Yes, Good old DOS kids (II) - Where Game Programming is today
So, our moderator friend doesn''t like what we''re saying here eh?
I see we have a case of some serious Windows fancy huh?
If he''d read a little more carefully he''d have found out this has to do a lot more with games than he may ever know. What''s wrong with some history, son?
Now, back to business..
Thank you all, kids, for posting on "Yes, Good old DOS kids, so read on". In reply to some of you:
Ah, the young generation!
The RealWanderer makes an excellent point in a brief and logic statement: If easy is what you need, then Windows is it. I agree. But then again, you may learn in time that making a good game is NOT supposed to be easy. A good game is something like a good girl, not so easy to come to terms with. Both expressions in the comparison hold true even today.
Now, kids, let''s not compare Operating Systems against hardware advances. The so called ''hardware advances'' of today, where you have a bunch of ram chips cattled together like PLAs, and where devices are entirely dependant on CPU speed for performance, are a subject all unto themselves, not to mention the GREAT advanced VGA screw up (now, what ever happened to Vertical Blanking Interrupts, memory mapped registers and coherence in design, i.e., performance? Oh, I forgot, you don''t need any of that, you''re in Windows).
That aside, let''s consider the place of games in gaming technology today now, shall we? Hmmm.. Where exactly are games today? Let''s see..
..A 233MHz system is needed (minimum) to run arcade games which originally ran at 1.02 MHz.. okay..
..PC games, more than often near a hundred Megabytes large, are in the hyped 3D realm (a style started out by UNIX games like maze and DOS games like Sublogic Flight Simulator 2 and Wolf 3D - did I say DOS?), most of which can''t get a decent 60 continuous fps of running speed without the characters looking like a bad 80''s video-clip remix scene..
..For the first time in gaming history we see an attempt to xbox up PC AT hardware with a glorious VGA sidekick and call it a game console, hmm...
..We see young game programmers using libraries several megabytes large to do something a couple hundred bytes of loose assembly (or extremely optimized C) would normally do.. Not so bad.. Games are in an excellent position, I see.
Still, like I stated before, it''s not a matter of which is better, it all comes down to what kind of games you want to design, games that look pretty in a window, or games that look well AND have excellent system response and kick serious butt.
As a final note, Sethius, Spinal Confusion and VXG, same as others whove already sent an email, are hitting on the right spot, and I can see not all is lost yet. You too are welcome to email me some time, for a couple of neat hardware tricks. Sethius, by the way, hardware acceleration is not a property of Windows, no matter what you''ve read or whatever idea someone sold you.
Spinal Confusion, with his timely remarks, speaks the truth. His remarks point out clearly the reason behind the obscene size of .DLL''s nowadays, the lack of quality of games (compared to the kind of hardware speed we now enjoy) and the whole bunch of game programmer wanna-be''s out there (you all know deep inside who you are). Just like Rock.. Every kid wanted to be a rock star some time or the other.
But, boyz and girlz, there''s always going to be guys like us around, wether you like it or not. Because otherwise, who''s going to design the hardware for you to play game-programmer on, and who''s going to be writing the REAL games for you to spend your dollars on? Come to papa, quarters and bucks.
Now that I think about it, we MIGHT be better off designing the hardware ourselves. :/
(VXG, you''re not so far off our track, son).
Now, if you''ll forgive me, kids, I have a game machine to finish and more dollars to make (actually working on the coin slot hardware wireup now).
Good luck and nice sharing with you all.
Regards,
2600.
..And remember, let''s not forget our history, let''s remember WHERE we came from, let us treasure who we are.
ps: for the kids that emailed me (pixelrat@hotmail.com - I know, I know, a hotmail account, but they''re actually pretty hard to trace back where I''m mailing from ), next time kindly put a note on the subject addressing the mail to ''2600'' (It''s a shared box)
Yeah, I agree with you.
But why DOS? Surely someone can program a smaller, faster OS with a better memorymodel than that? Right?
/ Martin
But why DOS? Surely someone can program a smaller, faster OS with a better memorymodel than that? Right?
/ Martin
quote:Original post by 2600
But then again, you may learn in time that making a good game is NOT supposed to be easy.
Then let''s all use machine code on punchcards.
quote:
..A 233MHz system is needed (minimum) to run arcade games which originally ran at 1.02 MHz.. okay..
Call me when I can surf the web, watch a video, listen to an MP3, work on a document or two, chat with my friends, check my email, hot-swap USB devices, develop software, and run 10 or 20 other processes at the same time on that 1.02 MHz machine.
quote:
..PC games, more than often near a hundred Megabytes large
If you can find better ways to store and represent the models, textures, sounds, and levels in a game like Quake3, please feel free to enlighten us. Or perhaps games don''t really need any of these, and we should all be playing ASCII Quake?
quote:
But, boyz and girlz, there''s always going to be guys like us around, wether you like it or not. Because otherwise, who''s going to design the hardware for you to play game-programmer on, and who''s going to be writing the REAL games for you to spend your dollars on? Come to papa, quarters and bucks.
Talk about an elitist attitude. Apparently, anyone who doesn''t write DOS games in assembly language isn''t a real programmer.
I agree, HUGA.
I''m not a DOS fan myself (If you read the past 2 topics regarding this you''ll see what I mean), but, judging by the way things are nowadays, DOS appears to be the lesser of two evils.
DOS is inefficient, memory wasting and is like a nightmare puzzle from hell gone bad, but compared to Windows, the level of hardware power you get is EXTREME.
I and people I know are working on their own independent OS''s (I have my kernal almost complete), but with corporate lawyers dogging around, it''s not likely kids in the future will ever see or get to use any of them. What we''ve chosen to do is design hardware for ourselves and use our own OS''s inhouse. Sound selfish, but you can only go so far on limited resources and budget (compared to Microsoft''s in example).
Every once in a while a kid will contact us for advice, and we''ll try to do the best we can to point them in the right information direction, opinions aside.
In regard to the Anonymous fellow who asks wether I like progress or not.. Why I even bother to post like this if I didn''t?
I''m up for progress, but SMART progress, son. Smart progress.
Latz.
2600.
I''m not a DOS fan myself (If you read the past 2 topics regarding this you''ll see what I mean), but, judging by the way things are nowadays, DOS appears to be the lesser of two evils.
DOS is inefficient, memory wasting and is like a nightmare puzzle from hell gone bad, but compared to Windows, the level of hardware power you get is EXTREME.
I and people I know are working on their own independent OS''s (I have my kernal almost complete), but with corporate lawyers dogging around, it''s not likely kids in the future will ever see or get to use any of them. What we''ve chosen to do is design hardware for ourselves and use our own OS''s inhouse. Sound selfish, but you can only go so far on limited resources and budget (compared to Microsoft''s in example).
Every once in a while a kid will contact us for advice, and we''ll try to do the best we can to point them in the right information direction, opinions aside.
In regard to the Anonymous fellow who asks wether I like progress or not.. Why I even bother to post like this if I didn''t?
I''m up for progress, but SMART progress, son. Smart progress.
Latz.
2600.
One more thing ...
You seem to be ignoring the fact that computers (and the associated operating systems) are designed to be general-purpose machines, which can perform any number of tasks, and run on any number of hardware configurations. If you want to program for arcade machines or consoles, more power to you, but going on about how Windows sucks because it isn''t something which it wasn''t designed to be is rather pointless.
You seem to be ignoring the fact that computers (and the associated operating systems) are designed to be general-purpose machines, which can perform any number of tasks, and run on any number of hardware configurations. If you want to program for arcade machines or consoles, more power to you, but going on about how Windows sucks because it isn''t something which it wasn''t designed to be is rather pointless.
Martee said:
I''m afraid I have to agree with 2600. Martee, I think 2600 is talking about computer game programming, not being a nerdy UZR hahah.
quote:
Call me when I can surf the web, watch a video, listen to an MP3, work on a document or two,
chat with my friends, check my email, hot-swap USB devices, develop software, and run 10 or
20 other processes at the same time on that 1.02 MHz machine.
I''m afraid I have to agree with 2600. Martee, I think 2600 is talking about computer game programming, not being a nerdy UZR hahah.
Er, thank you.
See my above post. If you want to program games for a 1.02 MHZ processor, go ahead. But don''t just sit here and complain about how bad our _Multi-Purpose_ computers and OSs are at playing arcade games.
See my above post. If you want to program games for a 1.02 MHZ processor, go ahead. But don''t just sit here and complain about how bad our _Multi-Purpose_ computers and OSs are at playing arcade games.
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