[Koji]

But then it wouldn't sound right. Errr I mean horrible...

Listen, if you change it from square to sine wave, It would sound too good, and too smooth. The sound effects used through the pc speakers wouldn't sound right through a sine wave.

[paulguy]

I think the whole goal to the Windows port should be to get rid of the horribleness of DOS limitations and get rid of that damned crappy ass sounding PC speaker. Square wave wouldn't be too bad but what they were saying before about putting it through a filter to purposefully crappify it is a stupid idea.

[Exophase]

My other computer's sound card emulates PC speaker. Not sure why or how (it's an SB16), but it works and it sounds fine. Better than the real thing, IMO.

I've been working on the port steadily while my connection's been down. At this point I have to do a lot of debugging before I can really get anywhere. Lots of fun. I'll keep progress posted on this thread. Maybe some screenshots eventually.

- Exo

[Smallhacker]

Just one question...
When you finish the port, will you:
1: Drop the DOS verison and update the ported version?
2: Update both the DOS and ported versions?
3: Update both the DOS and ported versions, but drop the DOS version after a while?
4: Accidently make your HD crash so the ported version's code gets erased?

[Exophase]

Smallhacker, on Jun 5 2004, 04:41 PM, said:

Just one question...
When you finish the port, will you:
1: Drop the DOS verison and update the ported version?
2: Update both the DOS and ported versions?
3: Update both the DOS and ported versions, but drop the DOS version after a while?
4: Accidently make your HD crash so the ported version's code gets erased?

#1 or #4

In all seriousness though, I can't see any good reason to continue the DOS version rather than move forward with a non-DOS one. But I won't do that until the port is very mature.

Anyway, I've hit some complications with the world/board loading source as it is right now, so I'm probably going to go ahead and rewrite it now instead of later, so that it's much saner. No progress will really be seen until that happens.

- Exo

[Exophase]

Okay, the new world loading is working and the first board can be viewed correctly like this (viewed, not played. It's a hack).

After I change the rest of the source to match the new world structures actual gameplay should be happening.

- Exo

[paulguy]

This is going pretty fasly, keep up the goos work Exo! Wihat kind of system will this be able to work on?

[Exophase]

paulguy119, on Jun 7 2004, 09:07 AM, said:

This is going pretty fasly, keep up the goos work Exo! Wihat kind of system will this be able to work on?

I don't really know, I'll have to test it on slower computers. Most of the functionality should be about as fast or faster than DOS MZX, with the main exception being the video rendering code (since it's not accelerated like text mode is). My renderer is pretty fast, though. It'll also depend on what speed you play on - getting full speed at speed 2 is much more graphically intensive than speed 4.

- Exo

[paulguy]

What do you mean "accelerated"?

[Exophase]

paulguy119, on Jun 8 2004, 08:57 AM, said:

What do you mean "accelerated"?

Textmode is hardware accelerated. Meaning the video card takes care of drawing the characters on the screen, so it's very fast. In graphics mode, the characters have to be drawn manually..

- Exo

[paulguy]

Oh. Isn't OpenGL hardware accelerated? Could using that speed it up?

[Exophase]

paulguy119, on Jun 8 2004, 10:30 AM, said:

Oh. Isn't OpenGL hardware accelerated? Could using that speed it up?

In 640x350x8bpp the speed isn't really an issue unless your computer is very slow...

- Exo

[paulguy]

How about 500Mhz AMD K6-2 with 180Something MB SDRAM? Is that fast enough? I guess if it can run Quake 2 at a decent speed, it can rum MZX. But what I'm asking for is MZX32 and UltraZig are both horridly slow on my computer.

[Exophase]

paulguy119, on Jun 8 2004, 05:57 PM, said:

How about 500Mhz AMD K6-2 with 180Something MB SDRAM? Is that fast enough? I guess if it can run Quake 2 at a decent speed, it can rum MZX. But what I'm asking for is MZX32 and UltraZig are both horridly slow on my computer.

I haven't really looked at the renderers for either of them, but my renderer is fast. It may not run full speed at speed 2, but after that the requirements go down a lot. I know that on a Celeron 850 my last renderer ran well, and this is a rewrite of that renderer (I lost it)

- Exo

[Pyro1588]

this is the first time i've seen this thread (been gone for awhile) and all i can say is that i can't wait! <3 exo!

[paulguy]

What's left to do for the port?

[Exophase]

paulguy119, on Jun 11 2004, 09:26 AM, said:

What's left to do for the port?

A lot. No one knows

- Exo

[djtiesto]

Exo, since I know you're trying to go for cross-compatibility for a variety of platforms... what are the chance we'll see a self-booting Dreamcast port - you can burn a disk with MZX and a buncha games on it and run it on your DC/TV... that would be awesome

[Exophase]

djtiesto, on Jun 11 2004, 06:32 PM, said:

Exo, since I know you're trying to go for cross-compatibility for a variety of platforms... what are the chance we'll see a self-booting Dreamcast port - you can burn a disk with MZX and a buncha games on it and run it on your DC/TV... that would be awesome

If SDL is available for Dreamcast it's totally possible, although I don't know how savegames/world saving will be supported (VMU?)

I don't have a Dreamcast, or even a CD-RW, so I can't really do this personally..

- Exo

[GetDizzy]

Exophase: Dreamcasts can either run Windows CE or Linux, so even if there isnt a native Dreamcast SDL port you could technically work it that way. But I dont think burning MZX games to disk and never being able to save anything over a few KB would be really that wise.

[Koji]

Win Ce.

I tried to do something on it once, but my Program never booted

EDIT: They weren't games.

This post has been edited by Koji: 12 June 2004 - 02:44 AM

[Exophase]

Zaphod`, on Jun 11 2004, 09:19 PM, said:

Exophase: Dreamcasts can either run Windows CE or Linux, so even if there isnt a native Dreamcast SDL port you could technically work it that way. But I dont think burning MZX games to disk and never being able to save anything over a few KB would be really that wise.

I don't remember the size of the VMU but I'm sure it's more than just a few kb.

- Exo

Uhhh, just because there's a Linux for it doesn't suddenly mean SDL can be ported to it if it hasn't already been. And I wouldn't want people to boot Linux to run it, either. WinCE is of course out of the question since we can't just package that with it.

- Exo

[Torte]

Maybe it's time to update the "Is there any work being done on an MZX port for Windows?" part of the FAQ, as a little side note.

[Exophase]

The end, on Jun 11 2004, 10:25 PM, said:

Maybe it's time to update the "Is there any work being done on an MZX port for Windows?" part of the FAQ, as a little side note.

It has been updated..

- Exo

[Risu2112]

Hey how much will this cost when you are finished? $20? $40? I don't want to pay more than $40. >=(

[Exophase]

KenOhki2112, on Jun 12 2004, 03:08 PM, said:

Hey how much will this cost when you are finished? $20? $40? I don't want to pay more than $40. >=(

Heh, it's not gonna cost anything, if you want to give me money that's up to you

- Exo

[Koji]

Dream cast has hardware imbedded winCE. Infact I think a few games (chuchu rocket!) were directly ported to winCE and distributed on DC disks. (although the exactly how is unknown to me)

[Exophase]

Koji, on Jun 12 2004, 05:37 PM, said:

Dream cast has hardware imbedded winCE. Infact I think a few games (chuchu rocket!) were directly ported to winCE and distributed on DC disks. (although the exactly how is unknown to me)

No, WinCE isn't on DC's firmware (unlike XBox which has a version of Windows internally). The (few) games that use it include it on disc.

- Exo

[Koji]

Really? I always read it as they had it internally...

Oh well, I'm wrong.

[Dr Lancer-X]

paulguy: Graphics emulation for textmode (using my own renderer, but with the same library) works at a nice speed on this 233, so you should be alright. Consider also that this is my renderer, and Exo's is probably a few times faster.