Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock))))
Jim Leonard wrote: Chris Newman wrote: What's the story? Is MS abusing its relationship with NBC? Where'd you hear the rumors? Yes, I'm very interested in that. Gates is part snake oil salesman, part gangster, and all opportunist. Rumor has it that Microsoft offered to 1. ignore existing NBC Microsoft product license violations (ie pirated copies) *and* cut them a deal on existing and future product license purchases if they set up Gates on a prime-time show (not necessarily Frasier) to promote XP. Oh great. Now you guys can't even calmly watch a TV show without suffering the risk of receiving a message from, according to Chris, Lucifer himself. Gates was paid standard SAG rates, something like $636 for a day's work. But this isn't surprising, really -- he doesn't need the money ;-) NBC should've paid him in legal copies of Windows ME instead of writing him a check. :) I'm not entirely sure I'd call Gates a gangster or snake-oil salesman -- that's Balmer's job and always has been. :-) Even before he became CEO? What did he do before? Opportunist is 99% of what Gates was/is. He saw some opportunities and he took advantage of them, and a couple of his successes -- MS-DOS licensed on multiple machines making him rich, Excel, Word for DOS -- were legitimate reasons to like Microsoft in the 1980s. Everything past Windows 3.0 was downhill though -- as late as 1989 they were telling application developers to develop for Windows 3.0 behind IBM's back (they had a license to co-develop OS/2 with IBM at the time). It was a total abuse of power. It sounds like gangster-like behaviour, actually. And praising WinME (the worst OS ever) makes him sound like a snake-oil salesman. If I head him say the word innovation again, I'll eat my MSDOS 4.01 floppies. Anyway, I think, from a technical point of view, that Microsoft really went downhill after Windows 3.11. Windows 95 is unexcusable: any OS should work with the least possible features on the Kernel, to minimize crashes. Windows95 has the whole GUI and much more on the kernel. All MS OSs after Win95 break several of basic rules of programming and maintaining an OS. My only real lament with the rise of Microsoft is two-fold: 1. People have come to expect buggy software, multiple releases/patches, and frequent crashing. It has become acceptable. Never thought of it that way, but that's the way things go nowadays, and it's not about OSes only. Games are following the same path. Does anyone remember a game released after 1998 that had no need for a patch? Me neither. 2. Geoworks Ensemble never got the recognition it deserved. The above is what really, really depresses me, especially Geoworks. Geoworks Ensamble? Please explain. I'd like once again to add #3 3. There's a solid, free, open source, nearly bug-free, easy to use, extremely stable, etc OS out there (Linux of course) and the number of people using it is still almost irrelevant, because most prefer any expensive and full of bugs version of Windows. http://www.MobyGames.com/ The world's most comprehensive gaming database project. Pedro R. Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] So long, and thanks for all the fish http://www.salvador-caetano.pt http://www.globalshop.pt -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: [SWCollect] Killer App revisited
Chris Newman wrote: Wizardry, circa 1982 Doom, circa 1994 1984 (maybe AppleII was earlier) for Wizardry and 1993 for Doom, actually. Defender of the Crown The first crop of Sierra 256VGA/SB games Oh yes, visually speaking, KQ5 (wasn't it the first) was tremendously impressive for its days. season to taste... Are they singly really enough to justify the purchase of a new machine? Depends on the person I suppose. Sure, back in 1994 I bought a P133 for Ultima 8, but I probably was the only one! :) For me, it was not a specific game, but a group of 5 or 10. We buy to update to the current generation, but it's those shining examples of perfect games that provides the motivation. Actually, I have a theory. Every year that passes I have more games that I really wanted to play but haven't got the time to. I guess that in some years time I won't need to upgrade anymore because I have enough games to play until I'm old :) Thief (1998). Ahhh, that is a great game :) I don't think it sold computers that massively. Pedro R. Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] So long, and thanks for all the fish http://www.salvador-caetano.pt http://www.globalshop.pt -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
[SWCollect] Chinese PC games
Anyone spotted this one? http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemitem=1297245902 Well-known PC games... in chinese version. I had never seen anything like these. Pedro R. Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] So long, and thanks for all the fish http://www.salvador-caetano.pt http://www.globalshop.pt -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: [SWCollect] Chinese PC games
Anyone spotted this one? http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemitem=1297245902 Well-known PC games... in chinese version. I had never seen anything like these. These are Chinese releases distributed in Taiwan and Hong Kong. They must be common in that area, but there aren't enough collectors that would export them, so they are hard to come by. On a side note, the seller initially also had a bunch of Chinese Ultimas, but someone else bought them up in the meantime ;-) /Alexander -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (was shock))))
I'm not thrilled with everything about Windows; however, as a gamer...I don't see how you can't think Windows 95 and later made life MUCH better. Once Win 95 was adopted by game developers, and games were written (well) under it, gaming became so much easier. I still remember the bad old days of having multiple boot disks, QEMM, and a reconfig programugh...that was really a crappy way to game (having come from the ST, Amiga, Mac world). Once 95 became the standard, things for gamers got much better...peripherals (rudder pedals, steering wheels, etc) also become much easier to deal with...gotta love Plug and Play. To me, it sounds like another example of the good old days not being that good. Certainly from a gamer's perspective. Hugh -Original Message- From: Pedro Quaresma [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, November 16, 2001 5:10 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (was shock Jim Leonard wrote: Chris Newman wrote: What's the story? Is MS abusing its relationship with NBC? Where'd you hear the rumors? Yes, I'm very interested in that. Gates is part snake oil salesman, part gangster, and all opportunist. Rumor has it that Microsoft offered to 1. ignore existing NBC Microsoft product license violations (ie pirated copies) *and* cut them a deal on existing and future product license purchases if they set up Gates on a prime-time show (not necessarily Frasier) to promote XP. Oh great. Now you guys can't even calmly watch a TV show without suffering the risk of receiving a message from, according to Chris, Lucifer himself. Gates was paid standard SAG rates, something like $636 for a day's work. But this isn't surprising, really -- he doesn't need the money ;-) NBC should've paid him in legal copies of Windows ME instead of writing him a check. :) I'm not entirely sure I'd call Gates a gangster or snake-oil salesman -- that's Balmer's job and always has been. :-) Even before he became CEO? What did he do before? Opportunist is 99% of what Gates was/is. He saw some opportunities and he took advantage of them, and a couple of his successes -- MS-DOS licensed on multiple machines making him rich, Excel, Word for DOS -- were legitimate reasons to like Microsoft in the 1980s. Everything past Windows 3.0 was downhill though -- as late as 1989 they were telling application developers to develop for Windows 3.0 behind IBM's back (they had a license to co-develop OS/2 with IBM at the time). It was a total abuse of power. It sounds like gangster-like behaviour, actually. And praising WinME (the worst OS ever) makes him sound like a snake-oil salesman. If I head him say the word innovation again, I'll eat my MSDOS 4.01 floppies. Anyway, I think, from a technical point of view, that Microsoft really went downhill after Windows 3.11. Windows 95 is unexcusable: any OS should work with the least possible features on the Kernel, to minimize crashes. Windows95 has the whole GUI and much more on the kernel. All MS OSs after Win95 break several of basic rules of programming and maintaining an OS. My only real lament with the rise of Microsoft is two-fold: 1. People have come to expect buggy software, multiple releases/patches, and frequent crashing. It has become acceptable. Never thought of it that way, but that's the way things go nowadays, and it's not about OSes only. Games are following the same path. Does anyone remember a game released after 1998 that had no need for a patch? Me neither. 2. Geoworks Ensemble never got the recognition it deserved. The above is what really, really depresses me, especially Geoworks. Geoworks Ensamble? Please explain. I'd like once again to add #3 3. There's a solid, free, open source, nearly bug-free, easy to use, extremely stable, etc OS out there (Linux of course) and the number of people using it is still almost irrelevant, because most prefer any expensive and full of bugs version of Windows. http://www.MobyGames.com/ The world's most comprehensive gaming database project. Pedro R. Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] So long, and thanks for all the fish http://www.salvador-caetano.pt http://www.globalshop.pt -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock))))
EA, MacDonalds, and now Windows... you're scaring me, Hugh! ;) I'm not thrilled with everything about Windows; however, as a gamer...I don't see how you can't think Windows 95 and later made life MUCH better. No, it hasn't. As a gamer, I'd rather have one of the old OSes that wouldn't crash. Once Win 95 was adopted by game developers, and games were written (well) under it, gaming became so much easier. a) The percentage of games written well under Windows is way lower than the ones written well for DOS. b) Sometimes it's not the problem of the games itself, they crash because of Windows itself. I still remember the bad old days of having multiple boot disks, QEMM, and a reconfig programugh...that was really a crappy way to game (having come from the ST, Amiga, Mac world). Multiple bootdisks?! Qemm?! DOS 6 (and 6.2, and 6.22) made those things obsolete. I could play any computer game on DOS 6.2 (my favorite), with the multiple-boot menus, and had no need for 3rd party software. Once 95 became the standard, things for gamers got much better...peripherals (rudder pedals, steering wheels, etc) That has nothing to do with Windows 95. If Windows 95 had never existed, and if we were all using, for example, OS/2, BeOS, Linux, etc, we'd still have rudders, wheels etc. Besides, there have always been different and innovative (I have began to hate this word) peripherals since the dawn of computers also become much easier to deal with...gotta love Plug and Play. Oh, Plug 'n' Play, that thing that works perfectly on Linuxes like Mandrake 8.0 but seem to crash or wrongly recognize hardware in Windows? 0:) To me, it sounds like another example of the good old days not being that good. Certainly from a gamer's perspective. Sorry Hugh, I still think that the good old days were much better. At least our standard OS was stable, and so were games. Hugh Pedro R. Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] So long, and thanks for all the fish Hugh Falk [EMAIL PROTECTED] 16/11/01 14:13 Solicita-se resposta a swcollect Para: [EMAIL PROTECTED] A/C: Ref: cc: Assunto: RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (was shock I'm not thrilled with everything about Windows; however, as a gamer...I don't see how you can't think Windows 95 and later made life MUCH better. Once Win 95 was adopted by game developers, and games were written (well) under it, gaming became so much easier. I still remember the bad old days of having multiple boot disks, QEMM, and a reconfig programugh...that was really a crappy way to game (having come from the ST, Amiga, Mac world). Once 95 became the standard, things for gamers got much better...peripherals (rudder pedals, steering
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock))))
QEMM was better at optimizing memory usage than DOS 6.22. There were several games that needed QEMM to run on my machine, because DOS' MemMaker wouldn't cut it. Pedro Quaresma wrote: EA, MacDonalds, and now Windows... you're scaring me, Hugh! ;) I'm not thrilled with everything about Windows; however, as a gamer...I don't see how you can't think Windows 95 and later made life MUCH better. No, it hasn't. As a gamer, I'd rather have one of the old OSes that wouldn't crash. Once Win 95 was adopted by game developers, and games were written (well) under it, gaming became so much easier. a) The percentage of games written well under Windows is way lower than the ones written well for DOS. b) Sometimes it's not the problem of the games itself, they crash because of Windows itself. I still remember the bad old days of having multiple boot disks, QEMM, and a reconfig programugh...that was really a crappy way to game (having come from the ST, Amiga, Mac world). Multiple bootdisks?! Qemm?! DOS 6 (and 6.2, and 6.22) made those things obsolete. I could play any computer game on DOS 6.2 (my favorite), with the multiple-boot menus, and had no need for 3rd party software. Once 95 became the standard, things for gamers got much better...peripherals (rudder pedals, steering wheels, etc) That has nothing to do with Windows 95. If Windows 95 had never existed, and if we were all using, for example, OS/2, BeOS, Linux, etc, we'd still have rudders, wheels etc. Besides, there have always been different and innovative (I have began to hate this word) peripherals since the dawn of computers also become much easier to deal with...gotta love Plug and Play. Oh, Plug 'n' Play, that thing that works perfectly on Linuxes like Mandrake 8.0 but seem to crash or wrongly recognize hardware in Windows? 0:) To me, it sounds like another example of the good old days not being that good. Certainly from a gamer's perspective. Sorry Hugh, I still think that the good old days were much better. At least our standard OS was stable, and so were games. Hugh Pedro R. Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] So long, and thanks for all the fish Hugh Falk [EMAIL PROTECTED] 16/11/01 14:13 Solicita-se resposta a swcollect Para: [EMAIL PROTECTED] A/C: Ref: cc: Assunto: RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (was shock I'm not thrilled with everything about Windows; however, as a gamer...I don't see how you can't think Windows 95 and later made life MUCH better. Once Win 95 was adopted by game developers, and games were written (well) under it, gaming became so much easier. I still remember the bad old days of having multiple boot disks, QEMM, and a reconfig programugh...that was really a crappy way to game (having come from the ST, Amiga, Mac world). Once 95 became the standard, things for gamers got much better...peripherals (rudder pedals, steering wheels, etc) also become much easier to deal with...gotta love Plug and Play. To me, it sounds like another example of the good old days not being that good. Certainly from a gamer's perspective. Hugh -Original Message- From: Pedro Quaresma [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, November 16, 2001 5:10 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (was shock Jim Leonard wrote: Chris Newman wrote: What's the story? Is MS abusing its relationship with NBC? Where'd you hear the rumors? Yes, I'm very interested in that. Gates is part snake oil salesman, part gangster, and all opportunist. Rumor has it that Microsoft offered to 1. ignore existing NBC Microsoft product license violations (ie pirated copies) *and* cut them a deal on existing and future product license purchases if they set up Gates on a prime-time show (not necessarily Frasier) to promote XP. Oh great. Now you guys can't even calmly watch a TV show without suffering the risk of receiving a message from, according to Chris, Lucifer himself. Gates was paid standard SAG rates, something like $636 for a day's work. But this isn't surprising, really -- he doesn't need the money ;-) NBC should've paid him in legal copies of Windows ME instead of writing him a check. :) I'm not entirely sure I'd call Gates a gangster or snake-oil salesman -- that's Balmer's job and always has been. :-) Even before he became CEO? What did he do before? Opportunist is 99% of what Gates was/is. He saw some opportunities and he took advantage of them, and a couple of his successes -- MS-DOS licensed on multiple machines making him
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock))))
From: Pedro Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] Memmaker was not optimal. I could get better results by configuring config.sys autoexec.bat myself, usually involving, IIRC, shadowing/unshadowing memory and other interesting tricks. I remember I used to get more than 600k base memory even with sound card and CD-ROM drivers loaded. Later on, with RDosUmb, 610+ was possible even with smartdrive loaded. Well but that's the point of this string... you had to configure the crap yourself! I've never had to do any such thing under windows! Try playing Chaos Engine on a regular install of MSDOS, the game wants every possible bit of memory it can have... spent ages trying to get it to run. That makes windows more like the older systems, like Amiga and ST. Granted there will always be a level of complexity not existing in the old days due to the open hardware platform (especially when hardware manufacturers decide to make things slightly off standard... I have stories about my WinTV Go card that would make you cry). But to suggest as you did in a previous post that Linux makes plug and play easier, well yes, you will get your soundcard recognized, but will your programs (aka games) recognize it? That's another issue entirely, since there is no universally accepted api set. I have never had to reset any of my system configurations (with the exception of 16 bit or 32 bit color... hate when a game won't accept 32bit color... anyone know what the problem is with that from a coding stand point?) for a windows program... it just runs. On the issue of crashing... all I can say is that Dos machines didn't crash as much because they weren't doing as much! Spec your windows system down to the bare minimum and only run one program at a time, with no lan connections or anything running, and believe me it won't crash either. Karl Kuras Visit Our House the online comic strip! http://ourhouse.trantornator.com -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock))))
If your game crashes...you have a complaint with the game, not the operating system (usually). Not really. So many games work on machine A,B C, but not in D, but others only seem to work on C D but not on A B... Poorly written/tested games will crash (or at least not work properly) under Linux, DOS or any other operating system. Of course. But with poorly coded OSs (Windows) they may crash more often than with stable ones. My favorite games don't crash under Windows. Shoot even my ST emulator doesn't crash (and it's freeware). Again I'm not saying Windows is perfect...I'm saying that DOS wasn't perfect either...and the acceptance of Windows as a game development platform has made things easier for gamers, which has made the PC more acceptable as a mass-market gaming platform, which has meant more games for us. And I can assure you...as a highly technical, programmer/technical support person working in the computer industry at the time, the PC was DIFFICULT to work with as a platform in the early nineties. My 80-year-old parents would not be able to look at pictures of their grandson on the Internet today if we still lived in a DOS world. 99.% of all game development in the world would be done on consoles. But this wasn't not a DOS vs Windows issue. If Windows had never existed we would be much better with other stable OSes out there. And we'd still have games. Hugh Pedro R. Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] So long, and thanks for all the fish http://www.salvador-caetano.pt http://www.globalshop.pt -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock))))
Well but that's the point of this string... you had to configure the crap yourself! I've never had to do any such thing under windows! You never had to configure anything in Windows? Reduce a bit your sound card acceleration? Tweak around with your gfx card settings? In DOS I only had to create the multiple configurations once (I usually did XMS with HiMem, EMS with HiMem, Mixed with HiMem and clean XMS), and you were set for every computer game out there. Try playing Chaos Engine on a regular install of MSDOS, the game wants every possible bit of memory it can have... spent ages trying to get it to run. That makes windows more like the older systems, like Amiga and ST. Granted there will always be a level of complexity not existing in the old days due to the open hardware platform (especially when hardware manufacturers decide to make things slightly off standard... I have stories about my WinTV Go card that would make you cry). But to suggest as you did in a previous post that Linux makes plug and play easier, well yes, you will get your soundcard recognized, but will your programs (aka games) recognize it? Sure. Haven't you ever played a game in Linux? I could surprise you with some data. Quake 2 in Linux is way faster than same machine running Quake 2 in Windows. Better yet, Quake 2 for Windows on a Windows emulator in Linux is faster than Quake 2 in Windows! Interesting, isn't it? That's another issue entirely, since there is no universally accepted api set. I have never had to reset any of my system configurations (with the exception of 16 bit or 32 bit color... hate when a game won't accept 32bit color... anyone know what the problem is with that from a coding stand point?) No idea, but there are programs out there that let you trick the game into thinking you're using another screen mode. for a windows program... it just runs. And then it just crashes and you have no idea why ;) On the issue of crashing... all I can say is that Dos machines didn't crash as much because they weren't doing as much! Spec your windows system down to the bare minimum and only run one program at a time, with no lan connections or anything running, and believe me it won't crash either. But you can run Linux with everything running and all services on, and it won't crash. In the worst possible event, X will crash but not the OS, so you can just start X again. Due to bad programming, an error in a software in Windows usually crashes everything. Yes, you've noticed by now how much I love Linux. Pedro R. Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] So long, and thanks for all the fish Karl Kuras [EMAIL PROTECTED] 16/11/01 14:54 Solicita-se resposta a swcollect Para: [EMAIL PROTECTED] A/C: Ref: cc: Assunto: Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock
RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock))))
It's up to the game developer to test it on different hardware configurations. The same problem exists with Linux. The problem is that there is less that 5% the number of systems running Linux (for example) that Windows. Apple of course doesn't have the problem with proprietary hardware. If Windows never existed we would all be on Apples right now. That would work for me as well. Hugh -Original Message- From: Pedro Quaresma [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, November 16, 2001 10:20 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock If your game crashes...you have a complaint with the game, not the operating system (usually). Not really. So many games work on machine A,B C, but not in D, but others only seem to work on C D but not on A B... Poorly written/tested games will crash (or at least not work properly) under Linux, DOS or any other operating system. Of course. But with poorly coded OSs (Windows) they may crash more often than with stable ones. My favorite games don't crash under Windows. Shoot even my ST emulator doesn't crash (and it's freeware). Again I'm not saying Windows is perfect...I'm saying that DOS wasn't perfect either...and the acceptance of Windows as a game development platform has made things easier for gamers, which has made the PC more acceptable as a mass-market gaming platform, which has meant more games for us. And I can assure you...as a highly technical, programmer/technical support person working in the computer industry at the time, the PC was DIFFICULT to work with as a platform in the early nineties. My 80-year-old parents would not be able to look at pictures of their grandson on the Internet today if we still lived in a DOS world. 99.% of all game development in the world would be done on consoles. But this wasn't not a DOS vs Windows issue. If Windows had never existed we would be much better with other stable OSes out there. And we'd still have games. Hugh Pedro R. Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] So long, and thanks for all the fish http://www.salvador-caetano.pt http://www.globalshop.pt -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock))))
Who knows where we would be if Windows never existed? We could be using for example AmigaOS, which handled multitasking better than most other OSes. Or MacOS which is even easier to use than Windows. Or Linux, BeOS, BSD, VAX (god forbid! ;) ) Anyway, Windows has serious issues, and we're now doomed to using it and/or its offsprings. Pedro R. Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] So long, and thanks for all the fish Hugh Falk [EMAIL PROTECTED] 16/11/01 15:43 Solicita-se resposta a swcollect Para: [EMAIL PROTECTED] A/C: Ref: cc: Assunto: RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock It's up to the game developer to test it on different hardware configurations. The same problem exists with Linux. The problem is that there is less that 5% the number of systems running Linux (for example) that Windows. Apple of course doesn't have the problem with proprietary hardware. If Windows never existed we would all be on Apples right now. That would work for me as well. Hugh -Original Message- From: Pedro Quaresma [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, November 16, 2001 10:20 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock If your game crashes...you have a complaint with the game, not the operating system (usually). Not really. So many games work on machine A,B C, but not in D, but others only seem to work on C D but not on A B... Poorly written/tested games will crash (or at least not work properly) under Linux, DOS or any other operating system. Of course. But with poorly coded OSs (Windows) they may crash more often than with stable ones. My favorite games don't crash under Windows. Shoot even my ST emulator doesn't crash (and it's freeware). Again I'm not saying Windows is perfect...I'm saying that DOS wasn't perfect either...and the acceptance of Windows as a game development platform has made things easier for gamers, which has made the PC more acceptable as a mass-market gaming platform, which has meant more games for us. And I can assure you...as a highly technical, programmer/technical support person working in the computer industry at the time, the PC was DIFFICULT to work with as a platform in the early nineties. My 80-year-old parents would not be able to look at pictures of their grandson on the Internet today if we still lived in a DOS world. 99.% of all game development in the world would be done on consoles. But this wasn't not a DOS vs Windows issue. If Windows had never existed we would be much better with other stable OSes out there. And we'd still have games. Hugh Pedro R. Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games
Pedro Quaresma boldly stated: I have never had to reset any of my system configurations (with the exception of 16 bit or 32 bit color... hate when a game won't accept 32bit color... anyone know what the problem is with that from a coding stand point?) No idea, but there are programs out there that let you trick the game into thinking you're using another screen mode. There are? Know any by name? The Activision Atari 2600 Action Packs only work in 256-color mode. (Bleah!) -- Lee K. Seitz * [EMAIL PROTECTED] * http://home.hiwaay.net/~lkseitz/ Wanted: Vintage Pac-M*n necktie (The asterisk is to keep from mucking up people's Usenet search results. Replace it with an a, if you didn't know.) -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock))))
It's pretty much a given that if Windows never existed we'd all have Apples right now. MS basically backstabbed Apple and released Windows...otherwise they would have been on the Apple bandwagon. Commodore and Atari would never have been able to compete with a solidly entrenched Apple/Microsoft line. Apple would be #1, DOS would be where Apple is today (Maybe with GEM or Geoworks as the shell), and Atari/Commodore (sadly) would be where they are today. Hugh -Original Message- From: Pedro Quaresma [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, November 16, 2001 10:52 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock Who knows where we would be if Windows never existed? We could be using for example AmigaOS, which handled multitasking better than most other OSes. Or MacOS which is even easier to use than Windows. Or Linux, BeOS, BSD, VAX (god forbid! ;) ) Anyway, Windows has serious issues, and we're now doomed to using it and/or its offsprings. Pedro R. Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] So long, and thanks for all the fish Hugh Falk [EMAIL PROTECTED] 16/11/01 15:43 Solicita-se resposta a swcollect Para: [EMAIL PROTECTED] A/C: Ref: cc: Assunto: RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock It's up to the game developer to test it on different hardware configurations. The same problem exists with Linux. The problem is that there is less that 5% the number of systems running Linux (for example) that Windows. Apple of course doesn't have the problem with proprietary hardware. If Windows never existed we would all be on Apples right now. That would work for me as well. Hugh -Original Message- From: Pedro Quaresma [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, November 16, 2001 10:20 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock If your game crashes...you have a complaint with the game, not the operating system (usually). Not really. So many games work on machine A,B C, but not in D, but others only seem to work on C D but not on A B... Poorly written/tested games will crash (or at least not work properly) under Linux, DOS or any other operating system. Of course. But with poorly coded OSs (Windows) they may crash more often than with stable ones. My favorite games don't crash under Windows. Shoot even my ST emulator doesn't crash (and it's freeware). Again I'm not saying Windows is perfect...I'm saying that DOS wasn't perfect either...and the acceptance of Windows as a game development platform has made things easier for gamers, which has made the PC more acceptable as a mass-market gaming platform, which has meant more games for us. And I can assure you...as a highly technical, programmer/technical support person working in the computer industry at the time, the PC was DIFFICULT to work with as a platform in the early nineties. My 80-year-old parents would not be able to look at pictures of their grandson on the Internet today if we still lived in a DOS world. 99.% of all game development in the world would be done on consoles. But this wasn't not a DOS vs Windows issue. If Windows had never existed we would be much better with other stable OSes out there. And we'd still have games. Hugh Pedro R. Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] So long, and thanks for all the fish http://www.salvador-caetano.pt http://www.globalshop.pt -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/ http://www.salvador-caetano.pt http://www.globalshop.pt -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/ --
RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock))))
2) I RARELY crash. I'm using Windows Me. Worst OS ever :) Going through normal use (Outlook, Word, Excel, FrontPage, various shareware utilities, and a bunch of games) I might have a crash once every couple of weeks. This is acceptable to me. This may sound strange for regular Windows users, but Linux hasn't crashed on me since 1998. Pedro R. Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] So long, and thanks for all the fish http://www.salvador-caetano.pt http://www.globalshop.pt -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games
I know I have downloaded one because Pirates! Gold for Windows only works with 256 colors too... wait, lemme check... OK, here it is: http://www.berend.com/qres.html It's calleed QRes and lets you choose a resolution for a specific program you run. Not sure on which Windows versions it works though, but will try running it on XP, very very soon. Pedro R. Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] So long, and thanks for all the fish Lee K. Seitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] 16/11/01 16:01 Solicita-se resposta a swcollect Para: [EMAIL PROTECTED] A/C: Ref: cc: Assunto: Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games Pedro Quaresma boldly stated: I have never had to reset any of my system configurations (with the exception of 16 bit or 32 bit color... hate when a game won't accept 32bit color... anyone know what the problem is with that from a coding stand point?) No idea, but there are programs out there that let you trick the game into thinking you're using another screen mode. There are? Know any by name? The Activision Atari 2600 Action Packs only work in 256-color mode. (Bleah!) -- Lee K. Seitz * [EMAIL PROTECTED] * http://home.hiwaay.net/~lkseitz/ Wanted: Vintage Pac-M*n necktie (The asterisk is to keep from mucking up people's Usenet search results. Replace it with an a, if you didn't know.) -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/ http://www.salvador-caetano.pt http://www.globalshop.pt -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock))))
From: Hugh Falk [EMAIL PROTECTED] Apple would be #1, DOS would be where Apple is today (Maybe with GEM or Geoworks as the shell), and Atari/Commodore (sadly) would be where they are today. I don't know if Commodore would be where it is now had it not been for Windows... granted they were falling behind the technology curve, but in 92-93 (what I see as the true end of the Amiga) the Mac was a falling system, which wouldn't recover until the iMac realease at the end of the decade. So, with no competition from MS the only gaming machine alternative would ahve been Amiga... granted Europe would have gone with it, and development would have been much slower (we'd probably just now be looking at games like Duke Nukem and Quake) but still, it would have become the standard. This is a good question as well... would consoles have developed as quickly without the PC pushing 3D? If you look at it, consoles didn't even think of 3D until the PC was doing it and then in only very limited ways, granted 3D is expensive, but it wasn't even part of the program had 3D gaming not been done on the PC, would anyone have demanded 3D on consoles? Sega obviously didn't expect it when designing the Saturn. Karl Kuras Visit Our House the online comic strip! http://ourhouse.trantornator.com -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock))))
Pedro Quaresma wrote: I'm not entirely sure I'd call Gates a gangster or snake-oil salesman -- that's Balmer's job and always has been. :-) Even before he became CEO? What did he do before? Biz guy. It's always been his job to wheel and deal. My only real lament with the rise of Microsoft is two-fold: 1. People have come to expect buggy software, multiple releases/patches, and frequent crashing. It has become acceptable. Never thought of it that way, but that's the way things go nowadays, and it's not about OSes only. Games are following the same path. Does anyone remember a game released after 1998 that had no need for a patch? Me neither. But I *do* remember when this kind of stuff simply didn't happen. I also recognize that products were simpler back then, and the OS/hardware platform was much simpler, but it's still frustrating. I'm curious to get Hugh's opinion on this: When developing for the PS2, were later game patches even an *option* like they are partially a *requirement* for PC games? 2. Geoworks Ensemble never got the recognition it deserved. The above is what really, really depresses me, especially Geoworks. Geoworks Ensamble? Please explain. I'd like once again to add #3 Old C64 and Apple freaks will remember Geos, which was an astonishing WYSIWYG GUI for word processing and general operation of the computer. When Geos decided to port this to the IBM, they came up with a GUI/operating environment that completely blew away Windows, even Windows 3.0. It had, amongst other features: - Full automatic virtual memory support (used EMS, XMS, high, UMB, and un-managed free RAM in addition to an automatic swap file) - Display postscript (!!!) and all printer drivers rasterized the postscript so you didn't need a postscript printer to print what you created - Bundled drawing program was vectors, not bitmap - Dot-matrix printer drivers would simulate higher resolution by overprinting (printing once, then half a pixel over, then half a pixel down, then half a pixel down and over) -- could simulate ~300 DPI on a 9-pin dot matrix printer - Interface was based on the established Motif GUI and featured detachable menus (use the File menu often? Tear it off and keep it next to you) - Program code and memory allocations were all in blocks of 64K or less, which not only kept Geoworks Ensemble compatible with real-mode CPUs like 8088/8086 but also allowed for very efficient and granular use of RAM. - If you wanted to run a DOS program, it would single-task itself out of RAM down to a 3K footprint to run the DOS program ..and all this ran on ANY PC with at least 512K RAM and a hard disk in 1990 (and a mouse, preferably, although not required). I swear I am not making this up! Geoworks had their best chance at mainstream success when Packard Bell installed it by default on all their machines in 1991 instead of Windows, but Microsoft threatened massive price gouging so they stopped doing it. Geoworks also didn't help their own situation; it took a very long time for the native Geoworks version of Lotus 1-2-3 to come out (you could run regular DOS Lotus 1-2-3 of course) which a lot of people were waiting for... they waited too long and 3.1 conquered the market. 3. There's a solid, free, open source, nearly bug-free, easy to use, extremely stable, etc OS out there (Linux of course) and the number of people using it is still almost irrelevant, because most prefer any expensive and full of bugs version of Windows. That's not a true statement. People don't *want* to use a buggy OS, but the applications they want to use forces them to. I only use Windows for multimedia authoring (something Linux simply cannot do) and 3D games. -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (was shock))))
Hugh Falk wrote: I'm not thrilled with everything about Windows; however, as a gamer...I don't see how you can't think Windows 95 and later made life MUCH better. Once Win 95 was adopted by game developers, and games were written (well) under it, gaming became so much easier. I still remember the bad old days of having multiple boot disks, QEMM, and a reconfig programugh...that was really a crappy way to game (having come from the ST, Amiga, Mac world). Yeah, but for that simplicity (I'm assuming you liked just having to stick the disk in and boot on those platforms) you sacrificed being able to load games on your hard disk. Not defending the IBM PC in this area; just making a counter-point. Loading games on Mac/ST/Amiga also took at least twice as long as on IBM clones of the time due to the hard disk. Once 95 became the standard, things for gamers got much better...peripherals (rudder pedals, steering wheels, etc) also become much easier to deal with...gotta love Plug and Play. To me, it sounds like another example of the good old days not being that good. Certainly from a gamer's perspective. My problem with today's Plug'n'Play devices is that they only work under Windows. I feel like that has locked me out of other platforms that are just as viable for gaming. Console gaming has become a lot more enticing recently. I still haven't seen anything that beats my 1GHz Athlon with GeForce 3 TI 500, but the *types* of games you can get on consoles is appealing. Just my $0.02... -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games(wasshock))))
Pedro Quaresma wrote: Memmaker was not optimal. I could get better results by configuring config.sys autoexec.bat myself, usually involving, IIRC, shadowing/unshadowing memory and other interesting tricks. I remember I used to get more than 600k base memory even with sound card and CD-ROM drivers loaded. Later on, with RDosUmb, 610+ was possible even with smartdrive loaded. One of the reasons I purchased all QEMM versions from 6.x onward is because I didn't have to even THINK about optimization and I got 620K free DOS RAM. If I got paranoid, THEN I brought out my mad tweaking skillz (my record is 628k free) but for the most part I loved QEMM -- brilliant product. -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock))))
Karl Kuras wrote: never had to reset any of my system configurations (with the exception of 16 bit or 32 bit color... hate when a game won't accept 32bit color... anyone know what the problem is with that from a coding stand point?) for a windows program... it just runs. Laziness or arrogance -- usually both. There isn't any legit reason why you should have to screw with your desktop color depth to run a game. On the issue of crashing... all I can say is that Dos machines didn't crash as much because they weren't doing as much! Spec your windows system down to the bare minimum and only run one program at a time, with no lan connections or anything running, and believe me it won't crash either. ..if some errant program hasn't updated a system component to the point of non-compatibility. This *can* be blamed on Microsoft (and not the program) because it's their architecture that makes updates necessary. It's a flawed design. -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games(wasshock))))
Pedro Quaresma wrote: But this wasn't not a DOS vs Windows issue. If Windows had never existed we would be much better with other stable OSes out there. And we'd still have games. Be careful in your advocacy -- Linux has only recently earned the stable moniker. SVGAlib used to bring your entire system down if you didn't compile in the right chipset, for goodness' sake -- this is no different than Windows' instability if you have the wrong driver for your video card. Stability comes with age and/or good design. -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games(wasshock))))
Pedro Quaresma wrote: You never had to configure anything in Windows? Reduce a bit your sound card acceleration? Tweak around with your gfx card settings? What the heck is reducing sound card accleration? I only tweak GFX if I'm trying to overclock and get better performance :) But to suggest as you did in a previous post that Linux makes plug and play easier, well yes, you will get your soundcard recognized, but will your programs (aka games) recognize it? Sure. Haven't you ever played a game in Linux? I could surprise you with some data. Quake 2 in Linux is way faster than same machine running Quake 2 It is not way faster. I don't consider 3-5fps way faster. in Windows. Better yet, Quake 2 for Windows on a Windows emulator in Linux is faster than Quake 2 in Windows! Interesting, isn't it? In software rendering, yes. But people don't play Q2 in software. Let me ask you this: What games *other* than Quake (and Civ3, and Myth) can we play in Linux? Especially now that Loki has bit the dust? (silence) Okay, are we done arguing about which OS is better than the other for gaming? It's a pointless argument. Consoles whip all computer platforms anyway since they never crash and never have compatibility issues. On the issue of crashing... all I can say is that Dos machines didn't crash as much because they weren't doing as much! Spec your windows system down to the bare minimum and only run one program at a time, with no lan connections or anything running, and believe me it won't crash either. But you can run Linux with everything running and all services on, and it ..and the game will run, but pause for a few seconds every minute while some process decides that it really really needs Ring 0 access in the kernel. Come on, choose your priorities dude! won't crash. In the worst possible event, X will crash but not the OS, so And that's acceptable? I'm just saying you should choose your battles wisely. If you were arguing for Linux as a server OS, I'd roll out the red carpet and step aside. But gaming isn't one of those platforms you should debate on. -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games(wasshock))))
Pedro Quaresma wrote: Who knows where we would be if Windows never existed? We could be using for example AmigaOS, which handled multitasking better than most other OSes. Or At the time, it was the only mainstream multitasking OS so I'm not sure what you're comparing it with. Hopefully not today's multitasking OSes (Linux, OS/2, Windows) because it was nothing more than round-robin timeslices (just like Windows 9x). MacOS which is even easier to use than Windows. Or Linux, BeOS, BSD, VAX (god forbid! ;) ) If you're saying that the Amiga's OS multitasked better than Linux or BeOS, you haven't done your research properly. -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games(wasshock))))
Pedro Quaresma wrote: 2) I RARELY crash. I'm using Windows Me. Worst OS ever :) Going through normal use (Outlook, Word, Excel, FrontPage, various shareware utilities, and a bunch of games) I might have a crash once every couple of weeks. This is acceptable to me. This may sound strange for regular Windows users, but Linux hasn't crashed on me since 1998. Not *once*? Methinks you're lying. The 2.0 kernels were hardly stable -- either that, or you rebooted all the time before it had a chance to crash. That's cheating ;-) -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock))))
But the Mac wouldn't have been a failing system with Microsoft as an ally (instead of competition). The Apple was on its way to being HUGE when it was undercut by Microsoft. Maybe OS/2 would have had a chance without Windows though. Don't get me wrong...I was one of the BIGGEST Commodore and Atari supporters at the time (rivaling Pedro's support for Linux :-) However, those companies didn't know what to do (and frankly didn't have the resources) to make their products mainstream. You're probably right about consoles...the PC really pushed them to 3D. Hugh -Original Message- From: Karl Kuras [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, November 16, 2001 11:17 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock From: Hugh Falk [EMAIL PROTECTED] Apple would be #1, DOS would be where Apple is today (Maybe with GEM or Geoworks as the shell), and Atari/Commodore (sadly) would be where they are today. I don't know if Commodore would be where it is now had it not been for Windows... granted they were falling behind the technology curve, but in 92-93 (what I see as the true end of the Amiga) the Mac was a falling system, which wouldn't recover until the iMac realease at the end of the decade. So, with no competition from MS the only gaming machine alternative would ahve been Amiga... granted Europe would have gone with it, and development would have been much slower (we'd probably just now be looking at games like Duke Nukem and Quake) but still, it would have become the standard. This is a good question as well... would consoles have developed as quickly without the PC pushing 3D? If you look at it, consoles didn't even think of 3D until the PC was doing it and then in only very limited ways, granted 3D is expensive, but it wasn't even part of the program had 3D gaming not been done on the PC, would anyone have demanded 3D on consoles? Sega obviously didn't expect it when designing the Saturn. Karl Kuras Visit Our House the online comic strip! http://ourhouse.trantornator.com -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
RE: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock))))
No...a patch for our PS2 games was never discussed as an option. If something disastrous were to happen, we would have to recall I'm sure...it would have been horrible. Our QA effort was tremendous, and it is certainly possible to create bug free (or acceptable bug-only) games even with today's complex games. However, that is one of the joys of the console...fixed hardware configuration (relatively). On the PC this is much more difficult, but it is often the game developer/publisher who pulls the plug on further QA for financial reasons...it is their choice to ship a buggy game...not the fault of the OS or the hardware. Hugh -Original Message- From: Jim Leonard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, November 16, 2001 12:02 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (wasshock Pedro Quaresma wrote: I'm not entirely sure I'd call Gates a gangster or snake-oil salesman -- that's Balmer's job and always has been. :-) Even before he became CEO? What did he do before? Biz guy. It's always been his job to wheel and deal. My only real lament with the rise of Microsoft is two-fold: 1. People have come to expect buggy software, multiple releases/patches, and frequent crashing. It has become acceptable. Never thought of it that way, but that's the way things go nowadays, and it's not about OSes only. Games are following the same path. Does anyone remember a game released after 1998 that had no need for a patch? Me neither. But I *do* remember when this kind of stuff simply didn't happen. I also recognize that products were simpler back then, and the OS/hardware platform was much simpler, but it's still frustrating. I'm curious to get Hugh's opinion on this: When developing for the PS2, were later game patches even an *option* like they are partially a *requirement* for PC games? 2. Geoworks Ensemble never got the recognition it deserved. The above is what really, really depresses me, especially Geoworks. Geoworks Ensamble? Please explain. I'd like once again to add #3 Old C64 and Apple freaks will remember Geos, which was an astonishing WYSIWYG GUI for word processing and general operation of the computer. When Geos decided to port this to the IBM, they came up with a GUI/operating environment that completely blew away Windows, even Windows 3.0. It had, amongst other features: - Full automatic virtual memory support (used EMS, XMS, high, UMB, and un-managed free RAM in addition to an automatic swap file) - Display postscript (!!!) and all printer drivers rasterized the postscript so you didn't need a postscript printer to print what you created - Bundled drawing program was vectors, not bitmap - Dot-matrix printer drivers would simulate higher resolution by overprinting (printing once, then half a pixel over, then half a pixel down, then half a pixel down and over) -- could simulate ~300 DPI on a 9-pin dot matrix printer - Interface was based on the established Motif GUI and featured detachable menus (use the File menu often? Tear it off and keep it next to you) - Program code and memory allocations were all in blocks of 64K or less, which not only kept Geoworks Ensemble compatible with real-mode CPUs like 8088/8086 but also allowed for very efficient and granular use of RAM. - If you wanted to run a DOS program, it would single-task itself out of RAM down to a 3K footprint to run the DOS program .and all this ran on ANY PC with at least 512K RAM and a hard disk in 1990 (and a mouse, preferably, although not required). I swear I am not making this up! Geoworks had their best chance at mainstream success when Packard Bell installed it by default on all their machines in 1991 instead of Windows, but Microsoft threatened massive price gouging so they stopped doing it. Geoworks also didn't help their own situation; it took a very long time for the native Geoworks version of Lotus 1-2-3 to come out (you could run regular DOS Lotus 1-2-3 of course) which a lot of people were waiting for... they waited too long and 3.1 conquered the market. 3. There's a solid, free, open source, nearly bug-free, easy to use, extremely stable, etc OS out there (Linux of course) and the number of people using it is still almost irrelevant, because most prefer any expensive and full of bugs version of Windows. That's not a true statement. People don't *want* to use a buggy OS, but the applications they want to use forces them to. I only use Windows for multimedia authoring (something Linux simply cannot do) and 3D games. -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (was shock))))
From: Hugh Falk [EMAIL PROTECTED] By the late 80's hard drives were common on STs and Amigas (I had two). They may have been common here in the states, but over in Europe (where the bulk of Amiga users and games were) barely anyone had them. Most of the kids I went to high school with had Amigas and I can't recall a single one of them having an HD (heck only one of them had more then 1MB RAM in their system). The reason the machine was popular was it's cheapness and that meant things like HD's fell by the wayside. The most popular games on the Amiga tended to be small, like Cannon Fodder and Settlers which were only 3 disks each. Karl Kuras Visit Our House the online comic strip! http://ourhouse.trantornator.com -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer
Jim Leonard boldly stated: - Dot-matrix printer drivers would simulate higher resolution by overprinting (printing once, then half a pixel over, then half a pixel down, then half a pixel down and over) -- could simulate ~300 DPI on a 9-pin dot matrix printer Sounds very slow. Was it? -- Lee K. Seitz * [EMAIL PROTECTED] * http://home.hiwaay.net/~lkseitz/ Wanted: Vintage Pac-M*n necktie (The asterisk is to keep from mucking up people's Usenet search results. Replace it with an a, if you didn't know.) -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games (was shock))))
Hugh Falk wrote: By the late 80's hard drives were common on STs and Amigas (I had two). The problem with games is that the copy protection often kept you from installing them on a hard drive (on all platforms). That's why code wheels, page numbers, etc. became so popular. I hated them, but it was worth getting hard drive speed. Jim, you're right...load times off floppy were just horriblethough still a lot better than cassettes in the C-64 days :-). What I really hated was when they had disk copy protection and a code wheel! ACK, I don't think I've ever had the pleasure of crack^H^H^H^H^Hrunning any of those. The most elegant codewheel copy-protection I've ever seen had to be Rocket Ranger. The code wheel that came with the game was necessary to play it -- to travel from one country to another, you had to enter in both source and destination and the amount of fuel needed to get from here to there was what you stuck in your rocket pack for the flight. You couldn't just disable the code wheel code, or you'd disable the entire game. -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer
Lee K. Seitz wrote: Jim Leonard boldly stated: - Dot-matrix printer drivers would simulate higher resolution by overprinting (printing once, then half a pixel over, then half a pixel down, then half a pixel down and over) -- could simulate ~300 DPI on a 9-pin dot matrix printer Sounds very slow. Was it? It was -- and quite noisy. But the quality jump was well worth it. -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
[SWCollect] 1983 IBM educational titles
Well I had an interesting lunch today. A friend had spotted a message in a thread in the local newsgroup (yes, my city has it's own Usenet newsgroup) about some place full of surplus computers. So today, three of us went to check it out. As I said, it was very interesting. After we finally found the place (no sign), we went in and asked if we could look around. They said sure. The building is pretty much all warehouse, with some unfinshed office space up front. Most of it was filled with pallets of wrapped monitors. Each pallet was labeled with a 8.5x11 piece of paper computer printed with big letters (e.g. Working 17 monitors, Non-working 14 monitors). There were also stacks and huge boxes of other stuff. It seems they recycle or resell all this stuff. The guy there said they had a big order of monitors ready to be shipped to Africa (or was it South America?). In the back, we found a huge box full of nothing but pins snipped off capacitors and other electronic components. When I say huge, I mean I tried moving it just to see how heavy it was. I couldn't budge it! The computers appeared to be mostly 486s and such. We saw a fair smattering of various older (pre-Quadra, I think) Mac models, one original PC (or maybe it was an XT, I couldn't tell), an Apple II+, a couple Sun Sparc pieces, and I forget what else. Also, an ancient tape drive that we all agreed would make a great display piece somewhere. (I thought it would make a nice, if small, coffee table. Maybe an end table would have been more appropriate.) There were some partially stripped racks of telco equipment outside. Anyway, to bring this on topic, in the very back, I found some boxes of software. Many slipcased copies of IBM Basic 3.0. I thought I'd finally found something when I saw a box that said Epyx, but it turned out to be some print program (a la Print Shop, which I also found copies of). The best I came up with were some 1983 1985 IBM educational titles: Bumble Games, Monster Math, Missing Letters, and Primary Editor. They're all in the nice grayish-beige plastic cases with the manuals, but only BG and PE have the original disks. (The others have copies.) I didn't have any money on me, but asked the guy about them anyway. He said I could have them because they were just going to throw them out. Are these worth anything to anybody? Don't worry, Jim, I'll enter the appropriate ones in MobyGames eventually. I see one or two are already there. I also got a shrinkwrapped copy of MS-DOS 5.0 for free. (There were several.) -- Lee K. Seitz * [EMAIL PROTECTED] * http://home.hiwaay.net/~lkseitz/ Wanted: Vintage Pac-M*n necktie (The asterisk is to keep from mucking up people's Usenet search results. Replace it with an a, if you didn't know.) -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
