WinDoom
Alec Saunders
Santa Clara this Sunday check out the demonstration of WinDOOM in the
Lafayette rm on Sunday at 2. It's built using a new games layer for
Windows called WinG.
Cheers!
Alec.
Colin Fuidge
Is there anywhere I can get any info about WinG? Is this anything to
do with the OS microsoft are supplying for the Saturn?
--
Colin Fuidge
Patrick L Faith
Any one have any info of the game developers conference ... i.e. how
much does it cost and where exactly is it ... what time ... do they
require pre-registration ?
plai
p.s. I'd like to here the theory behind the WinG layer.
Robert Barris
Chris Sells <sel...@armon.rain.com> wrote:
>In <Coox1...@microsoft.com> al...@microsoft.com (Alec Saunders) writes:
>
>> If you are heading to the Computer Game Developers Conference in
>> Santa Clara this Sunday check out the demonstration of WinDOOM in the
>> Lafayette rm on Sunday at 2. It's built using a new games layer for
>> Windows called WinG.
>
>
>Alec,
>
>How about an update of this demo once you've seen it? TIA.
>
>Chris Sells
I saw it at the CGDC. Actually I saw two demonstrations of Doom running
in 640x480: WinDOOM under WinG, and DOOM under Rational DOS4/GW with
some new video driver technology.
In both cases, the game had the capability to run in either a
"chunky" mode where it rendered into its buffer at the usual 320x240
and then scaled it, or in a "smooth" mode where it rendered at the native
resolution of the display (leading to smoother edges and greater detail
visible in the distance).
Performance in both cases was visibly comparable, running on
DX2/66's with local bus video. And it was plenty fast, even at
640x480, computing every dot.
WinG looks good if you want to play with hi-res buffered 8-bit
graphics under Windows... of course they didn't have the sound
working yet but they did say that it only took two days to get DOOM
running under WinG. WinG will get you hardware independence
(more or less) as long as you're willing to deal with things
like pixel maps that either run top-down or bottom-up in memory,
depending on whether WinG discovers one is faster than the other
for you rparticular card/driver combo...
Rational's product looks good if you want to keep programming
for 32-bit DOS and maintain that control over low level stuff, yet
also take advntage of vendor optimized Windows drivers for video
cards, Indeo, WAVE devices, etc without actually running under Windows...
they call it the WinDvr technology and it's pretty cool!
Tired fingers, more later!
Rob Barris
Quicksilver Software Inc.
rbba...@quicksilver.com
Chris Sells
Chuck Doty
(Sorry :+>. We all know Windoze wasn't designed for games.)
n...@babel.cb.att.com
>
>> If you are heading to the Computer Game Developers Conference in
>> Santa Clara this Sunday check out the demonstration of WinDOOM in the
>> Lafayette rm on Sunday at 2. It's built using a new games layer for
>> Windows called WinG.
I was there. Saw it played. Wanted it, really really badly.
Wow. Where was this two years ago, Microsoft?
WinDOOM was a treat to see. point, click, Doom in 640x480 pixels. Doom is
able to put as many pixels up as you have, it's not fixed to 320x200. At
640, the speed was fast. Not the blinding speed of 320x200, but still
impressively fast. 640 would be awe inspiring if you hadn't seen Doom
already. point, click, Doom at about 800x600 and here is a slow down. Not
a killer slowdown; [almost full screen (1024x768) was clunky] but a goodly
fraction of the screen moved pretty well.
Doom is pixel bound, so display size determines speed.
Here we have something that has been needed for a very long time. WinG
uses the device driver from the video card maker. For example, if you run
Doom on an ATI Ultra under DOS, you use the slowest part of the card (the
dumb, slow, VGA section). But WinG uses the on-card accelerator (the Mach8
chip in this case) to gain back big chunks of any performance hit you get
from the DOS to Windows switch. Typical performance was same speed as
native.
I wanted this kind of performance under Windows when 3.1 came out. I
wanted this kind of display independence from my games ever since I went to
SVGA. Take for example Wing Commander I. On a 486/25 DX the game runs too
fast to play. I have a big monitor, I'd love to go to 1024x768 worth of
graphics and take the speed hit. That would get the game speed back down
to playable. At 320x200 the game was too fast. And that low resolution looks
ugly on a 20 inch monitor.
So to future game designers out there, think hard about staying in the DOS
world. WinDoom is due out by Christmas this year. There is now a way to
make games fit arbitrary device resolutions. And you don't have to worry
about device drivers. My geuss is we have just seen the beginning of the
end of DOS/VGA (320x200) games.
Neil Kirby DoD# 0783 n...@babel.cb.att.com
AT&T Bell Labs Columbus OH USA (614) 860-5304
President Internet BMW Riders
It's very red. It's very fast. And it's mine: 1994 R1100RSL
R S Rodgers
>>> If you are heading to the Computer Game Developers Conference in
>>> Santa Clara this Sunday check out the demonstration of WinDOOM in the
>>> Lafayette rm on Sunday at 2. It's built using a new games layer for
>>> Windows called WinG.
>
>I was there. Saw it played. Wanted it, really really badly.
>
>Wow. Where was this two years ago, Microsoft?
>
>WinDOOM was a treat to see. point, click, Doom in 640x480 pixels. Doom is
>able to put as many pixels up as you have, it's not fixed to 320x200. At
>640, the speed was fast. Not the blinding speed of 320x200, but still
>impressively fast. 640 would be awe inspiring if you hadn't seen Doom
>already. point, click, Doom at about 800x600 and here is a slow down. Not
>a killer slowdown; [almost full screen (1024x768) was clunky] but a goodly
>fraction of the screen moved pretty well.
What kind of machine was it running on (CPU, Video)? What
OS was it running (primarily, was it running the Win16 WinG, or
the Win32 version)?
I assume they're still using the normal Doom bitmaps, though.
(Looked like it from the screen shots.)
>Doom is pixel bound, so display size determines speed.
>
>Here we have something that has been needed for a very long time. WinG
>uses the device driver from the video card maker. For example, if you run
>Doom on an ATI Ultra under DOS, you use the slowest part of the card (the
>dumb, slow, VGA section). But WinG uses the on-card accelerator (the Mach8
>chip in this case) to gain back big chunks of any performance hit you get
>from the DOS to Windows switch. Typical performance was same speed as
>native.
The "Writing HOT Games for Windows" doesn't really sound like it's
using much of the accellerated functions, but rather, the speedup
comes from operating the card without the penalties of VGA. The
ATI card, acting as a framebuffer, is a lot faster than the VGA
mode DOS support. I wonder if WinDoom will be *substantially* faster
than DosDOOM on cards like the Viper, XGA and Matrox MGA that have
slow DOS support, but very good Windows support (especially the
FB of the Viper and MGA).
>I wanted this kind of performance under Windows when 3.1 came out. I
>wanted this kind of display independence from my games ever since I went to
>SVGA. Take for example Wing Commander I. On a 486/25 DX the game runs too
>fast to play. I have a big monitor, I'd love to go to 1024x768 worth of
>graphics and take the speed hit. That would get the game speed back down
>to playable. At 320x200 the game was too fast. And that low resolution looks
>ugly on a 20 inch monitor.
>
>So to future game designers out there, think hard about staying in the DOS
>world. WinDoom is due out by Christmas this year. There is now a way to
>make games fit arbitrary device resolutions. And you don't have to worry
>about device drivers. My geuss is we have just seen the beginning of the
>end of DOS/VGA (320x200) games.
Good. It's about time. (Without the resolution switching in
Windows 4.0, though, one will either have to change resolutions
the hard way whever one wants to play games, or play in a window.)
--
Be sure to vote *YES* on rec.music.menudo!
Ted Halmrast
>From: n...@babel.cb.att.com ()
>Subject: Re: WinDoom
>Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 18:50:57 GMT
>In article <1994Apr27.1...@armon.rain.com>,
>Chris Sells <sel...@armon.rain.com> wrote:
>>In <Coox1...@microsoft.com> al...@microsoft.com (Alec Saunders) writes:
>>
>>> If you are heading to the Computer Game Developers Conference in
>>> Santa Clara this Sunday check out the demonstration of WinDOOM in the
>>> Lafayette rm on Sunday at 2. It's built using a new games layer for
>>> Windows called WinG.
>I was there. Saw it played. Wanted it, really really badly.
>Wow. Where was this two years ago, Microsoft?
Where can it be obtained now?
n...@babel.cb.att.com
R S Rodgers <rsro...@wam.umd.edu> wrote:
[snip]
>>WinDOOM was a treat to see. point, click, Doom in 640x480 pixels. Doom is
>>able to put as many pixels up as you have, it's not fixed to 320x200. At
>>640, the speed was fast. Not the blinding speed of 320x200, but still
>>impressively fast. 640 would be awe inspiring if you hadn't seen Doom
>>already. point, click, Doom at about 800x600 and here is a slow down. Not
>>a killer slowdown; [almost full screen (1024x768) was clunky] but a goodly
>>fraction of the screen moved pretty well.
>
>
> What kind of machine was it running on (CPU, Video)? What
> OS was it running (primarily, was it running the Win16 WinG, or
> the Win32 version)?
486/66 with VL bus video card. I think the card was a Diamond Viper, but
I'm not sure. Memory says it was a fast (but not the very fastest) modern
VL bus card.
Using the WinG DLLs. Note that WinG is part of Chicago (Win 4.0) and
compatible with Win 3.1.
I didn't catch which Windows it was; it could easily have been Win32. Or
it could have been vanilla Win 3.1.
>
> I assume they're still using the normal Doom bitmaps, though.
> (Looked like it from the screen shots.)
Yes, but the increased number of pixels meant that the bitmaps appeared to
have much finer grain. From far away, there was a great deal of fine
detail visible on the walls, for example, when regular Doom would have
muddled them.
[snip]
Chris Magagna
>Where can it be obtained now?
You can FTP the WinG specification from
ftp.microsoft.com:/developer/drg/WinG/GAMESUM.ZIP.
The press release is in the same directory, wing.txt.
According to the release, the DLLs etc. are scheduled to go into beta around
the end of May.
Chris
------------------------
Chris Magagna University of Idaho Computer Services
ch...@uidaho.edu Networks & Systems
Philip Brown
: So to future game designers out there, think hard about staying in the DOS
: world. WinDoom is due out by Christmas this year.
Waitaminit... does this mean there will finally be a "cool" game that
will be playable under Wabi? (sun's MS windows emulator :-)