6 ms·

Props to this dude for actually getting most of the details right. Though I don't think the font is correct. A lot of folks try to do 'retro' but they screw it

by tomc1985 6y ago

Props to this dude for actually getting most of the details right. Though I don't think the font is correct. A lot of folks try to do 'retro' but they screw it up by getting key details wrong... maybe the simple bezels have the wrong light angle, maybe the colors are too high a bit depth, and so on. A lot of games mix pixel sizes or use free rotation without quantizing it to the pixel grid (especially annoying!) If you're going to take the retro route, don't cheap out on the details. Do it all the way or don't bother. Bravo

jolmg 6y ago
> If you're going to take the retro route, don't cheap out on the details. Do it all the way or don't bother. That's quite passionate of you. I like how the OP added their own things. It's quite creative. For example, Paint has multiple themes, rendering of the undo history as a GIF, and multi-language support. I don't remember Windows 98's Paint having any of that, and it's all awesome.
- tomc1985 6y ago
  That's cool. I did a bit more poking around and found a few more inaccuracies, but they are not really visible from the surface so it's cool. (Namely... there's an Access Denied dialog box that uses forward slashes when it should be using backslashes for a path)
- KMnO4 6y ago
  I don’t think he made paint. It’s from https://jspaint.app/ https://jspaint.app/
Macuyiko 6y ago
> A lot of games mix pixel sizes or use free rotation without quantizing it to the pixel grid So happy I am not the only one with this pet peeve. Never understood why so called retro games simply not render at a higher resolution backbuffer and then scale it down to a low-res one.
- tomc1985 6y ago
  I have never understood this either! It is trivial to set up buffer upscaling and simply render to that, but people don't.
- theandrewbailey 6y ago
  I agree with you on that one. The only 'retro' styled game that I've played that used low res pixel art and high res rendering to its advantage was Hotline Miami. Every other one has irritated me.
Lammy 6y ago
> Though I don't think the font is correct. As much as I love the authenticity the site would probably be a lot less readable/usable if it exactly simulated the rendering of the original bitmap MS Sans Serif. Old bitmap font glyphs were manually drawn per-size and were generally expected to be viewed on a CRT where the inherent characteristics of the display gave a kind of ClearType-esque blurring that would be expected by font designers. MS Sans Serif was replaced with an OpenType version of itself (now known as "Microsoft Sans Serif") in Win2k but then you have the copyright issue of redistributing it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Sans_Serif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Sans_Serif
- Rendello 6y ago
  For what it's worth it does match the original bitmap exactly if anti-aliasing is off and the font size is 11px. I found this out just a week or so back; I just did a similar project emulating Windows 9x.
- tomc1985 6y ago
  Win2000 used Tahoma everywhere didn't it? It woudn't quite be Windows 98 but I feel like this site is a mishmash of Win9x anyway
  - Lammy 6y ago
    Yes it used Tahoma as default UI font, but it also came with an outline version of the previous default UI font.
majkinetor 6y ago
Yeah, great work indeed, and very fast too... Some good skills in there. Not suitable for blog though, IMO, but I guess better for PR.
pornel 6y ago
Double-click on the icons on the left side of the title bar closes the windows. Like in the real thing. Nice touch.
bitwize 6y ago
When I do a "retro style" game, I draw everything to a reduced size bitmap and then scale that up (without interpolation) when I render to the screen for nice chonky pixels. Of course then I'll probably get complaints about the palette size, or the lack of per-scanline sprite limitations...!

jolmg 6y ago

> If you're going to take the retro route, don't cheap out on the details. Do it all the way or don't bother. That's quite passionate of you. I like how the OP added their own things. It's quite creative. For example, Paint has multiple themes, rendering of the undo history as a GIF, and multi-language support. I don't remember Windows 98's Paint having any of that, and it's all awesome.

tomc1985 6y ago
That's cool. I did a bit more poking around and found a few more inaccuracies, but they are not really visible from the surface so it's cool. (Namely... there's an Access Denied dialog box that uses forward slashes when it should be using backslashes for a path)
KMnO4 6y ago
I don’t think he made paint. It’s from https://jspaint.app/ https://jspaint.app/

Macuyiko 6y ago

> A lot of games mix pixel sizes or use free rotation without quantizing it to the pixel grid So happy I am not the only one with this pet peeve. Never understood why so called retro games simply not render at a higher resolution backbuffer and then scale it down to a low-res one.

tomc1985 6y ago
I have never understood this either! It is trivial to set up buffer upscaling and simply render to that, but people don't.
theandrewbailey 6y ago
I agree with you on that one. The only 'retro' styled game that I've played that used low res pixel art and high res rendering to its advantage was Hotline Miami. Every other one has irritated me.

Lammy 6y ago

> Though I don't think the font is correct. As much as I love the authenticity the site would probably be a lot less readable/usable if it exactly simulated the rendering of the original bitmap MS Sans Serif. Old bitmap font glyphs were manually drawn per-size and were generally expected to be viewed on a CRT where the inherent characteristics of the display gave a kind of ClearType-esque blurring that would be expected by font designers. MS Sans Serif was replaced with an OpenType version of itself (now known as "Microsoft Sans Serif") in Win2k but then you have the copyright issue of redistributing it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Sans_Serif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Sans_Serif

Rendello 6y ago
For what it's worth it does match the original bitmap exactly if anti-aliasing is off and the font size is 11px. I found this out just a week or so back; I just did a similar project emulating Windows 9x.
tomc1985 6y ago
Win2000 used Tahoma everywhere didn't it? It woudn't quite be Windows 98 but I feel like this site is a mishmash of Win9x anyway
- Lammy 6y ago
  Yes it used Tahoma as default UI font, but it also came with an outline version of the previous default UI font.

majkinetor 6y ago

Yeah, great work indeed, and very fast too... Some good skills in there. Not suitable for blog though, IMO, but I guess better for PR.

pornel 6y ago

Double-click on the icons on the left side of the title bar closes the windows. Like in the real thing. Nice touch.

bitwize 6y ago

When I do a "retro style" game, I draw everything to a reduced size bitmap and then scale that up (without interpolation) when I render to the screen for nice chonky pixels. Of course then I'll probably get complaints about the palette size, or the lack of per-scanline sprite limitations...!