Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
On 5/21/2015 8:00 PM, David Griffith wrote: What do you mean by saving the game progress? All Z-machine implemenations allow you to save your progress. The steps/answers/instructions in the game to get to the point where it crashes... Ralf --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
On 05/21/2015 10:04 AM, David Griffith wrote: I guess my next step is to bring one of my older machines home, clean it up, install FreeDOS, and get to work with Turbo C++'s debugger. You could also try running it on Linux through valgrind, it's usually pretty decent when it comes to finding bad memory operations. Can anyone offer any explanation why a program would run fine in DOSbox and crash on real hardware? I had a very similar problem two or three times in the past with my own programs. In my case, it was always related to illegal memory operations, like allocating an array of 10 bytes, and writing 11 bytes to it, or freeing a memory area and then writing garbage to it after some time. Depending on where the trashed memory area is located, it might pass without crashing anything, but this will be different on every platform and compiler. You might also want to review carefully your usage of int variables, that's one of the classics. Under real mode DOS, these will be 16 bit long, so they will wrap much sooner than you might expect, and potentially lead to the same problem as I described above, if you decide to write to array[z] where z is a signed int that you have set to, say, 32800. A pretty easy test could be to replace all occurrences of int by long, and see if the problem happens again. Mateusz -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
On Wed, 20 May 2015, Mateusz Viste wrote: Good news is that Frotz v2.32 works fine. I played the Lost Pig game for about 20 minutes and I didn't experienced any crash. My guess is that you have a fishy memory usage in newer versions of frotz - following an invalid pointer, or writing to non-allocated memory, or so... good luck :) I guess my next step is to bring one of my older machines home, clean it up, install FreeDOS, and get to work with Turbo C++'s debugger. Can anyone offer any explanation why a program would run fine in DOSbox and crash on real hardware? -- David Griffith dgri...@cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
Hi, On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 4:04 AM, David Griffith dgri...@cs.csubak.edu wrote: On Wed, 20 May 2015, Mateusz Viste wrote: My guess is that you have a fishy memory usage in newer versions of frotz - following an invalid pointer, or writing to non-allocated memory, or so... Presumably yes. A very quick testing of Zbefunge worked fine ... until I quit, then I too got a MCB crash/halt/error. I guess my next step is to bring one of my older machines home, clean it up, install FreeDOS, and get to work with Turbo C++'s debugger. You probably don't have to use an older machine. In fact, you could use something like RUFUS to install to a bootable USB jump drive: http://rufus.akeo.ie/ Can anyone offer any explanation why a program would run fine in DOSbox and crash on real hardware? DOSBox is not a real DOS, it's only for games, and it only emulates maximum 64 MB of RAM. If I had to guess, they're probably ignoring any attempts to free memory until actual program exit (probably to avoid buggy games crashing). -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
On Thu, 21 May 2015, Ralf Quint wrote: On 5/21/2015 1:04 AM, David Griffith wrote: I guess my next step is to bring one of my older machines home, clean it up, install FreeDOS, and get to work with Turbo C++'s debugger. Can anyone offer any explanation why a program would run fine in DOSbox and crash on real hardware? DOSBox is actually pretty bad in terms of DOS emulation and hardware, unless it comes to sound or video cards. It simply by catch this bug with an exception instead of crashing... And I agree with Mateusz that just using a DJGPP version doesn't make any sense, it might just do the same thing, rather catch the error and proceed rather than crap out. Is there a way to save the game progress, so someone else could try it on different hardware? What do you mean by saving the game progress? All Z-machine implemenations allow you to save your progress. Or are you looking for a a memory dump of the machine? I have just confirmed that Frotz 2.44 under FreeDOS 1.1 in Virtualbox will crash when playing Lost Pig or Uninvited, but not Shadowgate. I have a vague suspicion that the problem might be related to the zcode file size or how memory is provided to the Z-machine VM. Here: -rw-r--r-- 1 dave dave 285184 Apr 6 2008 LostPig.z8 -rw-r--r-- 1 dave dave 186880 May 21 18:36 sgate.z5 -rw-r--r-- 1 dave dave 239104 May 21 18:37 uninvited.z5 I also made it crash with Infocom's Sherlock. The FROTZ that appears in the crash message is from the filename of the executable. If I rename it to FOO.EXE, the crash message will contain FOO. -- David Griffith dgri...@cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
On 21/05/2015 21:43, Ralf Quint wrote: Is there a way to save the game progress, so someone else could try it on different hardware? Hi Ralf, No need for a save state - the game crashes within a minut or so after starting playing, so the crash is rather easy to reproduce :) Mateusz -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
On 22/05/2015 05:00, David Griffith wrote: The FROTZ that appears in the crash message is from the filename of the executable. If I rename it to FOO.EXE, the crash message will contain FOO. Yes, that's because the 'system halt' message prints out the MCB when MCB corruption happens (which is stated in the message itself). The MCB is an area managed by DOS, vaguely looking like a linked list where DOS keeps information about all currently running processes. it's definitely a place that frotz should NEVER write to, hence my assumption that you are mis-writing something at some point in your code (writing over a non-allocated memory, using a wrapping index on an array, dereferencing a non-assigned pointer or so). The fact that you hit the MCB is quite of a chance, because that's one of the rare types of corruptions that DOS will actually detect. If you were writing to other places, you might trash completely different things (with more or less serious consequences) without DOS ever noticing. This doesn't mean that it's the only bug of course, it's completely possible that you are breaking many other things in the user's system, but the MCB corruption is the only one that DOS catches. Mateusz -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
Great Stuff! GNU OpenSource 2015-05-20 21:46 GMT+02:00, Dario Roncone darioronco...@gmail.com: Yes Software diden´t work! 2015-05-20 21:41 GMT+02:00, Ralf Quint freedos...@gmail.com: On 5/20/2015 12:22 PM, Dario Roncone wrote: Sorry! too Old hardware. ? Care to explain WHY? Ralf --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
Yes i know it... 8080 Intel 2x86 3x86 Dx/Sx intel MMX amdSSE SSE2. 2015-05-20 21:48 GMT+02:00, Ralf Quint freedos...@gmail.com: On 5/20/2015 12:46 PM, Dario Roncone wrote: Yes Software diden´t work! That's not an explanation. And it's DOS for crying out loud. There can't be any hardware too old to run a DOS program on... Ralf --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
Fuck youself... 2015-05-20 22:01 GMT+02:00, Ralf Quint freedos...@gmail.com: On 5/20/2015 12:59 PM, Dario Roncone wrote: Great Stuff! GNU OpenSource You really need to work on the way you are trying to express yourself. I don't understand one bi of your comments in regards to the Infocom game engine... Ralf --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
On 5/20/2015 12:59 PM, Dario Roncone wrote: Great Stuff! GNU OpenSource You really need to work on the way you are trying to express yourself. I don't understand one bi of your comments in regards to the Infocom game engine... Ralf --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
Shell CMD 4dos its a storry about computers. 2015-05-20 22:10 GMT+02:00, Dario Roncone darioronco...@gmail.com: Fuck youself... 2015-05-20 22:01 GMT+02:00, Ralf Quint freedos...@gmail.com: On 5/20/2015 12:59 PM, Dario Roncone wrote: Great Stuff! GNU OpenSource You really need to work on the way you are trying to express yourself. I don't understand one bi of your comments in regards to the Infocom game engine... Ralf --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
On 5/20/2015 1:08 PM, Dario Roncone wrote: Yes i know it... 8080 Intel 2x86 3x86 Dx/Sx intel MMX amdSSE SSE2. Doesn't look like it... Ralf --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
On 5/20/2015 12:22 PM, Dario Roncone wrote: Sorry! too Old hardware. ? Care to explain WHY? Ralf --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
On 5/20/2015 12:46 PM, Dario Roncone wrote: Yes Software diden´t work! That's not an explanation. And it's DOS for crying out loud. There can't be any hardware too old to run a DOS program on... Ralf --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
Yes Software diden´t work! 2015-05-20 21:41 GMT+02:00, Ralf Quint freedos...@gmail.com: On 5/20/2015 12:22 PM, Dario Roncone wrote: Sorry! too Old hardware. ? Care to explain WHY? Ralf --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
Sorry! too Old hardware. 2015-05-20 20:38 GMT+02:00, Mateusz Viste mate...@viste.fr: Here the result with Frotz v2.43. Same computer, same game: http://s11.postimg.org/y8fknk0rn/frotz_v2_43_lost_pig.jpg Mateusz On 19/05/2015 23:25, David Griffith wrote: On Tue, 19 May 2015, Mateusz Viste wrote: Hello David, First of all thanks for still caring about DOS in 2015, and on top of that, caring about how your app works on real hardware :) I tested the version of frotz you submitted to us, and I must disappoint you - it's buggy. I tested it using the Lost Pig game from the gopher repo you pointed. My PC is a 486DX4 running at 75 MHz, with 24M of RAM and no sound card. The game is loaded all right, I see the introduction text, and I can type in a few commands, but after a dozen commands, the program crashes horribly. I tried a few times, and it doesn't crash on any specific command, just after a few of them (always more than 3, always less than 10). Here is a screenshot of what happens: http://s27.postimg.org/xu9k4nywz/frotz_lost_pig.jpg Oh dear. Could you try a couple other games and some other versions of Frotz? Versions 2.43 and 2.32 for DOS are available at the IF Archive at http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/frotz/frotz243.zip and http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/old/frotz/DosFrotz232Std10.zip -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
Here the result with Frotz v2.43. Same computer, same game: http://s11.postimg.org/y8fknk0rn/frotz_v2_43_lost_pig.jpg Mateusz On 19/05/2015 23:25, David Griffith wrote: On Tue, 19 May 2015, Mateusz Viste wrote: Hello David, First of all thanks for still caring about DOS in 2015, and on top of that, caring about how your app works on real hardware :) I tested the version of frotz you submitted to us, and I must disappoint you - it's buggy. I tested it using the Lost Pig game from the gopher repo you pointed. My PC is a 486DX4 running at 75 MHz, with 24M of RAM and no sound card. The game is loaded all right, I see the introduction text, and I can type in a few commands, but after a dozen commands, the program crashes horribly. I tried a few times, and it doesn't crash on any specific command, just after a few of them (always more than 3, always less than 10). Here is a screenshot of what happens: http://s27.postimg.org/xu9k4nywz/frotz_lost_pig.jpg Oh dear. Could you try a couple other games and some other versions of Frotz? Versions 2.43 and 2.32 for DOS are available at the IF Archive at http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/frotz/frotz243.zip and http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/old/frotz/DosFrotz232Std10.zip -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
Good news is that Frotz v2.32 works fine. I played the Lost Pig game for about 20 minutes and I didn't experienced any crash. My guess is that you have a fishy memory usage in newer versions of frotz - following an invalid pointer, or writing to non-allocated memory, or so... good luck :) Mateusz On 20/05/2015 20:38, Mateusz Viste wrote: Here the result with Frotz v2.43. Same computer, same game: http://s11.postimg.org/y8fknk0rn/frotz_v2_43_lost_pig.jpg Mateusz On 19/05/2015 23:25, David Griffith wrote: On Tue, 19 May 2015, Mateusz Viste wrote: Hello David, First of all thanks for still caring about DOS in 2015, and on top of that, caring about how your app works on real hardware :) I tested the version of frotz you submitted to us, and I must disappoint you - it's buggy. I tested it using the Lost Pig game from the gopher repo you pointed. My PC is a 486DX4 running at 75 MHz, with 24M of RAM and no sound card. The game is loaded all right, I see the introduction text, and I can type in a few commands, but after a dozen commands, the program crashes horribly. I tried a few times, and it doesn't crash on any specific command, just after a few of them (always more than 3, always less than 10). Here is a screenshot of what happens: http://s27.postimg.org/xu9k4nywz/frotz_lost_pig.jpg Oh dear. Could you try a couple other games and some other versions of Frotz? Versions 2.43 and 2.32 for DOS are available at the IF Archive at http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/frotz/frotz243.zip and http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/old/frotz/DosFrotz232Std10.zip -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
Hi, On Wed, May 20, 2015 at 1:38 PM, Mateusz Viste mate...@viste.fr wrote: Here the result with Frotz v2.43. Same computer, same game: http://s11.postimg.org/y8fknk0rn/frotz_v2_43_lost_pig.jpg At risk of asking the obvious, what major DOS version / vendor is the OP (David) developing on? Is it MS-DOS or FreeDOS? Does this mean it works for him in MS-DOS but not in FreeDOS? I haven't done a lot of messing around in Frotz, although I was aware of it. Mostly, I never knew what games were worth playing. So the only thing I remember is somebody's ZBefunge (and Zedfunge, but I never really cared for '98). IIRC, that was good for debugging .bef scripts. http://flourish.org/zbefunge/ But I'll have to reboot to test your new compile properly. Anyways, my point was that there was a (pmode) DJGPP version, so (Mateusz) you should try that, it should be (more?) stable, for comparison: http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/frotz/DJGPPFrotz240.zip -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
I don't know details, but I guess the OP is developing on some emulation machine, like DOSemu or DOSBox, and it works fine for him there. This happened to me in the past - emulated environment are apparently more resilient to bugs than a real machine. I doubt that using a DJGPP version is a solution. Even if it doesn't crash, it still means there's a bug in the application, and the bug is worth fixing as much for DOS than for other platforms, since sooner or later it can make the app crash on other platforms, too. Mateusz On 21/05/2015 02:25, Rugxulo wrote: Hi, On Wed, May 20, 2015 at 1:38 PM, Mateusz Viste mate...@viste.fr wrote: Here the result with Frotz v2.43. Same computer, same game: http://s11.postimg.org/y8fknk0rn/frotz_v2_43_lost_pig.jpg At risk of asking the obvious, what major DOS version / vendor is the OP (David) developing on? Is it MS-DOS or FreeDOS? Does this mean it works for him in MS-DOS but not in FreeDOS? I haven't done a lot of messing around in Frotz, although I was aware of it. Mostly, I never knew what games were worth playing. So the only thing I remember is somebody's ZBefunge (and Zedfunge, but I never really cared for '98). IIRC, that was good for debugging .bef scripts. http://flourish.org/zbefunge/ But I'll have to reboot to test your new compile properly. Anyways, my point was that there was a (pmode) DJGPP version, so (Mateusz) you should try that, it should be (more?) stable, for comparison: http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/frotz/DJGPPFrotz240.zip -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
Hello David, First of all thanks for still caring about DOS in 2015, and on top of that, caring about how your app works on real hardware :) I tested the version of frotz you submitted to us, and I must disappoint you - it's buggy. I tested it using the Lost Pig game from the gopher repo you pointed. My PC is a 486DX4 running at 75 MHz, with 24M of RAM and no sound card. The game is loaded all right, I see the introduction text, and I can type in a few commands, but after a dozen commands, the program crashes horribly. I tried a few times, and it doesn't crash on any specific command, just after a few of them (always more than 3, always less than 10). Here is a screenshot of what happens: http://s27.postimg.org/xu9k4nywz/frotz_lost_pig.jpg I hope that helps! cheers, Mateusz On 18/05/2015 11:10, David Griffith wrote: I'm the one who maintains and develops Frotz these days, a program that emulates the Z-machine[1] for modern computers. I worked to make sure the old DOS interface code works with the current core code. Release 2.44 is coming up Really Soon Now and I was wondering if I could get some of you to check it out on real hardware. It was compiled with Turbo C++ 3.0 for 16-bit DOS. You can get the binary at http://661.org/if/frotz244.zip. The source code is at https://github.com/DavidGriffith/frotz. Games to play can be found at http://ifarchive.org/ (or gopher://gopher.feedle.net/1/if-archive/) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-machine -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
On Tue, 19 May 2015, Mateusz Viste wrote: Hello David, First of all thanks for still caring about DOS in 2015, and on top of that, caring about how your app works on real hardware :) I tested the version of frotz you submitted to us, and I must disappoint you - it's buggy. I tested it using the Lost Pig game from the gopher repo you pointed. My PC is a 486DX4 running at 75 MHz, with 24M of RAM and no sound card. The game is loaded all right, I see the introduction text, and I can type in a few commands, but after a dozen commands, the program crashes horribly. I tried a few times, and it doesn't crash on any specific command, just after a few of them (always more than 3, always less than 10). Here is a screenshot of what happens: http://s27.postimg.org/xu9k4nywz/frotz_lost_pig.jpg Oh dear. Could you try a couple other games and some other versions of Frotz? Versions 2.43 and 2.32 for DOS are available at the IF Archive at http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/frotz/frotz243.zip and http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/old/frotz/DosFrotz232Std10.zip -- David Griffith dgri...@cs.csubak.edu -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Infocom-style games for DOS
I'm the one who maintains and develops Frotz these days, a program that emulates the Z-machine[1] for modern computers. I worked to make sure the old DOS interface code works with the current core code. Release 2.44 is coming up Really Soon Now and I was wondering if I could get some of you to check it out on real hardware. It was compiled with Turbo C++ 3.0 for 16-bit DOS. You can get the binary at http://661.org/if/frotz244.zip. The source code is at https://github.com/DavidGriffith/frotz. Games to play can be found at http://ifarchive.org/ (or gopher://gopher.feedle.net/1/if-archive/) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-machine -- David Griffith dgri...@cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
