xyzzy
@xyzzy@lemm.ee
- Comment on The BASIC programming language turns 60 2 weeks ago:
C
#include <stdio.h> int main() { printf("Hello, world"); return 0; }
C++
#include <iostream> int main() { std::cout << "Hello, world" << std::endl; return 0; }
- Comment on Microsoft releases MS-DOS 4 source code on GitHub — 45 year old code now open-source 3 weeks ago:
According to people who are way more interested in this than I am, there was a bunch of licensed software in 5 and 6.
- Comment on How Not To Release Historic Source Code | OS/2 Museum 3 weeks ago:
tl;dr for article and comments:
Microsoft mangled arrays and code comments with ASCII extended characters into UTF-8 encoding, which makes building many of these files impossible without a lot of extra work. This was mistakenly attributed to Git.
The timestamps for each file are also not preserved, which is debatably a valid criticism of Git (original file timestamps can technically be preserved on an archive like this, but it requires a large amount of work to line up those times and the correct commit times programmatically).
Several Microsoft employees involved in this project appeared in the comments and offered to work directly with the author to correct the character encoding issues. One Microsoft employee indicated that historical timestamps could likely not be included due to Microsoft corporate policy around personally identifiable information.
- Comment on Pre-Mac OS X games 3 weeks ago:
Do you have a list? What condition are they in?
- Comment on Commercials of the Dot Com Bubble 1 month ago:
12:30 made me tense up with momentary anxiety
- Comment on Google Is Killing Retro Dodo & Other Independent Sites 1 month ago:
This author seems to lament that its a computer doing it, but the way the summary functions is really no different than if a human did the same thing.
It’s entirely different. Scale matters.
- Comment on The PC that finally defeated IBM | LowSpecGamer 1 month ago:
It was Compaq. Incidentally, that story was the basis for the first season of Halt and Catch Fire.
- Comment on New Games for Old Consoles 5 - Game Sack 1 month ago:
I was maybe interested in Life on Mars as a take on Super Metroid despite the short play time, but then the developer got super defensive in the comments section about Joe’s thoughts on Life on Earth.
- Comment on The Majestic Birth of Graphical User Interfaces – Xerox Alto and the Alto Trek game 2 months ago:
Can I imagine? Yeah, I lived it. Even Internet browsers used to be text only. My first modem was <1 kbit/s. (For contrast, the last dial-up modem speeds were 56,000 kbit/s, and today speeds are often 1,000,000 kbit/s or more.)
The mouse came before graphical OSes for me, since games used it but they were executed from the command line MS-DOS. Of course DOS was also capable of using a mouse. I didn’t really use an OS GUI until Windows 3.1, which was mostly a novelty at first. That came out in the early '90s. I didn’t have any exposure to Macs until System 7 in the mid-'90s.
My daily driver these days is a MacBook Pro. We’ve come a long way!
- Comment on Nothing was off-limits for retro game ads 2 months ago:
I was a senior in high school at the time and even back then I thought this kind of advertising was crass, gross, and unnecessary. No nostalgia here, just second-hand embarrassment.
- Comment on A more relaxing way to play text-based games? 3 months ago:
All good, I know you weren’t and didn’t take it that way!
- Comment on A more relaxing way to play text-based games? 3 months ago:
The software is built with imprecision in mind. I don’t know about you, but I use the swype method (moving a finger continuously from key to key and lifting at the end of the word) and when writing a message I still spend like 50% of the time correcting mistakes from the virtual keyboard.
Because these are usually short messages you’d instead likely be hunting and pecking the virtual keys, but without the tactile feedback of a real keyboard. For games that are all about text, it’s a preference thing.
Plus a phone comes with a ton of distractions that a dedicated device without notifications doesn’t. Sure, you could turn in do not disturb while playing a text game but that feels a little intense.
If you really think about it, your question is basically like asking why anyone would need a Nintendo Switch when mobile games have virtual controls.
- Comment on A more relaxing way to play text-based games? 3 months ago:
Will do! If I can get it all working (and that’s a big if) I’ll definitely post about it and create a guide. Total project will be like less than $35 so worst-case scenario I’m not out too much, heh.
- Comment on A more relaxing way to play text-based games? 3 months ago:
I’m a big text adventure fan too, as well as a programmer and hobbyist electronics tinkerer, and you gave me a great idea.
I want to take this cheap wireless home theater keyboard and see if I can replace the touchscreen with a tiny OLED display and power it all with a simple board running Linux for text adventure games. The biggest challenge might be getting everything to fit properly in the case, but if I can make it work I’d have a portable text “game boy”!
- Comment on My Phantasy Star Online dilemma 3 months ago:
This is a very complicated question. Reverse engineering a public game server via network traffic sniffing is legal in the general sense because you’re doing it without direct knowledge of the server code. However many game EULAs forbid exactly this, or even forbid playing on private servers. And you have to agree to the EULA in order to use the game client. When in doubt, read the EULA.
However, speaking practically, many game companies don’t enforce this.
- Comment on Love picking up new Gameboy games in 2023 4 months ago:
Thanks for clueing me in to incube8! I subscribed to their newsletter and signed up for release announcements for a few of the upcoming games currently in development.
- Comment on Issue 5 of Quarter Up, a free pinball/retro arcade newsletter 5 months ago:
That’s a fun cover illustration!
Sinistar was terrifying back in the day. Every time he came after me I’d start to panic, haha.
- Comment on [Zelda II]I did it! 5 months ago:
Congrats! I’ve beaten most of the Zelda games and this is one of my favorites. (I tend to like the quirky first sequels where they tried something different, even if it doesn’t quite work: Zelda 2, Mario 2 (USA), Final Fantasy 2 (Japan), Castlevania 2…)
- Comment on Which controller did you start with? 5 months ago:
An Atari 800 joystick, which was basically the same as the 2600 one. Many evenings spent playing Zaxxon, Miner 2049er, and so on, as well as simple games typed in from magazines.
Then I bought an NES and didn’t look back. Super Mario Bros. was way more advanced, not only in terms of graphics but also the fluidity of movement and the game pad design. And it was more fun!
- Comment on Retrotink 4k Confirmed Pricing- $750 5 months ago:
Boy. It’s really hard to justify that price unless you only play on original hardware.
I have a bunch of original consoles, but I also own a bunch of Analogue FPGA consoles for direct HDMI output. MegaSD for Sega CD FPGA. GameCube has the Carby. Wii U for Wii games. And I’d probably be more inclined to play PlayStation 1 & 2 on my PS3 with hardware backwards compatibility and direct HDMI output.
So that leaves Dreamcast, which I just need to sit down and mod for HDMI since I already have it ready to go; Xbox, which just recently saw an HDMI mod (although I have the original component cables and an old Onkyo component to HDMI receiver I could set up if I were so inclined); Nintendo 64, which also has HDMI mods available; and PSP, for direct TV output (knowing I could get a PSTV if I were really so inclined).
So the question is, is upscaling to 4K worth the trouble on its own if the original signal is digital to begin with and I’m playing on a good LG 4K TV? And if so, is it worth $750 when I could theoretically use that money toward a few classic games in near mint condition instead? Hmm…
- Comment on [deleted] 6 months ago:
This stage was tough, but it wasn’t unfair. I beat it many times. The next stage, the one with the Turtle Van—that one was tough, mostly because I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Watching long plays of it later, it’s really obvious why I only beat it a few times. The Mechaturtle boss was brutal!
I never did make it past the airport.
- Comment on isn't it weird how newer games manage to look more realistic than older ones? - GST Channel [5:32] 6 months ago:
Exactly, every couple of years there was another big leap in verisimilitude.
- Comment on isn't it weird how newer games manage to look more realistic than older ones? - GST Channel [5:32] 6 months ago:
It’s an interesting video, I suppose more so if you didn’t experience games in real time like those of us who did. No one ever thought Half-Life looked real. But wow, if you experienced games starting with text only and colored squares like I did, each new capability was incredible.
In Zork, you were wondering around an entire dungeon, simulated in text. Anything was possible!
Then a game like Ultima VII came around. The world was so huge, and it felt like a whole world where I could do anything. It was to me how Skyrim was in its time.
Ultima Underworld (or Wolfenstein 3-D or Doom for most people) felt incredible because it was movement in a 3D space, but without step transitions like the earlier dungeon games. When I walk, I actually see my movement in real time.
Each step was bringing us closer and closer to reality, and when you get to a game like Half-Life, where it feels like a small section of a world was being faithfully simulated, it was incredible.
- Comment on SIGIL II Exclusive Showcase w/ John Romero + Interview! 6 months ago:
Is this the moment John Romero finally makes us his bitch?
But seriously, I have the big box version of the guest SIGIL and it looks like I’ll be picking up one for this too.
- Comment on Review of Aftermarket VMU for Sega Dreamcast - VM2 by Dreamware Enterprises 6 months ago:
Ordered mine a year ago, and still waiting for it to arrive in the mail. Between this and my HDMI mod I need to apply, I think my Dreamcast may be coming out of storage soon!
- Comment on How Did Anyone Beat This In The Arcade? 6 months ago:
The same way you beat any game in the 1980s and early '90s: lots of pattern memorization based on trial and error. In the arcade, that means lots of quarters.
Once a game like Dragon’s Lair was memorized, you could play through the entire thing on only a couple quarters, to the astonishment of arcade bystanders.
Kids and teenagers had more time back then because smart phones and Instagram and YouTube didn’t exist. People underestimate what a huge time sink those can be.
No one had Internet access. You could play a game, play an instrument, read a book, go to the mall and the arcade and maybe catch a movie, go outside, or watch whatever happened to be on the 3-4 network TV channels (or possibly cable if your family had the money). And TV back then was mostly terrible.
So if you had $10 in your pocket, that was an entire afternoon of entertainment at the arcade and movie theater.
- Comment on Game Revival Projects? 6 months ago:
- Ultima - Graphics patch
- Ultima II - Upgrade patch
- Ultima III - Upgrade patch
- Ultima IV - xu4 or the upgrade patch, but actually the Sega Master System version is probably the best official version
- Ultima V - Upgrade patch
- Ultima VI - ScummVM
- Ultima VII - Exult
- Ultima VIII - ScummVM
- Comment on HDMI For The Original Xbox 6 months ago:
I think the question is, setting aside TV upscaling, whether upscaling to 4K (via the upcoming RetroTINK 4K) and increasing the resolution by 24 times versus 480p or nine times versus 720p is a bigger difference than a raw 720p digital feed.
Modern upscalers are very, very good, so I don’t know that the question is necessarily as cut and dry as you say. Especially when official HD cables (the inputs to an upscaler) already produce an image that’s nearly as good.
The HD mod is certainly cheaper and easier to keep plugged in in a modern receiver, though.
- Comment on HDMI For The Original Xbox 6 months ago:
Yeah, this is convenient for not having to swap cables, but for pure image quality it’s almost certainly better to just run these through a good RetroTINK with upscaling. I bought a (somewhat pricey) Dreamcast HDMI mod that I’ve yet to install, but may just end up using a RetroTINK 4K instead, once that’s released.
But I’m still tempted.
- Comment on The 8-bit Guy - My Dream Computer is Finally on Sale! (Commander X16 update) 6 months ago:
Isn’t educational use the whole point of Raspberry Pi? It seems like that has way more opportunity for it with a modern architecture, ready-made robotics kits, and other maker-type applications that could get kids excited about electronics and programming.