"SciTech Software, a long time user of Watcom compiler products contacted Sybase about turning the compilers into an Open Source project, and hence the Open Watcom Project was born."
I was going to ask SyBase to open source their C/C++ compiler after finding out they dropped their compiler/support last year, but Thank-you SciTechSoft for getting the ball rolling !
> That is the rendering engine breaking down under conditions it was not built to handle properly; much like when you walk right up to a wall in Doom and walk sideways (ooo, look at the squares!).
That's because Doom only uses point sampling texture mapping.
"Give me TriLinear Filtering or give me death !"
;-)
> However, if and when rendering engines start to incorporate true motion-blurring (which nobody seems terribly inclined to bother with, since the fake blurring looks just fine,
The REASON, is because a high frame is MUCH EASIER to generate then true motion-blurring. With a high frame rate we can have a faked temporal (time) and spatial (scan-line) anti-aliasing image. TV's do this, with their interlaced frames. (And is part of the reason text looks so bad on them.)
> and is probably cheaper and definitely simpler to compute), 30 FPS will be just fine.
30 Hz is still TOO LOW. I can't play anything less then 60 Hz without eyeball strain, and I prefer 100 Hz.
> I've played the Apple II version as well, but wasn't it in monochrome?
Not if your apple was hooked up to a TV.;-)
(I only had my Apple hooked up to a green monitor. My uncle had his hooked up to a TV, and it was great to see *COLOR* graphics;-) I could FINALY play GumBall hehe
Old games dont' die, they just become less popular
on
Vanishing Game Genres
·
· Score: 2
As long as there are people around, there will be games. How long have Chess, Go, and even Gambling been around for ? For over a 1,000 years, or more.
It's true, a lot of games are just "the same game with nicer visuals". i.e. How far have driving games progressed? From Atari's Stunts up to the latest EA's "Need for Speed".
Now I don't see too many people playing Quake 1 CTF / ThunderWalker / Team Fortress / Mega-TF because the "majority" of gamers have moved onto newer games (which may or may not be better;-) Old games don't die, they just become less popular. I see the same thing in the retro-gaming scene.
What new games ARE doing are becoming cross-genre experiences. e.g.
Majesty is a nice mix of Sim, RTS, and RPG.
Dungeon Siege is a sweet mix of RPG+Action. Even Drakan is a mix to a limited extent.
Part of the problem that we dont' see more new genres, is because of sales. When "gamers" snap up 2 million copies of Diablo 2, which is a just a rehash (allthough fun game!) of Diablo 1, what incentive is there for smaller developers to create a "new" game, when sales can barely even reach 100,000.
i.e. Thief was a interesting twist and great innovative game, but that didn't help Looking Glass Studios from running out of money.
We'll continue to see new games. It's just getting harder and harder to do.
> Also, why would anyone besides IPO millionares or graphics professionals want to spend the price of a low-end PC on JUST a graphics card
Because when you spend $300 to $400 on a new video card it will last ~3 years, INSTEAD of spening $150 on a crappy 3d card that has to be replaced every year. "Do the math"
I spent $350 on my Voodoo 2... I lasted 3 years.
I sent $400 on my GeForce 2... it will last me a good 3 years.
Sometimes you want to buy the most expensive thing you can afford, so it lasts longer.
Bragging rights? Those are gone in 6 months anyways.
NT4 was DEFINATELY much more snappy on a dual system. Win2K still seems a little sluggish, BUT ONLY when opening a new window, it seems fine otherwise. I think it's the ram, or lack of it. Both, at work (single cpu) and at home (dual cpu's) only have 128 megs of RAM. I'm thinking another 128 megs would help. (Here I thought NT was a memory pig, then along comes Diablo 2;-)
> How much would the P3-800s run for nowadays anyway?
Checking www.mwave.com, the P3s-800 are ~ $320. I have bought stuff from there before and enjoy the quality of service, even though they aren't _the_ cheapest, they do have good prices.
> In fact I'm planning on playing around with a 1394 hard drive adapter one of these days.
Isn't 1394 firewire ?
I probably should upgrade my outdated scsi-2 up to scsi-160. I need a screaming fast drive for reading / writing. Any recommendations I should look into? (I have a budget max of $500 for a new hard drive plus controller.)
> Incidentally, what did it take to o/c the 366 to 550?
2 Things: Cooling, and Power.
1. A heatsink. I mean a REAL heatsink: www.3dfxcool.com/alpha7ho.htm Don't let the website name fool you, they sell cpu coolers (along with video card fans)
2. The 2nd cpu needed a little extra juice. Had to bump the voltage up to 2.10v. Also, in the BIOS, turn Error Speed Hold off (forgeting the exact name, but should be close enough), and also select Custom MHz: FrontSideBus speed: 100 Mhz.
I've been running the dual system since last Nov. I've had NT4 and NT5 crash about once every 2 months, due to a "IRQ not handled exception." Never did track this one down.
You might want to check the overclockers database to see if the week your cpu was made, can be overclocked: Overclockers Database Main site is here:www.overclockers.com
Also, make sure you upgrade the Abit BP6 Bios.
www.bp6.com
I think my next upgrade will be dual 1 GHz P3's. I want my system to be 100% rock solid (allthough I am EXTREMELY HAPPY with the c366 @ 550;-)
> To live in the US
You will find ssn's in pretty much most of the English colonies, Canada, Australia, etc., not just the uSA.
> you pretty much MUST have one
Not true. I haven't had one for the past 2
years. I also have friends who haven't had for one for as long as the past 10 years. It IS possible to live without a Slave Identification Number.
If you study into contract law, you will see the ssn is really a contract. Which means it can be revoked.
> They refuse to install the modem if you have anything other than Win 95/98/ME or a Mac.
Not true. At least in Massachusetts, they recognize NT4 and NT5.
Last year in Jan when I got my cable modem, I told the guys I was running Linux. They said they didn't support Linux. I asked them if they would install the cable modem on a NT box, and then let me handle the setup for Linux. After they said yes, I asked if their would be any problems running a Linux firewall. They said as long as it doesn't cause any problems. Since I didn't allow the tech guy to tough my computer, I asked him for the usual net config info, such as domain name, dns servers, and whether they were using DHCP.
Currently, I'm running Win2k as my main internet machine (due to me not having time to learn all the new ipchains stuff in 2.2) If the @Home guys make a hassle about non-windoze OS's, like BSD, or BeOS, just setup a windows partition, let the tech guys do their stuff, then switch over to the OS you want to use.
If you are a paying customer, but don't use a "supported OS".. are they going to cut you off? With ASDL just becoming avail in Mass., the answer should be no.
> is get a dual-Celeron board with two 500s or 600s for Win2K.
Been there done that. (Abit BP6 w/ 2x Cel 366 o/c to 550)
Instead, get a dual P3-800 with minimum 128 megs of ram. (Or get a dual mobo w/ 1 cpu now, and wait for the price of the 800's to come down in a few months)
> 3D cards haven't yet reached that point, and are relying on bigger and better games coming out that force users to upgrade. Eventually, there will reach a point at which it won't matter any more, and my guess is it won't be all that long
Not with real-time photorealism demands.
Imagine a 1600x1200 real-time raytraced image at 100 fps. We have QUITE a while before we get there.
> What do people cling to C's hideous syntax when they write a new language?
I'll take braces over begin/end any day.
What _specifically_ do you hate about the C / C++ syntax ?
> At 32, since the day I first got my hands on an Apple ][+
Ah, the good old days, when a person could ACTUALLY understand the whole computer / OS / Hardware.
> When I wasn't playing games on my Apple, I was either cracking their copy protection and disassembling them
Aye, like figuring out how to make a backup copy of Br0derbund's "Wings of Fury." I actually un-write protected the disk, by punching a hole on the side of the disk. Then after modified the boot sector, I was able to do nibble trace to see what exactly it was trying to read off the disk. FINALY was able to make a backup copy of the disk with Copy II Plus:-)
Or figuring out in Captain Goodnite, that whenever your pressed the 'T' key to show your time remaining, to reset the time back to 24 Hours;-)
I never did figure out how the change the landscape in "Rescue Raiders";-(
>, or making lame-ass attempts at writing my own. > I learned how the Bresenham line algorithm worked by poring over the entrails of Ultima II's DNGDRAW.OBJ
The early ultimas were great for learning about graphics. Tile-based graphics? Wazthat? hehe
> and Karateka taught me what good sound and animation code looked like.
Does that ever sound familiar !
One of my best hacks, was ripping the end music from Karateka and converting it to real music notation. I "shadowed" the ROM into the 16K language card, and made the Reset ALLWAYS dump into the "monitor." Since Karateka only used 48K, it left the shadow'ed rom/ram alone.
Had to love that timely Nibble article on "Duel Voice"
Slashdot Mirror
I just read this from the info page:
"SciTech Software, a long time user of Watcom compiler products contacted Sybase about turning the compilers into an Open Source project, and hence the Open Watcom Project was born."
http://www.openwatcom.org/info.html
I was going to ask SyBase to open source their C/C++ compiler after finding out they dropped their compiler/support last year, but Thank-you SciTechSoft for getting the ball rolling !
> That is the rendering engine breaking down under conditions it was not built to handle properly; much like when you walk right up to a wall in Doom and walk sideways (ooo, look at the squares!).
That's because Doom only uses point sampling texture mapping.
"Give me TriLinear Filtering or give me death !"
;-)
> However, if and when rendering engines start to incorporate true motion-blurring (which nobody seems terribly inclined to bother with, since the fake blurring looks just fine,
The REASON, is because a high frame is MUCH EASIER to generate then true motion-blurring. With a high frame rate we can have a faked temporal (time) and spatial (scan-line) anti-aliasing image. TV's do this, with their interlaced frames. (And is part of the reason text looks so bad on them.)
> and is probably cheaper and definitely simpler to compute), 30 FPS will be just fine.
30 Hz is still TOO LOW. I can't play anything less then 60 Hz without eyeball strain, and I prefer 100 Hz.
Cheers
> I've played the Apple II version as well, but wasn't it in monochrome?
;-)
;-) I could FINALY play GumBall hehe
Not if your apple was hooked up to a TV.
(I only had my Apple hooked up to a green monitor. My uncle had his hooked up to a TV, and it was great to see *COLOR* graphics
All you Lode Runner fan, check this site out:
Lode Runner Museum !
> Every play the advanced version with all new levels? That was almost impossible.
Championship Lode Runner ?
That was dam hard, but fun.
You can find it and some emu's here:
http://www.geocitie s.com/SiliconValley/Byte/6508/apple2/emu.htm
Cheers
As long as there are people around, there will be games. How long have Chess, Go, and even Gambling been around for ? For over a 1,000 years, or more.
;-) Old games don't die, they just become less popular. I see the same thing in the retro-gaming scene.
It's true, a lot of games are just "the same game with nicer visuals". i.e. How far have driving games progressed? From Atari's Stunts up to the latest EA's "Need for Speed".
Now I don't see too many people playing Quake 1 CTF / ThunderWalker / Team Fortress / Mega-TF because the "majority" of gamers have moved onto newer games (which may or may not be better
What new games ARE doing are becoming cross-genre experiences. e.g.
Majesty is a nice mix of Sim, RTS, and RPG.
Dungeon Siege is a sweet mix of RPG+Action. Even Drakan is a mix to a limited extent.
Part of the problem that we dont' see more new genres, is because of sales. When "gamers" snap up 2 million copies of Diablo 2, which is a just a rehash (allthough fun game!) of Diablo 1, what incentive is there for smaller developers to create a "new" game, when sales can barely even reach 100,000.
i.e. Thief was a interesting twist and great innovative game, but that didn't help Looking Glass Studios from running out of money.
We'll continue to see new games. It's just getting harder and harder to do.
> whereas D3D uses execution buffers
Only in DX3. DX5, and later, fixed that.
> Also, why would anyone besides IPO millionares or graphics professionals want to spend the price of a low-end PC on JUST a graphics card
... I lasted 3 years.
... it will last me a good 3 years.
Because when you spend $300 to $400 on a new video card it will last ~3 years, INSTEAD of spening $150 on a crappy 3d card that has to be replaced every year. "Do the math"
I spent $350 on my Voodoo 2
I sent $400 on my GeForce 2
Sometimes you want to buy the most expensive thing you can afford, so it lasts longer.
Bragging rights? Those are gone in 6 months anyways.
Cheers
> But Win2K screamed on those duals,
;-)
NT4 was DEFINATELY much more snappy on a dual system. Win2K still seems a little sluggish, BUT ONLY when opening a new window, it seems fine otherwise. I think it's the ram, or lack of it. Both, at work (single cpu) and at home (dual cpu's) only have 128 megs of RAM. I'm thinking another 128 megs would help. (Here I thought NT was a memory pig, then along comes Diablo 2
> How much would the P3-800s run for nowadays anyway?
Checking www.mwave.com, the P3s-800 are ~ $320. I have bought stuff from there before and enjoy the quality of service, even though they aren't _the_ cheapest, they do have good prices.
> In fact I'm planning on playing around with a 1394 hard drive adapter one of these days.
Isn't 1394 firewire ?
I probably should upgrade my outdated scsi-2 up to scsi-160. I need a screaming fast drive for reading / writing. Any recommendations I should look into? (I have a budget max of $500 for a new hard drive plus controller.)
Cheers
> Incidentally, what did it take to o/c the 366 to 550?
;-)
2 Things: Cooling, and Power.
1. A heatsink. I mean a REAL heatsink: www.3dfxcool.com/alpha7ho.htm
Don't let the website name fool you, they sell cpu coolers (along with video card fans)
2. The 2nd cpu needed a little extra juice. Had to bump the voltage up to 2.10v. Also, in the BIOS, turn Error Speed Hold off (forgeting the exact name, but should be close enough), and also select Custom MHz: FrontSideBus speed: 100 Mhz.
I've been running the dual system since last Nov. I've had NT4 and NT5 crash about once every 2 months, due to a "IRQ not handled exception." Never did track this one down.
You might want to check the overclockers database to see if the week your cpu was made, can be overclocked: Overclockers Database
Main site is here:www.overclockers.com
Also, make sure you upgrade the Abit BP6 Bios.
www.bp6.com
I think my next upgrade will be dual 1 GHz P3's. I want my system to be 100% rock solid (allthough I am EXTREMELY HAPPY with the c366 @ 550
Cheers
> To live in the US
You will find ssn's in pretty much most of the English colonies, Canada, Australia, etc., not just the uSA.
> you pretty much MUST have one
Not true. I haven't had one for the past 2
years. I also have friends who haven't had for one for as long as the past 10 years. It IS possible to live without a Slave Identification Number.
If you study into contract law, you will see the ssn is really a contract. Which means it can be revoked.
Read the book if you want more info.
> They refuse to install the modem if you have anything other than Win 95/98/ME or a Mac.
.. are they going to cut you off? With ASDL just becoming avail in Mass., the answer should be no.
Not true. At least in Massachusetts, they recognize NT4 and NT5.
Last year in Jan when I got my cable modem, I told the guys I was running Linux. They said they didn't support Linux. I asked them if they would install the cable modem on a NT box, and then let me handle the setup for Linux. After they said yes, I asked if their would be any problems running a Linux firewall. They said as long as it doesn't cause any problems. Since I didn't allow the tech guy to tough my computer, I asked him for the usual net config info, such as domain name, dns servers, and whether they were using DHCP.
Currently, I'm running Win2k as my main internet machine (due to me not having time to learn all the new ipchains stuff in 2.2) If the @Home guys make a hassle about non-windoze OS's, like BSD, or BeOS, just setup a windows partition, let the tech guys do their stuff, then switch over to the OS you want to use.
If you are a paying customer, but don't use a "supported OS"
"They that would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin, 1759
Those concerned about privacy should read this excellent book:
It's None of Your Business by Larry Sontag
There is NO law that requires a person to be numbered, and it IS possible to live, work, drive, without being another numbered serf.
> capitalization of Microsoft, IBM, Cicso, Intel.
> They're the "biggest boys" on the planet.
Who owns the money?
I'd say the largest organized crime syndicates would be _government_ and _bankers_.
> because I want the price of the 850MHz PIII to drop rapidly so I can upgrade my 450 :)
:-)
Hear, hear.
I'm waiting for the 1 GHz's to drop so I can upgrade my dual 550s.
"Once you taste a SMP machine, you will cringe when you go back to uniprocessor land"
> is get a dual-Celeron board with two 500s or 600s for Win2K.
Been there done that. (Abit BP6 w/ 2x Cel 366 o/c to 550)
Instead, get a dual P3-800 with minimum 128 megs of ram. (Or get a dual mobo w/ 1 cpu now, and wait for the price of the 800's to come down in a few months)
Don't forgot "Outcast"
> 3D cards haven't yet reached that point, and are relying on bigger and better games coming out that force users to upgrade. Eventually, there will reach a point at which it won't matter any more, and my guess is it won't be all that long
Not with real-time photorealism demands.
Imagine a 1600x1200 real-time raytraced image at 100 fps. We have QUITE a while before we get there.
It's funny, that id has "allmost" doing abandonware for years now. Releasing sources for CW3D, Doom, and Quake.
> What do people cling to C's hideous syntax when they write a new language? I'll take braces over begin/end any day. What _specifically_ do you hate about the C / C++ syntax ?
> At 32, since the day I first got my hands on an Apple ][+
:-)
;-)
;-(
:)
Ah, the good old days, when a person could ACTUALLY understand the whole computer / OS / Hardware.
> When I wasn't playing games on my Apple, I was either cracking their copy protection and disassembling them
Aye, like figuring out how to make a backup copy of Br0derbund's "Wings of Fury." I actually un-write protected the disk, by punching a hole on the side of the disk. Then after modified the boot sector, I was able to do nibble trace to see what exactly it was trying to read off the disk. FINALY was able to make a backup copy of the disk with Copy II Plus
Or figuring out in Captain Goodnite, that whenever your pressed the 'T' key to show your time remaining, to reset the time back to 24 Hours
I never did figure out how the change the landscape in "Rescue Raiders"
>, or making lame-ass attempts at writing my own. > I learned how the Bresenham line algorithm worked by poring over the entrails of Ultima II's DNGDRAW.OBJ
The early ultimas were great for learning about graphics. Tile-based graphics? Wazthat? hehe
> and Karateka taught me what good sound and animation code looked like.
Does that ever sound familiar !
One of my best hacks, was ripping the end music from Karateka and converting it to real music notation. I "shadowed" the ROM into the 16K language card, and made the Reset ALLWAYS dump into the "monitor." Since Karateka only used 48K, it left the shadow'ed rom/ram alone.
Had to love that timely Nibble article on "Duel Voice"
Anyone want the the Karateka MIDI file ?
> but if you want to play the games legally you still have to buy them.
That's part of the problem, finding the older games for sale.
Sounds like the income tax scam. Slave Identificaion Number = signed confession of a contract.
> Is there even a market for 1GHz+ right now?
Game developers: Programmers, and artists. ( I fall in the former category. I hate waiting 20 mins for the latest build to compile.)
Scientific visualization.
CAD
etc.
> or better yet your social security number
Not everyone has one.
> I don't think even the "visionary" Jon Katz can predict the future here.
... who has the money?
It's not that hard to predict
A. The recording companies. They have the money to sue the living daylights out of anyone for "copyright violation"
B. Who empowers the recording companies? The consumer. If enough people boy-cott buying cd's, the RIAA would sit up and take notice.
Unfortunately, people aren't as organized as companies.
Nice trolling.
If anyone has checked out the SDK, you can see they conditionaly compile the student version anyways =P