=========================================================== D O S G A M E S A R C H I V E N E W S L E T T E R =========================================================== No. 11 * September 20, '99 * http://www.dosgamesarchive.com ----------------------------------------------------------- Welcome ----------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to the 11th issue of the DOS Games Archive News- letter! We have included a special article about Prince of Persia 3D and the first two versions. We hope you will like it. If you have any ideas for future content/articles to include in our newsletter, we would like to hear from you! Please e-mail us at webmaster@dosgamesarchive.com ----------------------------------------------------------- Table of contents ----------------------------------------------------------- + What's new on DOS Games Archive? - New design - MS-DOS Games Ring - New hosted site + Why not tell a friend? + Prince of Persia 3D + DOS is fast - How does Windows handle this? - Virtual device drivers - Changes in the system files + Top 10 downloads + Wanted! - Jones in the Fast Lane - Mortal Kombat Trilogy - Digger - Rise of the Dragon - Spector - Paranoid + Webpoll + Site tip - Classic Games ===================== Sponsor message ===================== Speed up and resume broken downloads with Go!Zilla 3.5. Go for the freeware version and more information to this URL: http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/gozilla.html =========================================================== ----------------------------------------------------------- What's new on DOS Games Archive? ----------------------------------------------------------- -- New design --------------------------------------------- DOS Games Archive has a completely new look! We are now using tables instead of frames. We are wondering if you like it, so please send us an e-mail about our new site. That would be nice! URL: http://www.dosgamesarchive.com -- MS-DOS Games Ring -------------------------------------- We have changed the order of our webring. All the (illegal) abondonware sites are gone. The sites which are currently in the ring are as follows: MidTimeGames http://midtimegames.dosgamesarchive.com DOS Games Page http://www.dosgames.com DOS Games Archive http://www.dosgamesarchive.com Games Nostalgia http://nostalgia.dosgamesarchive.com SaveGamesNet http://www.savegames.net We will add more sites to the ring in a few days. If you would like to join our webring, or just explore it, go to the homepage of the ring. URL: http://webring.dosgamesarchive.com -- New hosted site ---------------------------------------- We are hosting a new site, called Classic Games. There are some remakes for Windows and MS-DOS of classic games. URL: http://classic.dosgamesarchive.com ----------------------------------------------------------- Why not tell a friend? ----------------------------------------------------------- Do you like DOS Games Archive? Why not tell a friend about our archive with over 90 free MS-DOS games? You could even win a Palm III from 3Com! So, refer a friend! URL: http://www.recommend-it.com/l.z.e?s=430650 ----------------------------------------------------------- Prince of Persia 3D ----------------------------------------------------------- A long time ago, the legendary game Prince of Persia came out. It was the first real platform game with amazing graphics and nice sound. It was an action game with some adventure elements, a nice combination. It wasn't an easy game, there were many obstacles, puzzles and thinking enemies. This game was the first one with good artificial intelligence (AI). Prince of Persia was a real challenging game and bought by thousands of people, worldwide! In that time there wasn't a whole team of programmers, designers, artists etc. One person, Jordan Mechner, programmed the game. His father composed the music and because Jordan wasn't a good drawer, he filmed his brother's moves for the animations in the game. He converted the film to bitmaps frame after frame with (in that time) a modern technology, called rotoscoping. Today's animations for games aren't so hard to create, because the moves are converted directly to bitmaps by using 'motion capturing'. And now the news you're waiting for! There will be a new version of Prince of Persia, called Prince of Persia 3D. The game is created by Red Orb Entertainment, the game division of Broderbund Software, the company which published the first two versions. But Red Orb Entertainment haven't used the 'motion capturing' technology. They have also filmed actors for the animations, so it looks very real! It's going to be an action/adventure game with a third-person view. Jordan Mechner was also a member of the team. He has written the story. We think this game will gonna be a big success, like the first two versions! If you want to download the demo of Prince of Persia 2, go to http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/games-t.html and select Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame from the list. Red Orb Entertainment: http://www.redorb.com Broderbund Software: http://www.broderbund.com Prince of Persia 3D website: http://www.pop3d.com ----------------------------------------------------------- DOS is fast by Chris Cruickshank ----------------------------------------------------------- DOS programs and in particular DOS games tend to use the very limits of a PC's power. They often do this by accessing hardware directly rather than through the operating system. Every ounce of speed is used by using the direct approach. However, this direct approach causes Windows so many problems. Windows, by its' very nature requires programs to 'talk' to the computer through Windows itself. This is done by the programmer using code that is supplied by Windows rather than routines written by the programmers themselves. For example, to draw a shape on a screen, Windows has drawing routines that do this for you. Indeed, a window and its' components, such as title bar, buttons, slider controls etc., are handled by Windows so that the programmer does not need to write code to draw these objects. This is fine for most sedentary programs like word processors, databases and the like but not so useful when you want screaming fast graphics flying around the screen with suitable sound effects! There appears to be a stalemate here and this often causes problems running DOS programs under Windows. Another problem is the age-old DOS 640KB limit. This limit, imposed when DOS was first written in the early 1980's said that the maximum base memory a program could use was 640KB. In those days, a big computer was 64KB so multiplying that by 10 would be more than enough room. How wrong they were! Into this 640KB must go the program itself along with driver programs that are used to communicate with the hardware itself. This may seem a daft way of doing things but in fact it paved the way for the PC industry. It allowed third party hardware components to be added to a PC without having to replace the entire computer. Try fitting a printer to a dedicated computer like hand held game consoles! -- How does Windows handle this? -------------------------- Windows 3.x handled DOS programs by allowing the user (and yes, it was usually left to the user), the ability to create a safe environment in which the DOS program could run in, completely oblivious to Windows. This is known as a shell. A Program Information File, PIF, was used to set up this environment. It included such things as command line parameters, the type of available memory and whether the program could run in a window. In Windows 3.x it was necessary to have all the drivers used on your system (for things such as CD-ROM drives, scanners, soundcards etc.) to be loaded before Windows. This meant there was less memory available for programs. Numerous utilities managed memory in order to get the most efficient set up possible. Windows 95/98 took this a step further with virtual device drivers. -- Virtual device drivers --------------------------------- Microsoft looked at this situation of loading all drivers into memory at the start of the session and thought, "What if you only loaded those devices you actualy used rather than all of them?" Of course, the computer didn't know which devices were going to be used at the start of a session so they devised a way to load the device drivers as an when they were needed. This means that a scanner's device driver for example would only be loaded when the system called for access to the scanner. If it wasn't used, it wasn't loaded. Hence the term 'Virtual Device Driver', it's only loaded when needed. -- Changes in the system files ---------------------------- This meant a change in the way the two main system files, AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS where used. Looking at these files on a Windows 95/98 system will reveal very few drivers being loaded. This may appear to make it difficult to produce a PIF for a DOS game. If these programs use such devices that are loaded via Windows. Enter the Windows 95/98 PIF file! Yes, PIF files are used in Windows 95/98 but they are handled differently to Windows 3.x systems. Windows 3.1 provided a PIF editor that allowed you to set up an environment, but this didn't included device drivers (those had to be loaded prior to program execution). Windows 95/98 handles this differently by allowing you to create not only a unique environment but a unique load sequence as well. If you have tried to run a DOS game under Windows 95/98 you may well see the system automatically reboot your machine into 'MS-DOS Mode'. This mode provides a start up sequence and launches the program itself. When you exit, the system reboots back into Windows. Why is this? Most DOS programs do not 'tidy up' after themselves and trying to run game after game after game often caused system crashes due to one program affecting the system that the second program couldn't cope with. Windows 95/98 recognises this by forcing the system to reboot and clear out such things as memory. For each DOS program you want to run under Windows 95/98, it is possible to produce a unique environment and system file start up set up to maximise memory by only loading those devices actually used by the program. Games don't tend to use scanners, so why bother loading the device drivers? How do you go about creating this unique environment? Read this in the next newsletter! This article is written by Chris Cruickshank Copyright (c) 1998 Chris Cruickshank We would like to thank Chris for providing his article. ===================== Sponsor message ===================== The third edition of the book 'DOS for Dummies' teach you more about MS-DOS. The author manages to infuse practically every passage with humor. If you're using DOS, this book will provide you with valuable and professional help. http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/bookshop/index.html =========================================================== ----------------------------------------------------------- Top 10 downloads ----------------------------------------------------------- The following games are most downloaded from our site: 1. Mario 6. Cannon Fodder 2. Prince of Persia 2 7. Wolfenstein 3D 3. Pinball Fantasies 8. Ninja Rabbits 4. DOOM 9. Wacky Wheels 5. Lamborghini 10. Worms ----------------------------------------------------------- Wanted! ----------------------------------------------------------- In this section you will find postings from our message board. Most people are looking for a game that isn't in our archive. Maybe other visitors (or readers of this newsletter) own the game. Then they could contact the person who has written the message. -- Jones in the Fast Lane --------------------------------- > "I have been looking for this really cool game ever its > called Jones in the Fast Lane if you have please e-mail > me." Lisa - rrshroy@internetcds.com -- Mortal Kombat Trilogy ---------------------------------- > "Could someone tell me where to get Mortal Kombat > Trilogy?" Clint - bhagyanclinton@hotmail.com -- Digger ------------------------------------------------- > "Hello, > Do you remember the old game called 'Digger'? You move > through a maze and have to dig your way through the > earth. Walking under bags will let them drop after 2-3 > seconds... remember? Do you got that game or know where > I can find this great game? > Many thanks!" Paul Stewart - pstewartp@hotmail.com -- Paranoid ----------------------------------------------- > "Can't find a game called 'Paranoid', playable only with > DOS" Kannan - kannankasthurirangan@usa.net -- Rise of the Dragon ------------------------------------- > "I'm looking for this very old game by Sierra/Dynamix, or > at least its main plot/story. I mailed Sierra but they > replied that they didn't have any info about it anymore. > It would be cool if I could find it somewhere! > Thanks in advance!" Christopher Ranschae - haploc@hotmail.com -- Spector ------------------------------------------------ > "An old game called Spector. Anyone know where I can find > this classic?" Scott - alien_power420@hotmail.com ----------------------------------------------------------- Webpoll ----------------------------------------------------------- Here are the results of our webpoll: What's your favorite game genre? Action 29% 81 votes Arcade 19% 53 votes Strategy 24% 65 votes Simulation 15% 41 votes Other 13% 36 votes Total votes: 276 ----------------------------------------------------------- Site tip ----------------------------------------------------------- -- Classic Games ------------------------------------------ Classic Games is a nice, little site about remakes of old classics for Windows and MS-DOS. Check it out! URL: http://classic.dosgamesarchive.com ----------------------------------------------------------- Thanks ----------------------------------------------------------- That's it for this issue of our newsletter. See you next issue and thanks for reading! ___________________________________________________________ If you want to unsubscribe from this mailing list, mail to webmaster@dosgamesarchive.com and write down the following information: UNSUBSCRIBE your@email