The possible reason you didn't make any money off our shareware biz is that
people back then were
Not sure if they would receive the full version for the money sent, scams
On Tuesday, November 27, 2012, bruce.bowman tds.net wrote:
> Just a few replies...
>
> I think it was written in Turbo C++ 3.0. It's been awhile. I've
> uninstalled it because I thought I had a backup around here. If not, I'm
> sure I can find images of the install disks on the web somewhere. I
> probably have it on floppies (ha ha).
>
> Back in the early 90s I had a shareware door "business" that was active in
> FidoNet and DoorNet before the web took over and the dialup BBS became
> passe'. It was called Dirt Cheap Software, and fully lived up to its name
> -- I didn't make any money, but it kept me out of trouble.
>
> Palletized 640x480x256 colors requires VBE 3.0. I reserved certain entries
> in the palette because those colors were used to draw other things on the
> screen. Otherwise the status bar, text, etc would be constantly changing
> colors as new images are put up.
>
> Total storage is about 23 MB and growing, mainly because of the number of
> images, and the fact that they use only RLE compression to help them
> display quickly. The program itself is pretty small.
>
> I have an account on the Vogons site, in hopes they would help me get my
> application running in DosBox. But the responses to the inquiries that I've
> posted there have been universally abrupt. If people persist in "helping"
> by talking over my head and acting intellectually superior then I prefer
> not to play in their sandbox.
>
> Back to the coal mine...
>
> Bruce
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 7:47 PM, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
> Just a few answers:
>
> On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 4:51 PM, bruce.bowman tds.net
> <bruce.bow...@tds.net> wrote:
>
> (part one)
>
> > My program is a fairly simple role-playing game. It was originally
> written
> > in Turbo C for DOS, and reads/writes to disk using DOS (not BIOS) calls.
>
> (BTW, which Turbo C version? Some here still use it.)
>
> So it's not NTFS that is bothering you, nor 32-bit NTVDM, just the
> lack of VESA support?
>
> > It runs in 256 palletized colors on a 640x480 console.
>
> I don't know jack about graphics, honestly. But IIRC the "normal" BIOS
> only supports 640x480x16 (16 colors?) or some such. It couldn't be too
> too hard to adjust to running in fewer colors (although not ideal)
> e.g. under WinXP. And/or you could just resize your .PCX image files,
> etc.
>
> > While running, it
> > frequently reads image files off disk, and for that reason won't fit on
> (or
> > reliably run from) a floppy. I want to share it with friends such that
> all
> > they have to do is insert a CD and boot up.
>
> But how much total storage do you need? More than 1.4 MB? You could
> uncompress it from physical floppy to RAM disk if speed is an issue.
> It's not that floppies are so great, but they've been around forever
> and have fairly good support and are fairly simple to use, modify,
> emulate, etc.
>
> > Having said that, I've tried DosBox, just for my own purposes. My
> > program runs very slowly in it, no matter what settings I use;
>
> notepad dosbox-0.74.conf
> (change memsize=16 to memsize=32 if desired)
> (change core=auto to core=dynamic)
> (try again)
> (revert changes or use a separate .conf for certain projects)
>
> I'll admit it can be fairly slow, but it's mostly for popular games.
> In fact, it's "only" for games, as the devs often admit. But Doom and
> Quake (mostly) run perfectly fine under it, etc. etc.
>
> Since your game is an actual game, you could always post on the DOSBox
> forum (Vogons / ZetaFleet or whatever) and bug the devs to fix it for
> you. Assuming you're willing to share with them also.
>
> I know you don't like emulators (who does?), but when they work, they
> work well. And DOSBox is small and easy to use (and GPL).
>
> > and
> > for some reason the graphics palette does not get reset properly.
> > I've downloaded VM too, but haven't tried that yet, and for
> > reasons already mentioned I probably won't.
>
> Well, the point is that DOSBox is a natural solution for DOS gaming.
> Of course, it's not a "real" DOS, per se, but it works pretty well.
> However, if you're unwilling to hack at it some more in cooperation
> with DOSBox devs, then you'll have to find another way.
>
> It's not that booting a CD is bad, but sometimes people like not
> having to reboot (and lose network access, background processes, etc.)
> just to play a game.
>
> > The DFSee CD image that someone else recommended looks like
> > something I can modify for my purposes. I've already booted off
> > of that and confirmed that the game runs well...here at home,
> > anyway. And it seems to detect and do i/o on my FAT32 partition
> > just fine. NTFS? I'll worry about that later.
>
> The problem with NTFS is moreso in the overhead, both memory and
> storage, not to mention its inherent security that is underdocumented
> on purpose (and of course several internal revisions). XP is the last
> Windows to boot natively off of a FAT file system. Newer ones only
> boot off of NTFS, but at least those newer ones have built-in
> capabilities to resize the main NTFS partition, if desired (which XP
> lacks, sadly, hence the need for GParted).
>
> > Floppy disks? I realizing I'm backtracking by using DOS instead of a GUI,
> > but am loath to go all the way to 80s technology. A bootable thumb
> > drive, though, intrigues me -- because I can write to it.
>
> It's not ideal but it's easy to use and widely supported (or at least
> used to be).
>
> > But how do
> > you make it show up? If I stick one in a USB port and restart, my
> > BIOS menu doesn't show it as a drive. A boot image that requires
> > a loader before it's seen by the BIOS sounds like a real
> > chicken
>
> --
> Sent from my meager, humble desktop computer.
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keep yourself connected to Go Parallel:
DESIGN Expert tips on starting your parallel project right.
http://goparallel.sourceforge.net
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
