Re: [Freedos-user] re-porting Frotz to DOS
On Wed, 7 Dec 2011, Rugxulo wrote: Hi, On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 1:30 AM, David Griffith dgri...@cs.csubak.edu wrote: Recently I've dusted off Frotz and am actively working on it now. One of the things I'd like to do is incorporate the changes I've made to the core back to DOS Frotz. In particular I want to allow DOS Frotz to open blorb files and get sound and V6 graphics resources from there instead of seperate files. I want to make sure the result is usable on the IBM PC 5150. I have a copy of Turbo C 2.01, which should be good enough. Does anyone here have any other suggestions? Do you actually have an IBM 5150? I'm not saying targeting that is a bad goal, but indeed it's hard to target something you don't have in real life in actual hardware. Or is that just your generic target (aka, 8086)? I do have a 5150, but it'll take some time and room to get it into working order. I think if I target the 8086 it should be fine. By the way, does anyone here use FreeDOS on a 5150 with any regularity? I think TC201 is too old to be useful (some bugs, lacks). At the very least, I'd recommend TC++101 or (even better) OpenWatcom. There are others too, of course. And keep in mind that I've only very rarely used Frotz, mostly for zedfunge / zbefunge, and I've not really used it for playing games, esp. not gfx ones. The one I ended up preferring was from circa 2000 (Jim Dunleavy? 2.40?), a port to DJGPP. So I would personally start there (esp. since older 16-bit version was only 2.32, IIRC). http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXinterpretersXfrotz.html Jim Dunleavy actually hasn't been involved in the Frotz project since 2.40 came out. It was mostly me since then. There were a lot of changes to the Frotz core between 2.32 and 2.40. I think you were noticing those changes. P.S. IIRC, usosutki (sp?), aka Steve Nickolas, was involved in a port at some point. He was active on this mailing list a few months ago, so perhaps he'll respond with better info. I can't seem to find any reference to him doing anything with Frotz. -- 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?-- Cloud Services Checklist: Pricing and Packaging Optimization This white paper is intended to serve as a reference, checklist and point of discussion for anyone considering optimizing the pricing and packaging model of a cloud services business. Read Now! http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51491232/___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] ..
.. http://koag.tym.cz/christmas.html?uCID=y9i1 -- Cloud Services Checklist: Pricing and Packaging Optimization This white paper is intended to serve as a reference, checklist and point of discussion for anyone considering optimizing the pricing and packaging model of a cloud services business. Read Now! http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51491232/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] re-porting Frotz to DOS
Hi, On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Michael B. Brutman mbbrut...@brutman.com wrote: I can't comment on Frotz specifically - I don't know what it is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-machine The Z-machine is a virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games. The Z of Z-machine stands for Zork, Infocom's first adventure game. Frotz was originally written in C by Stefan Jokisch in 1995 for DOS. By 2002, development stalled and the program was picked up by David Griffith. (Heheh, he's famous!!) Well that answers that. ;-) However, if you are looking to target a 5150 or something similar Turbo C++ 3.0 for DOS and Open Watcom 1.9 are my current favorites. All of my mTCP work has been done with those two. Turbo C++ doesn't optimize code as well but it is functional and has a smaller runtime footprint. Open Watcom has a more full featured runtime, but it is larger. But TC++ 3.0 isn't freeware nor easily available, right?? Maybe you could check eBay, but it's probably wiser to just use (freeware-ish) TC++ 1.01 or (better) OpenWatcom or similar. (Pacific C? Desmet C? BCC/Dev86? Digital Mars? LSI C-86?) Again, it's not that TC 2.01 is so bad, but TC++ 1.01 is slightly better in a few ways (even ignoring the dopey C++ part, heh). And OpenWatcom should surpass it even, but that requires 386+ host (similar to DMC, though that is Win32-host only). But it's not for me to decide for you what compiler is best: use whatever works! -- Cloud Services Checklist: Pricing and Packaging Optimization This white paper is intended to serve as a reference, checklist and point of discussion for anyone considering optimizing the pricing and packaging model of a cloud services business. Read Now! http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51491232/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] re-porting Frotz to DOS
Rugxulo, I could have looked up Z machine - was just pressed for time this morning. I try not to sound willfully ignorant. ;-0 (Which reminds me - I wanted to do a telnet server that used the Zork virtual machine as a proof of concept. Now I know where to go start when I find the time. Zork on the internet via Telnet! Eliza would be another good one.) Borland Turbo C++ 3.0 is not freeware, but I don't think it is hard to find. I have sold a few copies that I personally rescued from the trash in the past year or two for a nominal amount. It runs well on a 386 or 486 and is easy to use. Look for a copy on eBay, the Vintage Computer Marketplace, etc. It can be used without the manuals by somebody with a little experience. Open Watcom is open source and readily available but it is quite overwhelming for a newbie. It took me a while to get over my fear of it, and I had plenty of experience with TC++, gcc, IBM's xlC, etc. But I'm happy I made the switch. Jim Leonard is a Turbo Pascal bigot. I think he's stuck in the mid 80s. :-) To be fair I think he uses it as a loader for his assembler code. Any reasonable compiler and development setup is probably best run on a 386 or better machine, unless you are using something like Turbo Pascal 3.0. TP 3.0 actually ran well on the oldest hardware, and fit too. Most of the C compilers have just too big of a footprint. As much as I like my PCjr and 5150/5160s, I still do most of my development work on a Windows XP machine and I test in DOSBox or a virtual machine. I did most of the mTCP development work on a 386-40, but my current setup is far more productive. (And all of this reminds me that I need to do a series of web pages or a Wiki on getting started programming in DOS. It is a dying art ...) Mike -- Cloud Services Checklist: Pricing and Packaging Optimization This white paper is intended to serve as a reference, checklist and point of discussion for anyone considering optimizing the pricing and packaging model of a cloud services business. Read Now! http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51491232/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
