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| 3 OCT 2006 at 5:01pm |
IviniaGuild Master
Posts : 4459
Joined: 7 JUN 2003
Location: US
Status : Offline | What do your web stats say tell you? Last month I had over 1,000 unique visitors and 34,000 hits - not large by any means, but only 3% of them were Win 98 users. There are a few out there and they are pretty verbal about it, which might make it seem like they are a larger group than they are. JA & GB have a much larger audience, so perhaps you can ask Val here at JA and Mags at GB if they know what percentage of their visitors are using 98?
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| 3 OCT 2006 at 9:15pm |
Alan ThornSorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 240
Joined: 8 JUN 2005
Status : Online | I'm curious. What function is this?
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| 3 OCT 2006 at 9:19pm |
scippie75Intergalactic Janitor
Posts : 55
Joined: 21 DEC 2005
Status : Online | AddFontMemResourceEx :-)
If I want to make it not so easy for people to steal my font, I'll need this one.
I hate to put a .ttf file in the directory.
Visit http://www.tears-of-betrayal.com for a new old-skool adventure game!
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| 4 OCT 2006 at 9:57am |
Alan ThornSorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 240
Joined: 8 JUN 2005
Status : Online | Originally Posted By scippie75 (3 OCT 2006 9:19pm)
AddFontMemResourceEx :-)
If I want to make it not so easy for people to steal my font, I'll need this one.
I hate to put a .ttf file in the directory.
I see. I don't know if you plan on using ID3DXFont, but if so, I found that class to be terribly unreliable. Unpredictable behaviour from system to system. Have you thought about creating an image tileset for fonts instead?
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| 4 OCT 2006 at 10:05am |
scippie75Intergalactic Janitor
Posts : 55
Joined: 21 DEC 2005
Status : Online | Originally Posted By Alan Thorn (4 OCT 2006 9:57am)
I see. I don't know if you plan on using ID3DXFont, but if so, I found that class to be terribly unreliable. Unpredictable behaviour from system to system. Have you thought about creating an image tileset for fonts instead?
No no no, no ID3DXFont. I use as least ID3DX-functionality as possible. Only the proven to worked mathematical functions are used.
No I render the font directly on a texture with the windows GDI function.
I don't want to create a bitmap font (although I am still in doubt to do so), because I want to be able to support more than one font and it will become a big work for not much gain (or even more pain).
Of course I don't re-render the font every frame.
Visit http://www.tears-of-betrayal.com for a new old-skool adventure game!
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| 4 OCT 2006 at 10:20am |
Alan ThornSorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 240
Joined: 8 JUN 2005
Status : Online | Well, my personal suggestion...
If the pain in using a bitmap font class is not related to fitting in with your program structure, but is more related to simply the hassle of printing all the fonts into a bitmap then this can be solved quickly. It's not the most elegant solution but, you can render every character from every font you need onto the texture (each character at a specified distance from each other), and then use D3DXSaveTextureToFile (or whatever it's called) to save as a bitmap. And there, you have one bitmap tile set.
I hope this helps.
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| 4 OCT 2006 at 10:23am |
scippie75Intergalactic Janitor
Posts : 55
Joined: 21 DEC 2005
Status : Online | Yes, I know how it works , but then you have the hassle with the different widths too, as the font we use at this moment is not fixed width.
You need to store them too.
But ok, then still, there are no big problems, I know.
But at this moment (and I am still in doubt), I see no need in making the effort as the framerate is always more than satisfying.
Visit http://www.tears-of-betrayal.com for a new old-skool adventure game!
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| 4 OCT 2006 at 4:41pm |
RecklessJourneyman
Posts : 962
Joined: 14 NOV 2002
Status : Online | Some quick stats on what my LSL site users use:
2003
Versions Hits Percent
WIN 65461 98.10%
Windows XP 25366 38%
Windows NT 248 0.30%
Windows Me 3552 5.30%
Windows 98 9634 14.40%
Windows 95 346 0.50%
Windows 2003 626 0.90%
Windows 2000 25689 38.50%
MAC 671 1%
Mac OS X 301 0.40%
Mac OS 370 0.50%
Others 537 0.80%
Unknown 356 0.50%
Linux 140 0.20%
Unknown Unix system 41 0%
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2004
Versions Hits Percent
WIN 2206939 95%
Windows XP 1655699 71.20%
Windows NT 16246 0.60%
Windows Me 75043 3.20%
Windows Codename Longhorn 75 0%
Windows CE 135 0%
Windows 98 188679 8.10%
Windows 95 5021 0.20%
Windows 2003 6424 0.20%
Windows 2000 259516 11.10%
Windows 3.xx 101 0%
MAC 41519 1.70%
Mac OS X 29142 1.20%
Mac OS 12377 0.50%
Others 74017 3.10%
Unknown 55427 2.30%
Linux 17443 0.70%
Sun Solaris 485 0%
OS/2 283 0%
Unknown Unix system 107 0%
FreeBSD 97 0%
WebTV 49 0%
NetBSD 40 0%
BeOS 28 0%
OpenBSD 19 0%
reamcast 19 0%
AmigaOS 14 0%
Symbian OS 6 0%
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2005
Versions Hits Percent
WIN 2456794 95%
Windows XP 1987505 76.80%
Windows NT 13530 0.50%
Windows Me 64779 2.50%
Windows Codename Longhorn 44 0%
Windows CE 164 0%
Windows 98 157057 6%
Windows 95 3605 0.10%
Windows 2003 5612 0.20%
Windows 2000 224413 8.60%
Windows 3.xx 85 0%
MAC 46786 1.80%
Mac OS X 36552 1.40%
Mac OS 10234 0.30%
Others 81303 3.10%
Unknown 54907 2.10%
Linux 21552 0.80%
FreeBSD 3220 0.10%
Sun Solaris 658 0%
Symbian OS 387 0%
WebTV 278 0%
CPM 140 0%
RISC OS 65 0%
AmigaOS 34 0%
OpenBSD 26 0%
BeOS 15 0%
OS/2 11 0%
Unknown Unix system 5 0%
NetBSD 3 0%
HP Unix 1 0%
Irix 1 0%
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2006 (Oct '06)
Versions Hits Percent
WIN 824801 95.20%
Windows XP 737470 85.20%
Windows NT 1238 0.10%
Windows Me 9332 1%
Windows Codename Longhorn 341 0%
Windows CE 175 0%
Windows 98 28493 3.20%
Windows 95 642 0%
Windows 2003 3619 0.40%
Windows 2000 43491 5%
MAC 20706 2.30%
Mac OS X 19246 2.20%
Mac OS 1460 0.10%
Others 20034 2.30%
Unknown 13340 1.50%
Linux 4718 0.50%
FreeBSD 1789 0.20%
Symbian OS 71 0%
WebTV 59 0%
CPM 33 0%
HP Unix 10 0%
Unknown Unix system 6 0%
Sun Solaris 5 0%
OpenBSD 2 0%
GNU 1 0%
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So from that you can see that in 3 years things have changed a lot so much so that I expect no Win98 users within another 3 years! And good riddance as well!!
An alternative is to use a container file which is unpacked on demand by the game. Lots of games do this PAK, WAD, etc. etc. You could encrypt and/or obfuscate the contents of the container so that only the game would be able to access its content. However, any form of protection can be hacked so I perhaps wouldn't spend too long on the task. Myself, I'd ditch support for Win9x and set the minimum requirements at Win2000 and above
[url=http://leisuresuitlarry.dyndns.org/]Leisure Suit Larry Archive Site[/url]&&[url=http://www.adamhearn.co.uk]Hearn Garage[/url]
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| 4 OCT 2006 at 4:51pm |
scippie75Intergalactic Janitor
Posts : 55
Joined: 21 DEC 2005
Status : Online | Ok, thanks all.
I think my decision is to go for win2k minimum!
Visit http://www.tears-of-betrayal.com for a new old-skool adventure game!
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| 4 OCT 2006 at 5:02pm |
IviniaGuild Master
Posts : 4459
Joined: 7 JUN 2003
Location: US
Status : Offline | Nice numbers Reckless, thanks for posting those. My stats seem to almost mirror yours.
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| 5 OCT 2006 at 1:55am |
hlalexSpace Cadet
Posts : 127
Joined: 19 JUL 2004
Status : Online | Reckless
So from that you can see that in 3 years things have changed a lot so much so that I expect no Win98 users within another 3 years! Smiley And good riddance as well!!
Sorry you feel this way as there is a lot of great games for the 98 and my guess is that you will never play them agaain or played them and can afford to dump the good old ones.
Ivian is right there is a few of us that do not want to give up 98 and will fight to keep it alive.
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| 5 OCT 2006 at 10:23am |
RecklessJourneyman
Posts : 962
Joined: 14 NOV 2002
Status : Online | Most of my games pre date Windows XP (a large amount pre date Windows in fact!) so I cannot agree at all. I personally think it's fine if people continue to use Windows 98 just for the games that couldn't run. For that you could use Virtual PC, dual boot or even an old machine 'in the cupboard' so to speak as best suits your need.
If you have specific games in mind then feel free to post in the Tech Help form and help will be forthcoming. Out of my collection of games (200 ish?) only Amber fails to run in XP. For that I have a Virtual PC setup (running Win9. Of course there will perhaps be other games as I've a modest collection but feel free to ask and help will be provided where possible
Perhaps I'm being over simplistic but for day to day usage Windows 98 should have been pensioned off a long long time ago! Cost (upgrade of hardware to run XP for example) is perhaps an issue I agree but I somehow expect most hardware to have already been upgraded
[url=http://leisuresuitlarry.dyndns.org/]Leisure Suit Larry Archive Site[/url]&&[url=http://www.adamhearn.co.uk]Hearn Garage[/url]
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| 5 OCT 2006 at 10:26pm |
hlalexSpace Cadet
Posts : 127
Joined: 19 JUL 2004
Status : Online | Yea know I could jump up and down and tell you of some of the stuff that sinks about XP but it is odvious that you like it and the fact that JA would probably ban me if I told you what I really thought. Just in case you are interested statements like your is one reason I HATE XP. Because it is old get rid of it. Hummmm.
And in case you are wondring we have well over 300 original games and that is not counting the old Commodore/Amiga games. And as for needing help with games to run on XP I do not need any. If it don't run on 98, Oh well I have pleanty of games to play without it. This is my opinion that XP sinks and a lot of people love it but I'll still be running it for a while till Vista comes out and is proven to run the stuff I do. The orginal point I wanted to make was that it isn't fair to say that no one needs or should be running 98 any more.
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| 5 OCT 2006 at 10:59pm |
RecklessJourneyman
Posts : 962
Joined: 14 NOV 2002
Status : Online | Nothing's perfect and that certainly includes XP. I don't like it as much as Windows 2000 which was the 1st OS Microsoft made that was a revelation in speed, security and reliability. XP is just an evolution of that but with a nasty teletubbies interface - which of course is easily rectified! You do realise that if you upgraded, you would get better reliability, better speed, security and other tangible benefits? Yes it's a little harder to get games to run but not so much so that it's out of reach of most users.
I'd impress upon you that you're not thinking logically about the benefits of XP. Saying it s[t]inks without actually running it seems odd! From my perspective [having run Beta 1, 2 & now the RC versions] Vista will shock many people in how different it is to anything that came before. Why you think you'll like Vista more than XP I've no idea. It's certainly going to be a lot harder to get old games to run in it
Anyways, clearly you have an axe to grind over XP. You seem bloody minded without facts to back up your reasoning. It's your loss and no-one elses concern so enjoy 98 as long as you care to
[url=http://leisuresuitlarry.dyndns.org/]Leisure Suit Larry Archive Site[/url]&&[url=http://www.adamhearn.co.uk]Hearn Garage[/url]
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| 6 OCT 2006 at 6:33am |
hlalexSpace Cadet
Posts : 127
Joined: 19 JUL 2004
Status : Online | Excuse me. I did not say I didn't have XP. What is said was XP stinks. And as for it running faster than my 98 you are very wrong. I have tests that has proved it and as for security XP loves spy/ad ware. My old 98 has no problems with it since most of the adware is looking to get in to XP. And Reliability is funny. I guess if you like the idea that about every 6 months to a year you have to reinstal XP because it scrambled your hard drive than I guess it is.
I wish people like you would stop down grading the old systems. You seem to get kicks out of trying to make people upset with your Love XP and then turn it around to make it look like you are the good guy. If you get kicks out of doing this I'll be more than happy to go at it with you but in privite e-mail only.
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| 21 OCT 2006 at 7:05pm |
jalexSchattenjger
Posts : 2503
Joined: 5 MAR 2003
Status : Offline | I think anyone that collects and plays a lot of the older games still runs 98SE. It will always be this way until MS comes up with a system that can run the old games without problems. There are also many kids that use a hand me down system that usually runs 98 and they want to play new game on it too. I do not think it's a good idea to make any game that will only run on Xp as all these people will not buy it.
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