QBiN wrote:

creepingnet wrote:

Worked on the game I'm creating some more last night, this time mostly drawing the "Rooms".

Very cool, creepingnet. Are you writing your own game engine? Or using one off-the-shelf?

I'm using an old copy of Adventure Game Studio in which the room editor runs in DOS. I'm keeping on vintage hardware and using vintage software to retain that "circa 1988-1993" feel to it. I may move over to Windows if I find that I'm stuck using 256 colors with 16-color sprites.

The tools I'm using total
AGS 0.99 (I think) - uses "ROOMEDIT.EXE" to edit the rooms, and still has the "Graphical Scripts" in it.
I'm using Notepad for WFWG311 and EDIT ("dosedit") for creating the walkthrough/puzzles/inventory lists, I use notepad for the smaller stuff
I'm using Graf-X II for DOS to create ALL of the graphics
I'm using Presto Arrange for Win31x and maybe Voyetra Sequencer Pro to create the soundtrack in MIDI

I'm also very familiar with these because I've been tinkering in them for over 15+ years. Especially Graf-X II, I even used that for website graphics and the like.

I've done a few short tidbits in AGS before that all worked really well, including a few working puzzles. But I've never actually worked a game to complete full-length game before though. Wish I had some of my earlier efforts still just to show off, but maybe I'll make a playable demo of this beforehand.

Today I decided to play around with my old Pentium M laptop. It is a ECS/PCChips G220. Upgraded Debian from Squeeze to Wheezy and had to patch speedstep-centrino and recompile the kernel to be able to use its processor at its actual speed instead of being stuck at 600MHz thanks to the broken ACPI and the fact that speedstep-centrino only has voltage/frequency tables for Banyas Pentium Ms, but no data on late Sonoma CPUs.

Started cleaning up a 770X thinkpad this morning. Things went well and I upped it to 128mb and a 6gb drive but things slammed to a halt when MSCDEX choked. Both on the DVD drive and the 24x drive it hopelessly hangs the machine so things are on hold again until I get another USB to IDE adapter so I can just dump the install CD to the drive, sys the disk and carry on from there.
After the bench is cleaned up I'll look into finally finishing an install of 95 on the 730TE tablet. 😊

CelGen wrote:

Started cleaning up a 770X thinkpad this morning. Things went well and I upped it to 128mb and a 6gb drive but things slammed to a halt when MSCDEX choked. Both on the DVD drive and the 24x drive it hopelessly hangs the machine so things are on hold again until I get another USB to IDE adapter so I can just dump the install CD to the drive, sys the disk and carry on from there.
After the bench is cleaned up I'll look into finally finishing an install of 95 on the 730TE tablet. 😊

have you tried alternative versions? mscdex from Win98se works in dos 6.22, I think. And you can try oakcdrom.sys and combination with mscdex.exe (comes on the win98se disc too), and try alternative ms-dos loaders like SHCDX (I think that's it). I can't remember where to get that from off the internet though.. I could boot up my 486 and get you a copy though if you want.

Started to learn how to use a SoundBlaster card from QBasic, because I always wanted to know this since I started programming in the mid-90s. I guess I'll be spending more time with BASIC from now on.

Optimized DOS configuration on my main retro machine. Currently installing WfW 3.11...

oerk wrote:

Started to learn how to use a SoundBlaster card from QBasic, because I always wanted to know this since I started programming in the mid-90s. I guess I'll be spending more time with BASIC from now on.

From BASIC? I had no idea that was possible. Impressive.

Configured DOSbox with a custom autoexec. 🤣 Good fun, I can't believe I never thought to do this before. 😜

anyone going to port one of the other CRT shadowmask shaders for the older monitors to complete this? 😀

The current CRT shader is great, but it represents later hi-res CRT monitors (which are still of the period really, does the job mimicing my '94 XGA monitor)

Did some more tweakin' to the 486. Just added a hard disk caddy system that allows me to swap out the hard drives, and setup a 20GB drive with a DDO and 4 10GB Partitions (FAT-32) - with Windows 98 SE installed on it. Strangely, Win98 is not as slow as I remember. Time to break out some Windows 9x Titles and tweak the speed.

shamino wrote:

oerk wrote:

Started to learn how to use a SoundBlaster card from QBasic, because I always wanted to know this since I started programming in the mid-90s. I guess I'll be spending more time with BASIC from now on.

From BASIC? I had no idea that was possible. Impressive.

Sure is: http://www.o-bizz.de/qbtuts/mallard/sbfaq.htm

There are even libraries written in Assembler for WAV playback, smooth scrolling, sprites, etc....

Revived a project I started years ago;

Raven Flight was a "game" I wrote in 2003 - and I use the term "game" very loosely here - which consisted of nothing more than ten multiple choice questions in some fairly elaborate batch files, the final choice of which was always "Do the Hokey-Cokey!" leading to an 11th question;
"You have beaten the game! Well done! What are you going to do now?
1) I'm going to Disney Land!
2) Go home!
3) Do the Hokey-Cokey!"
Which was the only time it was the correct answer, choosing another would kill you and send you to the first screen.

This proved to be so cutting edge and so popular among the huge number of 1 people it was released to that it got a sequel in 2006 where there were more questions, some illusion of multiple branches and you got to control your character during a "final boss fight" and this game was a bestseller at the stores it was released in (A grand total of zero stores sold Raven Flight II - Roland's Revenge with great success!), it was also in color. Around 2009 I revived it for one last game but got side-tracked after I found that the game could not fit into real DOS as the batch file is too long. Now, after years of waiting, the gaming community may have Raven Flight III - The Final Chapter rock their world even harder than previous installments, sure to change the face of games forever.

In other news I returned to trying to make an ancient Socket 7 board work, it's ex military and I have no idea who made it, the BIOS chip is missing.

leileilol wrote:

anyone going to port one of the other CRT shadowmask shaders for the older monitors to complete this? 😀

The current CRT shader is great, but it represents later hi-res CRT monitors (which are still of the period really, does the job mimicing my '94 XGA monitor)

wait, there's a decent shadow mask shader already?

creepingnet wrote:

HighTreason wrote:

2fort5r wrote:

That reminds me, there was some piece of software in the old days that would add 'wallpaper' to the backgrounds of MS applications, like Word and Excel. Does anyone remember what it was called?

I wish I knew, I saw that on toastytech.org years ago on Nathan LIneback's "Computers I've Had" page or somesuch, he had a pretty killer Windows 3.11 setup with that program that would decorate the back of the Program Manager and Program Groups. That and 256 color Icons.

OS/2 apparently had similar features. I wonder why MS didn't implement them as well. Windows of the time were probably targeted at lower-spec computers than OS/2.

Spent last night testing out some parts, turns out I have the wrong Cache RAM in the 486 DX2/66's motherboard, I have some old 16K x 4 chips and an unknown TAG Ram Module - apparently this is the setup required to have a functional L2 Cache - looks like some parts to add to the "want list"....

128KB
(4) 32K x 8
(1) 8K/32K x 8

256KB
(4) 64K x 8
(1) 32K x 8

512KB
(4) 128K x 8
(1) 32K x 8

Also, turns out my old Intel 486 DX4-100 chip is dead as well (gate A8 pin Missing and even fixed still won't POST). Will probably replace though strangely through some tweaks I'm getting rather close to the same performance with the DX2 in there.

Still tweaking 98SE, I now have it performing better than any of my previous installs on 486 era hardware. Installed unofficial SP3 on there (all the updates + TweakUI and a few other things), and use the tools therein to tweak the system. My main benchmark is Doom95 (Doom Collection) - which is running perfectly under 98SE! Never before this time have I had Doom95 run good on anything 80486, especially a DX2/66. Makes me wonder what I was missing the last few times that I got right this time (ie, adding 32bitdiskaccess under the 386enh section of SYSTEM.INI and such). I also have Diablo on there, though I'm trying to run it CD-less....I have a few tweaks to try for that. Also installing Driver, NASCAR2, and a few other Win9x games (and maybe some older Win16 ones).

Also will be trying out some "new" engines in windows on here to see what I can pull off. As for now, copying those games to the D drive while I'm at work, let em' sit and copy and they'll be done when I get home.

I participated with 9 computers at the Long Night of Computer Games in Leipzig at 25th of April.
You can find pictures here ftp://78.46.141.148/pictures/LNdCS2015/

That looks fun. Did you have to drive far? I'd be nervous of taking old computers on long road trips due to the vibration.

I wish we had stuff like that around here. It looks awesome... Other than all those bum-ass bearded guys wandering around, that joint needs more style bringing to it.

^^ bearded fatguys are to old computers as bees are to honey

The fat nerdy guys are fine, it's the younger, slimmer Jesus Christ wannabes that crop up everywere now. Don't know if it''s the same in Germany, but in the UK practically every person like that I have met has been either a poseur, half-baked hipster or a personality lacking halfwit¹, usually a combination of all three. Still, that's not to say they are all like that, maybe it's just the local population given that even without the beard, people tend to be that way inclined here. I am in what is officially the dumbest city in the UK... Also voted worst place to live... Also has worst schools... Also has worst hospitals... Ugh, I'd move if my family wasn't here.

I miss the LAN Parties that were around here back in the K7-early K8 days, fun times and rampant piracy for the win.

¹I replaced the first four letters of this word to be more polite.

Edit: We've been knocked off the top spot in a few of them, but it doesn't get any better even though we're now in second. Heh. Ever heard the term North/South Divide?

The council pretty much gave up on us, we have barely any roads left that don't rip the axle off your car, all the local businesses are dead and most of our housing is "unfit for human dwelling" including mine, according to the letter the council sent me when I moved in - but they still charge rent... Wah, what a tangent.

On topic; umm... I moved a DIN keyboard or something, poked some buttons. Oh, also seperated the ANSI art from my game into external ANS files, now the batch file is 29KB, so I will have a long way to go before I hit the 128KB limit again.

HighTreason, are those batch scripts regular COMMAND.COM .BAT files or are you using a more elaborate shell like 4DOS? They look interesting.

Today I'm messing with an MVP3-based K6-2, configured my Pentium M laptop to redirect the input of my USB MIDI adapter to a software synth, and tested a CGA-clone in a S7 system (because I don't have 486- era hardware... yet). Btw, is there any way to obtain the MT-32 ROM files legally besides paying a little fortune to ship one used unit to Brazil?