[geeks] Dos and similar games

Sun Aug 13 12:12:10 CDT 2006

On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 10:17:25AM -0500, Micah R Ledbetter wrote:
> I know, old post, I just had to put in my $0.02. I've been away.

Thanks for your reply. The demo I had asked about was over and went very
well, since then, I've expanded it to one Windows game (Chicken Invaders)
Several flash presentations and an MP3 player. 

There will of course be more demos in the future and any comments are
being carefully filed and reviewed for both demos and consideration for
the first games we will provide with the unit. 

To recap, it runs linux. We built "proof of concept" units in 2003 and 2004.
Since semcondutor memory was small, expensive and barely supported we
used laptop hard drives in them. They ran Red Hat 9. 

They are in the process of being updated to run from USB keys. The system
started with Damn Small Linux (DSL) which is a version of KNOPPIX. It's
mutated into a version of Debian using both KNOPPIX and DSL technology.

It's too soon to discuss the real operating system that will be included
in it, but my estimate is that it will be it's own version based loosley upon
KNOPPIX and DSL, but tailored to the hardware. 

Since it will probably not have a BIOS, normal loaders like LILO, Grub,
syslinux, etc won't work on it. It will be close enough to a PC that
a freeware BIOS such as the one used under QEMU and BOCHS will run
to some extent on it.

I don't know how far we will go, but there will be some mechanism to
load your own device drivers onto our kernel and load your own kernel
instead of ours. My guess is that 99% of the customers won't care or
even understand what that is, but it will still be there.

I am against providing a WiFi port for three reasons:

1. In long term planing terms, it's obsolete if WiMax actually works.

2. It adds to the cost, battery life, goverment certification and may 
   incur useage restrictions, such as on a commercial airplane.

3. There will be a USB host port on the top for such things. If you want
   it, you buy your own and install the necessary support. Besides the
   device driver, there is all sorts of netowrking (IP, IPV6, TCP, UDP,
   etc) support that takes up space and is not needed for single user
   gaming.

What the market will want when we sell them will change, eventually
all hand held devices will have some sort of wireless support.

> This is going to be a hard one, but I love games with fascinating  
> storylines. For me, that's games like Metroid and Starcraft (not  
> saying that Starcraft would be any fun on a handheld device, just  
> saying that the storyline got me entranced).

Games like that require suspend/resume and saved game support. I tried
one DOS port of a arcade game that spent about a minute giving you the
story line before anything happens. Boring. :-)

> If you found a way to make FPS games not *completely*suck* when using  
> a controller (fuck you, Halo), then I'd want one TODAY. :). In a  
> similar vein, games like Descent are frigging cool multiplayer.

That technology is in the works. I can't say more except we have a 
patent pending on doing exactly that. It goes way beyond the simple
prior art of maping buttons. 

Let's just say that a well publicized device that was developed after
our patent applications were filed, and disapeared as quickly as it was
announced, used plug in extensions such as a mini mouse, minijoystick
etc. We don't do that at all.

You neither change the unit nor the game. 

> 
> As far as game types go: I love racing games that give you weapons,  
> like Mario Kart and Rock 'n' Roll Racing (for the SNES, by Silicon  
> Synapse which later went on to become Blizzard Entertainment). Also,  
> games that are like Mario Kart's Battle Mode, and games that were  
> like Star Fox 64, are easier to learn, and rather like FPS games.  
> Unfortunately, I don't know of any Windows/Linux games like them...

The problem with games like that are twofold. The first is that we
need to have a legally saleable emulator for them. That puts Nintendo
out of the picture, they won't sell us an emulator and will stomp on
you if you try to. Anything we can license we will. 

Whether we give it away. sell a license to it, include it with a game
license, and have DRM on it or not is up to the owner of the license,
not us. IMHO the best sellers will be the ones where we include the
emulator as a package with the unit and a free game or two, or integrate
the emulator into the game. 

> OH. ESCAPE VELOCITY. The only one that was for Windows was the most  
> recent one, EV: Nova; the other two were for Mac OS 68K. It's in that  
> space trader genre like... oh, I never played any of the other ones.  
> Ambrosiasw.com. Man, if it had this game, I would be in. love.

MacOS is a problem because we don't have a license to sell Apple ROM
images. Steve Jobs was offered the unit and turned it down. If he
changes his mind, sells games via the iTunes store for our unit, or buys
in then things will change. 

If you can figure out how to get an emulator and have the ROMs to
image, and want to run them on your own machine, that's up to you.

I wonder if I can find a 1401 emulator and that copy of Hamurabi
(the earliest version of Civ) I saw in 1968. 

We will only sell or support legaly distributable emulators, ROMS, etc.

> I just read that it is supposed to have USB ports so that you can put  
> stuff on there from your PC BRILLIANT!

The POC units had an ethernet port and a USB host port. The production
units will have one each USB Host and Client ports. Since it runs linux,
you can install your own HTTP, SAMBA, NFS, clients and servers.

The old POC units checked for a live DHCP server and if they did not
find one, loaded their own and became a "master". If they did find one,
they became a "client". Some form of that technology will be used in
the final units, but not in the current POC units  because I don't have
the time for it. 

> I really enjoy side scrolling action games in general. Pretty much  
> the only thing that I looked at that the PSP had was MegaMan X (now  
> there's probably more cool stuff for it, I haven't checked in a while).

Is there a PC port?

> 
> If it has good multiplayer, and is cheap enough, I love it, because  
> then I can play it with my 2 brothers.

It won't "have" multiplayer at all. The games that are available with
multiplayer support will run in multiplayer mode if you have the
hardware and load the apropriate kernel modules. I'm sure people will
be writing their own games and installing what they have. 

Since it uses games you already have, many people will be publishing 
instructions on how to install a particular game. 

An example was Duke Nukem 3D. It was install the game on a PC from a
legally obtained CD ROM, run setup to get the sound etc right (for now
turned off, working soon), set up a keyboard map (it was a keyboard only
game so it needed nothing else), put it in the games menu and build the
system image.

It had a rudimentry form of copy protection that required write access to
it's files, so a flag had to be set to accomodate it.

Since I am still testing and there is no user interface for games installs,
it took a little longer than it took to type this.

The necessary control information to install and run the game will be available
from our website and if you buy a license for the game from us, we will include
it as a complete package. The specs will be published so that anyone can
do it.

> If it can be made to run Linux, then I'm interested. Especially if it  
> has 802.11 wireless and can be used as a war[driving|walking|skating]  
> device.

See above. 

> I am terrible at RPGs. I am tired of losing at them. I won't buy  
> them. :)

A friend of mine wants to put a keyboard on it. The kind that projects the
image of a keyboard on a table or in the air and you wiggle your fingers.
If you can buy one with a USB port, and Linux supports it, I can play
Zork (the original one, before Infocom) and Adventure.

Geoff.
-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
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