zdoom is cool

HotWax · Post by **HotWax** » Wed Oct 08, 2003 4:51 pm

Whining because you have to turn off a few newbie-friendly settings is like complaining that you had to take that bright red bow off the Ferrari you got for your birthday before you could drive it.

"Hey, my clunker may not be as fast and might break down every two days, but at least it doesn't look pretty!!!"

Do a search on Google for "Win XP services" and the first site that comes up will be a site dedicated to configuring XP services so all the unnecessary "bloat" magically goes away. Once you've got the services you don't need turned off, XP takes far less RAM, boots up faster, and runs alot faster as well.

Don't blame the OS on your lack of ability to configure it.

Oh, and BTW, the DOS that Win 2000 uses that is so magically delicious is the same DOS used by Win XP. 2000 also doesn't have any compatibility settings in case something doesn't work right, and it's less compatible with games overall than XP. It may be a bit better for security and as a developer platform, but not much.

The Ultimate DooMer · Post by **The Ultimate DooMer** » Wed Oct 08, 2003 4:59 pm

Enjay wrote:Here's the Duke port I was on about

http://www.rancidmeat.com/project.php3?id=1

It was a little odd to set up in as much as some things needed to be set up using the old DOS setup prog, and others were done by the game. I also can't get it to start fullscreen (despite setting the ini) but alt-enter works. Other than that, a pretty good port that has crashed on me, but only once.

You've obviously not tried to use the map cheat, then...

BTW, add "-fullscreen" to the command line to have it start there.

Biff · Post by **Biff** » Wed Oct 08, 2003 6:57 pm

randy wrote:I also have my own Duke port, based on code from ZDoom. It's not released, and I haven't touched it since May. I've thought of putting it up, but it would require a little more work to make it "finished."

!!! Not too much work that it couldn't be tested at an upcoming LAN party? Before the end of the year?
By any chance, Shadow Warrior or Blood capable?

Post by **randi** » Wed Oct 08, 2003 7:40 pm

Biff wrote:!!! Not too much work that it couldn't be tested at an upcoming LAN party? Before the end of the year?

Just stuff like adding a menu for customizing controls in-game without using the console. The game itself is fully functional, as far as I can tell.

By any chance, Shadow Warrior or Blood capable?

No, their source code is unreleased.

i387 · Post by **i387** » Wed Oct 08, 2003 10:58 pm

HotWax wrote:Do a search on Google for "Win XP services" and the first site that comes up will be a site dedicated to configuring XP services so all the unnecessary "bloat" magically goes away. Once you've got the services you don't need turned off, XP takes far less RAM, boots up faster, and runs alot faster as well.

Yep! Definitely set the "Themes", "System Restore Service", and "Remote Registry" to manual or disabled. You can free up tons of RAM on the first two alone.

Check out http://www.blackviper.com/ for much more info.

Lexus Alyus · Post by **Lexus Alyus** » Thu Oct 09, 2003 6:19 am

Okay, as far as I've noticed (I've been running XP for while now, which does run nice, but then my computor isn't exactly crap either). My only problem with old games is sound. That is because my sound card is a Terratec DMX 6fire (designed mainly for music, with ultra high quality and low latency). It isn't compatable with Dos games cus it has no dos driver, and seems to make them run jerky and slow (But it's probobly using windows legacy drivers). Now, when I disable sound the games work fine (Mainly vanilla doom, which isn't a problem, and Strife, which is a problem). I'd like some help with this matter, and I have tried VDM sound and I get the same jerky results.

Biff · Post by **Biff** » Thu Oct 09, 2003 8:24 am

Enjay wrote:Here's the Duke port I was on about

http://www.rancidmeat.com/project.php3?id=1

It was a little odd to set up in as much as some things needed to be set up using the old DOS setup prog, and others were done by the game. I also can't get it to start fullscreen (despite setting the ini) but alt-enter works. Other than that, a pretty good port that has crashed on me, but only once.

I give this a try, got it running and set up OK. Movement feels very "sloshy", though playable. When I kill some of the flying enemies in the first map, there is a message about a sound not found. Do you notice these things?

Post by **Enjay** » Thu Oct 09, 2003 9:01 am

Can't say I did. The control is a little hard for me to judge. When I was playing Duke a lot I was still a keyboarder. Now I use the mouse, so I'm playing it in a different way. As far as the sounds go, no I don't remember seeing those messages. I have played right through episodes 1 and 2 and a bit of 3. I hope I'd have noticed something like that if it was happening - but no guarantees. The only real problem I had was a crash during the episode1 boss battle. I have sionce completed the level 3 or 4 more times with no problems.

X-DOOM · Post by **X-DOOM** » Thu Oct 09, 2003 11:04 am

randy wrote: I also have my own Duke port, based on code from ZDoom. It's not released, and I haven't touched it since May. I've thought of putting it up, but it would require a little more work to make it "finished."

Geez, i was sure you had make your own since the first day duke source was out.

Will we see a ZDuke port? lol

keep up the good work Randy.

David Ferstat · Post by **David Ferstat** » Thu Oct 09, 2003 11:18 am

Here's my tuppence worth.

I spent about about 4 years playing games under Win98. This experience led to the formulation of Ferstat's Law:

"Once you have installed Windows 98, it's already time to re-install it."

Win98 played all the games that I threw at it, especially DOS games like Duke Nukem 3D, Blood and Redneck Rampage.

But ...

There's no way I could call this OS stable.

While games rarely seemed to crash it, lots of other software seemed to, and the regularly increasing frequency of BSODs, hangs, and severe slow-downs caused by Win98's inability to control memory leaks meant that I was re-installing every 3 to 4 months.

Last year, when I upgraded my PC from a P3-450- to a P4-1.8-based system, I found out that Win98 simply couldn't handle a processor that fast. Simple OS accessories like the Character Mapper, and games like Freecell would crash, badly, requiring a re-boot of the OS.

This left little choice but to migrate to WinXP.

Now, games still run painlessly, save a few DOS games, like the aforementioned Blood, etc, which simply won't.

To my surprise, and contrary to reports I'd read, XP WILL run .bat files happily. This was important to me, as the low-tech way I run Doom wads is by batch files. (Yes, I know that there are launchers, and, maybe, I'll try them someday.)

The BIG difference, is that I can leave XP running for a week without needing to re-boot, a period ludicrous under 98, where 24 hours without re-starting was memorable.

Occasionally some software will crash, but this hardly ever takes anything else with it.

Only two programs have ever crashed XP on me, and these were both relatively recent games demos, IronStorm and Chrome.

I do intend to make my PC into a dual-boot system, so that I can re-install Win98, but ONLY so that I can run OLD games. Everything else will stay under XP.

My conclusion? I am MUCH happier running my games under XP, if for no other reason that my computer now spends more time doing what i want it to do, rather than crashing.

wildweasel · Post by **wildweasel** » Thu Oct 09, 2003 3:22 pm

I stick with Windows 98 SE. Why? I still play all my old DOS games and I don't have ANY reason to switch to a newer OS. From what I've heard, XP really hates some older 95/98 games (even in compatibility mode), and the command prompt has been dumbed down yet again. I have enough trouble trying to run my games, I don't need any more.

Post by **Enjay** » Thu Oct 09, 2003 3:52 pm

wildweasel wrote:and the command prompt has been dumbed down yet again.

Not that it will convince you to change OS (nor am I trying to persuade you to), but I don't think the command prompt has been "dumbed down" (although I'm not sure what you mean by that).

Command.com is still there and can be run in the same way as any prog. From what I can tell it is much as it was in '98. There is also cmd.exe which is a native command prompt. Basically very similar to command.com but because it is a proper XP application it runs better and has other features (like DOSKey functionality is built in).

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Thu Oct 09, 2003 11:25 pm

the truth is that winxp's dos sucks, and they did that on purpose to screw up dos programs.

Cyb · Post by **Cyb** » Fri Oct 10, 2003 12:39 am

OMG conspiracy!! That's exactly the reason...

or wait, maybe it's because winxp isn't based on dos like win9x is, so there IS no dos.

so you trade uh, getting rid of a crappy old barely-OS thing, for major stability at the cost of not being able to play some old games. wahhh. I think the problem is people don't realize you aren't supposed to have to reboot an os every couple of hours, and personally there isn't a single dos game I'd put ahead of having all the stability of winnt (2k and xp).

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Fri Oct 10, 2003 2:42 am

Bill Gates blows. His software is made intentionally bogus, spywared and less compatible with every new release so people are pushed to buy faster IBM machines and new Microsoft OS's. I hail Visual Basic and Windows 2000 professional, but that's all I can say for the good of this creepy company. Sadly, the best programs are coded for Windows based systems so I'll be forced to use it.