DirectX - Just say "no"
Daniel Phillips
An excerpt from Computer Gaming World's review of Fire Fight, the
much ballyhooed 3/4 perspective action game for W95 native:
"Unfortunately, there is a price for all the lush scenery:
performance. The game took so long to load from the
autoplay prompt that my screen saver kicked in. Once in the
game, the animation suffered from constant chopiness, even
on my P133 with 16 MB of RAM. The jerky movement was
especially bothersome when trying to dodge and counterattack
at the same time - precise aiming was almost impossible."
Paul C. Schuytema
For the full article, see CGW Oct. issue.
Got anything to say, Microsofties? Kevin, is this guy an "idiot"?
David, are the EA guys just inexperienced?
Why not just admit it - W95 is a crummy platform for high
performance gaming. Don't mislead these guys - it's going to cost
anybody who falls for it a lot of frustration and money.
---------------
Daniel Phillips
phil...@dowco.com
Daniel Phillips
An excerpt from Computer Gaming World's review of Fire Fight, the
much ballyhooed 3/4 perspective action game for W95 native:
"Unfortunately, there is a price for all the lush scenery:
performance. The game took so long to load from the
autoplay prompt that my screen saver kicked in. Once in the
game, the animation suffered from constant chopiness, even
on my P133 with 16 MB of RAM. The jerky movement was
especially bothersome when trying to dodge and counterattack
at the same time - precise aiming was almost impossible."
Paul C. Schuytema
For the full article, see CGW Oct. issue.
Got anything to say, Microsofties? David, is this guy an "idiot"?
Kevin, are the EA guys just uneduated?
Brian Ross
Daniel Phillips wrote:
>
> An excerpt from Computer Gaming World's review of Fire Fight, the
> much ballyhooed 3/4 perspective action game for W95 native:
>
> "Unfortunately, there is a price for all the lush scenery:
> performance. The game took so long to load from the
> autoplay prompt that my screen saver kicked in. Once in the
> game, the animation suffered from constant chopiness, even
> on my P133 with 16 MB of RAM. The jerky movement was
> especially bothersome when trying to dodge and counterattack
> at the same time - precise aiming was almost impossible."
>
> Paul C. Schuytema
>
> For the full article, see CGW Oct. issue.
>
> Got anything to say, Microsofties? David, is this guy an "idiot"?
> Kevin, are the EA guys just uneduated?
I don't know if he is an idiot or not, but I have seen
FireFight played on a P133 with 16mb of ram and it ran
very smooth.
Yes... Directx/Win95 is slower than dos. So what? You get
built in driver support and a consistant interface and the
games still run just fine on a decent system. (and no...
a 486-66 with 8mb is not a decent system.)
James Shaw
phil...@dowco.com (Daniel Phillips) wrote:
>An excerpt from Computer Gaming World's review of Fire Fight, the
>much ballyhooed 3/4 perspective action game for W95 native:
>
> "Unfortunately, there is a price for all the lush scenery:
> performance. The game took so long to load from the
> autoplay prompt that my screen saver kicked in. Once in the
> game, the animation suffered from constant chopiness, even
> on my P133 with 16 MB of RAM. The jerky movement was
> especially bothersome when trying to dodge and counterattack
> at the same time - precise aiming was almost impossible."
>
> Paul C. Schuytema
>
>For the full article, see CGW Oct. issue.
This is more "fact" to back up your argument?
Why would EA release a game if it was so bad? You would have thought
that they wouldn't release anything which would be likely to damage
their good reputation.
There's obviously no chance the reviewer had his machine set up badly,
or is running with a Trident card and a duff CD drive?
I know that full-screen DirectDraw has problems with screensavers.
>Got anything to say, Microsofties?
Troll
> Kevin, is this guy an "idiot"?
Difficult to tell isn't it. In my experience game reviewers are
idiots, but I don't usually tell them, because I want them to review
my next game!
>David, are the EA guys just inexperienced?
Obviously, that's why they've released only shit games.
Jim
arj brussee
Daniel Phillips wrote:
> "Unfortunately, there is a price for all the lush scenery:
> performance. The game took so long to load from the
> autoplay prompt that my screen saver kicked in. Once in the
> game, the animation suffered from constant chopiness, even
> on my P133 with 16 MB of RAM. The jerky movement was
> especially bothersome when trying to dodge and counterattack
> at the same time - precise aiming was almost impossible."
DirectDraw can do this stuff pretty OK. Windowed DirectDraw is very fast
(supporting the hardware scaling and blit functions), fullscreen it's in
the 2-5% slower range as DOS.
Maybe the graphics engine isn't that well programmed? Quite possible <G>
-arjan
MORTALIS
Troy M. Gilbert wrote:
>
> Daniel,
> Have you played Fire Fight? Tried running it on your PC? I've played it
> on a P100 with 32MB of RAM on the highest detail setting, biggest screen,
> and it ran flawlessly. I noticed no lengthy load times. My CD-ROM was a
> quad speed, what about in the article? Was there much multitasking going
> on in the background? Lots of memory hogging programs requiring disk
> swapping? What about the video card?
> Daniel, if you're going to start complaining about DirectX, you need to do
> one of two things: get better FIRST-HAND facts, or build a better mouse
> trap.
>
> And you also mention that Win95 is a "crappy, high performance gaming
> platform"? I would be interested in your credentials. Have you written
> several "high performance" games for the Win95 environment? Again, let's
> see some FIRST-HAND evidence of Win95/DirectX's shortcomings. Like any
> court of law, heresay has no value.
>
> Troy M. Gilbert
> --
>
> S I M A G E R Y - "Why be real, when you can be surreal?"
>
> visit us at: www.clandjop.com/~tgilbert/index.html
you are screwed in the head if you think Windows out powers DOS? There
is no way Windos can compare. Only reason you like window is because you
can just start coding your software, not worring about the hardware
level. You think thats good, but it means your lazy! Not because you
don't code for the hardware, but because you think windowslows can
handle it. Well, it can't! Windows Suxs!!! Its not an os for games! its
an os for dummies!!! Dos might not have all the build in features thats
windows does, buts thats alright with me. Cause I only use windows for
the net... cause I haven't seen any DOS protocols, or I would use that.
Most game programmers(the sorry ones) love windows can they don't have
to code as much as they do in dos... they use there spare time watching
baywatch... DOS RULEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!! only sorry programmers use it for
games(or anything that needs speed). Its alright for programs that do
not require speed, LIKE quicken, or some other stupid program.
Troy M. Gilbert
Robin Green
In article <32469D...@engsoc.carleton.ca>, br...@engsoc.carleton.ca says...
>
>I don't know if he is an idiot or not, but I have seen
>FireFight played on a P133 with 16mb of ram and it ran
>very smooth.
There are problems with Win95, that's true. Major problem, and cause
of much choppyness is due to the way Win95 uses Virtual Memory - you
just can't turn it off and it fires off unpredictably.
Developers and DirectX Beta programmers, hassle the DX team for a Win95
Virtual Memory Masterclass!
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Robin Green, Technical Specialist rgr...@ea.com
Electronic Arts, UK. tel:+44 1753 772353 These opinions are my own
----------------------------------------------------------------------
David Springer
Daniel Phillips (phil...@dowco.com) wrote:
: Got anything to say, Microsofties? David, is this guy an "idiot"?
: Kevin, are the EA guys just uneduated?
Does working at EA automatically give a programmer world class
talent ? I think not.
Have there never been complaints lodged against a DOS based game
that were due to improper setup on the user's part rather than
mistakes made by the programmers ?
Direct Draw doesn't guarantee the game will work right,
it merely gives you the tools to directly access video memory,
change screen resolution, and access whatever hardware acceleration
goodies that might reside in the graphics chip.
It doesn't do things like make sure your graphics are loaded into
memory prior to use so the game doesn't stutter when the hard disk
or CD-ROM is accessed.
It doesn't speed up the initial load time from CD-ROM of a poorly partitioned
executable.
: Why not just admit it - W95 is a crummy platform for high
: performance gaming. Don't mislead these guys - it's going to cost
: anybody who falls for it a lot of frustration and money.
The most likely problem was poor memory management either due to
not enough memory on the machine or on EA not handling it well.
Stutturing like the guy mentions is due to either CD-ROM being
accessed at the wrong time to load graphics or sounds and/or the
hard drive being accessed at inappropriate times to page stuff
in and out of virtual memory.
Daniel, why not just admit that W95 is too complicated for you to
understand and that's why you cling to the much simpler DOS
environment ?
David Springer
--
********* WEB GAMES ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM ***********
* *
* A client/server system designed from the ground up to *
* support real time multi-player games on the Internet. *
* Game developers, players, and ISP's check it out at: *
* *
************** http://www.eden.com/~springer **************
Kevin L. Hamilton
Daniel Phillips wrote:
>
> An excerpt from Computer Gaming World's review of Fire Fight, the
> much ballyhooed 3/4 perspective action game for W95 native:
>
> performance. The game took so long to load from the
> autoplay prompt that my screen saver kicked in. Once in the
> game, the animation suffered from constant chopiness, even
> on my P133 with 16 MB of RAM. The jerky movement was
> especially bothersome when trying to dodge and counterattack
> at the same time - precise aiming was almost impossible."
>
>
> For the full article, see CGW Oct. issue.
>
> Kevin, are the EA guys just uneduated?
Why do you persist with these stupid arguments? We are all aware that DirectX
works well only when it is supported by hardware, otherwise it does everything
in the Hardware Emulation Layer. I saw no mention of what type of video
card, sound card, DirectX version, etc. These things are important. Just
a processor speed and amount of RAM doesn't help determine if it is the
game or the system. Plus, it is possible for a company to produce a bad
game. Ultima VIII suffered from many complaints of sluggishness, yet it
(a DOS game) was written by a company who has been around for years. I
think you let your hatred of Microsoft get the better of your common sense.
Simply put: DirectX is being supported by almost all of the major hardware
vendors. All you have to do is take a look at the announced products. They
are tripping over each other trying to get this stuff out there. There is
also a big commitment from game companies with over 200 titles announced
for the comming year. Face it, DirectX is here to stay.
You must also remember that DirectX is very young. The version cycle is
fairly tight and will be thru DirectX 4.0 which is supposed to be ready
this December. Don't expect the first round of offerings supporting DirectX
to be nice and efficient (though many are), that would be naive. There are
still a lot of kinks to work out, old habits to break, and new tricks to
learn. Once again, don't bash something you seem to know very little about.
Cheers, Kevin
--
Kevin Hamilton
Virtual Environments Group, The Georgia Institute of Technology
Internet: kev...@cc.gatech.edu or kh...@prism.gatech.edu
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Undergrad/Kevin.Hamilton/home.html
John Paul D'India
: Daniel, why not just admit that W95 is too complicated for you to
: environment ?
That's me. I just can't understand why someone would want to make
things so complicated?
--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
John Paul D'India - D'India Software - Game Developer (programmer)
Projects: Aro2 (hi-res jump'n'run); 4gen (side scrolling shooter)
din...@netcom.com
If you're an artist/3d modeller who wants to work on some high
quality shareware projects then leave me alone... <smile>
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Anthony Kanner
Daniel Phillips wrote:
>
> An excerpt from Computer Gaming World's review of Fire Fight, the
> much ballyhooed 3/4 perspective action game for W95 native:
>
> "Unfortunately, there is a price for all the lush scenery:
> performance. The game took so long to load from the
> autoplay prompt that my screen saver kicked in. Once in the
> game, the animation suffered from constant chopiness, even
> on my P133 with 16 MB of RAM. The jerky movement was
> especially bothersome when trying to dodge and counterattack
> at the same time - precise aiming was almost impossible."
>
> Paul C. Schuytema
>
> For the full article, see CGW Oct. issue.
>
> Got anything to say, Microsofties? David, is this guy an "idiot"?
> Kevin, are the EA guys just uneduated?
>
> performance gaming. Don't mislead these guys - it's going to cost
> anybody who falls for it a lot of frustration and money.
>
> Daniel Phillips
> phil...@dowco.com
hmm .. I also have problems with Need for Speed SE using direct x by EA.
It seems that it crashes every other time I start it .. and sometimes it
won't start unless I restart my computer.
Also there are times during play where it just freezes for a few seconds
and the next thing you know you ran into a wall.
While the dos version doesn't have these problems .. the graphics aren't
as good.
It seems like directx just makes games look pretty ..
Anthony
--
----------------------------------------------------
Coder/Gamer
kan...@pacificnet.net
check out my web site at
http://www.pacificnet.net/~kanner/
----------------------------------------------------
Takamoto Miura
> you are screwed in the head if you think Windows out powers DOS? There
> is no way Windos can compare. Only reason you like window is because you
> can just start coding your software, not worring about the hardware
> level. You think thats good, but it means your lazy! Not because you
> don't code for the hardware, but because you think windowslows can
> handle it. Well, it can't! Windows Suxs!!! Its not an os for games! its
> an os for dummies!!! Dos might not have all the build in features thats
> windows does, buts thats alright with me. Cause I only use windows for
> the net... cause I haven't seen any DOS protocols, or I would use that.
> Most game programmers(the sorry ones) love windows can they don't have
> to code as much as they do in dos... they use there spare time watching
> baywatch... DOS RULEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!! only sorry programmers use it for
> games(or anything that needs speed). Its alright for programs that do
> not require speed, LIKE quicken, or some other stupid program.
You're absolutely right! I'm lazy. You know what? You should
quit game programming because game programming is about programming
games and not about being proud of programming in hardware level. If
that's what you like, work for Microsoft and help improve DirectX.
-Takamoto Miura
Daniel Phillips
taka...@ucla.edu says...
>[somebody said]
>>you are screwed in the head if you think Windows out powers DOS?
>>There is no way Windos can compare. Only reason you like window
>>about the hardware level. You think thats good, but it means
>>because you think windowslows can handle it. Well, it can't!
>>Windows Suxs!!! Its not an os for games! its an os for dummies!!!
>>Dos might not have all the build in features thats windows does,
>>buts thats alright with me. Cause I only use windows for the
>>net... cause I haven't seen any DOS protocols, or I would use
>>that.
It's straightforward, as long as you have a decent serial i/o
package. You use PPP (Point to Point Protocol) and TCP/IP.
Everything you need to know is in the form of RFC's (Request
for Comment) docs that you can find at:
ftp://nic.merit.edu/documents/rfc/
and other places on the Web.
Here are some of the ones you'll need:
RFC0791
RFC0793
RFC1055
RFC1140
One of them is an index to all the others, I can never remember
which one.
>>Most game programmers (the sorry ones) love windows cuz they
>>don't have to code as much as they do in dos...
Well, there are any number of quality packages you can get for
Dos coding that will cut the work down, quite likely to less
than what's required for Windows.
>>...they use their spare time watching baywatch...DOS
>>RULEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!! only sorry programmers use it for games
>>(or anything that needs speed). Its alright for programs that
>>do not require speed, LIKE quicken, or some other stupid
>>program.
(Damn straight, kid. Now let's listen to the other guy...)
>You're absolutely right! I'm lazy.
And stupid also, it would appear. Impolite at best.
>You know what? You should quit game programming because game
>programming is about programming games and not about being proud
>of programming in hardware level. If that's what you like,
>work for Microsoft and help improve DirectX.
>
> -Takamoto Miura
Like I said, impolite.
---------------
Daniel Phillips
phil...@dowco.com
Daniel Phillips
Hey, Micro$ofties! I just picked this up, thought you'd like to
know:
"STATEMENT OF TIM O'REILLY, PRESIDENT OF O'REILLY & ASSOCIATES,
IN RESPONSE TO CONFIRMATION OF JUSTICE DEPARTMENT'S INVESTIGATION
OF MICROSOFT"
[excerpt]
"I'm delighted to hear about the Department of Justice
investigation. We don't know what they'll find, but we
do know that Microsoft's recent practices have been bad
for users, and they have demonstrated a pattern of
anti-competitive behavior. The fact of this investigation
will further alert people to Microsoft's activities. I
believe in the marketplace, and think that there can be
a healthy impact on the marketplace from the DOJ
investigation."
The full text can be found at:
http://software.ora.com/news/ms_internet_frame.html
To say that it makes a good read is an understatement. (Yes,
this is relevant to games programming.)
---------------
Daniel Phillips
phil...@dowco.com
John Harries
On Mon, 23 Sep 1996 22:55:32 -0500, MORTALIS <lo...@iamerica.net>
wrote:
>you are screwed in the head if you think Windows out powers DOS? There
>is no way Windos can compare. Only reason you like window is because you
>can just start coding your software, not worring about the hardware
>level. You think thats good, but it means your lazy! Not because you
>don't code for the hardware, but because you think windowslows can
>handle it. Well, it can't! Windows Suxs!!! Its not an os for games! its
>an os for dummies!!! Dos might not have all the build in features thats
>windows does, buts thats alright with me. Cause I only use windows for
>the net... cause I haven't seen any DOS protocols, or I would use that.
>Most game programmers(the sorry ones) love windows can they don't have
>to code as much as they do in dos... they use there spare time watching
>baywatch... DOS RULEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!! only sorry programmers use it for
>games(or anything that needs speed). Its alright for programs that do
>not require speed, LIKE quicken, or some other stupid program.
Does your Dad know what you are doing with the family Internet
account?
I may be wrong in assuming that English is your first language, but
you need to be able to spell and organise coherent sentences if you
are to have any success at all when programming.
Anyone who uses more than one exclamation mark has a severe
personality disorder.
Hugs and kisses,
Johnny.
jo...@curved-logic.com Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum
Gregory Pierce
Strange, I had no problems on my P166 ATI64.
Anthony Kanner <kan...@pacificnet.net> wrote in article
<32485A...@pacificnet.net>...
> Daniel Phillips wrote:
> >
<SNIP>
Scott Le Grand
I take it you foresee a future where DirectPlay servers for
NT Workstation can only accept 10 connection while those for
the significantly more expensive (but identical except for 2 registry
settings and some new applications software) NT Server can accept an
unlimited number, thus enacting a de facto game-server tax...
All in all, a legitimate worry... I wish O'Reilly Associates
the best of luck with this case... I think they may actually stand
a chance this time... On the other hand, if they lose, it seems
a golden opportunity for someone to write their own unlimited
networking package for NTW and end up getting sued by MS
for providing end users with the tools to violate licensing
agreements (much like NTTUNE which must be making the warez
rounds already)...
Scott Le Grand
Head Coder
4Play
Anthony Kanner
Gregory Pierce wrote:
>
> Strange, I had no problems on my P166 ATI64.
My friend has a P133 and it seems that for him it crashes sometimes too
when he starts it.
Mark Feldman
Some idiot (whose name had been deleted) projectile vomited onto the
net:
> you are screwed in the head if you think Windows out powers DOS? There
> is no way Windos can compare.
bwahahahahaha.....
Hello??????? Ever heard of "3d acceleration"????? True, DirectX without
acceleration is somewhat slower than DOS, but the amount depends largely
on the skill of the programmer. But accelerated cards are standard now,
and programs I write for Win95 are 100% compatible not only with every
single piece of hardware on the market today, but also with those that
haven't even made it to the drawing board yet. Try writing a DOS program
to do THAT!
> Only reason you like window is because you
> can just start coding your software, not worring about the hardware
> level. You think thats good, but it means your lazy!
No, it means I have more time to concentrate on the actual game itself
instead of fiddling around with low-level routines and trying to
accommadate the thousands of pieces of hardware it might be run on, like
I used to do. This means I can now produce faster than you do, which
makes me more attractive to employers and means any company I work for
can get products onto the market quicker thus resulting in more revenue
generated in the long term. Of course, if you were a professional game
developer you'd understand this...but you're not....and it's no wonder
why!
> Most game programmers(the sorry ones) love windows can they don't have
> to code as much as they do in dos... they use there spare time watching
> baywatch...
Actually we use it to play Warcraft 2 and for spending time with our
families.
You know.....women. Remember them?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Feldman mailto:pc...@ix.netcom.com
Activision Studios......but I speak for myself only.
David Springer
Daniel Phillips (phil...@dowco.com) wrote:
: Hey, Micro$ofties! I just picked this up, thought you'd like to
: know:
: "STATEMENT OF TIM O'REILLY, PRESIDENT OF O'REILLY & ASSOCIATES,
: IN RESPONSE TO CONFIRMATION OF JUSTICE DEPARTMENT'S INVESTIGATION
: OF MICROSOFT"
: this is relevant to games programming.)
No Daniel, this is relevant to your inability to deal with a complex
operating system which manifests itself as hatred for the developer
of said O/S.
The justice department inquiry is about web browsers and anyone who
bothers to do a daily scan of a newspaper business section knows
about it. How does the way that Microsoft distributes its Internet
Explorer web browser relate to games programming ? Hmmmmm ?
David
John Hattan
jo...@curved-logic.com (John Harries) wrote:
>On Mon, 23 Sep 1996 22:55:32 -0500, MORTALIS <lo...@iamerica.net>
>wrote:
>
>>you are screwed in the head if you think Windows out powers DOS? There
>>is no way Windos can compare. Only reason you like window is because you
>>can just start coding your software, not worring about the hardware
>>level. You think thats good, but it means your lazy! Not because you
>>don't code for the hardware, but because you think windowslows can
>>handle it. Well, it can't! Windows Suxs!!! Its not an os for games! its
>>an os for dummies!!! Dos might not have all the build in features thats
>>windows does, buts thats alright with me. Cause I only use windows for
>>the net... cause I haven't seen any DOS protocols, or I would use that.
>>Most game programmers(the sorry ones) love windows can they don't have
>>to code as much as they do in dos... they use there spare time watching
>>baywatch... DOS RULEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!! only sorry programmers use it for
>>games(or anything that needs speed). Its alright for programs that do
>>not require speed, LIKE quicken, or some other stupid program.
>
>Does your Dad know what you are doing with the family Internet
>account?
Frankly, he has used his parents' account to create the most
unintentionally hilarious post I've seen in quite some time! The
MORTALIS handle only makes it funnier.
>I may be wrong in assuming that English is your first language, but
>you need to be able to spell and organise coherent sentences if you
>are to have any success at all when programming.
So you're asserting that his grammar Suxs :)
>Anyone who uses more than one exclamation mark has a severe
>personality disorder.
Actually, his post is a game. The object is to find all of the
misplaced apostrophes. It's sort of a grammatical "Where's Waldo".
---
John Hattan High UberPopeness -The First Church of Shatnerology
The Code Zone Sweet Software for a Saturnine World
hat...@fastlane.net http://www.fastlane.net/~hattan/
Daniel Phillips
Here is the latest in my series of "What Does the World Think About
DirectX?" articles. :-)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Published by Micro$oft, advertised for eons, Close Combat has to be
as good as it gets, right? Especially in the performance deparment.
Here is what Computer Gaming World had to say:
[Patrick C. Miller - excerpt]
"Close Combat is a good game, but it could have been better.
Some will find gameplay extremely frustrating...
...these omissions, combined with the real-time system, slow
map scrolling and delayed responses to mouse clicks, make
the game seem more difficult than it is and more frustrating
than it should be."
and later:
"sometimes-sluggish performance, even on high-end Pentiums"
(the full article is in CGW Oct. edition)
If Microsoft (and Atomic Games) can't make DirectX run fast
and smooth, then who Can?
Who???
------------------------
Here's a new department:
================
The Crybaby List
================
<no entries today>
These are the rules: you go on the list if you snivel, whimper,
pander, swear, or spam my mailbox. Flaming in public is OK. You
go off the list if you follow up one of my articles intelligently,
or if you're good for 3 days, or 4 days if you have ".edu" in
your URL.
Have a nice day Kevin.
---------------
Daniel Phillips
phil...@dowco.com
Daniel Phillips
[...]
> hmm .. I also have problems with Need for Speed SE using directx
>by EA. It seems that it crashes every other time I start it ..
>and sometimes it won't start unless I restart my computer.
>Also there are times during play where it just freezes for a
>few seconds and the next thing you know you ran into a wall.
>
>While the dos version doesn't have these problems .. the
>graphics aren't as good. It seems like directx just makes
>games look pretty ..
>
>Anthony
>Coder/Gamer
>kan...@pacificnet.net
>check out my web site at
>http://www.pacificnet.net/~kanner/
Funny how Anthony's original article seems to have disappeared
from the newsgroup. Maybe that cancelbot got it. Funny how the
cancelbot seemed to have gotten so many of *my* articles, while
leaving others. Just funny, is all.
---------------
Daniel Phillips
phil...@dowco.com
Chad Barry
Close Combat doesn't use DirectX.
Chad
--
The opinions expressed in this message are my own personal views
and do not reflect the official views of Microsoft Corporation.
Daniel Phillips <phil...@dowco.com> wrote in article
<DyDn0...@dowco.com>...
...stuff deleted...
> Published by Micro$oft, advertised for eons, Close Combat has to be
> as good as it gets, right? Especially in the performance deparment.
> Here is what Computer Gaming World had to say:
>
...stuff deleted...
Robin Green
In article <01bbac46$33b97160$2db5369d@javelin>, ch...@microsoft.com says...
>
>Close Combat doesn't use DirectX.
And, if I remember rightly, Alex St John (DirectX evangelist) stood
up in front of the audience at "The Ultimate Game and Multimedia
Development Conference" (Nice bag, shame about the conference) and said
"OK, we're Microsoft and we can't write games for shit. We know that,
that's why we're giving you the tools so *you* can write the games".
Or something along those lines.
Seems someone high up changed their minds.
Elliott Oti
Daniel Phillips wrote:
> Funny how Anthony's original article seems to have disappeared
> from the newsgroup. Maybe that cancelbot got it. Funny how the
> cancelbot seemed to have gotten so many of *my* articles, while
> leaving others. Just funny, is all.
>
Considering the amazing number of "articles" you post here it's
a statistical certainty that a cancelbot working randomly
will squelch a lot of your "articles". It doesn't mean the cancelbot
is a bug-ridden piece of software working for Microsoft with
"Get Dan !" written somewhere in the executable.
David Springer
Scott Le Grand (leg...@tesla.mbi.ucla.edu) wrote:
: I take it you foresee a future where DirectPlay servers for
: NT Workstation can only accept 10 connection while those for
: the significantly more expensive (but identical except for 2 registry
: settings and some new applications software) NT Server can accept an
: unlimited number, thus enacting a de facto game-server tax...
No such thing as an unlimited number - although the number may be so
high as to practically make it unlimited. 65,535 connections like
Unix flavors of sockets would do nicely.
Anyhow - Win95 accepts 256 simultaneous connections and the limit
is set by the winsock implimentation. I would assume that Trumpet
Winsock 95 will gain a bit in popularity if MS's wsock32.dll drops
down to 10 connections like rumored for NT.
I don't know much about NT but can't a third party do an unlimited
winsock for it as well ?
David Springer
Jonathan Mavor
Clost Combat isnt a directx game.
-Jon
Daniel Phillips (phil...@dowco.com) writes:
> Here is the latest in my series of "What Does the World Think About
> DirectX?" articles. :-)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Published by Micro$oft, advertised for eons, Close Combat has to be
> as good as it gets, right? Especially in the performance deparment.
> Here is what Computer Gaming World had to say:
>
> [Patrick C. Miller - excerpt]
> "Close Combat is a good game, but it could have been better.
> Some will find gameplay extremely frustrating...
> ...these omissions, combined with the real-time system, slow
> map scrolling and delayed responses to mouse clicks, make
> the game seem more difficult than it is and more frustrating
> than it should be."
>
> and later:
>
> "sometimes-sluggish performance, even on high-end Pentiums"
>
> (the full article is in CGW Oct. edition)
>
> If Microsoft (and Atomic Games) can't make DirectX run fast
> and smooth, then who Can?
>
> Who???
>
> ------------------------
> Here's a new department:
>
> ================
> The Crybaby List
> ================
> <no entries today>
>
> These are the rules: you go on the list if you snivel, whimper,
> pander, swear, or spam my mailbox. Flaming in public is OK. You
> go off the list if you follow up one of my articles intelligently,
> or if you're good for 3 days, or 4 days if you have ".edu" in
> your URL.
>
> Have a nice day Kevin.
>
> ---------------
> Daniel Phillips
> phil...@dowco.com
>
--
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| TANSTAAFL --------------> is there? ------------> didn't think so |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Scott Le Grand
David Springer wrote:
>
> Scott Le Grand (leg...@tesla.mbi.ucla.edu) wrote:
>
> : I take it you foresee a future where DirectPlay servers for
> : NT Workstation can only accept 10 connection while those for
> : the significantly more expensive (but identical except for 2 registry
> : settings and some new applications software) NT Server can accept an
> : unlimited number, thus enacting a de facto game-server tax...
>
> No such thing as an unlimited number - although the number may be so
> high as to practically make it unlimited. 65,535 connections like
> Unix flavors of sockets would do nicely.
Well true, but you get my point I hope?
> Anyhow - Win95 accepts 256 simultaneous connections and the limit
> is set by the winsock implimentation. I would assume that Trumpet
> Winsock 95 will gain a bit in popularity if MS's wsock32.dll drops
> down to 10 connections like rumored for NT.
See below...
> I don't know much about NT but can't a third party do an unlimited
> winsock for it as well ?
Here is the relevant part of the licensing agreement for NTW 4.0
courtesy of http://software.ora.com/news/ms_internet_frame.html
which is a very good read BTW...
"...you may permit a maximum of ten (10)
computers to connect to the Workstation
Computer to access and use services of the
SOFTWARE PRODUCT, such as file and print
services and peer web services. The ten connection
maximum includes any indirect connections made
through software or hardware which pools or
aggregates connections."
The way I read this is that if you are running NTW 4.0, then
you can only accept 10 connections by any means if they in
any way exploit features of the NTW 4.0 OS... How
about you? So much for those 16-64 player game servers
I intend to write and allow people to run on their own
machines wherever and whenever they want... The thought
of our userbase having to buy a licensing agreement from Microsoft
for the "privilege" of doing this sucks...
Now NTW is more of a business rather than a consumer product, but
I think this action raises the spectre that they might try this sort
of thing with Windows 97 if they aren't stopped now... This is only
the second time I've looked at an action taken by Microsoft and
truly believed it to be both harmful to the market and possibly
even demonstrably illegal (the first was the fee Microsoft used to
collect with the sale of every Intel Box)... The rest I've written off
to the ruthless nature of the business which is run by suits after
all...
I'm glad this got the attention of the Justice Department and
I hope it is settled appropriately... It's really no big
deal if it is thwarted promptly...
Avocado Green
In article <DyDnF...@dowco.com>, phil...@dowco.com says...
>from the newsgroup. Maybe that cancelbot got it. Funny how the
>cancelbot seemed to have gotten so many of *my* articles, while
>leaving others. Just funny, is all.
>
Not funny Danny, they're out to get you...What do you expect when
you mess with Bill "the man" Gates???
Paul Robert Nash
On 24 Sep 1996, David Springer wrote:
> Daniel Phillips (phil...@dowco.com) wrote:
>
> : Got anything to say, Microsofties? David, is this guy an "idiot"?
> : Kevin, are the EA guys just uneduated?
>
> Does working at EA automatically give a programmer world class
> talent ? I think not.
You know, the funny thing about all this is that EA only distributed
FireFight -- it's an Epic MegaGames game, which means that it was most
likely done by a small programmer, since Epic is designed to help small
timers get their stuff published.
This means all quality comparisons and comments about EA's skill at
writing games are totally meaningless.
> Direct Draw doesn't guarantee the game will work right,
> it merely gives you the tools to directly access video memory,
> change screen resolution, and access whatever hardware acceleration
> goodies that might reside in the graphics chip.
Exactly right. If the programmer was an idiot (not that the FireFight
people were -- I think it's a great game) then it really doesn't matter
what OS you're running on.
> Daniel, why not just admit that W95 is too complicated for you to
> understand and that's why you cling to the much simpler DOS
> environment ?
Hmm, that's an interesting (and funny) comment. In a lot of respects,
W95 is easier, because there's less direct work to be done futzing with
hardware. However, I think the problems people are having is that
instead of only removing problems, it naturally defines a different set
of issues which must be understood. Hopefully, people will learn.
/---------------------------------+--------------------------------------\
| Paul R. Nash pr-...@uiuc.edu | |
| Snr, Eng. CS & Tech. Management | "Hmm, it works on my machine..." |
+---------------------------------+--\ |
| http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/pr-nash | (Cry of the dead SW developer) |
\------------------------------------+-----------------------------------/
Jay Mehaffey
David Springer wrote:
>
>
> Anyhow - Win95 accepts 256 simultaneous connections and the limit
> is set by the winsock implimentation. I would assume that Trumpet
> Winsock 95 will gain a bit in popularity if MS's wsock32.dll drops
> down to 10 connections like rumored for NT.
If Microsoft is really going to stick it with this then they'll
change Win95's liscense to read the same way. They might wait
though and stick it in Win96 or 97, thus spreading the complaints
out over a longer period of time.
> I don't know much about NT but can't a third party do an unlimited
> winsock for it as well ?
My reading of the liscense is that it doesn't matter what software
your using. 10 connections max. In theory you can have more as
long as they don't use *any* NT services, but that's pretty darn
theoretical.
Personally I think MS should be slammed here. The whole issue
is a money grab by Microsoft, and they've ruined what little
respect I had for them by not comming clean from the start.
Microsoft lied about the differences between NT server and
workstation in an attempt to justify their actions, and they
got caught.
Jay Mehaffey
Paul Robert Nash
On Sat, 28 Sep 1996, Jay Mehaffey wrote:
> David Springer wrote:
> > down to 10 connections like rumored for NT.
That's what you get for listening to rumors. There is no longer any
limitation on the number of physical connections via TCP/IP, only the
peer-to-peer networking aspects.
It's unfortunate that these limits are there, because it indicates the
extent Microsoft must go to in order to prevent idiots from using the
software for things it wasn't intended to do. If you're gonna run a
server, get a server operating system.
Glenn Corpes
> Daniel,
> Have you played Fire Fight? Tried running it on your PC? I've
played
> it
> on a P100 with 32MB of RAM on the highest detail setting, biggest
> screen,
> and it ran flawlessly. I noticed no lengthy load times. My CD-ROM was
> a
> quad speed, what about in the article? Was there much multitasking
> going
> on in the background? Lots of memory hogging programs requiring disk
> swapping? What about the video card?
> Daniel, if you're going to start complaining about DirectX, you
need
> to do
> one of two things: get better FIRST-HAND facts, or build a better mouse
> trap.
>
> And you also mention that Win95 is a "crappy, high performance
gaming
> platform"? I would be interested in your credentials. Have you written
> several "high performance" games for the Win95 environment? Again,
> let's
> see some FIRST-HAND evidence of Win95/DirectX's shortcomings. Like any
> court of law, heresay has no value.
No he's just one of the last few flat earthers on the anti directx
bandwagon, he posts an arrogant pseudo informed anti windows 95 message
just about every day. The fact is that if you port a dos vesa program to
directx you will get a slight maybe 3% (it's less on faster machines)
slowdown, start using the hardware to clear your screen or draw a few
sprites, a control panel or a cockpit with the blitter and you are very
quickly running faster than it's possible to in dos.
_\/ __
\ / \ gco...@ea.com
|\ \/ / Bullfrog
| \/ /___/_Productions
|| /____\
Daniel Phillips
pr-...@uiuc.edu says...
>>David Springer (D.S.) wrote :
>>>down to 10 connections like rumored for NT.
>That's what you get for listening to rumors. There is no longer any
>limitation on the number of physical connections via TCP/IP, only the
>peer-to-peer networking aspects.
>
>It's unfortunate that these limits are there, because it
>indicates the extent Microsoft must go to in order to prevent
>idiots from using the software for things it wasn't intended
>to do. If you're gonna run a server, get a server operating
>system.
Really? I thought it was there as an anti-competitive measure.
---------------
Daniel Phillips
phil...@dowco.com
Crybabies list: D.S. Reason: spammed my mailbox.
Daniel Phillips
gle...@cix.compulink.co.uk says...
>No he's just one of the last few flat earthers on the anti directx
>bandwagon, he posts an arrogant pseudo informed anti windows 95
>message just about every day.
Glenn, I guess you've gone over to the dark side. By the way, your
sig is too long - it violates rules of netiquette.
>
>_\/ __
> \ / \ gco...@ea.com
>|\ \/ / Bullfrog
>| \/ /___/_Productions
>|| /____\
---------------
Daniel Phillips
gle...@cix.compulink.co.uk says...
>[somebody said]
>>Daniel,
>>Have you played Fire Fight? Tried running it on your PC? I've
>>played it on a P100 with 32MB of RAM on the highest detail
>>setting, biggest screen, and it ran flawlessly. I noticed no
>>lengthy load times. My CD-ROM was a quad speed, what about in
>>the article? Was there much multitasking going on in the
>>background? Lots of memory hogging programs requiring disk
>>swapping? What about the video card? Daniel, if you're going to
>>start complaining about DirectX, you need to do one of two
>>things: get better FIRST-HAND facts, or build a better mouse
>>trap.
Just to remind you:
An excerpt from Computer Gaming World's review of Fire Fight, the
much ballyhooed 3/4 perspective action game for W95 native:
"Unfortunately, there is a price for all the lush scenery:
performance. The game took so long to load from the
autoplay prompt that my screen saver kicked in. Once in the
game, the animation suffered from constant chopiness, even
on my P133 with 16 MB of RAM. The jerky movement was
especially bothersome when trying to dodge and counterattack
at the same time - precise aiming was almost impossible."
Paul C. Schuytema
For the full article, see CGW Oct. issue.
If you object to this point of view, complain to *him*, not to me.
>>And you also mention that Win95 is a "crappy, high performance
>>gaming platform"?
That is correct.
>>I would be interested in your credentials.
Test me.
Neil Graham
Glenn Corpes wrote:
> [ stuff gone ]
> The fact is that if you port a dos vesa program to
> directx you will get a slight maybe 3% (it's less on faster machines)
> slowdown, start using the hardware to clear your screen or draw a few
> sprites, a control panel or a cockpit with the blitter and you are very
> quickly running faster than it's possible to in dos.
The problem I see with DirectX is that the documentation seems to direct
you towards assuming hardware acceleration. This of course wouldn't affect
a program ported from dos using a vesa frame buffer. But If the example
programse with the directx sdk are anything to go by the performace is
lousy if you assume hardware and let the emulatoion layer do it for you.
When it comes down to it both DirectX and Vesa are promises and little else.
SciTechs Univbe delivers on the vesa promise for practicly everybody.
The DirectX promise has yet to be delivered upon to my satisfaction. Those
experiencing problems with directX frequently get told to contact the
hardware vendor for an up to date driver. I don't think this is a very
satisfactory solution. Although it's easy enough for me to download the
latest drivers (The drivers that came with the sdk supported no hardware
accelleration on my card and assumed I had 512k of video ram). I Don't
think it's acceptable to release a game where everybody out there has do go
through a similar process. This is a sure recipe for turning the numbers of
computer illiterates into numbers of software returns.
As a side note. What's wrong with the Vesa accellerator functions?
As another side note. What's wrong with WinDirect?
--
"Glook!" le...@aurora.co.nz
Like defender? try -> http://www.laserpoint.com/mswin/glook/glook.shtml
That which does not kill us, has made its last mistake
Kevin L. Hamilton
phil...@dowco.com (Daniel Phillips) writes:
>These are the rules: you go on the list if you snivel, whimper,
>pander, swear, or spam my mailbox. Flaming in public is OK. You
>go off the list if you follow up one of my articles intelligently,
>or if you're good for 3 days, or 4 days if you have ".edu" in
>your URL.
>Have a nice day Kevin.
Daniel,
Please try to act like an adult instead of a sniveling child who complains
and berates about things which he does not understand. Why don't you take time
to consider that if there are this many people defending DirectX that there
MAY be something to it which you are not aware. Why don't you sit down with
it for a while and take a look at it. There are some VERY good things there,
but you let your petty hatred toward Microsoft (which is probably nothing
but an excuse for your own lack of success) get in the way. You will never
get anywhere doing this. If you hate Microsoft so much and think they are
over dominate, then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Beat them at their own game, don't
just bitch and moan or go crying to the government to stick its nose where
it does not belong.
You are irritated me because I held your feet to the fire asking you to
back up your claims with technical reasoning and not just hear say or your
usual anti Microsoft whining. I also asked for your qualifications because
your posts and e-mail messages have made many incorrect claims which put
them in doubt. I do not like doing this sort of thing in public. It is childish
but you continue to refer to me in your posts so I think it is best that I
answer. One last thing, not everyone who likes Windows or DirectX works for
Microsoft or is being paid by them (I for one am not). Did you ever stop to
consider that these people may see a side of things that you do not? Could
it be possible that you are letting your bitterness get in the way of rational
thought and good judgement? Appears so. Flame away at Microsoft all you want,
but leave my name out of your posts it in the future unless you are directly
addressing something that I publicly posted.
Kevin
--
Kevin Hamilton
Virtual Environments Group, The Georgia Institute of Technology
Internet: kev...@cc.gatech.edu or kh...@prism.gatech.edu
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Undergrad/Kevin.Hamilton/home.html
Daniel Phillips
spri...@eden.com says...
>
>Scott Le Grand (leg...@tesla.mbi.ucla.edu) wrote:
>
>>I take it you foresee a future where DirectPlay servers for
>>NT Workstation can only accept 10 connection while those for
>>the significantly more expensive (but identical except for 2
>>registry settings and some new applications software) NT Server
>>can accept an unlimited number, thus enacting a de facto
>>game-server tax...
Right. (shudder)
[...]
>I don't know much about NT but can't a third party do an unlimited
>winsock for it as well ?
There's the little problem of Micro$oft's punitive licence
agreement. Anyway, the Department of Justice investigation
into Necrosoft isn't necessarily just about *this* little
matter...
--
Daniel Phillips
phil...@dowco.com
Crybabies list: D.S. - Reason: spammed my mailbox.
Dale Pontius
In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.96092...@ux4.cso.uiuc.edu>,
>
>> > down to 10 connections like rumored for NT.
>
>That's what you get for listening to rumors. There is no longer any
>limitation on the number of physical connections via TCP/IP, only the
>peer-to-peer networking aspects.
>
agreement. The hardware enforcement of the license is what has been
lifted. If making more than 10 inbound connections to NTW, it will
still work, but you'll be breaking the license agreement.
By the way, it's now pretty well established that for the files that
are present in both versions, NTW and NTS are byte-for-byte identical.
NTW has a lot of extra facilities, and perhaps some data structures
are optimized differently, but it appears that two registry keys are
all that makes the difference at the kernel level.
Dale Pontius
(NOT speaking for IBM)
Takamoto Miura
> If you hate Microsoft so much and think they are
> over dominate, then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Beat them at their own game, don't
> just bitch and moan or go crying to the government to stick its nose where
> it does not belong.
The biggest contradiction I see here is that those people who don't
like Windows program for DOS. Now, DOS was made by Microsoft, yet they
still
claim they hate Microsoft. This is something I never had a reasonable
explanation
for. Windows is not an ideal game platform, but neither is DOS. So if
you claim
you hate Microsoft, please stop developing for "MS"-DOS. If you just
like DOS over
Windows for some other reason, that's fine with me.
-Takamoto Miura
Jonathan Mavor
Paul Robert Nash (pr-...@uiuc.edu) writes:
> On 24 Sep 1996, David Springer wrote:
>
>> Daniel Phillips (phil...@dowco.com) wrote:
>>
>> : Got anything to say, Microsofties? David, is this guy an "idiot"?
>> : Kevin, are the EA guys just uneduated?
>>
>> Does working at EA automatically give a programmer world class
>> talent ? I think not.
>
> You know, the funny thing about all this is that EA only distributed
> FireFight -- it's an Epic MegaGames game, which means that it was most
> likely done by a small programmer, since Epic is designed to help small
> timers get their stuff published.
>
> This means all quality comparisons and comments about EA's skill at
> writing games are totally meaningless.
>
As a matter of fact FireFight was written bu a group
of guys from Poland, who at the time I met them were calling
themselves Chaos Works.
-Jon
>> Direct Draw doesn't guarantee the game will work right,
>> it merely gives you the tools to directly access video memory,
>> change screen resolution, and access whatever hardware acceleration
>> goodies that might reside in the graphics chip.
>
> Exactly right. If the programmer was an idiot (not that the FireFight
> people were -- I think it's a great game) then it really doesn't matter
> what OS you're running on.
>
>> Daniel, why not just admit that W95 is too complicated for you to
>> understand and that's why you cling to the much simpler DOS
>> environment ?
>
> Hmm, that's an interesting (and funny) comment. In a lot of respects,
> W95 is easier, because there's less direct work to be done futzing with
> hardware. However, I think the problems people are having is that
> instead of only removing problems, it naturally defines a different set
> of issues which must be understood. Hopefully, people will learn.
>
> /---------------------------------+--------------------------------------\
> | Paul R. Nash pr-...@uiuc.edu | |
> | Snr, Eng. CS & Tech. Management | "Hmm, it works on my machine..." |
> +---------------------------------+--\ |
> | http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/pr-nash | (Cry of the dead SW developer) |
> \------------------------------------+-----------------------------------/
>
Scott Le Grand
Daniel Phillips wrote:
>
> spri...@eden.com says...
> >
> >Scott Le Grand (leg...@tesla.mbi.ucla.edu) wrote:
> >
> >>I take it you foresee a future where DirectPlay servers for
> >>NT Workstation can only accept 10 connection while those for
> >>the significantly more expensive (but identical except for 2
> >>registry settings and some new applications software) NT Server
> >>can accept an unlimited number, thus enacting a de facto
> >>game-server tax...
>
> Right. (shudder)
The real kicker in the NTW 4.0 licensing agreement is this
little snippet:
"The ten connection maximum includes any indirect connections made
through software or hardware which pools or aggregates connections"
If we interpret the wording of this fragment verbatim, then
it is a violation of the agreement to do the following from
a workstation running NTW 4.0:
1. Log onto IRC or any other multi-user chat application
2. Log into a multiplayer networked game with more than 10 players
3. Tele-conference with more than 10 other people
4. Mount more than 10 remote disk drives
5. Run a multiplayer game server that handles more than 10 players
6. Log into a timesharing host with more than 9 other users online
such as Compuserve, America Online or any other online service
or ISP
7. Participate in a Local Area Network of more than 10 machines...
All of these situations can IMO be construed to represent software
or hardware which pools or aggregates connections... I think
it would take a grander marketing scheme than that used to
espouse the virtues of segmented over flat memory schemes to
sell this one...
So what we have here is an OS for which it's a crime to use
the Internet, and which can only be used on LANs of 10 or
fewer hosts... Am I missing something here? If so, please
give me a reference... I'm getting my info straight from
the NTW 4.0 Licensing Agreement...
As a result, there's no way Microsoft can impose this agreement
on the worldwide userbase. The computer press is already starting
to tear into them over this and I believe the issue will go ballistic
and possibly make it to the front page of the New York Times or
worse if they try to impose this sort of limitation on Windows 97...
I mean sheesh, even the rogue canceller got some serious press
and that's peanuts compared to this...
Therefore, they won't do it, and even if they do, the ridicule
they will face will make them back down...
David Springer
Daniel Phillips (phil...@dowco.com) wrote:
: Funny how Anthony's original article seems to have disappeared
: from the newsgroup. Maybe that cancelbot got it. Funny how the
: cancelbot seemed to have gotten so many of *my* articles, while
: leaving others. Just funny, is all.
Amazing isn't it ? Who would've thought cancelbots would display
good taste...
Daniel - helllloooo ? Can you spell "paranoid" ? I knew you
could.
Mr. Rogers
Dave Erazmus
Stanley D. Chatman <stan...@interaccess.com> wrote in article
<stanchat....@interaccess.com>...
> ...
> I have dabbled with Directx for about 4 months and up until this
point I
> considred it a viable alternative to Dos in terms of game
programming.
>
> THIS has all changed! After seeing NBA Full Court Press I have to
evaluate
> which direction I want to go in terms of games programming...
I'm confused. You say you've had a good opinion of DirectX for 4
months and are now changing your opinion on the basis of one bad game?
Even after commenting on the other DirectX games you've played which
were good? I have not seen this NBA Full Court Press game, but there
must be more than a couple dozen sprites slowing it down.
> All the results were about the same the animation was jerky
> and the music from the cd-rom was choppy.
The DirectX games I've played include "The Need for Speed SE" (a
driving game), Zork Nemesis (360 deg. scrolling adventure game), and
Mechwarrior II (Matrox Mystique Edition). All of these look and sound
great. NFS-SE and Mech2 are fast and the music is clear, though I
think neither uses CD Audio (NFS-SE is doing its own digital sythesis
and Mech2 is using General MIDI). Zork has CD Audio and spatialized
digital sound effects, but is not an action game and so has lots of
time for that stuff. In any case, so far, I have not had any bad games
with DirectX so I think, like any other available technology, it can be
used well or used poorly.
> In all honesty this game has the potential to be a really fun game
but IMO
> Directx is taking away from some of this fun. For instance you have
the
> option of changing the screen resolution from 640x480 to 1024x768.
This is
> good. When you go full screen mode and you have to call a timeout it
kicks
> you back into the 640x480 screen mode regardless of what mode you
were in.
DirectX is not "doing" this, the programmer is. They obviously decided
to switch into 640x480 when calling a time-out. Why? I don't know,
but would you blame the video card for switching into that mode? your
monitor? C'mon, a little perspective here. Mechwarrior II, which I
mentioned above, has a similarly annoying trait. The gameflow SVGA is
all in 640x480 and it runs in a window. period. This means that on
desktops bigger than 640x480 you can actually see the frame and menu
bar. Sloppy programming. They could have easily switched into
640x480x8 full-screen for the entire game rather than just doing it
during missions. I understood this ability after 5 minutes with a
magazine article on DirectX. Why the Activision programmers made this
ridiculous decision is, as I said, a mystery.
> I think DirectX is going to be the future in gaming on the dos
platform but
> just not at this particluar moment. Maybe by release 5.0 Directx
will have
> all the bugs worked out and will be a viable game programming tool.
For now I
> am sticking with Dos a little bit longer (which could be good or
bad).
The test of any technology is in how widely it is used. Presumably, it
will only be used if it brings significant advantages to game
development over existing methods. Many game companies seem to be
willing to roll the dice. Many individuals with personal distaste for
all things Microsoft have been very vocal in bashing it. I prefer to
evaluate these things first hand.
--
Dave Erazmus
Austin, TX
mailto:dera...@eden.com
David Springer
Daniel Phillips (phil...@dowco.com) wrote:
: Here is the latest in my series of "What Does the World Think About
: DirectX?" articles. :-)
Better known as "Daniel is a parrot... part Deaux"
Awwwwwwwk - Polly want a cracker !
C'mon Daniel, if we wanted to see CGW articles we'll look in our
children's rooms. My 19 year old son has a stack of them higher
than the pile of bullshit you're making here.
Speaking of which - a game programmer using CGW for technical
information is about like a nobel prize winner using Omni for
a research aid... Helllooo, Daniel, Hellllloooooo ? Can you
spell "bubblegum" ? I knew you could.
: Here's a new department:
: ================
: The Crybaby List
: ================
: <no entries today>
With you as the charter member the roster is already swelled to
capacity. :-)
TTFN,
Mr. Rogers
Daniel Phillips
kh...@prism.gatech.edu says...
>Why don't you take time to consider that if there are this many
>people defending DirectX that there MAY be something to it which
>you are not aware.
My reading on it is it's mainly just you, Kevin Hamilton, a
student who has received job offers from Micro$oft, and David
Springer, a retreaded Basic programmer who works for
Dell "Microsoft Inside" Computer. On the other hand, there has
been plenty of criticism from all sorts of people, not just me.
My position is, DirectX is snake oil that attempts to solve a
problem that doesn't exist, to the detriment of game writers and
game players.
--
Daniel Phillips
phil...@dowco.com
Crybabies list: <no entries today>
Paul Ross
gle...@cix.compulink.co.uk ("Glenn Corpes") wrote:
>No he's just one of the last few flat earthers on the anti directx
>bandwagon, he posts an arrogant pseudo informed anti windows 95 message
>slowdown, start using the hardware to clear your screen or draw a few
>sprites, a control panel or a cockpit with the blitter and you are very
>quickly running faster than it's possible to in dos.
Hmm, I suppose by hardware you mean hardware blitters and stuff ?
Well, if you were going to use the hardware blitter from DOS then it
would be faster than doing it from windows.
Unfortunately there is no argument, DOS is simply faster than windows
simply because of the following two reasons
o Windows '95 keeps a 16bit copy of your program's information (handle
etc etc) as well as a 32bit version in it's kernel. This means it's
constantly going from 16bit to 32bit mode, which is a slow thing
to do.
o In DOS you only ever run 1 task at a time, in Windows you are
running at least 2.
Where windows does shine is in how portable it makes your code.
Before I started as a games programmer, I was a demo coder and getting
your demo to work on all combinations of SoundCard, GFX card etc etc
was an absolutely nightmare. With windows though you just don't get
that trouble, if it works on 1 PC it will work on them all.
Also people, in earlier parts of this thread, who go around saying
that real programmers code straight to the hardware, obviously haven't
done anything else but that. Programming with handles, contexts and
MFC is just as technically demanding as writing mode-x 16bit texture
mapping routines.
Nuff said really,
Paul
-------
Kevin L. Hamilton
phil...@dowco.com (Daniel Phillips) writes:
>kh...@prism.gatech.edu says...
>>Why don't you take time to consider that if there are this many
>>people defending DirectX that there MAY be something to it which
>>you are not aware.
>My reading on it is it's mainly just you, Kevin Hamilton, a
>student who has received job offers from Micro$oft, and David
>Springer, a retreaded Basic programmer who works for
>Dell "Microsoft Inside" Computer. On the other hand, there has
>been plenty of criticism from all sorts of people, not just me.
If your reading on DirectX has come from mainly two people's posts on a
newsgroup, then WHY ARE YOU EVEN COMMENTING ON IT AT ALL? This only goes
to show that you have no experience with writing DirectX software whatsoever
(which I figured it had to be that or you were just a lousy DirectX programmer
who didn't know how to get things done). Now you attack me for being a
student even though I work in a very prestigious graphics lab that, until
very recently, was headed up by Jim Foley (of Computer Graphics fame). Who
says that someone working for Dell Computer isn't competent or knowledgable?
You seem pretty quick to criticize other people's jobs but you never say what
YOU do. Frankly, it doesn't matter and this discussion is getting rather
childish. But do not attack me for being a college student. People have
accomplished a lot of great things while still in college, especially in this
industry.
>My position is, DirectX is snake oil that attempts to solve a
>problem that doesn't exist, to the detriment of game writers and
>game players.
You mean by consolidating the interfaces for networking, graphics, audio,
and input into one package so you don't have to write a bunch of device
drivers for wide support (contrary to some of your previous statements,
UniVBE is not the be all-end all, and not every video board offers good
support for VESA)? How is DirectX detrimental to game writers and players
(no hearsay please, answer with an original, grounded in fact statements)?
If you can produce a good game with DirectX (and you can) and people have
fun playing it, how is that detrimental? You yourself said that your reading
on DirectX comes from Dave and I, why don't you read some more (like the
documentation), or better yet sit down and write some software with it
(it really is easy)? Then, give your commentary. Only this time it will
actually be informed. But for God sakes, don't lambast others for liking
or using a Microsoft product (especially one that you do not understand)
by insenuating they are bought and paid for by MS or belittling their jobs
and station in life. That kind of stuff does not matter. What does matter
to these discussions are factual, technically grounded information about
game programming that is (hopefully) helpful to others.
This has boiled down to nothing more than a series of personal attacks and
I'm getting out of it (admittedly, I should have never gotten into it). If
you wish to discuss game programming calmly and rationally then that would
be great.
>Daniel Phillips
>phil...@dowco.com
>
>Crybabies list: <no entries today>
Cheers, Kevin (the student)
John Hattan
phil...@dowco.com (Daniel Phillips) wrote:
>My reading on it is it's mainly just you, Kevin Hamilton, a
>student who has received job offers from Micro$oft, and David
>Springer, a retreaded Basic programmer who works for
>Dell "Microsoft Inside" Computer. On the other hand, there has
>been plenty of criticism from all sorts of people, not just me.
I haven't received an offer from MS, and I don't work for a MS OEM. Is
it OK if I like DirectX?
>My position is, DirectX is snake oil that attempts to solve a
>problem that doesn't exist, to the detriment of game writers and
>game players.
Why is it to the detriment of game players? Frankly, if an app's gotta
run full-screen, I'd rather it have access to Windows' resources
(memory, sound, Winsock) than to have to worry if the app supports my
video card, sound card, modem, network card, etc.
To the detriment of game-writers? How many libraries can you find that
do all of what DirectX provides for a similar price ($0.00).
I would ask you to list these products, but I'll probably get on your
list of those who do not please you.
---
John Hattan High UberPopeness -The First Church of Shatnerology
The Code Zone Sweet Software for a Saturnine World
hat...@fastlane.net http://www.fastlane.net/~hattan/
Daniel Phillips
taka...@ucla.edu says...
>
>>If you hate Microsoft so much and think they are
>>over dominate, then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Beat them at their
>>own game, don't just bitch and moan or go crying to the
>>government to stick its nose where it does not belong.
>
>The biggest contradiction I see here is that those people who
>don't >like Windows program for DOS. Now, DOS was made by
Who told you Dos was made by Micro$oft?
--
Chris Lomont
On Tue, 1 Oct 1996, Daniel Phillips wrote:
> kh...@prism.gatech.edu says...
>
> >Why don't you take time to consider that if there are this many
> >people defending DirectX that there MAY be something to it which
> >you are not aware.
>
> My reading on it is it's mainly just you, Kevin Hamilton, a
> student who has received job offers from Micro$oft, and David
> Springer, a retreaded Basic programmer who works for
> Dell "Microsoft Inside" Computer. On the other hand, there has
> been plenty of criticism from all sorts of people, not just me.
>
> My position is, DirectX is snake oil that attempts to solve a
> problem that doesn't exist, to the detriment of game writers and
> game players.
>
> --
> Daniel Phillips
> phil...@dowco.com
>
> Crybabies list: <no entries today>
Except when many people have 3D accelerated hardware with no HARDWARE
standard, and 3D sound (all in under 2 years, I'd expect), and want
internet play, modem play, network play, and a programmer tries to
produce drivers for all these cards and can't spend his/her time on
actual GAME programming. After having written lots of dos and quite a bit
of DirectX code, I must say that sound mixing, MIDI playback, network
support, etc, is much quicker under DIrectX than anything else I've used.
And since MS seems to be putting out new releases every couple months, I
imagine DirectX will be the way to go on a PC. Every big game company
that has PC titles slated I know of is working on DirectX code. To avoid
a technology like this would be very stupid for a professional
programmer, who in my opinion is someone who learns current technology
and the benefits of when and where to apply it in order to produce better
product him/herself and stay competitive.
Just my 2 cents...
Chris Lomont
Daniel Phillips
hat...@fastlane.net says...
>
>phil...@dowco.com (Daniel Phillips) wrote:
>
>>My reading on it is it's mainly just you, Kevin Hamilton, a
>>student who has received job offers from Micro$oft, and David
>>Springer, a retreaded Basic programmer who works for
>>Dell "Microsoft Inside" Computer. On the other hand, there has
>>been plenty of criticism from all sorts of people, not just me.
>
Yes, that's fine. Just don't criticize others for *not* liking it.
>>My position is, DirectX is snake oil that attempts to solve a
>>problem that doesn't exist, to the detriment of game writers and
>>game players.
>
>Why is it to the detriment of game players?
Because it's slow and jerky and the sound card doesn't work a lot
of the time.
>Frankly, if an app's gotta run full-screen, I'd rather it have
>access to Windows' resources (memory, sound, Winsock) than to have
>to worry if the app supports my video card, sound card, modem,
>network card, etc.
Why are those "Windows" resources? I thought they were "PC"
resources.
>To the detriment of game-writers? How many libraries can you
>find that do all of what DirectX provides for a similar price
>($0.00).
Well, my own library does it all, and also costs me ($0.00). Plus
is faster and more reliable. There are lots of good libraries out
there and a few of them are free.
David Matiskella
On Tue, 1 Oct 1996, Daniel Phillips wrote:
> taka...@ucla.edu says...
> >
> >>If you hate Microsoft so much and think they are
> >>over dominate, then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Beat them at their
> >>own game, don't just bitch and moan or go crying to the
> >>government to stick its nose where it does not belong.
> >
> >The biggest contradiction I see here is that those people who
> >don't >like Windows program for DOS. Now, DOS was made by
> >Microsoft...
>
> Who told you Dos was made by Micro$oft?
>
> --
> Daniel Phillips
> phil...@dowco.com
>
> Crybabies list: <no entries today>
>
This is getting funny. Actually as we all know DOS was the orignal
"file sytem" for the apple II computer. Got up to version 3.3 if I
rember correctly.
Of course you were most likely refering to MS-DOS. Okay the original MS-DOS
was bought buy microsoft. That was what, oh over 15 years ago. Now 6 or 7
versions later what do you think is left of the orginal product?
This whole dicussion come down to the fact that Daniel Phillips
doesn't like Microsoft. Some of the objections are actual problems with
the software and a lot more are religous arguements in that he doens't
want evil microsoft to rule the world. Of course if you want to prevent
that you would be better off writing for OS's like System 7, os/2, or
some unix rather than Dos. Of course exept for the fact you are really
going to limit your market.
David Matiskella
mati...@aa.washington.edu
Doug McCreary
Paul Ross wrote:
>
> gle...@cix.compulink.co.uk ("Glenn Corpes") wrote:
> >No he's just one of the last few flat earthers on the anti directx
> >bandwagon, he posts an arrogant pseudo informed anti windows 95 message
> >just about every day. The fact is that if you port a dos vesa program to
> >directx you will get a slight maybe 3% (it's less on faster machines)
> >slowdown, start using the hardware to clear your screen or draw a few
> >sprites, a control panel or a cockpit with the blitter and you are very
> >quickly running faster than it's possible to in dos.
> [SNIP]
>
> Hmm, I suppose by hardware you mean hardware blitters and stuff ?
> Well, if you were going to use the hardware blitter from DOS then it
> would be faster than doing it from windows.
>
You seem to be missing the point here, what if you can't use the
hardware
blitter from dos, but you can get at it in windows by using directx.
This is often the case, as many hardware features on today's video cards
go undocumented externally, but are used to enhance the window's driver
performance.
> Unfortunately there is no argument, DOS is simply faster than windows
> simply because of the following two reasons
>
But there is an argument, because most folks designing games cannot
afford
to design or purchase a dos-mode driver for every video card on the
market.
Windows directx support is a relatively inexpensive method of getting
at hardware acceleration features that can be difficult, expensive, or
sometimes even impossible to get access to in MS-DOS/VESA mode. Can
dos be faster than windows? Yes. Is dos always faster than windows,
no. Dos is faster than windows in those cases where you have access to
all the hardware features you want, which I would argue is a very small
number of situations. Entirely too many card features are undocumented,
and therefore unavailable to the dos-mode programmer.
> o Windows '95 keeps a 16bit copy of your program's information (handle
> etc etc) as well as a 32bit version in it's kernel. This means it's
> constantly going from 16bit to 32bit mode, which is a slow thing
> to do.
>
> o In DOS you only ever run 1 task at a time, in Windows you are
> running at least 2.
>
Our current port from vesa to directx shows something around 10%
performance
decrease, considering both of the above. And on the other hand, we've
not
yet begun to exploit directx acceleration, which we expect will be
substantial
in our design, but we'll see. Even so, such a small performance penalty
is a small price to pay to be free of compatibility worries.
> Where windows does shine is in how portable it makes your code.
> Before I started as a games programmer, I was a demo coder and getting
> your demo to work on all combinations of SoundCard, GFX card etc etc
> was an absolutely nightmare. With windows though you just don't get
> that trouble, if it works on 1 PC it will work on them all.
>
This is certainly one of the big plusses for us. Since we decided to go
with directx, we've realized that a mac port might not be such a big
deal, where such was clearly an unreasonably difficult task before.
-- Doug McCreary --
office:(408)364-9285 fax:(408)364-9300 home:(408)374-7961
mailto:do...@ictv.com
http://www.ictv.com/users/dougm/index.html
Jonathan Mavor
> --
> Daniel Phillips
> phil...@dowco.com
>
> Crybabies list: <no entries today>
>
Could I get a copy of this library of yours that
supports 3d hardware that hasn't been invented yet and that
all of the hardware companies will write drivers for? I'd
like to evaluate it. After all it's free just like directx
right?
-Jon
Doug McCreary
Daniel Phillips wrote:
>
> do...@ictv.com says...
> >
> >Our current port from vesa to directx shows something around 10%
> >performance decrease, considering both of the above. And on the
> >other hand, we've not yet begun to exploit directx acceleration,
> >which we expect will be substantial in our design, but we'll see.
> >Even so, such a small performance penalty is a small price to pay
> >to be free of compatibility worries.
>
> the job better, which you are, so it's not. 10% is a big penalty,
> not a small penalty. That's enough to do all your game AI and
> physics, for instance.
>
It's a small penalty if you are a small developer who can't
afford to code for a thousand graphics chip sets, or to
pay for someone else's library which gives you those
services. And what if your game already runs on a 486/50
with CPU time to spare, will it matter that a 10% performance
penalty limits your code to running on 486/66's or better?
Directx is a real tradeoff, with positive and negative
aspects. One of the strongest negatives is that it limits
your market to win95/winnt. It leaves all the dos folks
out in the code. One of the strongest positives is
you don't have to go license or write your own graphics
device drivers. To me, those are the most important
factors in the decision. The minor performance penalty
really wasn't a factor in our decision, and again, I should
point out, we're not using acceleration features yet,
which could result in our getting a performance
bonus in the net.
Doug McCreary
> >You seem to be missing the point here, what if you can't use the
> >hardware blitter from dos...
>
> How could that possibly happen?
>
That could happen very easily if you had, say, a Matrox Millenium
with undocumented blitter features that are used in the
win95 drivers. How would you propose to gain access to those
features in dos mode? And then how would you get access to
the undocumented features on Diamond's Stealth series cards.
Oh, and what about Hercules?
Daniel Phillips
do...@ictv.com says...
>
>Our current port from vesa to directx shows something around 10%
>performance decrease, considering both of the above. And on the
>other hand, we've not yet begun to exploit directx acceleration,
>which we expect will be substantial in our design, but we'll see.
>Even so, such a small performance penalty is a small price to pay
>to be free of compatibility worries.
That's only true if you're not competing with anybody who's doing
the job better, which you are, so it's not. 10% is a big penalty,
not a small penalty. That's enough to do all your game AI and
physics, for instance.
--
Daniel Phillips
do...@ictv.com says...
>
>Paul Ross wrote:
>>
>>gle...@cix.compulink.co.uk ("Glenn Corpes") wrote:
>>>No he's just one of the last few flat earthers on the anti directx
>>>bandwagon, he posts an arrogant pseudo informed anti windows 95
>>>message just about every day. The fact is that if you port a dos
>>>vesa program to directx you will get a slight maybe 3%
Funny, nobody has challenged that "3%" figure. Looks a little on
the low side, judging from other people's reports.
>>>(it's less on faster machines) slowdown, start using the
>>>hardware to clear your screen or draw a few sprites, a control
>>>panel or a cockpit with the blitter and you are very quickly
>>>running faster than it's possible to in dos.
>>...
>>Hmm, I suppose by hardware you mean hardware blitters and stuff ?
>>Well, if you were going to use the hardware blitter from DOS then
>>it would be faster than doing it from windows.
>>
>You seem to be missing the point here, what if you can't use the
>hardware blitter from dos...
How could that possibly happen?
--
Daniel Phillips
kh...@prism.gatech.edu says...
>phil...@dowco.com (Daniel Phillips) writes:
>>kh...@prism.gatech.edu says...
>>>
>>>Why don't you take time to consider that if there are this many
>>>people defending DirectX that there MAY be something to it which
>>>you are not aware.
>>
>>student who has received job offers from Micro$oft, and David
>>Springer, a retreaded Basic programmer who works for
>>Dell "Microsoft Inside" Computer. On the other hand, there has
>>been plenty of criticism from all sorts of people, not just me.
>
>on a newsgroup, then WHY ARE YOU EVEN COMMENTING ON IT AT ALL?
Calm down, Kevin, no need to shout.
>...Now you attack me for being a student even though I work in a
>very prestigious graphics lab that, until very recently, was headed
>up by Jim Foley (of Computer Graphics fame).
I'm not trying to destroy you or your reputation, just your little
fiction that DirectX is something necessary or desirable for
programming games on the PC.
As for your name drop, oops, I mean *well respected mentor*, I have
his book right over there on my shelf. Now, (how to put this
politely) it's not exactly brimming with original thought, is it?
What we need in this industry is less pedagogical regurgitation and
more original thinking.
Jon Beltran de Heredia
On Wed, 2 Oct 1996 00:51:04 GMT, phil...@dowco.com (Daniel Phillips)
wrote:
>>You seem to be missing the point here, what if you can't use the
>>hardware blitter from dos...
>
>How could that possibly happen?
Haha... what if the card came out just after the game and the game
does not have the drivers...
Not that you'd be able to make drivers for the zillion cards out there
right now without and unbelievably big task force....
VBE/AF should change this. I'm looking forward to seeing it.
But Win95 is still the key to wintel portability. Regrettably. I don't
know why the manufacturers have waited so long to make an acceleration
standard.
Regards,
-------------------------------------------------
Jon Beltran de Heredia Yann/Iguana
-------------------------------------------------
David Springer
Paul Ross (pa...@csl.com) wrote:
: Hmm, I suppose by hardware you mean hardware blitters and stuff ?
: Well, if you were going to use the hardware blitter from DOS then it
: would be faster than doing it from windows.
No, it would be the same speed. Once the blitter is blitting it's
going to run at the same speed no matter who instructed it to start.
It's the ancillary operations that may or may not be faster in DOS
and those are the same speed IF they are performing the same job.
In Windows 95 it's just typical that there are MORE ancillary tasks
to support the pre-emptive multitasking.
: Unfortunately there is no argument, DOS is simply faster than windows
: simply because of the following two reasons
Of course there's an argument. When you say something like that
you are in fact saying "There's no argument I would accept"...
Nevertheless I will in fact argue it.
: o Windows '95 keeps a 16bit copy of your program's information (handle
: etc etc) as well as a 32bit version in it's kernel. This means it's
: constantly going from 16bit to 32bit mode, which is a slow thing
: to do.
Huh ? Never heard that before. What's your reference ?
: o In DOS you only ever run 1 task at a time, in Windows you are
: running at least 2.
This is a disengenuous statement made true only by the definition of
multitasking at the O/S level. In fact DOS is running a lot of tasks
when you include responding to interrupts. The bottom line is that
there is only one CPU in both cases and it executes instructions
one after the other.
Indeed, once you have a "game loop" that is controlling the execution
of tasks within your program you are indeed multitasking. What real
difference is there between Windows having a program loop where it
sees if it has any tasks pending or a game loop doing the same thing?
The difference is that you control the code in the loop instead of
Microsoft which may or may not be a good thing.
: Where windows does shine is in how portable it makes your code.
: Before I started as a games programmer, I was a demo coder and getting
: your demo to work on all combinations of SoundCard, GFX card etc etc
: was an absolutely nightmare. With windows though you just don't get
: that trouble, if it works on 1 PC it will work on them all.
Not quite true. You can still write programs that work on one Windows
computer but not another. Window's device drivers are still written
by third parties and they can have various bugs in them. The real difference
is YOU, the programmer, are writing to one interface instead of a plethora.
The interface is expected to work the same for all brands of devices
behind it but in fact in the real world it doesn't.
: Also people, in earlier parts of this thread, who go around saying
: that real programmers code straight to the hardware, obviously haven't
: done anything else but that. Programming with handles, contexts and
: MFC is just as technically demanding as writing mode-x 16bit texture
: mapping routines.
I've done both and at least for the first years the Windows environment
is more difficult. That may be because I know the PC at the hardware
level so well after 15 years working with it but I tend to think not.
Thousands of API's that I didn't write and don't have the source for
is just plain daunting. Granted that you'll only use a few hundred
of those API's in a program but even finding the right API in any one
instance out of the thousands available can be a chore.
David Springer
Laptop BIOS Programmer
Dell Computer Corporation
--
********* WEB GAMES ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM ***********
* *
* A client/server system designed from the ground up to *
* support real time multi-player games on the Internet. *
* Game developers, players, and ISP's check it out at: *
* *
************** http://www.eden.com/~springer **************
T.W.J. jakobs
>>My position is, DirectX is snake oil that attempts to solve a
>>problem that doesn't exist, to the detriment of game writers and
>>game players.
>
>You mean by consolidating the interfaces for networking, graphics, audio,
>and input into one package so you don't have to write a bunch of device
>drivers for wide support (contrary to some of your previous statements,
>UniVBE is not the be all-end all, and not every video board offers good
>support for VESA)? How is DirectX detrimental to game writers and players
>(no hearsay please, answer with an original, grounded in fact statements)?
Yeah, But one problem, Not (ehhh I say Only some) every Video card is
supported by directX, But most are by UNIVBE, Oh yeah, and one other thing is
this, All you Windows people who are saying that you don't have to restart
your computer just to play a game, are talking bullocks, because I have
already a few games for windows (Yeah, they even have DirectX) where I have to
get Back to 256 color mode(Which requires most windows computers to restart).
So I Do have to restart the computer, Oh yeah, I even had one game Well, it
was a Demo (Which had DirectX) that even didn't start because my videocard had
no hardware support for directx... Uhhh So There's your directX.... But hee,
we also have real good drivers for dos, UNIVBE for Video, Miles drivers for
Sound.
But That's just what I wanted to say to people who are complaining about
DOS... For the rest, Just choose the one you like (DOS or WINDOWS)...
But if you are using Windows, just don't let us go back to 256 colors, just
tell (As some other games do) that it is optimized for 256 colors, and that in
more colors the performance could be lower.....
Cja,
Andre Jakobs
MicroBrain Technologies Inc.
The Netherlands
PS. One BIG DISADVANTAGE of DirectX is that everybody can make games, WHICH is
ofcourse not a good thing, since the market is already fludded with JUNK.
But That's just my opinion......
Glenn Corpes
> gle...@cix.compulink.co.uk says...
> >No he's just one of the last few flat earthers on the anti directx
> >bandwagon, he posts an arrogant pseudo informed anti windows 95
> >message just about every day.
> sig is too long - it violates rules of netiquette.
I just can't see how a programmer can spend quite so much time worrying
about which OS he uses.
> Daniel Phillips
> phil...@dowco.com
> Crybabies list: D.S. Reason: spammed my mailbox.
My sig is 101 characters, 13 more than yours.
_\/ __
\ / \ gco...@ea.com
|\ \/ / Bullfrog
| \/ /___/_Productions
|| /____\
Daniel Phillips
ah...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA says...
>>>>problem that doesn't exist, to the detriment of game writers and
>>>>game players.
>>>
>>
>> Because it's slow and jerky and the sound card doesn't work a lot
>> of the time.
>>
>>>find that do all of what DirectX provides for a similar price
>>>($0.00).
>>
>>Well, my own library does it all, and also costs me ($0.00). Plus
>>is faster and more reliable. There are lots of good libraries out
>>there and a few of them are free.
>
>hardware that hasn't been invented yet and that all of the
>hardware companies will write drivers for? I'd like to evaluate
>it. After all it's free just like directx right?
Sorry, it's only free to me. (But you'll get a chance to evaluate
it pretty soon anyway, heehee.) Just post your question here about
free and shareware libraries and you'll get plenty of answers.
--
Daniel Phillips
phil...@dowco.com
Crybabies list: <no entries today>
Daniel Phillips
do...@ictv.com says...
>> >hardware blitter from dos...
>>
>> How could that possibly happen?
>
>with undocumented blitter features that are used in the
>win95 drivers. How would you propose to gain access to those
>features in dos mode? And then how would you get access to
>the undocumented features on Diamond's Stealth series cards.
>Oh, and what about Hercules?
Well, I look at the OEM string and if it says "S3" I hook in special
code for 2D blitting. Since those guys have pretty much got a
hammerlock on the market, that takes care of most of it. Seems to
me also that Scitech has a set of 2D accelerator ops - I haven't
checked it out yet, but it's got to be a natural for
standardization.
John Hattan
phil...@dowco.com (Daniel Phillips) wrote:
>hat...@fastlane.net says...
>>
>>phil...@dowco.com (Daniel Phillips) wrote:
>>
>>>My position is, DirectX is snake oil that attempts to solve a
>>>problem that doesn't exist, to the detriment of game writers and
>>>game players.
>>
>>Why is it to the detriment of game players?
>
>Because it's slow and jerky and the sound card doesn't work a lot
>of the time.
Haven't experienced this myself. I've gotten quite good performance
with very good sound support.
I've found that scraping the oil off the snake makes the video smoother.
Oops, I probably just made your blacklist with my snide comment.
>>Frankly, if an app's gotta run full-screen, I'd rather it have
>>access to Windows' resources (memory, sound, Winsock) than to have
>>to worry if the app supports my video card, sound card, modem,
>>network card, etc.
>
>Why are those "Windows" resources? I thought they were "PC"
>resources.
Winsock is a PC resource?
>>To the detriment of game-writers? How many libraries can you
>>find that do all of what DirectX provides for a similar price
>>($0.00).
>
>Well, my own library does it all, and also costs me ($0.00). Plus
>is faster and more reliable. There are lots of good libraries out
>there and a few of them are free.
Well, you're a more resourceful programmer than I. I, for one, am not
willing to roll my own graphics/sprite library if there's a good free
one already available. All of my experience with DirectX 2 shows it to
be a worthwhile platform.
John "not invented here" Hattan
Jonathan Mavor
Daniel Phillips (phil...@dowco.com) writes:
> ah...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA says...
>>Daniel Phillips (phil...@dowco.com) writes:
>>>hat...@fastlane.net says...
>>>>>My position is, DirectX is snake oil that attempts to solve a
>>>>>problem that doesn't exist, to the detriment of game writers and
>>>>>game players.
>>>>
>>>>Why is it to the detriment of game players?
>>>
>>> Because it's slow and jerky and the sound card doesn't work a lot
>>> of the time.
>>>
>>>>To the detriment of game-writers? How many libraries can you
>>>>find that do all of what DirectX provides for a similar price
>>>>($0.00).
>>>
>>>Well, my own library does it all, and also costs me ($0.00). Plus
>>>is faster and more reliable. There are lots of good libraries out
>>>there and a few of them are free.
>>
>>Could I get a copy of this library of yours that supports 3d
>>hardware that hasn't been invented yet and that all of the
>>hardware companies will write drivers for? I'd like to evaluate
>>it. After all it's free just like directx right?
>
> Sorry, it's only free to me. (But you'll get a chance to evaluate
> it pretty soon anyway, heehee.) Just post your question here about
> free and shareware libraries and you'll get plenty of answers.
>
> --
> Daniel Phillips
> phil...@dowco.com
>
> Crybabies list: <no entries today>
>
Right. It's nly free to YOU. Ergo, the rest of use should
use what's free to us, which happens to be directx. BTW which
manufacturer's did you say were supporting your driver standard?
Daniel Phillips
do...@ictv.com says...
>Daniel Phillips wrote:
>>do...@ictv.com says...
>>>
>>>You seem to be missing the point here, what if you can't use the
>>>hardware blitter from dos...
>>
>>How could that possibly happen?
>>
>That could happen very easily if you had, say, a Matrox Millenium
>with undocumented blitter features that are used in the
>win95 drivers. How would you propose to gain access to those
>features in dos mode? And then how would you get access to
>the undocumented features on Diamond's Stealth series cards.
>Oh, and what about Hercules?
Well, I emailed SciTech and asked, cuz I kinda thought *they'd*
know. I took the liberty of posting it here:
---------------------------------------------------------------
>I heard you had some generic support for 2D blitting, but I didn't
>see it mentioned front-and-center on your developer pages. Any
>truth?
Daniel,
Yep. We sure do!
We are in the process of a major redesign of our web pages, so it
should be more clear (and prettier) in the future -- sorry about
that one.
We fully support hardware acceleration through the newly adopted VESA
VBE/AF (Accelerator Functions) standard. The standard allows access to
hardware acceleration on any x86 machine, in any operating system,
including DOS, Windows 3.1/95/NT, etc.
If you want to learn how to access to VBE/AF, you can look at our
SciTech SuperVGA Kit 6.0 or SciTech MGL 2.01 libraries, both of which
fully support VESA VBE/AF drivers. You can also get a copy of the
offical standard directly from VESA at 408-435-0333.
For VBE/AF _drivers_, download our SciTech Display Doctor 5.3 and it
will automatically generate a VBE/AF driver for your system. Although
we generate a VBE/AF driver for any of the chips SDD supports. We
currently only support the full VBE/AF spec on ATI cards (you get
VBE 2.0 equivalent support on all the other cards). This is so
developers can start trying it out while we (and the hardware vendors)
get more VBE/AF support out the door.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any further questions.
Regards,
Tom Ryan
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| SciTech Software - Building Truly Plug'n'Play Software -- Today!
|+----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Tom Ryan, Director of Marketing | Ph/FAX: 916-894-8400/916-894-9069
| SciTech Software, Inc. | Email : To...@scitechsoft.com
| 505 Wall Street | ftp : ftp.scitechsoft.com
| Chico, CA 95928 | www : http://www.scitechsoft.com
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Daniel Phillips
ah...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA says...
>Daniel Phillips (phil...@dowco.com) writes:
>>ah...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA says...
>>>Daniel Phillips (phil...@dowco.com) writes:
>>>>Well, my own library does it all, and also costs me ($0.00). Plus
>>>>is faster and more reliable. There are lots of good libraries out
>>>>there and a few of them are free.
>>>Could I get a copy of this library of yours that supports 3d
>>>hardware that hasn't been invented yet and that all of the
>>>hardware companies will write drivers for? I'd like to evaluate
>>>it. After all it's free just like directx right?
>> Sorry, it's only free to me. (But you'll get a chance to evaluate
>> it pretty soon anyway, heehee.) Just post your question here about
>> free and shareware libraries and you'll get plenty of answers.
>Right. It's only free to YOU. Ergo, the rest of use should
>use what's free to us, which happens to be directx.
Not at all. (BTW, do you ever pay for *anything*?) Did you see my
previous post? Maybe not. Here it is again:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I emailed SciTech and asked, cuz I kinda thought *they'd*
know. I took the liberty of posting it here:
>I heard you had some generic support for 2D blitting, but I didn't
Gil Colgate
Dave Erazmus wrote:
>
> > My position is, DirectX is snake oil that attempts to solve a
> > problem that doesn't exist, to the detriment of game writers and
> > game players.
>
Actually, the problem does exist. Exactly two years ago it was very
unclear how to break past the 320X200 barrier into high res cards.
Microsoft promised a brain-dead way to support lots of hardware easily.
The question is not that the problem existed: the problem
is: does DirectX meet its promises? Microsoft has a tendency to
overpromise and underdeliver.
Promise
1) Your program can easily gain a fast frame rate with high res video
modes using the video
memory to video memory blit.
Delivery
2) On most PCI cards, you can get this frame rate. On some, your game
will suck. I'd say
this promise has been met.
Promise
1) You won't have as many customer service issues.
Delivery
2) For Sound Cards, you won't. But you will get complaints regarding
video cards, occasionally.
So this is a wash. You may need as much customer support for a windows
program as for a Dos
program, but you may not. Customer service problems will usually involve
"Download the
driver for your video card from the manufacturer".
Promise
1) Windows will stay out of your hair. You won't have to use the GDI.
Delivery
2) Except for some bizarre problems with alt-tab, this is true. It's
even hard to use the GDI
if you are using an exclusive mode application. It's apparent that the
GDI has some value
(particularly with Fonts, or color remmapping, if not any other sort of
operation... Rectangle
is a joke (Create a brush, select it, draw the rectangle, unselect the
brush, restore the old one... unnecessary multiplication of entities).
However, Direct 3D and Direct Play are more problematical, since they
are NOT Direct and
should have another name, such as IndirectionPlay and Indirect3D.
Direct Play sits on top of software protocols. The main protocol to
worry about these days
is INTERNET. You may as well write in WinSock... you'll have a lot more
control and
understand all the details. Of course, this involves learning time, so
DirectPlay may be a good
solution for some.
Direct 3D, on the other hand, is a mess. Here are some promises and
deliveries.
Promise: Direct 3D programs will run easily on a wide variety of 3D
accelerators.
Reality: Most 3D cards have idiosyncracies, and the drivers don't
support a wide variety
of things.
Promise: You can write a game using the software drivers.
Reality: Yeah, if you want your game to suck.
Promise: Windows will keep out of your hair.
Reality: Window's tentacles of complexity have crept into the Direct 3D
API,
instigating massive tangles of code. Just initializing Direct3D makes
a windows program look simple.
Promise: Direct3D is a thin layer above the hardware.
Reality: Did someone say THIN? You can't really get at the hardware from
Direct3D, unlike
Direct Draw. The code to draw a triangle is a mess. (Create a Direct3D
object, Create A
Direct3D Immediate mode object, Create a frame buffer, Create an execute
buffer. Fill
the execute buffer with instructions to draw a triangle...... this is
just
like the GDI with it's unneccessary multiplication of entities. Couldn't
they have
implemented Draw2DGouraudTriangle(VECTOR *a, VECTOR *b, VECTOR *c)
A lot of hardware cards do.
If Microsoft had been smarter, they would've made a stripped down
version of OpenGL. I fully expect the market to ignore Direct3D in three
years: software will run OpenGL, which has
the advantage of being simpler.
Fabio Bizzetti
Daniel Phillips (phil...@dowco.com) wrote:
>do...@ictv.com says...
>>
>>Our current port from vesa to directx shows something around 10%
>>performance decrease, considering both of the above. And on the
>>other hand, we've not yet begun to exploit directx acceleration,
>>which we expect will be substantial in our design, but we'll see.
>>Even so, such a small performance penalty is a small price to pay
>>to be free of compatibility worries.
>That's only true if you're not competing with anybody who's doing
>the job better, which you are, so it's not. 10% is a big penalty,
>not a small penalty. That's enough to do all your game AI and
>physics, for instance.
If he gets a 10% overall penalty on the whole game, the lone "screen copy"
misperformed by DirectX must take 2 times more time than with DOS..
I wonder how the Microsoft "programmers" can be so lame, is their only
worry to finish the product in time to sell millions of copies to all the
sheeps around?
I would like to know WHY I should support Windows95. Is it that Billy Boy
comes out and says "hey! let's all buy my oS!" and we smile and do it, or
we should consider only its quality? In this case, why should I support a
"multitasking" OS with my games? Who ever said that multitasking is a good
thing for action (or whatever) games? Who said that DirectX is more compatible
than VESA? It even uses VESA as far as I can see on the Windows95 driver info..
And, who cares about accelerations? (BTW: there's VESA/AF for it AFAIK),
when I just need to render all my gfx with the CPU and then only copy the
CPU RAM screenbuffer to video RAM. And if the video card can do this in
DMA, then a new function in VESA will be welcome. It's more than I need.
What about 3D gfx boards and inDirect3D? Who cares? Not me for sure, they
become obsolete in 3 months and I anyway will never support them, my 3D engine
is not polygon-based, and its performances will comment by themselves.
It's all just business and I sure dont support it; I ain't a sheep.
There's no reason on earth visible from here to support Windows95, and the
only one I can see (feeding Billy Boy and killing the risk that he becomes
suddenly poor) isn't really on the top of the things I care/worry about.
I say: program and let program. All the "Windows95 propaganda" supporters
out there have to understand that we aren't dumb, they better spend their
precious time coding their wonderful Windows95 games/demos rather than
propaganding Windows95 to us. We know what we do, dont worry and thanks.
Let's compare only the final results.. they'll speak for themselves.
>--
>Daniel Phillips
>phil...@dowco.com
>
>Crybabies list: <no entries today>
---------------------------------------
Fabio Bizzetti - bizz...@mbox.vol.it
J.P. Hamilton
>T.W.J....@nl.cis.philips.com (T.W.J. jakobs) wrote:
>Yeah, But one problem, Not (ehhh I say Only some) every Video card is
>supported by directX, But most are by UNIVBE, Oh yeah, and one other thing is
I can promise you, if the card isn;t supported under DirectX it is the
manufacturers fault. And on top of that it is probably a piece of
shit or a high end card that maybe 1% of pc users have. Give me a
list of cards that don't have DirectX drivers. This is a lame
argument. Everybody whos anybody has got a DirectX driver.
>this, All you Windows people who are saying that you don't have to restart
>your computer just to play a game, are talking bullocks, because I have
>already a few games for windows (Yeah, they even have DirectX) where I have to
>get Back to 256 color mode(Which requires most windows computers to restart).
>So I Do have to restart the computer, Oh yeah, I even had one game Well, it
>was a Demo (Which had DirectX) that even didn't start because my videocard had
You must install DirectX first, dude.....
>no hardware support for directx... Uhhh So There's your directX.... But hee,
>we also have real good drivers for dos, UNIVBE for Video, Miles drivers for
>Sound.
Or you have a piece of shit card.
>
>PS. One BIG DISADVANTAGE of DirectX is that everybody can make games, WHICH is
>ofcourse not a good thing, since the market is already fludded with JUNK.
>But That's just my opinion......
Ummm.....this is not correct. You obviously have not used DirectX at
all. Not to put you down or anything, but you don't know what you are
talking about. Opinion != Fact. Basically you get a "surface" and
you can treat it like linear memory. Just like 320x200. I ported all
my old 320x200 routines over in a matter of minutes. I am not using
windows API calls to do my blting,line drawing,etc....I am using the
routines I have slaved for years to build.....except now its 640x480
and fast as shit (99 FPS).
Dave Erazmus
Daniel Phillips <phil...@dowco.com> wrote in article
<DyLnE...@dowco.com>...
> kh...@prism.gatech.edu says...
>
> >Why don't you take time to consider that if there are this many
> >people defending DirectX that there MAY be something to it which
> >you are not aware.
>
> My reading on it is it's mainly just you, Kevin Hamilton, a
> student who has received job offers from Micro$oft, and David
> Springer, a retreaded Basic programmer who works for
> Dell "Microsoft Inside" Computer.
Oh yes, only those two... and other lowlife characters like the people
who make decisions for companies like Origin, Activision, Interplay, Id
software, ... and what do they know anyway?
> On the other hand, there has been plenty of criticism from
> all sorts of people, not just me.
Most of which is merely anti-Microsoft flameposting. You want to
convince people? Debate works when you present facts. For example,
the above statement about industry support (though heavily laden with
juicy sarcasm) is a fact. What doesn't work? Well, insults are pretty
much a sign that you've lost it. I mean, I hardly know David Springer,
but I doubt that his treads are worn. A heated debate generally
includes a few choice insults, but when your entire post is nothing but
crude personal attacks... well, 'nuff said, I think.
> My position is, DirectX is snake oil that attempts to solve a
> problem that doesn't exist, to the detriment of game writers and
> game players.
Good...good! I like the symbolism. You see, this is the statement you
should lead-off with -- followed by specific problems which do not
currently exist and why this hurts everyone who is being sucked in by
this evil. Without such support, your posting is just so much...
venom.
Cheers,
--
Dave Erazmus
Austin, TX
mailto:dera...@eden.com
Glenn Corpes
> do...@ictv.com says...
> >
> >Our current port from vesa to directx shows something around 10%
> >performance decrease, considering both of the above. And on the
> >other hand, we've not yet begun to exploit directx acceleration,
> >which we expect will be substantial in our design, but we'll see.
> >Even so, such a small performance penalty is a small price to pay
> >to be free of compatibility worries.
>
> That's only true if you're not competing with anybody who's doing
> the job better, which you are, so it's not. 10% is a big penalty,
> not a small penalty. That's enough to do all your game AI and
> physics, for instance.
>
There is no way it's 10% on a real game, maybe a page flip test or
something would be 10% slower, all I know is that Dungeon Keeper in
640*480 is about 10% faster than vesa, 320*200 was slightly slower as
directx didn't use the hardware in this mode, it used to do some weird
xmode hack, this isn't true on most graphic cards now but I have no
timings.
Thought for the day.
On a pentium Dos may only use a few tens of kilobytes of your megabytes
of memory and it's interrupts steal a fraction of 1% of your processor
time but it was originally written to run on 4.77 mhz 8086 based machines
with 64k of memory, back then it must have eaten a quarter of your memory
and about 10% of your processor time.....
Daniel Phillips
clo...@omni.cc.purdue.edu says...
>Daniel Phillips said:
>>My position is, DirectX is snake oil that attempts to solve a
>>problem that doesn't exist, to the detriment of game writers and
>>game players.
>Except when many people have 3D accelerated hardware with no HARDWARE
>standard, and 3D sound (all in under 2 years, I'd expect), and want
>internet play, modem play, network play, and a programmer tries to
>produce drivers for all these cards and can't spend his/her time on
>actual GAME programming. After having written lots of dos and quite
>a bit of DirectX code, I must say that sound mixing, MIDI playback,
>network support, etc, is much quicker under DIrectX than anything
>else I've used. And since MS seems to be putting out new releases
>every couple months, I imagine DirectX will be the way to go on a
>PC. Every big game company that has PC titles slated I know of is
>working on DirectX code. To avoid a technology like this would be
>very stupid for a professional programmer, who in my opinion is
>someone who learns current technology and the benefits of when and
>where to apply it in order to produce better product him/herself and
>stay competitive.
>
>Just my 2 cents...
Sure. Could you please explain why your conclusion conflicts so
strongly with that of Gil Colgate <gcol...@sirius.com> under the
subject:
Re: DirectX - Just say "no": promises and deliveries
My conclusion is that DirectX just makes things more complicated and
less reliable for:
- Internet play (use Winsock - *not* Direct Play. If you have code
that runs under Dos, even better - cuz Winsock sux, actually, just
not as much as Direct Play)
- Network play
- Modem play
- Direct Serial Links
- Video (yes, video. It's easier with VESA, and with VBE/AF,
faster, too)
- 3D
- Sound (can't get the !@#$)!~& card to make any sound!)
- Miscellaneous GUI headaches
So that's what I mean. Snake oil. And also, could you explain why
the DirectX releases are so far pretty lame? Even though plenty of
time has gone by. Check the charts.
Daniel Phillips
bizz...@mbox.vol.it says...
>Who ever said that multitasking is a good thing for action (or
>whatever) games?
Actually, it's a *great* thing, but you don't need Window$s to
do it. Far from it - I just hate the multitasking response of
Windoze, it's really out of the ballpark. Let alone when you have
to rely on "cooperative" task switching.
Quake, for instance, does lots of multitasking. So does my game.
With pipes between processes and everything. I think it's got to
be one of the most fun things you can do in programming - as long
as it's light and tight.
Takamoto Miura
> My conclusion is that DirectX just makes things more complicated and
> less reliable for:
>
> - Internet play (use Winsock - *not* Direct Play. If you have code
> that runs under Dos, even better - cuz Winsock sux, actually, just
> not as much as Direct Play)
> - Network play
> - Modem play
> - Direct Serial Links
> - Video (yes, video. It's easier with VESA, and with VBE/AF,
> faster, too)
> - 3D
> - Sound (can't get the !@#$)!~& card to make any sound!)
> - Miscellaneous GUI headaches
Uhh... no. When I'm on-line, I'm using Netscape and mIRC and
all the other new softwares. Just in case you've never seen them, they
are for Windows. How can I run all of them at the same time in DOS?
Answer?
-Takamoto Miura
Avocado Green
In article <Dynw4...@dowco.com>, phil...@dowco.com says...
>Sorry, it's only free to me. (But you'll get a chance to evaluate
>it pretty soon anyway, heehee.) Just post your question here about
Ah, I get it now, I've been wondering about your anti-DirectX sentiments,
but now found out that you, too, have a graphics library of yourself.
As bad as you made yourself look on this n.g. I wonder who'd buy in.
But then, the only people who know how idiotic you sound know what
DirectX can't/can do, so these aren't your customers anyway. Well,
good luck on it...Is it for DOS?
>Daniel Phillips
>phil...@dowco.com
>
>Crybabies list: <no entries today>
>
Minh Truong
truo...@ucunix.san.uc.edu
Crybabies list: Daniel Phillips
Joshua Boyd
Takamoto Miura <taka...@ucla.edu> wrote in article
<325027...@ucla.edu>...
> The biggest contradiction I see here is that those people who don't
> like Windows program for DOS. Now, DOS was made by Microsoft, yet they
> still
> claim they hate Microsoft. This is something I never had a reasonable
> explanation
> for. Windows is not an ideal game platform, but neither is DOS. So if
> you claim
> you hate Microsoft, please stop developing for "MS"-DOS. If you just
> like DOS over
> Windows for some other reason, that's fine with me.
Ah, but when they are developing for MSDOS they just override DOS and take
complete control of the computer. Well some of them at least.
Joshua Boyd
Dale Pontius <pon...@btv.ibm.com> wrote in article
> By the way, it's now pretty well established that for the files that
> are present in both versions, NTW and NTS are byte-for-byte identical.
> NTW has a lot of extra facilities, and perhaps some data structures
> are optimized differently, but it appears that two registry keys are
> all that makes the difference at the kernel level.
Could you tell us what those keys are so that we won't have to go out and
buy the server just to run Microsoft IIS
Joshua Boyd
Scott Le Grand <leg...@tesla.mbi.ucla.edu> wrote in article
<325072...@tesla.mbi.ucla.edu>...
> I mean sheesh, even the rogue canceller got some serious press
> and that's peanuts compared to this...
What is that anyway? I keep seeing references to it.
Ola Fosheim Grøstad
Fabio Bizzetti wrote:
> There's no reason on earth visible from here to support Windows95, and the
> only one I can see (feeding Billy Boy and killing the risk that he becomes
> suddenly poor) isn't really on the top of the things I care/worry about.
>
User demand?
--
Ola Fosheim Groestad, Oslo, Norway ( http://www.ifi.uio.no/~olag/ )
Kevin L. Hamilton
phil...@dowco.com (Daniel Phillips) writes:
>Sure. Could you please explain why your conclusion conflicts so
>strongly with that of Gil Colgate <gcol...@sirius.com> under the
>subject:
> Re: DirectX - Just say "no": promises and deliveries
>My conclusion is that DirectX just makes things more complicated and
>less reliable for:
> - Internet play (use Winsock - *not* Direct Play. If you have code
> that runs under Dos, even better - cuz Winsock sux, actually, just
> not as much as Direct Play)
I've written several Winsock and DirectPlay applications. Never had a problem.
In fact, you can get WinSock to behave just like Berkley sockets in UNIX if
you are so inclined, or you can use an asynchronous mode with callbacks. It
is actually fairly nice, but a lot of the published documentation is lacking
in several aspects. These are easy to figure out and doesn't take much time.
> - Network play
Again, I've had no problems with DirectPlay. Especially 3.0.
> - Modem play
> - Direct Serial Links
Haven't played with these two under DirectX yet, but I've had no problem
with this stuff under the standard Win32 API.
> - Video (yes, video. It's easier with VESA, and with VBE/AF,
> faster, too)
I think a lot of people are missing the point here. Many video board companies
are adding acceleration specifically for DirectDraw into their new hardware.
These features may or may not be documented so you can role your own driver
(depends on the manufacturer). On these cards, DirectX blows VESA out of the
water. VBE/AF is not in wide use right now, and does not have the manufacturer
support of DirectX so you cannot as easily depend on it. Plus, I've spent a
lot of time tweaking my graphics library (which uses DirectX) and have found
negligible speed differences (if any) over using VESA on a variety of cards
(Diamond Stealth 64, ATI Mach 64 Turbo, Number 9 Motion 771, ...).
It cracks me up when I read about people getting a new library or piece
of hardware and they assume that their old code is alreadt optimized for
the new stuff. This is often not the case. DirectX is young and still
growing. It takes time to learn and adapt to. Most importantly (as with
many other areas of game programmer) it takes some experimentation to
find out what works best. It is my experience, however, that brute force
and obvious methods perform fairly well under DirectX so if those are
good enough for your purposes, then best of luck.
I am not slamming DOS or VESA in any of this. What I am criticizing are comments
about DirectX that are incorrect or come from little to no direct experience
with the API.
> - 3D
Just what is it about the 3D engine you hate? You are aware, aren't you,
that you can plug in different lighting and rendering modules (thereby
implementing different methods) into the pipeline. Would you rather it
be spline based? Would you like to decide which scan conversion method
is used by the card? What? Be specific for once.
> - Sound (can't get the !@#$)!~& card to make any sound!)
I've had no problem. The people I've worked with have had no problem. It
could be that you didn't implement things correctly.
> - Miscellaneous GUI headaches
A very broad point here. What GUI headaches, specifically? Are you sure
they aren't stemming from a lack of knowledge with the Win32 API or DirectX?
>So that's what I mean. Snake oil. And also, could you explain why
>the DirectX releases are so far pretty lame? Even though plenty of
>time has gone by. Check the charts.
True. I think many of the DirectX games out there do suck. But I also think
it has more to do with the game itself than the API. MOST of the games out
there suck. It is frankly, really hard to make a good game. It takes a lot
of work and creativity as well as top notch programming. There is a lot
more trash out there that supports VESA. But is that a reflection of VESA?
Do you think that DirectX has some magic about it that is supposed to force
creativity and great programming techniques on its users? Come on. You can
write crap under anything. Wait until it gets more mature (no one in their
right mind used version 1.0, and a fourth version is due out near the
end of the year - at least that was what I was told). The games will come
(are comming). Some will be great and many will suck. Just like it always
has been.
>--
>Daniel Phillips
>phil...@dowco.com
>
>Crybabies list: <no entries today>
I'm surprised that I haven't gotten on your list yet. Really though, don't
you think having such a stupid list is a little immature.
Cheers, Kevin
--
Kevin Hamilton
Virtual Environments Group, The Georgia Institute of Technology
Internet: kev...@cc.gatech.edu or kh...@prism.gatech.edu
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Undergrad/Kevin.Hamilton/home.html
Fabio Bizzetti
Glenn Corpes (gle...@cix.compulink.co.uk) wrote:
>Thought for the day.
>On a pentium Dos may only use a few tens of kilobytes of your megabytes
>of memory and it's interrupts steal a fraction of 1% of your processor
>time but it was originally written to run on 4.77 mhz 8086 based machines
>with 64k of memory, back then it must have eaten a quarter of your memory
>and about 10% of your processor time.....
Then I guess that I'll use Windows95 when my Pentium 133Mhz will become
a Pentium 1330Mhz. <grin> ;)
>_\/ __
> \ / \ gco...@ea.com
>|\ \/ / Bullfrog
>| \/ /___/_Productions
>|| /____\
---------------------------------------
Fabio Bizzetti - bizz...@mbox.vol.it
Lord Shaman
Never heard of VESA VBE? The whole point to that was to prevent DOS
coders from having to write drivers for every video card out there.
--
... the Lord Shaman
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"My aim is life is to become immortal, or die trying."
http://www.nlc.net.au/~shaman or mailto:sha...@nlc.net.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Javier Arevalo
Paul Robert Nash <pr-...@uiuc.edu> wrote:
>> Direct Draw doesn't guarantee the game will work right,
>> it merely gives you the tools to directly access video memory,
>Exactly right. If the programmer was an idiot (not that the FireFight
>people were -- I think it's a great game) then it really doesn't matter
>what OS you're running on.
Hm?
With DOS games, perhaps 80-90% of the running code is made by
the developer. With DX games (and much more for D3D) the amount of
code executed which is not under control of the developer could
well be in the 40-50% range.
Is the programmer then responsible for errors in that 40-50% which
he can't modify or fix?
Face it, Win95 may be the future but it's not going to be nice for
some time.
Just try the Hellbender demo from Microsoft and see for yourself.
On this P-100 16MB it's nearly unplayable due to interruptions in
the action every 10 or 29 seconds. Not to speak about the sound
glitches.
Seeyanara
Jare/Iguana
Glenn Corpes
> As a side note. What's wrong with the Vesa accellerator functions?
> As another side note. What's wrong with WinDirect?
Face it, windows 95->97->NT _is_ the way forward, i'm a game programmer,
I write games, I don't give a flying fuck which OS I write for,
personally I would love it if there was no such thing as hardware
acceleration and therefore no reason to use directx, then we would
continue writing for DOS (i'd still develop under 95 though), writing fun
little rendering tricks but I can see what's coming and i'm not going to
delude myself that slagging microsoft off in r.g.p is going to stop it.
3D will be next, acceleration is happening _now_, anyone starting a DOS
based 3d game today had better think hard about how they are going to get
at all the nice new hardware, otherwise their game is going to look a bit
sick at E3 next to a 24 bit, hi-res, filtered competitor running under
direct3d on the next stand.
Glenn Corpes
> Well, I look at the OEM string and if it says "S3" I hook in special
> code for 2D blitting. Since those guys have pretty much got a
> hammerlock on the market, that takes care of most of it. Seems to
> me also that Scitech has a set of 2D accelerator ops - I haven't
> standardization.
Blitters have been present in most cards for about five years now, nobody
ever used them from Dos, it looks like this could be a rare case of
Microsoft taking the lead.....
Daniel Phillips
mati...@aa.washington.edu says...
>On Tue, 1 Oct 1996, Daniel Phillips wrote:
>> Who told you Dos was made by Micro$oft?
>...Okay the original MS-DOS was bought by microsoft. That was what,
>oh over 15 years ago. Now 6 or 7 versions later what do you think
>is left of the orginal product?
Uh - pretty much everything. Do you think I'm wrong? Let's not have
any rewriting of history, OK.
Daniel Phillips
truo...@ucunix.san.uc.edu says...
>
>phil...@dowco.com (Daniel Phillips) says...
>
>>Sorry, it's only free to me. (But you'll get a chance to evaluate
>>it pretty soon anyway, heehee.) Just post your question here about
>
>Ah, I get it now, I've been wondering about your anti-DirectX
>sentiments, but now found out that you, too, have a graphics library
>But then, the only people who know how idiotic you sound know what
>DirectX can't/can do, so these aren't your customers anyway.
Whoops! I thought you just sent this piece of tripe privately!
Well, you just made it onto my Crybabies list. As you are a student,
that will be *four* days.
As for the content of your message (lets be polite and say that is
*has* content), no my library is not for sale. I have nothing to
gain by challenging the spams of Micro$oft other than a free world.
--
Daniel Phillips
phil...@dowco.com
Crybabies list: M.T. Reason: snivelled and pandered
Kevin L. Hamilton
phil...@dowco.com (Daniel Phillips) writes:
>mati...@aa.washington.edu says...
>>On Tue, 1 Oct 1996, Daniel Phillips wrote:
>>> Who told you Dos was made by Micro$oft?
>>...Okay the original MS-DOS was bought by microsoft. That was what,
>>oh over 15 years ago. Now 6 or 7 versions later what do you think
>>is left of the orginal product?
>Uh - pretty much everything. Do you think I'm wrong? Let's not have
>any rewriting of history, OK.
Once again, not true. DOS's file system underwent some major changes after
version 1 when support for subdirectories were added. Additional support
files such as EMM drivers, HIMEM, support for hard drive partitions larger
than 32 MB, and numerous other features were added over the course of
time. 4.0 was almost a complete rewrite (remember how many people had
problems with it and kept using 3.2 until 5.0 came out and fixed many
of the problems). What MS bought was one guy's attempt to clone CPM,
that's it. It has been modified heavily since.
Daniel Phillips
gle...@cix.compulink.co.uk says...
>My sig is 101 characters, 13 more than yours.
Check the Netiquette FAQ at MIT if you think I'm wrong. I wouldn't
have hipchecked you if you hadn't made such an inane remark. Oh
well, you're the guy who made Magic Carpet go fast, so I still
respect you, OK?
Daniel Phillips
ol...@ifi.uio.no says...
>
>Fabio Bizzetti wrote:
>>There's no reason on earth visible from here to support Windows95,
>>and the only one I can see (feeding Billy Boy and killing the risk
>>that he becomes suddenly poor) isn't really on the top of the things
>>I care/worry about.
>
>User demand?
The user can't tell the difference between something that uses DirectX
and something that runs under DPMI/VESA in the Dos box under Windoze.
Except for maybe the DirectX version doesn't work as well. No, there
is no user demand for DirectX, just marketing spams from Microdoze.
David Matiskella
On Thu, 3 Oct 1996, Daniel Phillips wrote:
> mati...@aa.washington.edu says...
> >On Tue, 1 Oct 1996, Daniel Phillips wrote:
> >> Who told you Dos was made by Micro$oft?
>
> >...Okay the original MS-DOS was bought by microsoft. That was what,
> >oh over 15 years ago. Now 6 or 7 versions later what do you think
> >is left of the orginal product?
>
> Uh - pretty much everything. Do you think I'm wrong? Let's not have
> any rewriting of history, OK.
>
> --
> Daniel Phillips
> phil...@dowco.com
>
> Crybabies list: <no entries today>
>
Why don't you take out your MS-DOS 1.0 disks and compare the file sizes.
While the basic arch. stays the same , a lot of improvements have been
made and added. Let me guess. You are one of the people that believe that
when they got rid of the 32 meg drive limit all they they did was replace
the code ASSERT(drivesize<32 megs) with ASSERT(drivesize<1024 megs)?
Not to mention 1.0 wasn't a finished product when MS aquired it.
Why not just say NT isn't a MS product since parts of the Dev. Team
worked at DEC before?
David Matiskella
mati...@aa.washington.edu
Doug McCreary
David Matiskella wrote:
)?
> Not to mention 1.0 wasn't a finished product when MS aquired it.
> Why not just say NT isn't a MS product since parts of the Dev. Team
> worked at DEC before?
>
> David Matiskella
> mati...@aa.washington.edu
Don't get them started on that subject again, please! If you haven't
yet met anyone who believes that NT is just MVS++ you are quite lucky,
there are a lot of them out there!
-- Doug McCreary --
office:(408)364-9285 fax:(408)364-9300 home:(408)374-7961
mailto:do...@ictv.com
http://www.ictv.com/users/dougm/index.html
Daniel Phillips
bo...@zansiii.millersv.edu says...
>
>Scott Le Grand wrote in article <325072...@tesla.mbi.ucla.edu>...
>>
>> I mean sheesh, even the rogue canceller got some serious press
>> and that's peanuts compared to this...
>
>What is that anyway? I keep seeing references to it.
Some loser had a progam go out and cancel about 30,000 usenet
articles. Blame has not been assigned yet, but the net detectives
are on the job. Most of the cancelled articles were immediately
reposted by right-thinking individuals who saw it all happen. The
internet is stronger than any one person.
--
Daniel Phillips
phil...@dowco.com