it was much much faster to work
with than the old ways because you more or less got direct memory access
to the video card framebuffer. Playing in 1280x1024x24bit in DOS is
possible, it's just that at the time no computer was really fast enouth
and had enouth memory that such extravagant mode was needed

> Distributing binaries is, as David Damerell stated, just a call for
> bit-rot. Ultima 7, for example, turned out to be easier to *rewrite*
> than get the emulators to run it well. (Not helped, mind you, by the
> insane hoops the original programmers had to jump through to work in
> the constraints of that system.)

I could nearly say that to that day it was easier to rewrite Ultima 7 or
play it with Dosbox than to get it working in a genuine DOS computer.
The memory manager in that game was horrible (who uses a memory manager
called Voodoo?) and was not a true 32bit mode extender. DOS programs
using 32bit extenders have far far less restrictive "conventional
memory" needs because they abstract away the 640K mode as soon as
possible, although you might still need that space for some hardware and
DMA access. Ultima 7 used a kind of dos extender but was still written
using paged memory and 16bit code it seems and still required an absurd
amount of free mem in the lower bank. It is indeed a bad example

SDL is probably a better idea in 99.99% cases, but there is indeed
something to say for the DosBox platform if you want some closed source
game to be playable many years from now.
 >> Stay informed about: We are doomed.. 

On Jan 14, 11:28 am, Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
<n....DeleteThis@sheep.art.pl> wrote:
> At Mon, 14 Jan 2008 07:26:53 -0800 (PST),
>
> Jeff Lait wrote:
> > The GBA, for example, has extremely precise specs that allow
> > some future emulator creator to rebuild a precise simulator.
>
> Out of curiosity, where are the specs available?
> Because I was only able to find some quick notes from hobby developers,
> apparently reverse-enginered by trial-and-error...

The holy tome is:
http://nocash.emubase.de/gbatek.htm

That also includes the specs for the NDS.
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)
 >> Stay informed about: We are doomed.. 

Quoting Gerry Quinn <gerryq.TakeThisOut@indigo.ie>:
>@i7g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, gamer2k4.TakeThisOut@gmail.com says...
>>Many graphical programs were written for DOS. The first two Descents
>>and the first two Warcrafts both ran in DOS.
>Yes... but do they run now?

Warcraft 2 runs under DOSBOX just fine.

>To make graphical programs run in DOS, you
>have to play tricks on it. With Windows, you just use standard
>function calls.

Assuming the original programmer did, and Microsoft don't change their
mind about what those "standard" function calls do...

A DOS program that works under DOSBOX (like they all do) will keep
working. A Windows program will have new versions of Windows shift the
ground under its feet.
--
David Damerell <damerell.TakeThisOut@chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?
Today is Second Aponoia, January.
 >> Stay informed about: We are doomed.. 

In article <x0q*wLT4r@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>,
damerell.TakeThisOut@chiark.greenend.org.uk says...
> Quoting Gerry Quinn <gerryq.TakeThisOut@indigo.ie>:
> >@i7g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, gamer2k4.TakeThisOut@gmail.com says...
> >>Many graphical programs were written for DOS. The first two Descents
> >>and the first two Warcrafts both ran in DOS.
> >Yes... but do they run now?
>
> Warcraft 2 runs under DOSBOX just fine.
>
> >To make graphical programs run in DOS, you
> >have to play tricks on it. With Windows, you just use standard
> >function calls.
>
> Assuming the original programmer did, and Microsoft don't change their
> mind about what those "standard" function calls do...
>
> A DOS program that works under DOSBOX (like they all do) will keep
> working. A Windows program will have new versions of Windows shift the
> ground under its feet.

Thy don't shift the ground very much. Windows backwards compatibility
is excellent.

- Gerry Quinn
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At Mon, 14 Jan 2008 07:26:53 -0800 (PST),
Jeff Lait wrote:

> The GBA, for example, has extremely precise specs that allow
> some future emulator creator to rebuild a precise simulator.

Out of curiosity, where are the specs available?
Because I was only able to find some quick notes from hobby developers,
apparently reverse-enginered by trial-and-error...

--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski <http://sheep.art.pl>
Meden agan.
 >> Stay informed about: We are doomed.. 

At Mon, 14 Jan 2008 10:43:48 -0800 (PST),
Jeff Lait wrote:

> On Jan 14, 11:28 am, Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
> <n....RemoveThis@sheep.art.pl> wrote:

>> Out of curiosity, where are the specs available?
>> Because I was only able to find some quick notes from hobby developers,
>> apparently reverse-enginered by trial-and-error...

> The holy tome is:
> http://nocash.emubase.de/gbatek.htm

> That also includes the specs for the NDS.

Thank you, I was looking for something like this.
Seems to be a very interesting design.

--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski <http://sheep.art.pl>
Meden agan.
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On 2008-01-14, Jeff Lait <torespondisfutile.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Of course, I would argue that this whole "closed source" question is
> quite irrelevant in the long term. Consider Ultima 7. That is a big
> game. It was closed source. Indeed, IIRC, the original source has
> long since vanished. Yet now, by the miracle of reverse engineering,
> it (meaning Exult) is open source.

Fun fact: A lot of the game logic in the U7 games was stored in the
usecode bytecode for a VM. I imagine it helped the Exult project quite a
bit that they only needed to reverse-engineer the usecode VM and could
then take a shot at running the original usecode binary.

I'm not familiar with the Exult project so I don't know just how much of
the game logic was in usecode and how straightforward was it to get the
old usecode to run on Exult's VM. But still, another datapoint for a
game having at least some VM architecture and being subsequently ported
onto new platforms by hobbyists.

--
Risto Saarelma
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"Jürgen Lerch" <jynwyn RemoveThis @gmx.de> wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:47:53 +0100, Patric Mueller wrote:
>
>> AROS probably too and it tries to be interface compatible
>> to AmigaOS 3.1.
>
> Yes, but it's in active development and so as moving a target
> as any other OS. IIRC 3.1 compatibility is only the first step.

Sure, but 3.1 compatibility isn't going to go away, even when new
features are added (e.g. to be more compatible to MorphOS and OS 4.0).
Besides, backward compatibility has a big tradition on the Amiga.

But AROS has one big plus. It has been programmed since the beginning
with portability in mind (x86, PPC and now the 64 bit version and the
loosely connected "AROS for Amiga"-project).

>> There are no roguelikes for AROS AFAIK or am I mistaken?
>
> It seems not.

Well, then there's one now.

http://bhaak.dyndns.org/nethack/nethack-for-aros.html

> (Hm, another worthwhile target for one of my vapourwares. ;-})

Release early, release often. Maybe it sucks but it ain't vaporware.


Bye
Patric
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Rachel Elizabeth Dillon wrote:
> On one level I agree with you; I'm generally not interested in playing
> alpha-release quality games, as they aren't as fun as something more
> polished. I'm not arguing for releasing a bad product; I'm arguing for
> using feedback to produce an even better product. Roguelike developers
> (for the most part) don't have an in-house group of testers to find
> bugs, imbalances, and other issues; the player base ends up doing a
> good chunk of that work.
>
> (Lately Crawl has actually had this, to some extent; a kind soul put up
> a publically-accessible server with the most recent build of the game
> in progress, and excited players can try out the latest changes before
> they've been balanced or even declared bug-free. Personally I prefer the
> released version, but some players are very excited and play a number
> of games on the bleeding edge; this server, I think, is why Stone Soup
> 0.3 has had only three patch releases so far.)

Angband doesn't have any servers for public play, but nightly builds are
made from the source. Several people seem to play these and I get
useful feedback out of them, even though I explictly tell people not to
play the nightlies.

Andrew Sidwell
 >> Stay informed about: We are doomed.. 

On 2008-01-18, Andrew Sidwell <takkaria RemoveThis @gmail.com> wrote:
> Rachel Elizabeth Dillon wrote:
>> On one level I agree with you; I'm generally not interested in playing
>> alpha-release quality games, as they aren't as fun as something more
>> polished. I'm not arguing for releasing a bad product; I'm arguing for
>> using feedback to produce an even better product. Roguelike developers
>> (for the most part) don't have an in-house group of testers to find
>> bugs, imbalances, and other issues; the player base ends up doing a
>> good chunk of that work.
>>
>> (Lately Crawl has actually had this, to some extent; a kind soul put up
>> a publically-accessible server with the most recent build of the game
>> in progress, and excited players can try out the latest changes before
>> they've been balanced or even declared bug-free. Personally I prefer the
>> released version, but some players are very excited and play a number
>> of games on the bleeding edge; this server, I think, is why Stone Soup
>> 0.3 has had only three patch releases so far.)
>
> Angband doesn't have any servers for public play, but nightly builds are
> made from the source. Several people seem to play these and I get
> useful feedback out of them, even though I explictly tell people not to
> play the nightlies.

That's awesome! I certainly know one or two people who play Crawl builds
off of trunk locally, but I think there the public server really helped.
If Angband doesn't need that, then, cool. (There's no Angband servers
anywhere at all, though? That's a shame...)

-r.
 >> Stay informed about: We are doomed.. 

On 2008-01-18, Rachel Elizabeth Dillon <rachel.DeleteThis@akrasiac.org> wrote:
> On 2008-01-18, Andrew Sidwell <takkaria.DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Angband doesn't have any servers for public play, but nightly builds are
>> made from the source. Several people seem to play these and I get
>> useful feedback out of them, even though I explictly tell people not to
>> play the nightlies.
> That's awesome! I certainly know one or two people who play Crawl builds
> off of trunk locally, but I think there the public server really helped.
> If Angband doesn't need that, then, cool. (There's no Angband servers
> anywhere at all, though? That's a shame...)

Is Angband even workable in a multiplayer/public server environment?

(My total exposure to Angband has been some Windows play, long ago, so I
really have no perspective on it, but I am somewhat curious for the sake
of a different project altogether.)

--
Derek

Game info and change log: http://sporkhack.com
Beta Server: telnet://sporkhack.com
IRC: irc.freenode.net, #sporkhack
 >> Stay informed about: We are doomed.. 

On 2008-01-18 15:58:10, Derek Ray <derek RemoveThis @moot.its.only.a.spamtrap.org> wrote:

> Is Angband even workable in a multiplayer/public server environment?

I'm not sure how well the actual support is maintained (although it's still
there), but Angband's predecessor Moria was very workable in a public server
environment.
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Derek Ray wrote:
> On 2008-01-18, Rachel Elizabeth Dillon <rachel.RemoveThis@akrasiac.org> wrote:
>> On 2008-01-18, Andrew Sidwell <takkaria.RemoveThis@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Angband doesn't have any servers for public play, but nightly builds are
>>> made from the source. Several people seem to play these and I get
>>> useful feedback out of them, even though I explictly tell people not to
>>> play the nightlies.
>> That's awesome! I certainly know one or two people who play Crawl builds
>> off of trunk locally, but I think there the public server really helped.
>> If Angband doesn't need that, then, cool. (There's no Angband servers
>> anywhere at all, though? That's a shame...)
>
> Is Angband even workable in a multiplayer/public server environment?

It is, yeah. The last release wasn't quite there because the build
system changed, but I think the development version has it right. You
can install it single-user or system-wide, and you make that choice at
compile-time.

Andrew Sidwell
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