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Shadow Hog posted:I'm not gonna profess that I'm right about this, but I imagine the slowest part of the games would be the rendering of each background - something about them being a series of draw and fill commands played back, in order, to create each screen, no bitmaps here. (Think of it like a Microsoft Paint TAS, I guess.) There's even built-in dithering to the fill commands, to save the artist/programmer from having to do several individual pixel draw commands¹. If you go overboard on detail for a background, that'll be both more data to load off the disk (floppy or hard) and more work for the CPU to power through (especially of there's a lot of overdraw), so 8088s or 286s might take noticeably longer than with other screens. I assume, meanwhile, that 486s and Pentiums would just fart out the end result like they were drawing the entire screen as one single finalized bitmap image. Probably not what you should be optimizing against. Dunno where 386s would fall, probably closer to 486s than 286s though. All 16-colour (so I'm assuming all vector-based?) Sierra games are fine to play on a 80286-based XT, as long as you have a hard-disk drive.
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Dec 13, 2021 16:24
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I can't help loathing the arrow keys (design-wise, although I'd assume they're bad to use as well?). e: I HAVEN'T EVEN NOTICED THE FUNCTION KEYS BEFORE 
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Feb 10, 2022 11:00
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I'm going to steal the arrow keys of the Commodore plus/4.
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Feb 10, 2022 15:59
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GutBomb posted:A whole hell of a lot better than commodore’s arrow keys before that. Those keys are beautiful.
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Feb 11, 2022 09:59
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ExcessBLarg! posted:Yes, games in the 80s didn't use arrow keys* on micros because they were universally badly placed, if present at all. Games in the late 90s switched to WASD. So it was actually a relatively-brief period where people used arrow keys for PC games. All my old CGA DOS games used arrow keys.
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Feb 24, 2022 16:05
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Charles Get-Out posted:MSX games all used arrows keys but uh the computers also always had really prominent cursors. Post the cursors.
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Feb 24, 2022 16:32
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nielsm posted:In DOS, the game would talk directly to the hardware port for the joystick. I'm pretty sure some games use BIOS calls (after the IBM PC AT introduced them).
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Feb 28, 2022 17:08
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I think my Voodoo 3 3000 16 PCI came with Ultima IX or a demo of Ultima IX? Didn't really run well.
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Mar 20, 2022 03:19
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Porfiriato posted:A bit of drama in the classic game collector world, apparently a member of the community has been making and selling suspected counterfeits of vintage games: Hmm some other odd poo poo being talked about in UDIC. Strikes me this Enrico character might not have clean flours in his bag!
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May 31, 2022 04:42
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I just see "FPGA" and immediately lose all interest in a project. (Also I have an actual working Commodore 64 and a The Vic20 already so...)
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Jun 4, 2022 13:16
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Huh, I could afford that 
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Jun 13, 2022 10:40
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I could afford one, and have space for one, and I like the looks, and I could probably even use it for a few things, but... life is short.
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Feb 11, 2023 22:04
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:I had fomo for a minute and then I realized I’d never use it and I have no nostalgia for it or any z80 machine Is it better than a nabu? e: I bid on an Amstrad CPC464 (with a cassette emulator and RGB cable, sans original VDU) and a Commodore VIC 20 but lost on both. Actually glad about the first one, as there is like maybe one game (Jack the Nipper 2) that I know I'd like to play on it (that isn't available for something else, usually better). It's a really cool-looking system but over 250€ is way too much without the monitor. A VIC I'd like just to complete the "family" but not paying more than 70€ right now for a possible project. The VIC games I want to play, I'll just play on the The VIC20, if I ever get around to it. ee: That ENTER key, tho   eee: A PPC6128 for under 300€ I'd probably go for. We had them in school and they're great. Too bad about the boring keyboard  
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Feb 11, 2023 22:28
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Timby posted:One of the first computers my family had in the '80s was an Epson Equity whose keyboard had the same Enter key. According to GIS it's not the same. It's upside down.
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Feb 12, 2023 01:46
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Fil5000 posted:Pretty sure Jack 2 is on the C64 and exactly as playable there as on the CPC if that helps any. Yeah I just took a look at the Amstrad version in colour and it looks loving hideous. I think I've only played it on the green CRTs. Also all three versions seem to be coming to Steam so... (Anyway I played a bit on VICE just now and I guess games seem a lot better when you're like 8 I still play the first game every year at least. Love the music.)legooolas posted:€250 for a CPC464? Is it made of gold or something? Shouldn't be more than about €100 to get one from the UK into the EU even after import duty or whatever, if you really want one. I'm not selling it, I just bid on it until it got too expensive for my blood.
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Feb 12, 2023 11:31
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an actual frog posted:"Hey man, almost finished with the chassis layout? Found a good place for the arrow keys, yeah?" What do you expect from a guy called Lord Sugar.
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Feb 13, 2023 00:44
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Oh gently caress yes: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2307520/Krakout_C64CPCSpectrum/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQZtK-pRk88 e: Oh gently caress no I'd forgotten about the BEES.
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Mar 2, 2023 08:34
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lobsterminator posted:Tangentially related to retro gaming. LGR is on CNN, but not related to his usual content. Sad to hear he's dumb enough to have a smart home.
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Mar 2, 2023 09:38
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Luigi Thirty posted:I rigged up enough X10 that I can turn the lights on and off in my bedroom from my PS/2. The Soviets used a clapper.
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Mar 2, 2023 10:29
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Minidust posted:I had Marble Madness for Amiga and it had a similar box (flat and square), I guess that was an Electronic Arts thing back then! Lmao you kids. e: 
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Mar 3, 2023 16:04
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Random Stranger posted:I think we can all agree that the first sign of EA going to poo poo was when they stopped using the album packaging. It was actually when they went public, OP. (In 1989 so I think it tracks?)
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Mar 3, 2023 16:12
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80486: Doom rocks  80386: Doom sucks So obviously '486 is the good one. e: Wait, does Doom even run on a '386? It was 40 000 years ago so I don't remember.
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May 15, 2023 10:08
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some kinda jackal posted:I think minspec is 386 DX or something like that, so it’ll “run” if you adjust your expectations of what running means Am I remembering wrong or did Wolfenstein 3D run on 80286s? (Depending on memory etc. but still.) Never tried it myself because there was no way it'd have fit on the HDD. e: Oh I was apparently way off. How silly of me. 
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May 15, 2023 10:33
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Chubby Henparty posted:Think I managed ^^ on a 386sx25 with (tedious story about config.sys mgt here) and Wolf3d definitely ran on a 286, maybe a pcAT? There was also the XT Model 286.
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May 15, 2023 11:17
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SCheeseman posted:I played Doom in it's time on my family's AMD 386DX40. Size the screen down two notches and run at half resolution and framerates get reasonable. Looks crunchy but similarly to the 32X version, without all it's cuts. That looks fine to me. (It's not like I didn't grown up used to games that wasted a lot of screen real-estate on frames and other chrome.)
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May 15, 2023 11:52
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ExcessBLarg! posted:So DOOM was funny. Moderately-spec'd PCs in 1993 were either a 486/25 or 486/33 with 4 MB of RAM. DOOM was one of the earlier games that ran in 32-bit protected mode with a DOS extender, and it was actually quite flexible about the memory configuration of the system if you had enough memory. The problem was that DOOM required 4 MB of RAM, and most computers at the time were configured with QEMM or EMM386 to provide as much conventional memory (lower 640 kB) as possible, and the additional RAM used by the memory manager itself was often enough that DOOM wouldn't start. Or you could use OS/2 Warp which came with a configuration file for Doom (among other games) 
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May 16, 2023 18:58
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Luigi Thirty posted:Doom runs under OS/2’s VDM e: I looked into it and it just hibernates the OS/2 session to HDD and runs PC-DOS. It's a better DOS than DOS, as far as things go, especially since it did come with ready-made configurations for all the popular games of the day. As far as the user is concerned, it's perfectly seamless. Running a DOS game in a virtual machine or whatever VDM is sounds like a bad idea anyway. Or, as Dijkstra put it, "virtual machines are a fake idea". 3D Megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 07:24 on May 17, 2023 |
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May 17, 2023 00:05
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An emulator will never do graphics properly. If they're good enough for someone, more power to them. Same for sound. If I hook up my VIC 20 to a television and if I hook up my The VIC20 to the same television, the displays look absolutely loving NOTHING like each other. 3D Megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Jun 29, 2023 |
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Jun 29, 2023 14:37
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Coffee Jones posted:In the 80’s there was the product category of the ‘home computer’. That REALLY sounds like you weren't around in the mid 80s. Because it sure as gently caress didn't.
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Jun 29, 2023 15:26
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America is the only country in the world that managed to have a god drat computer video game crash. Those things everyone likes and wants to buy and play. Lmao. But also lol.
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Jun 29, 2023 16:49
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ExcessBLarg! posted:The video game crash of '83 wasn't that "people stopped buying games Exactly. Way to suck at capitalism, lmao.
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Jun 29, 2023 18:13
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I think that one aspect that is basically always left out of the histories is that objectively arcade games are by their nature absolute trash. Normal people got tired of them and just played at home or didn't play at all. (A lot of people love trash and are willing to spend mad time and money on it. But not a lot enough in this case.) E: even the biggest arcade game aficionados today vastly prefer NOT TO PAY for the games they still play. That's when it de facto stops being an arcade game. 3D Megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Jun 29, 2023 |
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Jun 29, 2023 18:46
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lobsterminator posted:Although I did enjoy gaming on the C64 and Amiga, I really found my gaming groove on the PC. I've always sucked at arcade style games and those were the norm on the earlier systems. On PC there were more and better slow games like adventure, RPG, flight sim and strategy compared to previous systems. Like my all time favorite game Civilization was barely playable on my Amiga 500 but it was a joy on a 486, which makes sense because there was several times the CPU power. If they hadn't hosed up the diskette drive interface on the Commodore 64, it could've had a bit more longevity for adventure game players. (I don't mean it would've meant much for the machine in general, but it would've meant a lot to people who wanted that kind of game.) I wonder how many people upgraded straight from C64 to a PC once they got a good taste of Ultima VI. e: OK it also does look like poo poo.
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Jun 29, 2023 20:58
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RF to HDMI modulators exist, and they're not thst expensive compared to a composite/SCART-to-HDMI box.
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Jul 2, 2023 14:32
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FuturePastNow posted:My personal dividing line for home computing is the release of Windows 95, after which normal people never had to leave the friendly UI and touch a command line lmao "Normal people do not do actual work with computers, machines that were created specifically for work." - Goon
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Jul 4, 2023 17:41
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I bought the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games from Gamestop. I stopped buying used console games from them when I bought Godfather and it didn't come with a manual. I went in to complain and they said: "well used games are often missing the manual and stuff." I replied: "I have a modified Xbox. I can run anything. If I have to download the god drat manual, why wouldn't I just download the entire games" and everyone clapped me, on the head, with implements.
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Jul 4, 2023 18:00
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Trabant posted:What a truly weird interpretation of what they said If you show me how I can keep my work Windows PC from locking up and displaying me as absent while I'm napping, without using the command line, I'm listening.
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Jul 4, 2023 18:11
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FuturePastNow posted:this is not the sort of thing normal people have to make a computer do OK kiddo.
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Jul 4, 2023 19:01
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TheMadMilkman posted:I mean, I don’t know your org’s setup, but the combo of running muted music on an endless loop in Windows Media Player and launching a meeting in Teams with no participants, then setting my status to available works just fine. Plus, my Teams status will update based off of other meetings and calls, and pulling my ID card will still set me as Away. Streaming is not allowed. E: huh, I guess I could just play a file that came with Windows! Thanks.
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Jul 5, 2023 14:10
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armpit_enjoyer posted:The worst PSUs have to be Commodore ones; they're essentially a transformer encased in a massive brick of epoxy. Can't imagine how much of a pain in the rear end repairing them has to be. Most people just use a box between the PSU and the computer that stops the former from frying the latter. C64saver or something like that (is the project name). You can buy them from a lot of places for like 20-30€ because I think it's open source? e: but yeah you can buy new PSUs as well, https://www.c64psu.com/
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Sep 11, 2023 12:25
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