Just a few extra thoughts ...

On Wed, 20 Mar 2002, George Richard Russell wrote:
> > what do you need to know (which languages/skills/knowledge) to port games
> > windows - Linux ?  I quite liked Warcraft, and Warcraft III is going to be
> > released any time soon ...  i'm an almost newbie but not (computer)
> > illiterate,  so if some of you gurus could tell me what to read up on ...
> > (better aim too high that way i'll probably learn something :) )
> > Thanks,
> 
> Unless you have the source code to the game, you can't port it. You can 
> run it via emulation if you have the binary - See Wine, Dosemu to run 
> older games.

If the game uses Windows then try Wine or WineX (transgaming's slant on
Wine). You can run some dos applications in Wine, but its not well
supported at the moment (and perhaps never will be: its not the main
thrust of Wine).

Dosemu provides a dos-like environment (all those pesky interrupts)  
including some support for DPMI, but you'll need command.com + friends in
order to do anything. If you don't have an old copy of MSDOS kicking
around, there's FreeDOS which does much the same.

> If you want to port a game, most it seems are C/C++ and graphics 
> intensive. Some maths and programming knowledge needed.

I think at least some Assembler knowledge is essential too. Although you
might not write any assembler you'll need to know what's going on at that
level of detail.

If you are interested, Micheal (I wrote Quake) Abrash's "black book" is
available on-line for free somewhere (SlashDot had the link). Its a little
dated but has some good advice (e.g. use your brain to optimise code, not
the -O2 switch in gcc).

HTH,

Paul.

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Paul Millar                            yo-yo, n. :
Particle Physics Theory Group              Something that is occasionally
Department of Physics and Astronomy        up but normally down.
University of Glasgow,                     (see also Computer)
Glasgow G12 8QQ,                                       [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Scotland                                               +44 (0)141 330 4717
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