VOGONS


Syndicate Wars Port

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Reply 21 of 30, by F2bnp

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sliderider wrote:
F2bnp wrote:

Wow... Just wow. Sliderider you've just hit an all-time low by calling one's hobby completely pointless. There is point in it, just like leileilol said, it's an awesome learning experience, and a lot of people just don't know or don't want to bother setting up a VM or heck even DOSBox, they find this stuff confusing. They just want to play their favorite old game and relive their memories. Plus, if they ever decide to, a port can do a lot more than the original, because you can actually alter the code. But anyway, your behaviour is completely uncalled for.

How is questioning a duplicated effort uncalled for? I can already run that game by other means so why do I, or anyone else, need to download this new version of the game which isn't new at all since it adds nothing and only runs the game under a later OS which you could already do before it was written? Duplicating the efforts of someone else IS pointless.

Questioning is fine. But you're not merely questioning here, you're downright calling it useless. Believe it or not, porting doesn't actually mean ZOMG 3D GRAPHICSORZ. Some people enjoy porting games they love, just for the sake of it and because they want to learn exactly how the games themselves work. And also, a port does not emulate, which means MUCH reduced system requirements, and I can tell you, DOSBox and SVGA games can be quite demanding. And ports can be much more efficient and crash-free than emulation.

Reply 22 of 30, by Miki Maus

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The port would rock with OpenGL renderer.

Reply 23 of 30, by sliderider

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F2bnp wrote:
sliderider wrote:
F2bnp wrote:

Wow... Just wow. Sliderider you've just hit an all-time low by calling one's hobby completely pointless. There is point in it, just like leileilol said, it's an awesome learning experience, and a lot of people just don't know or don't want to bother setting up a VM or heck even DOSBox, they find this stuff confusing. They just want to play their favorite old game and relive their memories. Plus, if they ever decide to, a port can do a lot more than the original, because you can actually alter the code. But anyway, your behaviour is completely uncalled for.

How is questioning a duplicated effort uncalled for? I can already run that game by other means so why do I, or anyone else, need to download this new version of the game which isn't new at all since it adds nothing and only runs the game under a later OS which you could already do before it was written? Duplicating the efforts of someone else IS pointless.

Questioning is fine. But you're not merely questioning here, you're downright calling it useless. Believe it or not, porting doesn't actually mean ZOMG 3D GRAPHICSORZ. Some people enjoy porting games they love, just for the sake of it and because they want to learn exactly how the games themselves work. And also, a port does not emulate, which means MUCH reduced system requirements, and I can tell you, DOSBox and SVGA games can be quite demanding. And ports can be much more efficient and crash-free than emulation.

How demanding can a game written for 1996 hardware be in 2011?

Reply 24 of 30, by sliderider

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Dominus wrote:

So scummvm, exult, pentagram, nuvie, xu4 etc. are a waste? You taking up digital space here is a waste

If they didn't bring anything new to the table that no other emulator or VM was already capable of at the time they were released, then yes, they are a waste.

I do know, however, that scummvm supports LucasArts games better in some ways than other emulators so that one doesn't really support your argument because it does do something unique that no other DOS game emulator before it did in adding more stability to the games that it supports.

Reply 25 of 30, by Dominus

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I didn't bring an argument, I asked Mr. Knownothing

Wow, Mr. David Beswick even had to go to the google group of this project to ask his question http://groups.google.com/group/syndicate-wars … b3dbbe642539146
Someone needs a life...

Reply 26 of 30, by F2bnp

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sliderider wrote:

How demanding can a game written for 1996 hardware be in 2011?

Running on DOSBox and VM on fullspeed on SVGA is demanding, it wouldn't run fullspeed on Pentium 4 3GHz last time I checked. Might have better luck on a similar Athlon though.

Reply 27 of 30, by wd

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then yes, they are a waste.

Certainly not since even if they don't bring anything "new" they open new possibilities especially if open sourced.

Reply 28 of 30, by RoyBatty

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It's an amazing amount of work, and hardly useless especially if they share the knowledge they gained reverse engineering the assembly parts and also the watcom call conventions, not to mention all the work to figure out to use the assets which came with the original game. It opens the door if it is open sourced to graphical and other enhancements to the game, multi-player over something than IPX or whatever it used, modern controller support, and the list goes on. To call something like this useless and a waste of time completely demeans the work the authors have put into the project and if they read this thread would probably feel pretty down about it and likely wouldn't do something like this again.

I like choices myself, sure I can run Quake or Doom in dosbox, and it's great if you like that sort of thing. However I prefer to play Quake in Dark Places (and I even do a little basic modding for it), and I also enjoy to play Doom in chocolate doom, ZDoom and other ports too just because it's FUN to try different stuff. I think you completely miss the point of why people do stuff like this. They do it because they CAN, They WANT TO, and for them for FUN. They don't do it for YOU, it's just a side benefit of them releasing such a work to the public and I applaud any and all such efforts.

I'm nearing 39 years old myself, and I hope in all sincerity that I never end up with a closed minded, know it all, jerk-off attitude like yours. If you don't like it fine, don't use it. Coming on a forum and complaining about it and calling it essentially shit is just egotistical at best, and totally moronic and useless at worst. Obviously few others see such things as you do, and that's fine, but keep your opinions like that to yourself, as they benefit no one at all, including yourself.

Reply 29 of 30, by sliderider

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Dominus wrote:

I didn't bring an argument, I asked Mr. Knownothing

Wow, Mr. David Beswick even had to go to the google group of this project to ask his question http://groups.google.com/group/syndicate-wars … b3dbbe642539146
Someone needs a life...

Who the hell is David Beswick?

And you'll notice the reply to the question. It is NOT needed to play the game, so what was the point?