Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games(wasshock))))
From: Jim Leonard [EMAIL PROTECTED] Actually, it makes perfect sense to reinvent these things since one of the whole points of consoles is to keep costs down so that you can make money on the hardware. I'm not sure... you have to remember that reinventing stuff costs a lot of RD dollars. I'm willing to wager that the Xbox was relatively cheap to design, with specs changing up to the last minute, whereas with a regular console, everything has to be made specially for that machine and is fixed early in development, which creates obsolete technology issues.So if you save a ton on RD then you can take a bigger hit on the actual machine sale. You can add these things to any new console design. I started thinking about this yesterday... what more can you add to a console other then a few little graphic tweaks these days? I mean, in the days of 2D consoles, you could add something like a Mode 7 chip, which allowed pseudo-3D and the like, this was a huge innovation, but now that everythign is done in true 3D, you could add lighting hardware and the like, and improve the sound, but there really is nothing beyond just more power. It seems like we've reached that point with console development it's just like pc's in that you are wondering how many polys you can manipulate. That travesty of pricing is what happens when you combine licensing with the high cost of hardware (the carts use up to 32MB of ROM, which is very expensive in terms of manufacturing and materials). I laughed at my friends who paid exorbatant prices for SNES and N64 games that cost more then 50 bucks... I just can't see that kind of highway robbery. I'm curious: Why do you think consoles were getting bogged down by not having internal hard drives? Saved game data primarily (I hate save points that require you to redo stuff). But also from a gameplay standpoint, it's getting harder to make games that look good and fit into system memory. Load times are becoming truly a pain in the butt in many games (especially on PS2) and the problems were only going to get worse with the next generation of consoles. The harddrive, if used right, and I doubt the first generation of xbox titles will do that, is going to make these games easier to deal with and eliminate the loading times that console users used to make fun of (cause carts didn't have them). Regarding X-Box as being the most powerful: A very strong argument can be made for console hardware being less powerful on paper but more powerful when specifically used for gaming. I agree wholeheartedly, that's why you will see great looking games on xbox that will run much better than they would on a 753mhz pc. But that has largely to do with lack of OS overhead, lower resolutions (really a MAJOR factor when you think about it... how fast does Q3 run at 640X480 vs. 1024X768?) and simplified codesets. I'm not advocating making consoles that are little pcs, but that there are certain extras in a pc which console gaming could really use. The ability to network consoles is great (I remember playing networked WipeoutXL on the old PS1, it was blast) and the harddrive, when used right will add a whole new dimension to the games, that I don't think gamers will be willing to do without from now on. 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))))
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? Hmmm. I remember a slide bar somewhere about the sound card... maybe it was some completely different thing. I only tweak GFX if I'm trying to overclock and get better performance :) How many times have you had to uninstall your regular drivers, because the newer nVidia's were faster, and then uninstalled your nVidia's because the older nVidias were even faster, and then uninstalled those and installed GLSetup because the old nVidias were incompatible with game X that you love so much... well, been there, done that. 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. 3-5? We had managed to get more than that. 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. Nevertheless, it was interesting to compare. 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? You gotta be kidding, right? www.tuxgames.com? Loki is still up and running, with two games comming up in Xmas? Does any of the following ring a bell: Neverwinter Nights, Soldier of Fortune, Deux Ex, Jagged Alliance 2, Descent 3, Heavy Metal FAKK 2, Kohan, Rune, Railroad Tycoon 2, Sin, Shogo, Tribes 2, etcetc? And if that's not enough, then load up your WinE and play your Windows games there! ;) (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. Consoles never crash? What's this that I hear everywhere about the XBox on exposition on the different Toys'r'us around USA reading randomly from the CD drive, failing to output any sound, stopping abruptly with error messages, etc? 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! Huh? I've played Quake 3 (no, I'm not proud of having played Quake 3, but we had nothing else to play on network back in those days ;) ) for hours in a row with crappy computers running Mandrake Linux and never experienced pauses and such. won't crash. In the worst possible event, X will crash but not the OS, so And that's acceptable? Well, I prefer the X to crash (and even so it happens with less frequency than Windows crashes) than a complete OS crash. Just startx and you're back on. 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. I still don't understand why not, but nevermind. I have this stable OS that has the same potentiality as this other unstable OS. In the very least it's as good to run games as the other. 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))))
Does any of the following ring a bell: Neverwinter Nights, Soldier of Fortune, Deux Ex, Jagged Alliance 2, Descent 3, Heavy Metal FAKK 2, Kohan, Rune, Railroad Tycoon 2, Sin, Shogo, Tribes 2, etcetc? How many of these are less then a year and a half plus old? Consoles never crash? What's this that I hear everywhere about the XBox on exposition on the different Toys'r'us around USA reading randomly from the CD drive, failing to output any sound, stopping abruptly with error messages, etc? It wasnt' the CD Drive failing. The demo cd's that they sent out were bad burns. I have a friend who manages an EB and he said that a whole batch of the CD's were bad, causing the problem to be huge. Not a software glitch (as far as coding). 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))))
Does any of the following ring a bell: Neverwinter Nights, Soldier of Fortune, Deux Ex, Jagged Alliance 2, Descent 3, Heavy Metal FAKK 2, Kohan, Rune, Railroad Tycoon 2, Sin, Shogo, Tribes 2, etcetc? How many of these are less then a year and a half plus old? Well, these are portings of games to Linux. As they were originally made for windows, of course at least some decent amount of time is necessary to do all the converting. 70% of the above run much better in Linux, of course. Oh, The Sims was already ported / is being ported too. Consoles never crash? What's this that I hear everywhere about the XBox on exposition on the different Toys'r'us around USA reading randomly from the CD drive, failing to output any sound, stopping abruptly with error messages, etc? It wasnt' the CD Drive failing. The demo cd's that they sent out were bad burns. I have a friend who manages an EB and he said that a whole batch of the CD's were bad, causing the problem to be huge. Not a software glitch (as far as coding). Wrong. Read the following: http://www.gaming-age.com/cgi-bin/news/news.pl?y=2001m=10nid=22-159.db Quoting some interesting parts: The Xbox unit had no disc inside and displayed a menu screen to access the hard drive and CD player. But customers who tried to navigate through menus could do little else but wait while the machine tried to load the next menu An Xbox unit in Software Etc. store in Sioux Falls, SD was reported to skip, freeze, and have audio problems Out of five stores that have playable demos within a ten mile area, only two have working units In conclusion, here's the clash of the two following axioms: Consoles don't crash and Everything that Microsoft does is buggy :) 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))))
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? Hmmm. I remember a slide bar somewhere about the sound card... maybe it was some completely different thing. I have never, ever had to do that. What the heck is wrong with your system? ;-) I say that with a wink because, sometimes, the user does nothing wrong and it still flakes out. But you can say this for any post-1990 OS/hardware combo anyway. I only tweak GFX if I'm trying to overclock and get better performance :) How many times have you had to uninstall your regular drivers, because the newer nVidia's were faster, and then uninstalled your nVidia's because the older nVidias were even faster, and then uninstalled those and installed GLSetup because the old nVidias were incompatible with game X that you love so much... well, been there, done that. Well, maybe you should've stuck with the original drivers. There's a reason they only officially release drivers twice a year. You aren't blaming this on the user or the OS, are you? It is not way faster. I don't consider 3-5fps way faster. 3-5? We had managed to get more than that. Then you have a broken setup or you're doing something wrong. In games where the rendering pipeline is 85% of the total gameslice *and* are hardware-assisted *and* the hardware assist is the same library (OpenGL) *and* the API for both platforms is provided by the same company (nVidia), there is no way Linux is going to be 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. Nevertheless, it was interesting to compare. So is running Windows in an emulator that itself is running in Windows, but I don't see the usefulness of it. 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. Consoles never crash? What's this that I hear everywhere about the XBox on exposition on the different Toys'r'us around USA reading randomly from the CD drive, failing to output any sound, stopping abruptly with error messages, etc? At no point did I promote the X-Box as a good console. Come up with *ANY* other report of a console crashing (NOT x-box). won't crash. In the worst possible event, X will crash but not the OS, so And that's acceptable? Well, I prefer the X to crash (and even so it happens with less frequency than Windows crashes) than a complete OS crash. Just startx and you're back on. But you still lose data. Your argument is really well, it's faster to restart X then it is to reboot a hung winbox. One is not better than the other. 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. I still don't understand why not, but nevermind. I have this stable OS that has the same potentiality as this other unstable OS. In the very least it's as good to run games as the other. Hey, I can lament for years why the Dreamcast didn't succeed but that doesn't change the current state of things :-) -- http://www.MobyGames.com/ The world's most comprehensive gaming database project. -- 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))))
Jim Leonard wrote: 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? Hmmm. I remember a slide bar somewhere about the sound card... maybe it was some completely different thing. I have never, ever had to do that. What the heck is wrong with your system? ;-) Don't ask! :) It happened one time that I had to switch my beloved AWE64 ISA for an unknown PCI sound card and it was working with the AWE's windows drivers... the problems I had before I found that it was a SB PCI64 I say that with a wink because, sometimes, the user does nothing wrong and it still flakes out. But you can say this for any post-1990 OS/hardware combo anyway. Sure. On some less than on others, though. I only tweak GFX if I'm trying to overclock and get better performance :) How many times have you had to uninstall your regular drivers, because the newer nVidia's were faster, and then uninstalled your nVidia's because the older nVidias were even faster, and then uninstalled those and installed GLSetup because the old nVidias were incompatible with game X that you love so much... well, been there, done that. Well, maybe you should've stuck with the original drivers. There's a reason they only officially release drivers twice a year. You aren't blaming this on the user or the OS, are you? Well, I don't know whose fault it is, but I don't know if this has anything to do with official drivers or not. I mean, both the chipset drivers (in my case nVidia's) and the gfx card (Asus) should be compatible with the same software, right? It is not way faster. I don't consider 3-5fps way faster. 3-5? We had managed to get more than that. Then you have a broken setup or you're doing something wrong. In games where the rendering pipeline is 85% of the total gameslice *and* are hardware-assisted *and* the hardware assist is the same library (OpenGL) *and* the API for both platforms is provided by the same company (nVidia), there is no way Linux is going to be way faster. Hmmm, I'l try to find one of the guys that actually ran the test and I'll let you know. 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. Nevertheless, it was interesting to compare. So is running Windows in an emulator that itself is running in Windows, but I don't see the usefulness of it. The fact that some windows applications work faster when windows itself is being emulated is useful. I've never seen linux being emulated on a winbox, and I doubt good results could be achieved. 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. Consoles never crash? What's this that I hear everywhere about the XBox on exposition on the different Toys'r'us around USA reading randomly from the CD drive, failing to output any sound, stopping abruptly with error messages, etc? At no point did I promote the X-Box as a good console. Come up with *ANY* other report of a console crashing (NOT x-box). No, you never promoted xbox, but you said consoles whip all computer platforms anyway since they never crash (hey, it's right there 11 lines above! ;) ), and there Microsoft comes along and proves you wrong! ;) won't crash. In the worst possible event, X will crash but not the OS, so And that's acceptable? Well, I prefer the X to crash (and even so it happens with less frequency than Windows crashes) than a complete OS crash. Just startx and you're back on. But you still lose data. Your argument is really well, it's faster to restart X then it is to reboot a hung winbox. One is not better than the other. It's completely different. X is just a GUI. An application. I work lots of times without the GUI, I just love multitasking 80x25 screens. In windows, the GUI is part of the OS. 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. I still don't understand why not, but nevermind. I have this stable OS that has the same potentiality as this other unstable OS. In the very least it's as good to run games as the other. Hey, I can lament for years why the Dreamcast didn't succeed but that doesn't change the current state of things :-) I'm not trying to change the current state of things, I'm purely in the lamenting phase ;) Hey, I wish my soccer club had more fans, but I'm not going to do anything about that either (except to lament it, too ;) ) Pedro R. Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] So long, and thanks
Re: OT Gates (was: [SWCollect] Rogue (was Killer Games (was Soccer Games(wasshock))))
Pedro Quaresma wrote: At no point did I promote the X-Box as a good console. Come up with *ANY* other report of a console crashing (NOT x-box). No, you never promoted xbox, but you said consoles whip all computer platforms anyway since they never crash (hey, it's right there 11 lines above! ;) ), and there Microsoft comes along and proves you wrong! ;) You know as well as I do that the X-box does not qualify as a console (it's not custom hardware or a custom OS or a custom bus/pipeine -- it's a PC in a package). It's completely different. X is just a GUI. An application. I work lots of times without the GUI, I just love multitasking 80x25 screens. In windows, the GUI is part of the OS. Yes, but if X crashes you still lose everything. It's not better. -- http://www.MobyGames.com/ The world's most comprehensive gaming database project. -- 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: Pedro Quaresma [EMAIL PROTECTED] It wasnt' the CD Drive failing. The demo cd's that they sent out were bad burns. I have a friend who manages an EB and he said that a whole batch of the CD's were bad, causing the problem to be huge. Not a software glitch (as far as coding). Wrong. Read the following: http://www.gaming-age.com/cgi-bin/news/news.pl?y=2001m=10nid=22-159.db Quoting some interesting parts: The Xbox unit had no disc inside and displayed a menu screen to access the hard drive and CD player. But customers who tried to navigate through menus could do little else but wait while the machine tried to load the next menu Well, hate to break it to you, but you chose the worse source in the world for this one. Gaming Age articles are mostly written by amateurs who get their rumors off newsgroups. I spoke to the manager of an EB who happens to be a computer science mager (aka Programmer) and he gave me the scoop on the faulty disks. What this is reporting is wild assumptions by people who just saw the units go down and spoke to high school stock boys with as much knowledge about hardware as my grandmother. Try to find a similar article on a respectable site like maybe gamespot or ign. 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))))
Karl Kuras wrote: Well, hate to break it to you, but you chose the worse source in the world for this one. Gaming Age articles are mostly written by amateurs who get their rumors off newsgroups. I spoke to the manager of an EB who happens to be a computer science mager (aka Programmer) and he gave me the scoop on the ^ KLONK OW! That hit me so hard it made a noise. Hopefully you meant mage, which is humorous :-) but I think you meant to write major. I take it you're not an English mager? ;-) faulty disks. What this is reporting is wild assumptions by people who just saw the units go down and spoke to high school stock boys with as much knowledge about hardware as my grandmother. Try to find a similar article on a respectable site like maybe gamespot or ign. Agreed, but even then I have to stress again that the X-Box is the first console that doesn't fit the traditional mold of console (custom hardware, bus, and OS; built from the ground up to be a gaming console). -- http://www.MobyGames.com/ The world's most comprehensive gaming database project. -- 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: Jim Leonard [EMAIL PROTECTED] Agreed, but even then I have to stress again that the X-Box is the first console that doesn't fit the traditional mold of console (custom hardware, bus, and OS; built from the ground up to be a gaming console). True it doesn't, but I like to think of it as the reinventing of what the Amiga was originally intended as, a game console that broke the mold, mainly by using floppy disks to store the games instead of cartridges. As much as I'm loathe to grant MS any more power then it already has, I can only see the acceptance of the x-box style architecture as a good thing, as it simplifies everything (much like the transition to console based hardware that most of the arcade industry went to with games like Tekken and Marvel vs. Capcom 2). Also, lets face it, console games were starting to get really held down by the lack of things such as harddrives and network cards, and there is no reason (or financial sense) in reinventing the wheel when these things already exist. (p.s. notice that I make no mention of my terrible spelling error from the last post) :-) 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))))
Karl Kuras wrote: vs. Capcom 2). Also, lets face it, console games were starting to get really held down by the lack of things such as harddrives and network cards, and there is no reason (or financial sense) in reinventing the wheel when these things already exist. Actually, it makes perfect sense to reinvent these things since one of the whole points of consoles is to keep costs down so that you can make money on the hardware. You can add these things to any new console design. The only reason Microsoft is getting away with selling a fairly powerful PC as a console is because they're losing $150 per sale (they make money on game licensing, which is why you pretty much can't buy an X-Box or GameCube without buying a bundle deal). They're also riding the success of the PC as a consumer device in general; only in the last two years is something like this even possible with today's consumer computing power. Sony is betting the farm on this concept as well; they're losing something like $70 per console. Only GameCube makes a little money on the console hardware itself. (So did Dreamcast when it first came out but at $50 nowadays they're a *steal*.) The concept of making money off of licensing only is significant enough to note in its own paragraph. ;-) For the first time in history, consoles are being manufactured *to sell at a loss* so that they can sell the games and try to make money off of licensing. It's the same concept behind the world of e-commerce (and the spectacular failure of many dot-coms in the last 18 months). That model doesn't work too well; I'm very curious to see what happens in the next 2 years. These licensing costs *are* passed down to the end-user, which is why the PS2 version of Red Faction retails for $49 while the PC version retails for $39. I'm not looking forward to paying kRaZy m0n3y ($59 and higher) for console games. That flew last decade when the market was smaller but it doesn't fly in today's world. Speaking of cost: Does everyone remember the first time they saw some N64 games that were $69 when they were first released? That travesty of pricing is what happens when you combine licensing with the high cost of hardware (the carts use up to 32MB of ROM, which is very expensive in terms of manufacturing and materials). I'm curious: Why do you think consoles were getting bogged down by not having internal hard drives? Regarding X-Box as being the most powerful: A very strong argument can be made for console hardware being less powerful on paper but more powerful when specifically used for gaming. The PS2, GameCube, and Dreamcast all have vastly under-powered graphics subsystems when compared to a GeForce3 (the nvidia chip inside an X-Box), but the PS2 has a faster bus subsystem between it's dual procs, the graphics hardware, and the memory controller. Dreamcast has a PowerVR as its graphics controller, which does smart tile-based rendering and makes games like Sonic Adventure possible (when you go to the top of a building or mountain and look 180 degrees down and you realize you can see then entire game world below you *and there's no slowdown*.) Stuff like intelligent tile-based rendering can fix inconsistent coding on the part of the 3D engine programmer(s). (p.s. notice that I make no mention of my terrible spelling error from the last post) :-) As won't I. ;-) Sorry for noting it -- I'm usually not that snotty -- but it just whacked me so hard that I had a hard time blinking my eyes in unison for a couple of minutes. ;) -- 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))))
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: 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 (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 (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(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/
