VOGONS


First post, by Gernot66

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I'm not even sure if a should report this at all because maybe it is in the nature of things and not to solve.

Exclaimer:
To exclaim any suggestions about "usescancode true/false" this has absolutely no influence on the following behave of DOSBox i tested this over and over.

Problem:
The internal command "CHOICE" seems to interpret certain scancodes wrong, usually this behave isn't to notice and it appeared to me until only with "CHOICE" but i can't tell if it will influence any other command or application such as a game which interprets the scancodes in a similar simple way.

Testcase:
Create a test.bat with following content:
"CHOICE /CHKMP" execute it and press now any of the four cursor keys "CHOICE" will return "H", "K", "M", "P" and of course the respective errorlevel (similar for all numbers on numpad if numlock is off, to test all cases create a bat with all letters from A to Z)
Usually this only get's to a problem if you use one of these letters at all for "CHOICE", but well.

The "Ghost in DOSBox":
To me this became to a problem, to a real brainfucker even. At first i used this glitch as an advantage and thought "oh cool i can request in this way cursor key inputs".
Well fine as long as you don't need the keys "H,K,M,P" for anything else, otherwise a cursor key press will provoke the input of any of these keys (a "ghost keypress" if you like though), annoying to me because i liked to request cursor keys inputs with "CHOICE", unusual i know but things should work fine imho even in the most unusual case.
Sure i can assign in the keymap any glyph to the cursor keys but the problem of "ghost keypresses" stays.
(caugh, i'm hated by my former co-devs for this "i will find any glitch and even abuse it if i can", that's why i sound so uncertain).

Most probably this is rooted in the way "CHOICE" interpretes the scancode because i noticed that the cursor key scancodes are similar to those letter keys, check a scancode table for this.

Like i said i have no idea if that is to solve, if that is an issue or is just this kind of way i just liked to report it because probably it could be a problem for an application, probably
it could be the root for certain issues some users have with interpretation of keystrokes in certain games?

maintainer of "Phoenix" (Pioneer Space Sim derivate)
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/phoenix … erivate.506984/

Reply 1 of 3, by ripsaw8080

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Maybe bug... maybe feature? 😁

A similar issue with the PAUSE command is fixed in SVN, so I guess the fix here is similar as well:

     Bit16u n=1;
do {
DOS_ReadFile (STDIN,&c,&n);
+ if (c==0) {
+ // read and ignore extended key
+ DOS_ReadFile (STDIN,&c,&n);
+ continue;
}
- } while (!c || !(ptr = strchr(rem,(optS?c:toupper(c)))));
+ } while (!(ptr = strchr(rem,(optS?c:toupper(c)))));
c = optS?c:(Bit8u)toupper(c);
DOS_WriteFile (STDOUT,&c, &n);

Reply 2 of 3, by Gernot66

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If i understand you right i either would have to use a SVN build or build a ECE version including this myself?

I'm a little cautious with the SVN builds, not so long ago i downloaded one from a quite suspicious site and after that my machine had a sneeze (i already hate if a unwanted searchbar pops up i count this as infection even if not serious). For my use i like to stay to the community edition or vanilla DOSBox.
It isn't the cause of the build it was caused by the location where it was uploaded to,

a quite bad idea

which i don't exactly understand to make builds public on such stupid filehosters which attack you not only with hard-core porno advertises. Pardon me but use one-drive, that's imho best, no advertises no shit and who would have ever suspected it i was also gifted with space by MS 10 ago for my "long time trust in MS" because i registered my office version a 20 years ago (10 by then). There is google which you can trust in and you can trust drop-box .... and then it already ends, i.e. i used for a while "picload" after i was bombed with advertises by "photobucket", but they erased for two times my complete content without any warning or reasoning. Whatever was the reason for maybe they thought it's not possible that a single person can be this creative, is that my fault if they are themselves lame "watschenohren" (bachelors) which can only count beans? all pictures was my own work - dammit!
It' not that i lost the pictures of course they all lurk around on my machine or external drives but i lost all presentations i made in any forum i.e.
Probably, but they should have warned me at least, they was disappointed that i used direct links to the images and bypassed in this way the advertises for viewers, well if that is possible and not restricted why shouldn't i? They still gain enough of advertises by all the rest of users who don't know this possibility, like i said; to death boring uninspired bean counters, not even a robot can be as boring stupid as them, at least that is what a former construction worker thinks of them and i should take my rooftops or whatever back - maybe they will understand then how unimportant they in fact are compared to only a helper on the construction site.
The links of google photo are "endless" but as long as they don't bomb me with ads or erase my stuff who cares.
Apart from toying around with batch proggies i'm usually the one who is responsible for art and i need a safe and free place to upload that (i'm a busted lad).

On the other hand why didn't it found its way to vanilla DOSBox or ECE, is there a reason?

For my recent batch project i can only use ECE because to many things depend on ECE, foremost to the presence of fluidsynth and munt, but also the differences in palette use restricts it to ECE (if you write text over a bitmap each release interprets the palette different and i have to cross fingers that it won't change else the "Commander Keen Wrapper" won't work anymore as expected).

As a sort of hint, i worked around this issue for my batch proggies with the use of "wait.com" if you call "wait 0" it will perform nothing except to swallow this additional keystroke or i used a program which didn't cares for any keystrokes except ESC & enter (i.e. GUS playfile).

maintainer of "Phoenix" (Pioneer Space Sim derivate)
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/phoenix … erivate.506984/

Reply 3 of 3, by Gernot66

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appendix 😀
a quite extensive one

most of my quite uncommon solutions are rooted in that i haven't access to web at home, thus as long as i stay in my "cabin on the hill" i have to work with what i have access to on my laptop. this ends sometimes in rude solutions like they way how i extracted numbers from "TIME" or how i count string length (loop until the bitter end).
Sometimes - no often a hack is needed, i.e. "nset" is quite good, small and easy to understand but it had a extreme drawback, to many predefined separators and the option to set own seperators didn't restricts the most annoying seperator "space", so it was at hand to change this to no separator except "; and CR" or defined ones (impossible! but some use tables for something else as bookkeeping). The lack of "pipe" is 8a hemlock but can be substituted with redirection most of the time even if i have to use temp file over temp file just to extract a little data. Another small helper "qecho" i use quite often because it echoes without to send a CR LF if you don't specify this, this allows to build fields in tables with the qecho command. qecho can even echo the content of a file and you can overwrite a file on a given column with i.e. the content of a variable. together with "count" by the same developer you can do already quite neat things with this trio and a choice replacement which supports mouse inputs. A bit annoying is that "Horst Schaeffer" who created this small coms seems to be in love with the "bell" which is hmm..... i hate that sound, it hurts my ears. It would be OK if you could say bell or no bell, but don't set such as default, another hack was needed to get rid of "bell" for some of his batch helpers.
This dude even offered a script to compile with the debug program of DOS, and what shall i say? it works, DOSBox quitted but the produced .com works fine.
What surprises me also is that they are such small, if i compare them to other similar programs

Just because of it and for no special reason except to boast a little 😀

One can see well why i love "random" things, "push a button" and it is no surprise that the quote is the proper one, i didn't selected it it just popped up, it could be any of almost 100 quotes but it is exactly the fitting one. As an additional info, the quotes was collected by someone many many years ago who made a proggie called simply "quote" for the amiga to use in the startup sequence. It's a fine collection of quotes and about 50% are computer related, most of them are utters from the very very past of computing but they are still true. Random isn't the proper term here it's rather a sort of generation based on time. Intentionally i setup the table of quotes for the "commander keen wrapper" that's why they are limited in length and i couldn't use all) And all this i reached wit something simple like adding and subtracting. The purpose of this "guru" is simply to display a help for a batch proggie if you entered no or a wrong argument, mostly for myself because i can easy forget the proper use if i have a complex batch with a lot of possible arguments like "randabc" (generates a random name from a property and a nomen like "rusty dagger" (another took over from "phoenix", intentionally "ship name" based on reg.#), generates a random word from a table of syllables like "ogiwuku", generates a random phrase from random words and finally either outputs it to text, a raw audio file of the letters from hand-knitted sfx and optionally plays it back or reconstructs it and optionally plays it back by recall or simply plays back the generated raw audio file) which you will see when i completed this bloody thing. While for all this i made use of a rand program because this would exceed the possibilities of a simple number extraction from time, here i need exact bounds and not like for the guru that i fit the tables to the possible number ranges (using only addition and subtraction, a "strings" program with multiplication/division will allow me to better tune the output, i'm already proud that i could bound an output of 0-99 to 200 or 20, it fails sometimes but that's no surprise and belongs to it).

Sure yes i'm a big fan of generated stuff else i wouldn't have been one of the first who contributed to Pioneer, "tower of mystery" which was never completed and never released by intellivision is another example, it stucks completely, this dude expected to much, it was completed by "intv" with restriction of many of the procedural stuff, but if i look at the original project this dude had something else in mind he just couldn't complete it before winter 1983. It is near to unplayable, it is totally unplayable on the real hardware but playable in MAME since you can save each level and this will help you to get rid of certain dead ends. Dead ends like the only annoying but not serious "uninhabited but stated as inhabited systems" in pioneer or our paragon frontier, it's just for this game such means dead, and you die a thousend deads in "tower" and imho the real mystery starts if you ended it for the first time and the resulting number is handed out to you, "hmmm... what is this, and hmmm... i can step back changing this number but hmm... it won't work always hmm... ????). In an interview from back then the interviewer i guess misunderstood him somewhat, it's not your "name" which you can enter to this game as "novelty" (which would have been one in 1983 but not such a novelty because he was a huge fan of procedural generated text adventures) it is this secret number respective to get to the magic number and the arithmetic's he used. Like i said the game is such extreme generated that it often fails, use a certain thing or a certain potion and you will run in such a dead end and the game terminates, that is mainly caused by the generation itself, it's hard to control if every little thing is random, a green flask which spends you energy on one session kills you or does simply nothing in a next session. Most of the items can be used together with another with unpredictable results.
Imho the only AD&D which honors the idea of AD&D and is not just some other hack and slay game. Anything you do will be reflected by the game, good or bad, it's just too complex i assume, no session will be exactly like the previous, maze, items and meaning of items change each session. The idea is that you can master the tower as either warrior, magician or trader, it's just that you can't select your role like for the final "tower of doom" you create your role with your acting, the very first use of the sword will make you to a warrior, but honestly i have no idea how to deal with the monsters else, they won't accept such gifts like an old boot you found, otherwise i'm to greedy with my collected items 😀 well you won't know what they are good for before you used them and if you used them you won't own them anymore.

Tell me where is that gone to?
Sure we have stunning almost real graphics but where is the real challenge if everything is repetitive and i will know already in advance where each of my enemies waits for me.
Oh well they took over the idea of procedural generation - for something meaningless like landscape meaningless as well as my "alien babble". But it belongs to the gameplay itself and unlike the landscape or our galaxy in pioneer it won't be generated the same each time, here the goal differs, it has to change for each session.
Just to explain a little why it fascinates me so much and why i make this batch scripts, in a sort of way i like to experiment with it outside of pioneer (phoenix), i like to get procedural generated adventures/missions - in the very end, in the very end this will separate "phoenix" from all the rest, in the very end i have this glimpse of hope to get the community back (on my side). Sure the whole thing differs much but personally i guess i will profit of it a little.
And even if not it's still a good sport for the master controller.

Somewhere i have to restart, if i took now a visual c compiler ok i will have to work on my phoenix it wold have priority, but i guess i have to learn a lot first.
Sure i changed it already a couple of years ago, sure i know what i want, but also sure i have no idea of certain things how to solve them.
Sure it is that much work for a single dude that it keeps my off.
And sure even some others expect some 3d models (some 200!) of me, gosh i'm just one guy and not 10 - my own fault.
Erm oh well yes procedural generated models? yes of course for phoenix this could be made with the tool of scripted (dynamic) geometry, but not for FFED3D.
They never understood why i hook so much on the scripted geometry but procedural generation i can't use for static models like the output of a CAD.
I need the possibility to generate even vertices, to construct and texture all based on a couple of numbers.
Last year or one and a half ago i scripted a texture calculator, it points already in this direction this is needed to texture automated (and i stumbled over an old error of the young devs which made first me and then them crazy, because of misunderstanding the simplest difference between right handed and left handed they changed texture projection and now i stuck with this, as if i wouldn't have told them it's wrong, but well you see i'm unlearned so in their opinion i can't be right, no it hasn't helped to direct them to stack overflow, neither it helped that i linked the nvidia history, goddammit read it yourself you are wrong! these basics scribbled down by Descartes will never change not in a hundred years and not in thousand years. Now if i ever work on the code again i will have to change this error back and this will mean i have to change all my models texturing for a second time. and all just because they thought it's wrong because blender displayed it wrong, but blender is left handed and pioneer has a right handed coordinate system for the models obviousely the x axis has to be mirrored. It is strange and has confused me to when i started out. Tom (the initinal dev of pioneer) "the models are right handed but the game is left handed this is because we don't fly through space we drag the objects through space, due to that our models in pioneer point in the "wrong" direction for a right handed coordinate system" in short terms (edit: even i can mix this up, "to err is human - to compute is divine". I do need my hands for this often and this is no stupidity as i learned from a theoretical astronomer, it is to complex to rotate over three axes in your mind). No i never learned it, but thanks to Tom and the scripted geometry i learned at first the very very basics and i see we already leak of that a lt, if they would just script a simple cube (sort of a "hello world") and try to texture it they would know it, but i assume that is to far below their graduation - caugh. In this sense "never change a running system" and of course not if it's proper to that's the worst you can do). In general the calculator works fine, it's just well i liked to rotate them to and then the problem really appeared because with the wrong projection coordinate system for z all is wrong because one is left and the other right handed on the same object, i can't rotate in this way with a calculator for this i need a compliant coordinate system and not a broken one. And all just because they thought the output of blender is right, no it isn't not for a right handed coordinate system - dudes and changing only the z plane to left handed was the very worst you could have done. But i was named with curses i won't reply here 😀 In the end this is a bit "doze", this sort of dynamic models was the very first we had in the age of DOS games in early '90s. Hand-knitted stuff like Frontier or F1GP. Also if i like to learn the basics i have to refer to this and not to a recent game and models build with the help of a CAD, already i can see they have no idea about that because of the advanced software which keeps all the brainy stuff away from you, you simply don't have to care for it and due to that you won't understand it, you don't need to know a tard about left or right handed or anything, drag and drop and copy and paste, i know it is also a problem for developing to and Tom has been called such because.... "anyone can put together a couple of scripts even you gernot" damned no Tom is a huge mathematician he understands the basics, we degenerate to button pressing chimps. He programmed or scripted "dirty" with intention, his scripts i understood from this i could learn, "aha this refers to that and that to this" but as they changed all later to "clean" i didn't understood a tard it wasn't speechy anymore or it started to get hard without to refer to the source code to understand where and why.

Basically i'm just a modeller - no, a model scripter 😀 sure i can work with a CAD - sleepwalking.
Before i scripted my very fist "hello world" which was in fact a simple octaeder i worked with NFS4 "CarCAD" this extremely simple program might have helped me to understand it different, similar to scripting you have to position vertice by vertice and fill tri by tri.
What i outputted back then is still honored much by my friend Geraldine, "the best Imperial Courier model ever".
When Tom visited my "octaeder" he replied: " i guess i found the proper dude who understands this model system", because already for this first approach i made use of a for loop in my script. Well i just examined his examples and to be honest some of them i still don't understand, to precalculate the points for a bezier shape exceeds my capabilities, still but also this i would have learn for generated models. I was already happy to understand "bezier" at all and it took me a quite long dig in the web to get to something else as a memorized formula which won't help if you like to understand how that works, also this shows 90% (pardon me 89%) are chimps which can only reply memorized things but they don't know by themselves how it works.
Which leads me in this little story (from time to time i have to write such lamentos, anyone knows this who knows me better) back to the construction site and an error which is generally impossible, could it be that so called architects have no idea about the basics of physic? That they for what reason ever disregard i.e. the simple updrift?
What sort of Engineers and Architects we have now, widget stands?
It looks like while dudes like me haven't a job and get betrayed by exactly the same widget stands for their hard earned pension.
One of my many practical experiences, back when we build the "Letzigrund" (that is the stadium in Zurich where they held the international athletics competition and also our soccer stadium) i walked upfront such an architect with my plans at hand and told him "look i can't do it this way, if i mount this long tubes such close together they will pull out all the iron of the concrete because of updrift, even screws wont help this is to much power" (they don't like if we use screws because this damages the hydraulic tables) - "no, do as we planned it there is no getting around that!" - "OK, but i told you it can't work out well". Nonetheless i screwed them down and didn't used nails every f* ten centimeters, nonetheless Archimedes won this competition. It pulled out all the iron of the concrete as i promised and there was a f* big "bubble" in the conrete. They did the laughable approach to press this down with a couple of tons of iron useless the updrift is stronger, goddammit it keeps tons of ships floating what do you expect what sort of power that is?
100 tons of iron is a nothing for updrift especially in concrete because it has a stronger updrift as water has.
Any helper of a mason will know this but it seems our architects don't, won't or can't understand what a helper understands.
Why?
Because they have a diploma and know it a hundred times better as the masons helper (caugh), they must know it a hundred times better because their salary is a hundred times better.
Well i guess they should have taken an apron and a spatula and learn first from the mason the very basics.
The end effect of this was that i was pleased to leave the construction site because i "disturb". well i do!
literally "i will personally insist that ppl like you won't have any work no more on the construction site" - "aha, what you need are dumb slaves and not workers" was my reply.
I just liked to make a good job that's all but it seems what otherwise is honored with the mouth is a problem for them in reality, it scratches up their masking.

Basically i'm not even a modeller, basically i'm educated as textile technician and worked as construction worker.
Basically most of the time they haven't even a glimpse of an idea about my education and handle me as a stupid, while well usually i understate myself a lot, if it pleases them?
Basically that is why i entitle myself as "Tüechlidrugger", if you don't know what a textile technician is and what it takes to be one you should have no idea.
(the exact german title was "Textilveredler" it didn't exist anymore it is replaced with the boasting "Textiltechnologe", most think of a sort of textile softener if they hear "Textilveredler", gosh but they wear the clothes i made. They do, all of the parasites in the upper class (and also the few non parasitic), what we produced in Mitlödi no common human can afford, only haute couture or alta moda depending on if paris or milano.
To be honest it was a beautiful job seen from this ward, it is tard that even Mitlödi which produces only for the upper class has problems to survive in the market, the can pay out and honor a stupid chimp like (pardon me) Lagerfeld was but we who are the ones which are really responsible for all this didn't even get honored with a little money.
And an industry like Mitlödi didn't earns in a whole year what a model earns with a single wiggle of her ass. That is a no go in my opinion and was the simple reason to sacrifice my profession to the construction site.
But well after three decades even here started the same "watschenohren" system. Fagotts, pardon me.
Basically i just copied my master, he was a chemist, a good one but entitled himself as well as "Tüechlidrugger", most had no idea about him and thought he's just a clown.
Basically this is John what Henry is.
Basically a Diploma values a tard, you have to understand it Diploma or not.
Basically we should return to the master and student system and learn first the practical things - with an apron around the lumbar and a spatula in the hand.
Like Jean (my master) "tell me the values of the elements" - "Jean please i just started out a month ago" - "ok, i will ask you next month, make yourself wise".
On the other hand, "Gernot come take a smell on what reminds you this?" after such followed some explanation he knew every time you smell this again all memorized will return. And if i had just spit out the table of elements he would have been displeased what he expected was to explain it and not to spit out numbers like an abakus.
On what is this system based and not what the exact values are, for this you have the table to refer to, but you have to understand why it is made this way.
Basically this is one of the reasons why i don't work anymore, i don't like to work for parasites.
Basically some even understand this but they can neither change this to good.

I know i'm a good craftsman but i like to be honored for and pardon me money isn't the sort of honor i expect, money is a flux.

Laws of Computer Programming: 1. Any given program, when running, is obsolete. 2. Any given program costs more and takes longer. […]
Show full quote

Laws of Computer Programming:
1. Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
2. Any given program costs more and takes longer.
3. If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
4. If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
5. Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.
6. The value of a program is proportional to the
weight of its output.
7. Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the
programmer who must maintain it.
8. Make it possible for programmers to write programs in
English, and you will find that programmers cannot write
in English.
SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 2, # 2

btw, "it is to complex to rotate over three axes in your mind" for most it's already to complex to orient themselves in a 3 dimensional environment. I remember well when i stated this when we sized up the galaxy in pioneer to it's "real" size, before Tom used a flattened down model like it is present in our paragon Frontier, Braben had a good reason to flatten it, the "steppenmensch" can't orient himself in a three dimensional environment if there is no plane to refer to. Thus he flattened it down to a single sector +/- the base line. "Dan" who started out with me and is responsible for many of the music in pioneer as well for the recent look of the planets wasn't convinced (not to tell about the devs who changed it to "real size") but after he played "Gernot you are right just a couple of sectors away from Sol and you won't have any idea where you are" See? 😀
I told you the "steppenmensch" can't do this. Anyway i keep this size due to experience it isn't that hard for this "steppenmensch" here and at least you have the coordinates if you have a good imagination this will tell you your relative position in the galaxy, somewhat, i won't claim that i'm a god.
The recent "goal" of Phoenix is to reach Sol (due to a lack of good long endurance missions for the game, the "scout" missions of "Walter" was a fine addition but they come only to real use if you have a final goal, btw scouting while finding a way back home will lead you somewhere but not where you like to go to) and the easiest is to concentrate on a single plane, i know i'm off Sol by i.e. +50,-80,+20 sectors (x,y,z) thus i step back to 0,0,0 plane by plane, first in this direction then in the next and at last in the final plane, this works fine, otherwise you will lose your course. It is possible to respect two of them but the third plane will confuse you.
You get nowhere, dammit nowhere, the inhabited "bubble" in Pioneer is a dot in the galaxy, but this dot is quite huge in dimensions.
Also Dan scripted the massive black hole in the center of the galaxy and a research station which orbits it at event horizon, but well there is no way to reach it by common gameplay, only if you hack the range of hyperspace drives to something "completely out of mind". Neither that there is something special to see since the BH or super massive BH is just a gravity point.

"Space is big, really big you won't believe how mind boggling big it really is"
Right and this is just a single mediacre galaxy of billions.

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maintainer of "Phoenix" (Pioneer Space Sim derivate)
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/phoenix … erivate.506984/