Parsec Demo For Linux Released

Jeff Hobbs writes about the " self-running demo of a new 3D, network, cross-platform space combat game called Parsec, that is being simultaneously developed for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Looks pretty *damn* cool so far...! "

Comments

Well I think my prayers have been answered

[slashdot-terminal]

Well at least in the figurative sense. Space games have always been favorites of mine from trek in the BSD games category to others I think this will be rather cool. Too bad my linux machine really can't take the strain, but I do have this little old useless NT machine here I can inflict with much punishment.

Re:Well I think my prayers have been answered

[krogoth]

Remember, this is windows NT you're running. NT never was good for games, and was always a few version of DirectX behind. Windows 98 is better(if a windows product can be "better" than anything) for running games.

not exactly playable

[McBeth]

I camped out on their site almost all day waiting for this thing.

My take on it.

Like it says, self-playing demo....
pretty much it is three timedemos
and a "freeflying" mode, which means you fly around in space (nothing around you) to "get used to the controls"

Gorgeous graphics, since you can't really blow anything up yet, it is hard to tell how much fun this will be.

personally I wish the configure key bindings weren't disabled so I could pick something more descent-esque than the crazy ones in there now.

oh, and who ever recorded those demos sure knows how to fly

my machine gets pretty good frame rates considering it is slowly aging.

Like I said, I can't hardly wait til the real thing comes out.

Re:not exactly playable

[McBeth]

oh BTW, the music rocks.
I have already snapped up anything by this
stev guy I can find....

Very Cool

[msaulters]

Those are beautiful screenshots. Looking forward to the real thing. Does anyone else know of any good cross-platform games? Best one I can think of is Abuse.

Re:Very Cool

[drinkypoo]

Quake and Quake II are sort of compelling. Windows, Mac, Linux.

Re:Very Cool

[msaulters]

Humbug!

I know this is not exactly the right place to slam quake, but seriously, that could only hold my attention just so long... I couldn't ever really get into Quake after so many years of Wolfenstein & Doom had burned me out on FPS's. Anyway, good answer, regardless. I'm just wondering if there are any others, especially networked, that will work together (ie, Mac against Linux against PC).

Re:Very Cool

[mcrandello]

If you hate normal quake, try Qpong (Q2 mod). It involves a big metal ball that you have to shoot through the opposing team's goal. That's half the fun, dodging the ball and running over your opponents with it is the other half ;P The only downside is that it's rare to find a server for it on the internet, but it's still fun as hell at lan parties.


mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.

Re:Very Cool

[Patrik Nordebo]

Heroes of Might and Magic 3 is available on Windows, Linux and I think Mac. I'm not sure if it will interoperate between Windows and the others though, depends on whether it uses DirectPlay or not.
Railroad Tycoon 2 should interoperate between the Mac and Linux versions, at least once Loki and whoever did the Mac port get around to it.
Empire is available on just about any conceivable platform.
FreeCiv runs on Unix-likes, Windows, Amiga, OS/2, but doesn't seem to be available for Mac.
Unreal Tournament is available for Windows, Linux and Mac.
Those are the ones I can think of right now.

Re:Very Cool

[Azog]

Well, the obvious answer is Quake III, available for Linux, Win32, and Macintosh. I have seen it for sale in all three versions. It has pretty screenshots too. :-)

Oh yeah, and Quake II is cross platform as well. But not as pretty.

To the best of my knowlege, all three Q3 platforms are interoperable - you can play against a Mac user from your Linux box, etc.

Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

Re:Very Cool

[N1KO]

Nethack is cross-platform and it has more complexity than many other RPGs. Too bad the graphics kinda suck.

Daydreaming...

[McSnickered]

Ahhh Parsec... Let me wax nostalgic as I float back to the glory days on my TI-99 4a.

Re:Daydreaming...

[JatTDB]

Hell yes....every day before I left for elementary school I'd manage to get a good 15 minutes of TI-99/4A Parsec in.

Hmm...there's a TI-99/4A in my closet...and a Parsec cart...I'll be back in a few days.

Re:Daydreaming...

[ENOENT]

Dramite ships attacking!

Re:Daydreaming...

[slashdot-terminal]

Hell yes....every day before I left for elementary school I'd manage to get a good 15 minutes of TI-99/4A Parsec in.

I honestly have no Idea what you are talking about could someone please explain.

Re:Daydreaming...

[JatTDB]

Parsec was also a 2D side-scrolling space shooter game for the TI-99/4A home computer...a computer that holds a special place in my heart as it was the first I ever owned. Nothing spectacular in the graphics department, but insanely fun and addicting. And, if you had the speech synthesizer attatched to the TI, it even talked to you: "ENEMY SHIPS APPROACHING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!"

Re:Daydreaming...

[cpt kangarooski]

Many moons ago, there were a whole bunch of interesting computers that had absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft or Intel.

Texas Instruments (they make a lot of chips and calculators) had a few personal computers in the 70's and 80's and one of the more popular was the TI-99/4a (which was not as popular as the stuff from Apple or Commodore... or Tandy... really, but was hardly unknown either)

It was also designed really weirdly (a 16bit chip with no registers to speak of and most ram only accessible through the video processor) and could be slow (the basic for the machine was slow 'cos it was interpreted twice)

Anywho, Parsec was one of those side-scrolling games where you fly a little ship and shoot at the aliens.

Personally, my favorite computer game of all time (aside from Lightspeed, a flight simulator that ran on an SGI Onyx) was Bolo for the Apple II. God help you if you tried to play on level 5 or above. You could at least have fun on level 9/density 9 by attempting to run away from the enemies. For about 15 seconds ;)

Re:Daydreaming...

[jailbrekr2]

How dare you mention bolo! It brings back fond memories! Evil! Bad!

JB

Re:Daydreaming...

[dezwart]

They were the coolest machines in those days. They had a speech synthesizer that worked with parsec:

"Press fire to begin..."

"Warning, enemy ship approaching..."

Probably the only other funky game on the TI-99 4a was "Grog" which had to be loading in from a generic audio tape.

An even more obscure computer that I once had was the Dick Smith Wizard. Dick Smith being the Australian version of Radio Shack.

This thing was so dinky...The keyboard would pull apart to become two joystick/gamepaddles and the keys would form the buttons that you could use... It even came with a book documenting the assembly language for it.

Re:Daydreaming...

[Esperandi]

Hey, was Parsec the game where if you fired your guns too fast your ship overheated and got destroyed (or maybe you just couldn't fire any more for awhile,I forget)... my neighbor had a TI, and I think I remember this game ;) Of course I only had a Vic-20 at my house, but I learned to code while he dropped out of school ;)

Esperandi

Re:Daydreaming...

[JatTDB]

Yep...if you held down fire, your ship would start to overheat. If you ignored the warnings and kept firing, you would explode.

Re:Daydreaming...

[Esperandi]

Damn, can't believe I remembered that game, I was YOUNG... like no older than 8...

Esperandi
But it looks like I'll be trying out this new one, that game was damn fun.

Re:Daydreaming...

[frknfrk]

Speaking of Bolo, and of cross-platform games... anyone ever play the macintosh version of Bolo? it was very, very cool. there was a subculture of players here at Purdue University, and it was this tcp-ip game on the mac, about the only reason i ever used the macs in the computer labs outside of photoshop.

Re:Daydreaming...

[rongen]

Oh yeah! I rememeber Parsec for the TI! That machine had some wierd games! A friend of mine had a TI-99 before I had a computer. It plugged into the TV and used cartridges for input of games...

There was Munchman, a strange Pacman-like game that blew the original game away. There was also a game whose name I can never remember. It was a Pacman-maze type game which had cows and cattle rustlers. I think you were trying to herd a bunch of cows across Texas or something.

When you fired your weapon a solid beam lanced out across the screen until it hit something... Wow does anyone remember this? It was hilarious! :) I seem to remember a map of Texas showing progress as you cleared each level... I'd love to know the name!

I've checked a few TI-99 "fan pages" but can't find this games' name anywhere...

Re:Daydreaming...

[proj_2501]

It's called Chisholm Trail.
--
The other side is crowded. The dead have nowhere to go.

Re:Daydreaming...

[cpt kangarooski]

No, no, no. The Mac game Bolo has nothing to do with the Apple II game Bolo, except that both involve tanks.

In the Apple II version, you've got a tank inside a very large maze. You could control both how hard the level was, as well as the density of walls within the maze (so you could go full speed at density 1, but very slowly and carefully at density 9). You died if you touched the walls.

Inside the maze were 6 bases, which looked like a square with a hollow center, and a dot in the center. The bases generated alien tanks (usually V shapes) periodically. While killing an alien tank got you (1 x the level) points, shooting through the wall of a base (takes a little while, and they regenerate too) to shoot the dot blew it up and was good for (100 x the level) points.

One thing exploding could spark an explosion in other things (like shooting an alien tank at the right time could blow up the base) but they could shoot and ram at you, and one shot killed. Touching the walls also killed you.

What was really tricky, was that you could rotate your turret independently of the tank, but there was no way to know which way the tank was pointing, and the controls were set up so that you really needed to know that.

On the higher levels, the game logic just became ruthless. The alien tanks shot a lot, and usually were right on target. Then they might just ram you. You had basically no chance on level 5 or above - they would immediately hunt you down, moving at top speed, and shoot or ram you. All you could do was run like hell.

I'd love to see something like Bolo crossed with Spectre... or even just a straight port of Bolo so that I don't have to dick around with an Apple IIe emulator.

Re:Daydreaming...

[deblau]

Anyone else remember Tunnels of Doom for the 99/4A? That loaded off a tape too. There were some other games I played on that thing when I was about 4. I vaguely remember some weird kind of Egyptian quest thing.

Looks good, but unstable

[eldamitri]

I downloaded it last night and played the first demo in the list. It was /very/ pretty and the music was pretty cool, too. About 8-10 min into it, it just stopped, my computer totally hung. No keyboard response, no mouse, nothing. I rebooted and tried again, this time selecting the free flight. My machine hung before I got a chance to even start flying.

Mandrake 7.0, Voodoo 2, latest drivers from 3dfx. Anyone have better luck or similar experiences?

-Scott

"there once was a big guy named lou

Re:Looks good, but unstable

[tzanger]

Does the game run as root? How does it manage to lock the system up hard if not? Perhaps the 3d libs are buggy?

Re:Looks good, but unstable

[_Bean_]

And other people are just plain rude. I don't really think it would hurt you too much to show some respect for other people.

Re:Looks good, but unstable

[captredballs]

maybe he is looking for more info so he can file a better bug report...

some people are assholes

Re:Looks good, but unstable

[Benley]

It does this for me too. I haven't seen anything lock HARD like that in quite a while... only takes 45 seconds or so for it to hang, too! I was slightly disappointed in the performance (relative to my system, not the demo) - I figured it would run nicely on a dual PII/400, but the audio kept breaking up etc, and then it hung. I do realize this is probably more my system than anything... but still... oh well.

Re:Looks good, but unstable

[eldamitri]

I was running it on a single PII 266 w/256M, and before it crashed, it was very smoothe, including the audio. I'm no gaming fanatic, so maybe the framerates would've been considered low for someone else, but it seemed quite acceptable to me. I didn't get around to doing the timetest to find out the actual framerates because I didn't want to have to reboot again!

Anyway, I was quite impressed nevertheless. I do realize this is an alpha product, and I wasn't terribly surprised it crashed. I was just hoping to find out if others were having similar problems so that I could determine if the problem was on my end or not.

Thanks for the reply.

-Scott
"there once was a big guy named lou

Re:Looks good, but unstable

[Ventilator]

I have:
Slackware 7.0, Voodoo 3, Athlon 600 MHz
3dfx-Drivers are installed.

The game (parsec_x) runs as user right out of xterm (Eterm, that is). Everything is working and I get whopping 85 frames/sec with 800x600 pixels. When I use the helix-cannon, framerate drops as low as 42 frames/sec, but that's still fast enough then. =:-)
Seems like I'm a lucky winner with this game, my setup is supported just fine.

Oh and of course, keyboard-control works just fine. Haven't tested joystick yet, since my Wingman is broken.

Parsec? Too little too late?

[DigitalGodBoy]

Granted, I haven't played it networked yet, but the free fly mode was pretty cool. The controls were slighty complex, using both hands for basic control. As for the graphics, it's seem like a 3D Escape Velocity/Overide. The lighting cannon seemed somewhat dated graphics wise, no transparency or anything. All the graphics feel somewhat dated. I do like the support of ANY acceleration (GL, Glide); max kudos there! Just my opinion, I've been known to ramble....

Re:Parsec? Too little too late?

[cronio]

Well, considering it's still an alpha version, has no networked support yet, and because it's a self-running demo you can't change the keybindings...I'd say that's pretty good. I've been watching this project for a while, and the screenshots look incredible (although I can't run the demo yet because of no linux opengl support yet). The movie on their site looks quite nice too. Considering it's being developed for free by a bunch of college kids, I'd say it's quite impressive :).

Re:Parsec? Too little too late?

[Ventilator]

Agreed, the lighting cannon looks ugly, compared to the rest. At least the noise it makes is ok. *BUZZ!*

But the whole rest is just impressive. Nebula, plasma-clouds, the ships (gotta love that Hurricane) and all those extra-weapons look quite cool. One can see the many hours of work put in to it.

Can't wait for T-Shirts and such stuff.

The only downside to the whole game is IMHO the missing single-player-mode. I'm just a dialup-user and I don't want to have my phoneline busy all the time I'm playing games.

TI-994a version?

[vitaflo]

Since the site seems Slashdotted, is this game from the creators of the Parsec game I have for my TI-994a? If so, I'm all over this, as that was my very favorite game for that old thing. If not, what happened to that license, and is this an abuse of that license?

Re:TI-994a version?

[Kismet]

Yeah, what a sweet game that was. GREAT SHOT, PILOT.

Ha, I wish I had a TI joystick that still worked... It's awful to play it on the keyboard.

I never got past level 4.

I'm doubting this Linux game has anything to do with good ol' Parsec, though.

Re:TI-994a version?

[British]

I'm glad to see others remember the good 'ol TI-994/A version of this game. Heh. First machine too.

Funny you mentioned the licensing. There was some bickering from Texas Instruments regading the V9T9 emulator, requirings its ROMs. I don't get it. They abandoned all of us around September of 1983 by "orphaning" the computer and they yell at everyone for emulating it?

Re:TI-994a version?

[luteijn]

I actually liked the keyboard alot better than the joystick, since it was easier to switch the 'lift' factor to 1 when you went to refuel.

Somebody ought to port that old game to a modern computer. Just like hunt the wumpus should be. (I actually did make a linux svga version with the original wumpus graphics laboriously copied from the screen, but it's not too portable, I'm afraid)

Pieter (luteijn@freud.et.tudelft.nl)

Re:TI-994a version?

[TheJet]

Sweet!!

I was just saying this on Ars yesterday. I remember those little machines quite fondly. I remember spending hours typing/porting programs to TI-BASIC, then storing 'em on a rigged up tape recorder...

I got to the part where the crap starts flying at you from both directions. Parsec had to be one of the greatest games out at the time... I hope this one does it justice.


The "Top 10" Reasons to procrastinate:

Re:TI-994a version?

[Kismet]

I actually started working on a version of Parsec for DOS some years back. Never got too far.

Hunt the Wumpus... A-Maze-Ing... Super demon attack... TI invaders...

Ah the good old days.

I've been waiting...

[dbarclay10]

Since the original X-Wing game, and its various addons, I have not found any space combat game the matches. This might be it. And it's being developed for Linux. This is good. But, until I see a working game(not a self-running demo), I won't bet my paycheck on it. However, since the only computer games that I like are space combat sims(Descent, X-Wing, and so forth), I'm willing to invest my paycheck in it :) Dave

Unfortunately...

[cronio]

...the Linux version is glide2-only for now (opengl support will be out soon supposedly). Meaning you
a) have to have a 3dfx card, and
b) even if you have a 3dfx card, you can't play the demo if you're using the 3.9.18 DRI server, because that doesn't support glide2 (yet).
Oh well...I guess I'll just have to wait for a new demo, or for backwards compatibility to be implemented in glide3.

Re:Unfortunately...

[PhatBhuda]

Um, you could always not use Linux. It worked fine on my iMacDV.

Woah

[Zan Thrax]

Ok, went and dl'd. Installed. Ran. Watched a few minutes of the first demo. Now I'm dizzy. I don't normally get dizzy from such things... maybe its because I wasn't in control of the motion.

Anyhow, looks pretty. I'll play around with it some more later, but right now, I've got to get to work...

Mirrors - kill /. effect early

[sethdelackner]

Linux
Mirror provided by www.atfw.net
Mirror provided by www.linuxgames.com
Mirror provided by www.gxp.de
Mirror provided by www.newsbytez.com
MacOS
Mirror provided by www.insidemacgames.com
Mirror provided by www.macupdate.com
Mirror provided by www.gxp.de
Mirror provided by www.newsbytez.com
Mirror provided by www.atfw.net
Windows
Mirror list on www.3dfiles.com
Mirror provided by www.atfw.net
Mirror provided by www.gxp.de
Mirror provided by www.newsbytez.com

Warning! Time to refuel!

[misterklaw]

Man, those were the days. That was the very first computer game i played to excess. The 99 provided me with a path to geekdom that i never left. I wore out many a keyboard and cartridge slot on those puppies.

Mirrors

[Nicodemus]

Here's a list of mirrors, straight from the site since it looks like they're going to get slashdotted pretty soon.

Windows
File size: 18MB
README
Local server (Vienna/Austria)
Mirror list on www.3dfiles.com
Mirror provided by www.atfw.net
Mirror provided by www.gxp.de
Mirror provided by www.newsbytez.com

MacOS
File size: 17.8MB
README
Local server (Vienna/Austria)
Mirror provided by www.insidemacgames.com
Mirror provided by www.macupdate.com
Mirror provided by www.gxp.de
Mirror provided by www.newsbytez.com
Mirror provided by www.atfw.net

Linux (x86)
File size: 16.9MB
README
Local server (Vienna/Austria)
Mirrorprovided by www.atfw.net
Mirror provided by www.linuxgames.com
Mirror provided by www.gxp.de
Mirrorwww.newsbytez.com

libglide required

[Alex Farber]

Don't bother d/l if you run Linux,
but don't have a Voodoo-card:

PC/Win32 (95/98/NT/2K)
----------------------

Voodoo Graphics
Voodoo 2 (8MB, 12MB)
Voodoo 3
Matrox G400
NVIDIA TNT
NVIDIA TNT2
NVIDIA TNT2 ULTRA
NVIDIA GeForce (SDR, DDR)

PC/Linux (x86)
--------------

Voodoo Graphics
Voodoo 2 (8MB, 12MB)
Voodoo 3

Mac (MacOS 8.5 or later)
------------------------

Voodoo Graphics
Voodoo 2 (8MB, 12MB)
Voodoo 3
ATI Rage 128

/Alex

Re:libglide required

[Lionfire]

The windoze version will quite happily use any OpenGL supporting card... (and crash and burn horribly too :)

It seems a little strange that the linux version wouldn't do the same?


...MoO!

Re:libglide required

[spinkham]

It will do the samewhen it's done, it just isn't done yet ;-)

Re:TI-994a version? .....SECOND

[dantes]

What a great game that was. Don't forget Hunt the Wumpus!!!

Offtopic: Speaking of the TI-994a, this was a great machine, my first exposure to programming.

More Info

[CentrX]

Here's more info for all of you who cannot visit the site:

The major part of this demo is a movie of in-game action rendered with the Parsec game engine. The demo is composed out of several actual network game sessions that was recorded using Parsec's in-game recording feature. It is 11:40 minutes long and features nice background music.

There is also a "free flight mode" where people can select their ship and navigate outer-space, collecting power-ups and such. However, there are no opponents, since the demo does not contain any networking code. Still, pilots can steer their spacecraft and fly around.

There is also a TIMEDEMO feature that is available.

The minimum recommended CPU is a Pentium 200 although a Pentium 300 is recommended. The minimum memory requirement is 64MB although 128MB or more is recommended. 65MB of hard disk space is also required. It is required that you have a Voodoo card (Glide), as GLX is not yet there. Kernel 2.2, glibc 2.1, and X (or svgalib) is also required.

The source is not available.

Chris Hagar

Why closed?

[/]

From the faq:

30. Why are you offering it for free?

Basically, Parsec has always been planned to be a project for fun and educational purposes. So the decision to release it as freeware was actually quite an easy one. As soon as it became apparent that we didn't compare all that badly to commercial releases (at least in most respects, we certainly won't be able to compete with the breadth of the big releases, there being no missions and real story, for instance), we coined the term "commercial-quality freeware" to describe a freeware game that rivals commercial releases in quality. Since then, we're working on living up to this premise.

33. Will Parsec be open-source?

No. We're strong believers in a coordinated development effort for computer games which we don't think works with a large number of people involved. There are already plenty of really great open-source projects out there (have a look at Crystal Space and WorldForge for instance), so there isn't really anything missing. What we want to do is to create a game, for which art and music is also very important; we don't think you can create a consistent look-and-feel of a game in a hugely distributed approach. We are going to release some of the game source, though, to facilitate the creation of user extensions like mods, maybe even total conversions. We will decide on the license for this at a later time.

Sure, there's no need to opensource the artwork, but why keep the engine closed if it's all being done for educational reasons and for fun? Those two tend to be synonymous with open source. And the points about distributed development are both silly and inapplicable, since they don't actually have to accept any modifications that people would make. They could even release it under some silly "you get the source, but you can't distribute modified copies" sort of liscense that would encourage bugfixes but no forks. At least the second paragraph implies that this is all subject to change.

Let's just hope they don't screw up security-wise the way Quake 1 did. If they're writing the game from scratch, I hope they get it right instead of learning the hard way after the fact.

Re:Why closed?

[Michel]

There are already plenty of really great open-source projects out there (have a look at Crystal Space and WorldForge for instance), so there isn't really anything missing.

*Twitch*

Isn't that kind of like saying "We don't need (Free|Open|Net)BSD to be open source because linux is already out there and there isn't really anything missing"?

Re:Why closed?

[Kalak451]

Actualy the quake fiasco is a good reason for them to keep it closed source. All of that security stuff could really be alot of extra work that none of them know how to do. its just a pain in the ass. games and security are really two totaly different things. As much as i would like to have a look at their code, i really do see why they are keeping it closed source.

Re:Why closed?

[cartographer]

I'd love to see a game done like this, w/ a totally client-server based protocol underneath and an open specification for the client. It would be cool to run the 'big asskicker 3D rendered client' or the curses-based text-mode client-- whichever I felt like at the time. Also, being client-server would open the door wide for
implementing robots-- very cool.

Your prayers are/will be answered ;). Take a look at Worldforge (www.worldforge.org). The protocol you are wishing for is called Atlas and is a library you can plug into a client or server today. I could go on and on about the cool stuff that has been developed or will be, but there's a whole website for that. Stop on by.

BTW, all the art, text and code are Open Source. And the security it through not trusting the clients. We know they will be hacked...in fact, we encourage it.

Re:Why closed?

[crivens]

Why not? Just because its free, doesn't mean it has to be open source. Maybe they're afraid of managing an open source project. Maybe not. Why this huge insistence that ALL software should be open source?

TI 99/4A Emulators?

[weston]

I feel the nostalgia welling in me as well. But there is no TI 99/4A in my closet (wait... no, actually there is, but the darn TV adaptor is missing). Perhaps there is an emulator out there that I could use? Maybe even dumps of my favorite games? (Parsec being cheifest among them, but I also spend hours glued to knockoffs such as Munchman and TI-Invaders).

Re:TI 99/4A Emulators?

[Alkaiser]

Damn, I'd be interested in that too. I used to have some pretty kick butt games...I think they're still sitting somewhere in my garage...but the SID chip broke in it and I never had sound.

Remember Tunnels of Doom? My first RPG experience ever...sigh....Like an old ex-girlfriend...who isn't trying to kill you.

Re:TI 99/4A Emulators?

[filbo]

I feel the need to confess that, as I recall, my dog picked up my TI/99 in her mouth, carried it to the backyard, and then proceeded to toss it around the porch until the case cracked and the board spilled out. I think I kept the board until a few years ago. The dog also took an honest run at my Atari 2600, but a flying leap over the sofa to tackle her managed to prevent anything more than some slober and a few tooth marks.

Re:TI 99/4A Emulators?

[Daniel H.]

I used to have Parsec and many TI99/4A machines, still have about 4 machines rotting in the basement. The only problem is that TV adapter kept going out on me. One day I went and tried hooking one of those NES RF connectors up to the TI99 because there is a port in the back that matches and too my amazement, the NES RF switch actually works with the TI for the video connection to the TV. Any NES/SNES/N64 RF adapter should work for hooking the TI up to the television. I don't remember if sound worked or not but the video sure did. You can still play Parsec after all. Best of all, the one by Nintendo actually hooks up to the cable and not, don't know the name of it, the two screw setup. Do correct me if I'm wrong, this was about 5 years back.

Re:TI 99/4A Emulators?

[ronfar]

Hrm... If I were you, I'd put my dog under a spot light and ask her,

"Who do you work for? Who put you up to this? Sony? Microsoft? Nintendo?"

I mean, it can't be a coincidence.

Of course, if she squeled you'd have to protect her from any other dogs involved in the conspiracy... see "Thomas Edison's Shaggy Dog" by James Thurber for details...

Mind you, I'm not being smug here, I gave my Atari 800 to a kid ;_; I get depressed about it now and then.. I hope she found it to be an inspiration.

Re:TI 99/4A Emulators?

[JatTDB]

Yeah, that's one thing that sucks about the TI...that TV adaptor is evil. Those flimsy U-connectors always broke off, and you could only strip the wire down for so long.

If you're interested in getting your TI back into working order, you can do it pretty easily. I frequently find TI tv adapters at flea markets and thrift stores, and usually really cheap since they have no idea what the hell it is. Heck once I bought a system (computer+power supply+tv adapter+2 or 3 carts) for $1. Also, if you want to avoid the flea markets, there are a number of people who buy and sell classic video game and computer systems...just search for it...it has a large presence on ebay as well. You'll pay more that way, but not a lot more usually.

Re:TI 99/4A Emulators?

[Tegularius]

There are lots of TI emulators, though not as many as there are for other platforms. A place to start looking for anything TI-related is at http://99er.hispeed.com. There's also TI-99/4A support in the multi-emulator MESS, at http://mess.emuverse.com.

You do need the system ROMs to run the emulator and the cartridge ROMs to play the games. There's PC software to do the dumps, and I'm sure that somewhere out there you can find already-dumped ROMS, but I have no idea where.

Re:TI 99/4A Emulators?

[technos]

If I remember, it had a RCA jack that connected to the back of the TI, a switch, a coax connector for the antenna and a bit of two conductor ladder line to the TV? Go out to the local Radio Shack with the busted unit in hand and ask them for another one like that. If they don't have one in stock they will order one for $3.19. They're a common thing! There is no reason to have such a fine bit of computational hardware just lying there when you could be playing Wumpus!!

Re:TI 99/4A Emulators?

[Alkaiser]

Never played Rock Climber. I had Chisholm Trail, Blasto! (which was Da Bomb!), Football (which totally blew.), TI Invaders, Tunnels of Doom, and Hunt the Wumpus (the sounds were coo'.)

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How about a 3D Escape Velocity

[Zemrec]

When Escape Velocity came out, I thought I was in love. Here was a game *I* would have made, if I were a programmer. But there was something missing....3D texture mapped graphics!!! Now that I think about...anyone remember Starglider 2 for the Amiga? THAT game kicked ass!! I'd just like to be able to use these 3D accelerator cards for something other than mindless killing sprees. I'm sick of those games. My head feels numb for hours after playing them! Just imagine being able to explore a 3D galaxy, visit planets, and be able to engage in lucrative commerce, join a starfleet, or be a rogue pirate swooping down on unexpecting merchant fleets... Gotta get those credits for that whiz bang particle accelerator cannon somehow! 8^) Something of a cross between Escape Velocity and Star Control but with 3D would be my ultimate game....only wish I knew how to do it myself.

Re:How about a 3D Escape Velocity

[Esperandi]

Basically you want to live another life inside a computer game... well, that is being done. They're called MUDs. Probably caused more divorces and flunked students than anything else in the world...

You have to have an imagination though, it won't draw all the pretty pictures for you.

Esperandi

Why such requirements?

[ForceOfWill]

I don't get why all the new games have such high system requirements. I know they want to have spiffy graphics, but at the expense of availability? There should be settings to allow for crummy graphics, but fast play. X-wing and TIE Fighter only needed a 486, and I still consider them to have pretty good graphics. Heck, Wing Commander III had excellent graphics, and it just barely ran on a 486-50 (but for some reason it refuses to work with my newer computer). Now I see all games having anything to do with 3d needing an accelerator, and if not, an absurd amount of memory (no single program should consume 128MB!).

Now that I'm done ranting about requirements, I just wanted to say that this looks to be a great game.

Re:Why such requirements?

[Pope]

Well, I have a 3.5 year-old Mac clone with a VooDoo 1 card, and it ran pretty damn well!
Of course, I automatically bumped all the graphics to LOW and sound to LOW. Still, it's pretty, and runs rather well on this ol' Mac.
hell, Unreal Tournament runs *way* better than Quack 3 does. If a brand new game can run on 2-3 year old technology, then what's the big deal?
I often rant against the True Hardcore Gamer(tm) upgrading every 6 months for negligible benefits, but I am a casual gamer so I don't really care all that much whether I can squeeze an extra FPS by reducing the usable life of my components, ie overclocking. I buy a machine to last a couple of years.
I bet you were complaining about the cost of that 486 back when it was brand new! :)

Pope

Re:Why such requirements?

[ForceOfWill]

If what you're saying is true, the "requirements" on the sides of boxes and on websites are false. I keep seeing very high requirements for games IMHO with only slightly better graphics than I got with a 486. What used to only need DOS, 8MB RAM, a CDROM drive, and a sound card now needs winblows, a 3D accelerator, and 64MB. I don't get it. Maybe it's all the overhead of having an actual OS instead of DOS. Maybe what we need is a boot-floppy based game system that has all the 3d and input routines on the floppy and boots the game on the CD. And maybe I'm completely wrong.

And my complaint is not with price, but with the bother of getting a game, finding out it doesn't work, waiting for the upgrade to come, installing it and hoping it works.

Re:Why such requirements?

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't that easy to write an engine that scales down the graphics gracefully. e.g. If you have high poly count models, it's decidedly non-trivial to scale down the polygon count in an intelligent way (this is supposedly a big feature of Shiny's Messiah)

Re:Why such requirements?

[be-fan]

Actually, programming a 3D engine with software support greatly reduces the things you can do with the hardware accelerated version. Graphics that are not superfical are hard to bring down. Many 3D rpgs also use textures and such for important information and losing those essentially changes the game. The problem is mainly that when making comprimises for fast software rendering, a lot of features have to be left out, even in accelerated modes. Plus most serious game players have PII and PIIIs so availibilty is franky not a problem. Even with the new MRM (basically tessalation) technologies coming out, it is more usefull on fast computers to deliver more consistant frame rate than to squeeze the game into a smaller computer.

Re:Why such requirements?

[be-fan]

A) The graphics in todays games are leap years beyond 486 graphics. MYST may look cool, but it isn't real time and isn't interactive. Sure Quake3 still doesn't have as good graphics (in terms of photorealistich) as some of the 2D sprite games, but it is much more interactive.
B) #D is the name of the game. 3D takes space, it take computing power. To draw even the most complex 2D sprite, all that is required is a blit of a 160K image, but to draw the same picture with 3D, it will take a few thousand polygons with a thousand verticies and a few matrix multiplies for each vertex plus color, shading and texture calculations. Not to mention that current games use something like 30 meg of textures, which shows there need of huge memory. Its not sloppy coding. The executable themselves aren't significantly larger, and the coding is probably even tighter. But when you have 3D scenes with a few million polygons per level and a total of a hundred megs of textures, memory gets hit. The Quake 3 executable is 830 kilobyes, but the .paq file, is 430 megabytes. Sure the executable loads a few DLLs, but the quake 3 installation is 464 meg, and 458 meg is tied up in levels and 3 meg in online services. That leave less than 3 meg of executable files.

Quirkiness of the TI-99/4A

[Alkaiser]

It was a nice machine...however, all the models I'd ever seen busted the sound chip, after something like a month.

On top of the the RF box for the thing wasn't a normal box, and you couldn't swap out stndard RCA plugs for it. If than thing busted then you were FUBAR. The worst thing about my TI, is my Dad bought it a week before it was discontinued. No more suport after that...but that was where I learned how to code. Good little machine.

Re:Quirkiness of the TI-99/4A

[ender-]

The worst thing about my TI, is my Dad bought it a week before it was discontinued. No more suport after that.

A friend of mine used to work for TI. He claims that one of the major screwups that TI had with that machine, was that when it wasn't selling well, and they wanted to get rid of them quick, they started giving $50 rebate coupons [was priced around $100 at the time]... Then the price dropped to $50... but they didn't take out the rebate coupons... oops...

I've also heard [dunno really] that the TI99/4A was better than it let on. That they kept the chip held back just to match what it's competitors had instead of letting it loose to kick butt... That's what I heard anyway [shrug]

Ender

Re:Quirkiness of the TI-99/4A

[SgtXaos]

Yeah, my mom bought us one when she worked at jc penney. Counting her 15% employee discount and the $50 rebate, she got the ti-99, the speech thingy, a memory add-on, and some games for a grand total of about $15. The real problem was that the speech and memory add-ons plugged in to the side, daisy-chain style. If you weren't careful, you would jiggle loose the stack of boxes and waste the high score you were trying to get. It was a cool box, I coded a few basic programs and played a lot of games on the old thing.

Parsec was one of the better ones, I wasted hours of time playing it instead of doing my high-school homework.

That was disapointing

[slashdot-terminal]

Well I ran the demo on an NT machine (upper end pentium PII 400 and it just crawled in just the menu I never even got past the opening screen. And even the turning logo was slow not to mention the lighting effects. What exactly did I do wrong here?

Re:That was disapointing

[Anonymous Coward]

Your OpenGL drivers are most likely not installed properly. If NT finds no GL drivers for your 3D card, it will handle everything in software (ouch). Results in ridiculously low framerates.

Try reinstalling your video card drivers.

cot

Gaming and Linux.

[be-fan]

The way I see it, with all the games being ported to Linux and all, that Linux will become significantly less choatic than it is now. Linux reminds me of DOS/Win 3.1 in many ways, at least in terms of applications. The gaming environment back then was complex. I remember that Kings Quest 6 actually had you drop into the command line to install it! There were hacks and workarounds all over the place, proriotory APIs were being used, and there wasn't really a unified installation method. With
mainstreamness (TM... My new word)comes unity, and I forsee Linux one day becoming better than Windows in this respect. (Whoa, put down the pitch-forks and hear me out!) Look at windows gaming today. The OS may be a piece of shit, but look at the infrastructure that MS has put in. There is a unified game API (DirectX) sure most good developers these days use OpenGL, but 3D is just a small (design, not code -wise) part of DirectX. Even an OpenGL developer would be a fool not to take advantage of everything from DirectInput and its ultra-flexible device handling, to DirectSound and its accelerated sound support, and DirectDraw and its accelerated everything support. I forsee Linux oneday having an API just like this, except instead of the hard-to-program closed API that is DirectX, it will be an open (source or not, I don't care) API that will be easily portable to different POSIX (and non POSIX) systems. I also see a standardized installation method. Variants of RPMS or DEBs except with much less complexity. And the LSB finally getting its act together so we will never have to harken back to the DOS days and hack the system just to get a game to work. The nifty thing about this is that there is no force required to develop this infrastructure. If it is built and built well, developers will come. There are about 0 serious developers that don't use autoplay or DirectX on windows. They could use something else, but why bother the user with it? And the cool thing will be that it won't be tied to one closed OS. (ie. It will be portable to BeOS :)

Re:Gaming and Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

I forsee Linux one day having.....I also see a ...

[backgroud humming to the tune of the old negro spiritual "We Shall Overcome"]

I too hope that one day Jew and Gentile will both use an Open API on Linux to play games. One day in the future, OS's will be judged by the content of their kernel and not by the color of the hair of the coders. Free BSD at last! FreeBSD at last! Thank God Almighty, FreeBSD at last !!

Re:Gaming and Linux.

[captaineo]

Even an OpenGL developer would be a fool not to take advantage of everything from DirectInput and its ultra-flexible device handling, to DirectSound and its accelerated sound support, and DirectDraw and its accelerated everything support. I forsee Linux oneday having an API just like this, except instead of the hard-to-program closed API that is DirectX, it will be an open (source or not, I don't care) API that will be easily portable to different POSIX (and non POSIX) systems.

It's here now and it's name is SDL. Linux. Windows. Mac. BeOS. 2D and OpenGL graphics. Sound. Input. DirectX on Windows. Fast. Lean. LGPL.

The first developer was Sam Latinga, who currently uses SDL to bring games to Linux with the other folks at Loki Software...

Re:Gaming and Linux.

[dudle]

I agree with what you said about DirectX. I did a car racing game couple of years ago (in Delphi ... yeeehhhaa) that was using DirectX, and I was amazed by this library. I am sure it has got a lot better now.

I remember at that time, the only superioty that DOS had was in games. All games where running under DOS. Microsoft found the way to make everybody program for Windows by using DirectX.

There is a question though. The only thing that is common in all Unixes when it comes to GUI is X11. No need to say that is it pretty hard to develop a good game with this toolkit. What do you think wil happen ? A layer on top of X11 bundled into Xfree and its competitors? A separate library that goes deep into the hardware (the kind of lib that detects your hardware at installation time and does the interface for you)? I don't know.

RMS said that developping an assembler was not a lot of fun, but is was needed. I think this kind of lib/interface is needed, even though it's not going to be a lot of fun (because I don't see how one can do it in Perl :-) )

Re:Gaming and Linux.

[be-fan]

Again, I've said this before, the problem with SDL is that it is directx style on the outside, but is missing the whole point of directX. DirectX is meant to be a library that directly abstracts the hardware, pushes the rest of the OS out of the way and provides accelerated everything. SDL is nice, but it is still software based. The only time it give the power of DirectX is under windows, and at that point you might as well use windows.

I can only imagine..

[Sarin]

What it feels like when you use that inner ear device that lets you feel the motion on this game..:)

A thrill that afterwards could only be described as a drink too much.


Regards,

So what's new?

[Pxtl]

This may possibly be flamebait, but I have to ask this, and I can't see the site 'cause its slashdotted. How is this game different from all the other Wing Commander clones? When I heard that Parallax was making a space fighter sim (D:freespace) I was extatic, hoping to finally see something new. Of course, that was just like the others, but with even more beautiful graphics, new style, but the same gameplay. Is this more of the same? Still, its great to hear that they're developing it for Linux. That alone is holding my interest.

even more obscure

[Pope]

My friend Wayne had an Exidy "Sorcerer" machine.
The carts like for BASIC, etc, came in 8-Track shells!

Exidy being, of course, primarily an arcade game manufacturer.

Pope

Re:even more obscure

[JatTDB]

Speaking of 8-track shells, I've actually found cartridges for the Fairchild Channel F game system in thrift store 8 track bins...on more than one occasion.

Re:even more obscure

[neopenguin]

Ahhh.. Exidy.

Did you ever see the Gandalf 2000? It was a "serious" CP/M machine. I have many happy memories of doing mindless little hacks (ddoouubblliinngg aallll oouuttppuutt eettcc..) on the thing. My friend Tom wrote a game based on Steve Jackson's OGRE for it, which we later ported to the spanking new Apple II+

Sweet memories. This Parsec now, it's amazing.

UCITA me? I FSCKa you up!

I love these games.

[Sangui5]

I remember a game that came with netware or something like that called NetWar. It was a 3D-space combat game. Single-player mode bit, but wohooo was multi ever fun. Crappy graphics, but it would run on a 286. Man, that thing was better than any other game I've played since.

Re:I love these games.

[mdxi]

You want to play NetWar?

Head over to Caldera and download DR-DO....er...OpenDOS from them. It's in
there (they have a DOSEMU package buried somewhere on their FTP server too).

I used to run it on my 486/25 linux laptop.

Invest your paycheck?

[znu]

You won't have that choice:

We are a team of game developers working on a non-commercial space-shooter called Parsec. Even though Parsec will be available for download free of charge, we are concerned with delivering a product of competitive quality. We want to combine the pl aying experience found in commercial games with free availability and unrestricted non-commercial distribution. We like to call this commercial-quality freeware (CQF).

It isn't open source though.

--

extension of POSIX

[be-fan]

It is interesting to me why all UNICIES are not compatible, given that all the relevant ones use X, have POSIX or SVR4 support, and all have many cross platform libraries. With all this inferstructure in place, it should be reletivly easy to standerdize the little inconsitancies between UNICIES to make them all completly source compatible with each other. Thus Solaris x86 should compile Linux x86 programs and Linux MIPS programs should compile on IRIX. This could come as an extension to POSIX, say 2.0? My point is that all UNICIES present a standard programming interface. The plumbing underneath is a greatly different, but from a program's point of view there is not a quantum leap in difference between Solaris and Linux and FreeBSD. Getting rid of the inconsistancies that remain would be a great help in getting UNIX accepted by more people. (Now wether or not the spread of UNIX is a good thing is up to you :)

Debian

[Sendy]

I've run it with Debian Gnu/Linux Potato. Just install the Debian glide packages (there is a mesag3_glide deb), and add a symlink from /usr/lib/libglide2x_V3.so to /usr/lib/libglide.so.2.
Don't forget to run ldconfig after it.

I did try it, but i didn't like it like this.

Re:Which is why I don't run Linux...

[be-fan]

Although this is a troll, he has a point. A Windows machine with DirectX 7 and a GeForce card whoops any linux machine available at games if only for that fact that
A) There is no comparable accelerated environment like DirectX on Linux.
B) Linux doesn't have hardware support of a lot of things.
C) Netscape really does suck!
But its getting better. 3D is being done right, (ie direct access.) Opera is out (the web-browser equivilent of BeOS) and linux is getting more game friendly every day. Of course Linux will probably never have something comparable to directX, becase it would require a lot of people to work together on a project with disparate pieces, yet keep it slim. Linux projects can work together, but even in focused environments they have the nasty habit of reusing a lot of code (GNOME and imlib for example) which is great for normal programming, but is condusive to bloat, which is unacceptable for a thin layer like DirectX.

Re:Which is why I don't run Linux...

[Khazathon]

Of course Linux will probably never have something comparable to directX

What's wrong with OpenGL? Or am I missing something?

another space game for linux: BFRIS

[synk]

This looks neat, but have you seen BFRIS? It's been out for over a year now and has linux and windows demos. It even runs well on low-end 3dfx cards and 28.8 modems.

Re:another space game for linux: BFRIS

[Dr.Whiz-Bang]

Tried BFRIS, but the controls were frustrating (no slide side to side, and joystick will not configure properly) and i got sick of spinning around inside a funky ball pretty quickly. Parsec is "the great outdoors". Kind of reminds me of Terminal Velocity/Hellbender, without the land surface (whick I'm sure could be coded into a level - mmmmm, mountains...).

Even if BFRIS didn't bore me, it would driver me bananas tryint to steer that silly boat.

gg

Open source security is impossible here...

[Andrew Cady]

...because security is impossible. Closed source security is impossible, but obscurity can buy you at least a few weeks before a breech (ahem).

The only way to secure against bots is to have a referee sitting behind every client playing the game (and even then he might be payed off). This is the same principle with computer chess -- there's absolutely no way to prevent a person from having big blue (or Kasparov for that matter) choosing his moves for him, without physically observing the match. When it gets down to it, someone could make a physical robot that plays FPS by monitoring video output visually and physically typing on a keyboard (or, more realistically, by replacing video drivers and monitoring in software, and replacing keyboard/mouse drivers for input and inputting in software). Nobody's taken this approach yet, but the only thing stopping them is obscurity. With open source, none of that roundabout shit would be necessary, so it's easier (though always possible); there truly is *no* way to secure against bots.

The most viable solution, which is actually an alternative to security, is to privatize every game. Have every player sign his logins with public key crypto, and if he starts cheating he gets manually put on the blacklist. In order to prove he's not on the blacklist he would have to be authenticated by a trusted server that maintains blacklists before he could play. Something similar is already used in Q3/halflife to prevent piracy (so-called). Extending this system to blacklist cheaters would probably be trivial; it wouldn't even require modification of the client (only server). Of course, server admins would be able to use whatever subset of the blacklist they want, or whatever alternative blacklist servers, or no blacklist at all.

I still don't consider that real security though. It's just an imperfect but easier version of the personal referee. It's the equivalent of not having any file permissions, but only letting close friends use the computer. And one major potential problem might be people getting blacklisted who shouldn't. Anyway, security in the traditional sense is impossible for these games. The only total solution is that people learn to have some consideration for others, and not to take games so seriously. Hey, it could happen ;)

Re:Open source security is impossible here...

[Andreas Bombe]

There is also a probably not so well known network game called netrek and its descendants (it's been around for a long time, starship combats in 2-D). Most clients for that game are free software and can be modified and compiled by anyone.

The way they guard against bots (it's server policy, not all do) is to accept connections only from authenticated binaries. Some trusted parties compile, sign and distribute binaries which authenticate themselves via RSA to game servers. Open source and very difficult to cheat, both at once.

Re:Open source security is impossible here...

[Sloppy]

You can't secure a game from the inhumanly accurate reflexes of a bot, but you can (even with open source) secure the game against certain types of cheats, like the see-through-walls cheats in Quake. Just don't disclose unnecessary info to the clients. It's something that needs to be designed into the protocol from the very beginning, not as an afterthought. I think this is the type of thing that / was talking about.

---

Re:Open source security is impossible here...

[Andrew Cady]

Actually the problem isn't the protocol; that would be very easy to modify. The client isn't using the information it doesn't need, it could be left almost the same. The problem would be that the server would then have to detect whether the client should have certain information, and this would require some SERIOUS CPU... It would have to do all kinds of real-time computations for each user. Totally impractical. And besides, protecting against one cheat and not others is just more obscurity.

Also, see-through-walls can be prevented by not disclosing information, but the information that *must* be disclosed can still be recorded and interpreted with perfect accuracy by the computer, resulting in unpreventable extra-info cheats. The loudness of a grunt or other sfx tells distance, the trajectory must be provided for 3d sound, and the computer can record this and put a blip on your radar. And even if fov 360 is prevented, a client can spin around instantly and record everything it sees. You couldn't possibly limit the turn speed and find a balance between disallowing this cheat and allowing good mouse aim. Not that you could even prevent fov 360; the information needs to be at the client already if its to turn without network latency having effect. Not to mention, current 3d hardware expects it. So there's no way to prevent rear-view mirror or bots that fire backwards as easily as forwards.

Re:Demo Mirror

[krogoth]

Damn it, that's the second time you catch me with that link!!!!!!!!!!!! There should be an addition to the slashdot code that automatically puts any message with this link at -1. :)

DirectX has been ported to Linux

[Andrew Cady]

at least partially. The port is called wine (I'm sure you've heard of it). It runs plenty of Windows games already, e.g. StarCraft, Unreal, Half-life, etc. Native linux apps can also use DirectX, through winelib. Just FYI :)

Re:DirectX has been ported to Linux

[be-fan]

The main problem with DirectX through winlib is that you miss the point of DirectX. The library is nothing special, its the fact that it is a direct abstraction of hardware. Presumably, winlib directX just makes calls to the OSS soundsystem to emulate DirecSound or whatnot.

what about the Solaris versions?

[virag0]

OK - So Linux rules the world when it comes to UNIX games. C'mon guys - Solaris is a contender and even more so now that UltraSPARC's are readily available. I myself have an Ultra30 with an FFB2+ as my personal home computer. If I want to play a game on it I have to go to extra effort to port it to Solaris from Linux. contacting these commercial companies producing games such as parsec invokes a null response. Solaris users are gamers too. C'mon guys....... I've got this gutsy workstation looking for some fun after hours and Quake is not exactly what I call a game for most females. At least the Quake team didn't forget us Sun users..... FYI I have ported several OpenGL Linux games to Sun and also flightgear flightsim and Xshipwars. Now it's time for Linux to remember it's UNIX roots and get these other commercial games on Solaris. Once these games get as far as Linux, a Solaris port is trivial. Remember - it's all UNIX and just say NO to Microsoft. rachel

Re:what about the Solaris versions?

[chegosaurus]

> Quake is not exactly what I call a game for most females

Don't worry: I'm working on an open source Unix port of "Barbie Fashion Designer". ;-)

Re:what about the Solaris versions?

[Anonymous Coed]

I've got this gutsy workstation looking for some fun after hours and Quake is not exactly what I call a game for most females.

Well, my girlfriend thought exactly the same thing until she tried Quake 3 Arena. Now I can barely get my turn in to play!

I'm going to show her Parsec later and see what she thinks...

Re:Dramite Ships Attacking!

[Tegularius]

An AC asks:

> Who are the dramite?

The names of the ships (Urbite, Dramite, one other that escapes me now) were derived from the names of the programmers. There's also the letters "Jed" and "Urb" in the landscape scrolling below the ship. Yes, you can fit programmers' credits into even a small game.

Unfortunately, my 90MHz 601 isn't quite up to running Parsec at a reasonable speed on Mac V9T9--although it does do a great job at MunchMan. I'll have to pick up the real thing next time I'm at the folks' place. That, or become the first and only person to upgrade to a G4 for the sake of TI-99/4A emulation.

Glide wrappers?

[Sloppy]

Whatever happened to the Glide wrappers that used to all be in the news a years or two ago? Any available for Linux/BSD yet?

---

Re:Which is why I don't run Linux...

[akgoel]

DirectX is so much more than just the 3D aspect of the programming. Sure, functionally Direct3D and OpenGL are similar, with OpenGL being the cleaner interface. But DirectX has clean, thin, consistent API's for access to sound hardware (and 3D sound), input devices (mice, keyboard, force-feedback joystick), music support, multiplayer gaming, 2D transformations and animation acceleration. The point is not to confuse OpenGL with DirectX, since DirectX is a whole host of multimedia services.

Re:Which is why I don't run Linux...

[qqaz]

yes and Linux isn't Unix.

You mean GNU's Not Unix, right?

That makes no sense

[Andrew Cady]

The way they guard against bots (it's server policy, not all do) is to accept connections only from authenticated binaries. Some trusted parties compile, sign and distribute binaries which authenticate themselves via RSA to game servers.

Uhm? A modified client can send exactly the same information to the server as can an unmodified one. In this case, one could download authenticated binaries, create the md5sum based on them (or whatever it uses), and then use a modified client that just sends the md5sum from the auth'd binaries instead of from its own binary. There's really no way to guard against this, even theoretically, without an on-site referee.

Even more specifically, here's the transaction:

1. Server expects connect
2. Modified client connects
3. Server expects md5sum of client binary
4. Modified client sends md5sum of unmodified client binary
5. Server sends position of enemy
6. Server expects trajectory for aim
7. Modified client takes position of enemy, sends perfect trajectory for aim
8. Server sends scores: modified client wins!

All of that is totally possible for a modified client. Is there any step I missed that is not possible for the modified client?

Open source, but incredibly easy to cheat.

Re:That makes no sense

[Flambergius]

Couldn't md5sum be replaced with some authentication method within the client? And couldn't you make that method's output dependent of input from the server.
Wouldn't make it perfect, as you could always reverse engineer the whole client, but it wouldn't be incredibly easy anymore.

--Flam

Re:That makes no sense

[Andrew Cady]

You've missed the point. You don't have to reverse-engineer the client because it's open source. "Some authentication method within the client" isn't going to be able to send anything that a modified client can't.

If the server expected something based on what it sent, that wouldn't make any difference at all. The modified client would be able to respond in exactly the same way as the original one.

Re:That makes no sense

[Andrew Cady]

Netrek uses RSA encryption. Every rsa-enabled binary has a public/private key pair with which it authenticates against the server, and a time limit after which the key pair expires. The server has a list with public keys that it will allow to connect. This list is updated by the sever admin choosing which clients can play.

Oh I get it! So the authorized client's source is different from the publically available source (the difference being the key). Well IMHO that doesn't count, because it's not /totally/ open source... But it's a nifty solution. Unfortunately, it's still security through obscurity. Somebody will disassemble the binary and find the keys, then plug them into a modified client. With a game like netrek this obscurity is probably going to last years; with quake it'll be days.

Re:That makes no sense

[Andreas Bombe]

Disclaimer: I don't know details about netrek authentication, everything I say is mostly based on what I read and common sense.

Oh I get it! So the authorized client's source is different from the publically available source (the difference being the key). Well IMHO that doesn't count, because it's not /totally/ open source...

It is open source, except that the private keys aren't made public. What more do you want? You could plug in your own keys, only the servers wouldn't accept it as a trusted authentication (well, start your own server with your own trusted keys list).

Unfortunately, it's still security through obscurity.

Having everything except for the private keys is not security by obscurity. You have the code, you have the algorithms. There's nothing obscured. By your definition all cryptography would be security by obscurity.

Somebody will disassemble the binary and find the keys, then plug them into a modified client.

This shouldn't be that easy. I think there could be a few tricks to avoid including it in the clear (mostly making it dependend on the rest of the code so that it really authenticates the binary and not the key alone).

Info on Netrek in general can be found on the Netrek Continuum.

Re:That makes no sense

[Andrew Cady]

Having everything except for the private keys is not security by obscurity. You have the code, you have the algorithms. There's nothing obscured. By your definition all cryptography would be security by obscurity.

What? THE PRIVATE KEYS ARE AVAILABLE TO ANYONE WITH THE CLIENT. The only thing obscuring them is the closed-sourceness of the binary. All information required is available to the client, if he can disassemble the binary enough. That's exactly what security through obscurity means. Unlike other crypto, where the snoopers DON'T have the private key at all. That's not obscurity. But if the snooper DOES have the key, but it's just DIFFICULT TO ACCESS, i.e. OBSCURE, then that's obscurity.

This shouldn't be that easy. I think there could be a few tricks to avoid including it in the clear (mostly making it dependend on the rest of the code so that it really authenticates the binary and not the key alone).

If those tricks are open source, they'll be easy to break. If they aren't, it's just more obscurity.

Re:Demo Mirror

[MstrFool]

{chuckle} just as it's a good idea to check your milk befor drinking it.. it's a good idea to check a link befor clicking it. {BTW.. I'm not the one that posted it}

NetWar!!

[Periwinkle]

Yes, I remember this. It came with Personal Netware. It was the first game I played over ether! Is there a linux port anywhere? I suppose I could just run it under dosemu, but dang, I loved that game.

-John
I eat dog. Free DVDs. Horray!

how to create enemies! (sorta)

[jbridge21]

I've had this game for more than 24 hours now, I've been watching Parsec for like a year now...
Anyways, if you want to make an "enemy" ship that doesn't do anything, but can be blown up, type in the console (~) "summon class hurricane" or "summon class firebird"... hehehehe
And if you poke around, you can figure out how to do some cheats and stuff.

Anyways. I'm surprised nobody has posted this information yet! Hope this post makes it to a good scoring so people will know...

freeciv

[Devil Ducky]

will the win freeciv play with the linux freeciv?
if you had the same version numbers etc...

Re:freeciv

[Orja]

It runs fine.

Re:Which is why I don't run Linux...

[six809]

Thinking back to the only DirectX proggy I've seen the source to, SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) does an awful lot of this, and cross-platform too. I think there's definite stress on the "simple", but that suits me fine...

ELITE, I want ELITE darn it!

[jonr]

IMNSHO still the best game written ever. ELITE is the king! Ah, all those nights on my trusty old BBC Model B, using an Apple green monitor in the computer lab. "Hey there is a system we havent vistited, I wander if we run into any Thargoids?"
David Braben and Ian Bell, where are you now?
(Oops, looks like troubl e!)
Jón
(No, I did NOT put that space in "trouble")

Re:Cross-platform games

[Ventilator]

I've played Doom on a friends Psion.
Don't ask me for a URL though... =:-(

Linux World Expo's Terminus?

[E-TiE]

This game PARSEC looks like Terminus (http://www.vvisions.com/terminus) a game I saw being demo-ed at the recent Linux World Expo (and had a chance to talk at length with one of the lead programmers). We'll have to see which is the better space game but they both look pretty neat. --e!
-------------------------------------------- ---

Re:Which is why I don't run Linux...

[locutus074]

You mean GNU's Not Unix, right?

Heh... nope.

LINUX == Linux Is Not UniX
:)

Overheat?

[ChunkOChowder]

This past summer, I bought a new Voodoo3 card. Everything seemed to be working fine, except when I would play games that actually used Glide or OpenGL, about ten minutes in my computer would hang. Black screen, no response from anything I did... I had just got a new motherboard too, so at first I thougt is was a driver problem. Well, one day I had the cover of my case off and was playing Quake III when I realized I had been playing for 20 min with no problem. So I reached down and put my hand on the heatsink on the video board, and burned the hell out of it. Long story short, attached a couple cpu fans to it and now it runs fine. I used to have a voodoo 2 accelerator, and it seemed like it ran pretty cool, but that was a while ago... You might try running with your cover off and check out your heat situation.

Chowder

Re:Alien Craft Advancing!

[thehermit]

I was also a Parsec addict. And Tombstone, too! I miss my old TI...

Forget Parsec! Where's Hunt the Wumpus!

[ryth]

As much as I adored parsec, and my TI-99 (almost as much fun as the cheesy TRS-80) I have to say the bestest (sic) game in the world for it had to be Hunt the Wumpus. Not only was the name a riot but so was the music. Anyone else remember it?

Yes, SDL is getting there

[DrCode]

I agree, SDL is becoming a great library for multi-platform game development. It's low-level, extremely simple, and hardly incurs any overhead. And I notice on the SDL newsgroup that lots of the people using it are using it on Windows. It still has a way to go, such as builtin MIDI support; but it's getting enhanced all the time.

Re:Which is why I bought a 3DFX card...

[DrCode]

I wanted to play Ultima9 when it came out, and knew that it
came with a Glide and Direct3D binaries. Since (1) I'd heard
that Glide was generally more efficient and stable than Direct3D,
(2) that Glide had long been supported in Linux, (3) that the
X-server for 3DFX cards, while new, was supposed to be one
of the best available, and (4) that a Voodoo3 was only $99 US,
it was a pretty easy choice.

It was also the right choice for me, since the Direct3D version
of Ultima9 turned out to be extremely buggy and slow, while
the Glide version was stable and performed reasonably, even
on my modest K6/333 machine.

Re:Cross-platform games

[DGolden]

Psion Doom port v0.2 (somewhat incomplete)
is on www.palmtop.com/encore.html

It's far from finished, since the programmers spent the past while working on the 4.0 version of their spectrum emulator for the psion. (which is also quite impressive...)