Wednesday, March 24, 2010

It lives Igor, it liiiiiiiiiives!

I think DirectQ can now run on Windows 98. Of course I haven't been able to test it properly because I no longer have any hardware that even has Windows 98 drivers available for it, and therefore I need to run it in a non-hardware-accelerated VM (even VMware's display driver - which gets me 130 FPS in GLQuake on Windows XP - won't work with Windows 98).

So my testing has gone as far as double-clicking on DirectQ.exe, noting that it gave me a missing GDI+ DLL error rather than the dreaded "your OS belongs in the Palaeozoic, begone sirrah!" error, and therefore assuming that at least the exe I can produce will run on it.

Further testing tomorrow with GDI+ installed and the reference device will provide more info.

Assuming that all goes well and that the end product does at least run (even if it's at 1 FPS on the reference device) the story will be:

  • I won't be generally distributing a Windows 98 build. This is to prevent overly-conservative types from downloading it in preference to the normal build.
  • You're going to have to ask me for it.
  • The procedure to ask me for it will be a PM on either QuakeOne.com or Inside3D.
  • There may be a delay before you get it. Sometimes it will be minutes, sometimes it will be weeks, and it will depend on what else I have going on in my life at the time (I'll be wandering around the Sahara again later on this year, for example).
  • I'll upload to one of the main file-sharing sites for you and notify you via reply PM. I normally use SendSpace for these things, but if you have a preference you'll need to tell me.
  • You'll just get the exe, no source code. The source code will be the very same as for the normal build. I don't intend changing anything for what is now a fifth-tier platform.
  • I make no guarantees that it will work for you. If it crashes or otherwise fails you're going to be pretty much on your own, unless you download the regular code and build it/debug it yourself. I believe this is reasonable owing to my complete inability to debug on Windows 98 (no hardware acceleration = less than 1 FPS performance).
  • I make no guarantees of performance on Windows 98, and I make no guarantees of any kind of optimization for Windows 98 (I have no hardware acceleration after all, so it's impossible for me to tune it). If you want that you'll need to download the source code and do it yourself.
  • I'll be putting code in the Windows 98 build to crash on anything later than 98, so don't go asking me for it unless you actually do have Windows 98. This is to prevent those conservative types I mentioned before.
  • Not every regular build will have a corresponding Windows 98 build, and Windows 98 builds are subject to being stopped at any point in time, with or without notice.
  • I won't be going out of my way to advertise the fact that it exists. This one post - and any other update I may or may not care to give - will be the only notification.
Now, I appreciate that some of this may make me sound like a bastard, but I do need to protect myself against being pulled into commitments I just can't keep with this. So that's the way it is, being able to do a proper full Windows 98 version is just not possible for me, but if I can get something that even kinda works, I will. But I need to stop there because I won't be able to go further.

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