From: quacci AT vera DOT com (jon)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: Quake and DJGPP
Date: Sat, 03 May 1997 21:15:07 GMT
Organization: Yale University
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Message-ID: <336ba2fe.23811656@news.cis.yale.edu>
References: <199704290141 DOT LAA26759 AT solwarra DOT gbrmpa DOT gov DOT au>
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To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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On Tue, 29 Apr 1997 01:41:46 GMT, leathm AT solwarra DOT gbrmpa DOT gov DOT au (Leath
Muller) wrote:

...

>> > 2. Id has anounced they won't make any DOS products anymore.
>
>> Why? I have warcraft for Dos and it's cool and all, while the
>> command&conquer for Windoze95 crashes 10 times a day...
>
>C&C (Red Alert) and WarII are by different people... also, the people who
>made War II (Blizzard) have since release Diablo - its Win95 only...

No DOS products anymore, eh... I can understand some the obvious
aspects of that reasoning. But I wouldn't want to focus on writing
programs for Win95; it isn't clear to me how long they'll be useable. 

Here's a devil's advocate speaking: I think there is a subtle strength
to DOS's smallness and long history that means DOS will probably
outlive Win95. I.e., 7 years from now, the games you have on CD for
Win95 will probably be unusable... all "Win95" (or whatever it will be
then) standards will have shifted... but DOS will still be DOS. It
will still be the same impovershed piece of... operating system it is
now, and it will still be a decent game platform. Why? Because all you
need it one diskette full of operating system to be able to run
anything written in the past 15 years: * it is convienient.* 

Question is, will you want to run anything from 7 years ago in the
future? I think maybe a small, tiny minority of programs, like DOOM,
Decent, Comanche perhaps, will always be somewhat interesting; the
games that have "soul" to them, irregardless of how pitifully backward
they one day look. Look at how well repackaged re-releases of ancient
pac-man-like arcade games are doing for playstation and the like. SOme
games last, for whatever reason.

>> > 3. There is a windows version of Quake that uses OpenGL (GLQuake) and
>> > it's actually very slow on a non-openGL machine, maybe that's what you
>> > mean?
>
>The OpenGL version basically _requires_ hardware acceleration. It uses
>bilinear (or is it tri?) filtering, only runs at 640x480 above etc, and
>runs at about .1 FPS on my 166 ... :)  But hey, it looks as good as the
>N64... Now, only if I can grab an N64 graphics card... ;)
>
>> Ok, they don't support dos anymore. What about UNIX/LINUX/etc ?

Linux will certainly still be around in 7 years. But the beauty to
having DOS as a game platform is that it is *tiny*, fit's on a
diskette even, so no matter what OS you have on an Intel-type
processor, you'll probably be able to run DOS and it's associated 15
year history of programs. Linux, like any *real* OS, will never fit on
a 1.44 diskette nor be as easy to do a quick temporary boot with. And
not everybody will have Linux; it will always be with only the
minority of hard-core power-users.

Question 2 is: will anybody still have a CD drive in 7 years? Any of
you still have 5.25 inch disc drives?!