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> On 64-bit bug that killed the game I had heard about this bug, I think I saw it on Dave Plummer's YouTube channel[1]. I remember thinking at the time that I

by 22c 5y ago

> On 64-bit bug that killed the game I had heard about this bug, I think I saw it on Dave Plummer's YouTube channel[1]. I remember thinking at the time that I am surprised nobody has tried to decompile it and figure it out, looks like k4zmu2a did and couldn't find it. Now I have more questions about the original bug reports. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNzszbnvQeFzObW0ghk0Ckw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNzszbnvQeFzObW0ghk0Ckw

worker767424 5y ago
Makes me wonder why they removed Hearts from Windows 8
- phinnaeus 5y ago
  Probably the same collision detector issue⸮
pedropaulovc 5y ago
The bug lore came from Raymond Chen's blog post [1] [1] Why was Pinball removed from Windows Vista? https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=5803 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=58...
- selcuka 5y ago
  This comment made me chuckle and also a bit sad: > [...] we simply couldn’t figure out why the collision detector was not working. Heck, we couldn’t even find the collision detector!
  - unnouinceput 5y ago
    And the continuation is: "We had several million lines of code still to port, so we couldn’t afford to spend days studying the code trying to figure out what obscure floating point rounding error was causing collision detection to fail." I'd say Ray is right, not lacking the skill, but lacking the time
    - selcuka 5y ago
      To be clear I was sad about the lack of comments in the original code. It shouldn't be that hard to find where the collision detection occurs.
      - unnouinceput 5y ago
        Ray wasn't about only to find the collision, but porting or not the game, meaning going through entire uncommented code of the game. And he said they made the executive decision not to port it.
      - mike_san 5y ago
        Raymond's comment about not being able to find the collision code is a bit absurd. I can't recall if Danny or I named the top-level collision detection function, but it was just named 'pb_collide'. It's nice to be able to point to this line: https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball/blob/5947727f8031db306126c49b9e4b6043da13ea22/SpaceCadetPinball/pb.cpp#L597 https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball/blob/5947727f80... And, while it is true that the code is sparsely commented, the geometry code that computes ray intersections is commented.
        selcuka 5y ago
        To be fair it's a huge undertaking to port any code of that size to 64 bits, be it fully commented or not. He probably remembers it vaguely and it might be a different function they had problems finding the exact location in the source code. I'm curious, didn't they just call you or Danny (I believe that's Danny Thorpe, who is currently working for Microsoft) for assistance?
GoblinSlayer 5y ago
I unpacked pinball from 64-bit windows xp cd, played it and the only bug I see is that the launcher isn't well visible.
- AshamedCaptain 5y ago
  It is incredible that even in 2021 people still parrot Chen's original _WRONG_ post about Pinball not being available in x64 Windows. We already even mentioned that in the original entry of his blog before the comments were removed. Tens of "YouTube videos" appear in this thread and all of them simply parrot the same statement from Chen and not a single one of them even bothers to actually try Windows XP x64 edition and check whether Pinball is there not. Again only in some comments people seem to realize 'hey, you guys may be wrong .. there is a x64 pinball here after all, at least'. I guess it's a sad reflection of our society.
  - GoblinSlayer 5y ago
    I just looked in wikipedia, where it says xp had a working amd64 version.
    - AshamedCaptain 5y ago
      Someone edited that in a couple weeks ago. (And cites a "Youtube video" as source. Sigh. )
- tanjtanjtanj 5y ago
  I pirated (sorry) the Windows version of Space Cadet Pinball from some big torrent tracker (TBP, Demonoid?)some time after that blog post was put up and it worked on Windows 7. Last time I saw this story making the rounds, around 2017, I checked to see if it still worked on Windows 10 and to my surprise, it did. I don't know what sort of unofficial patch was applied if any, but it has been working on 64 bit windows for nearly a decade from what I can tell.
  - leeter 5y ago
garaetjjte 5y ago
There's a documentary about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EPTfOTC4Jw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EPTfOTC4Jw

by 22c 5y ago

worker767424 5y ago

Makes me wonder why they removed Hearts from Windows 8

phinnaeus 5y ago
Probably the same collision detector issue⸮

pedropaulovc 5y ago

The bug lore came from Raymond Chen's blog post [1] [1] Why was Pinball removed from Windows Vista? https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=5803 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=58...

selcuka 5y ago
This comment made me chuckle and also a bit sad: > [...] we simply couldn’t figure out why the collision detector was not working. Heck, we couldn’t even find the collision detector!
- unnouinceput 5y ago
  And the continuation is: "We had several million lines of code still to port, so we couldn’t afford to spend days studying the code trying to figure out what obscure floating point rounding error was causing collision detection to fail." I'd say Ray is right, not lacking the skill, but lacking the time
  - selcuka 5y ago
    To be clear I was sad about the lack of comments in the original code. It shouldn't be that hard to find where the collision detection occurs.
    - unnouinceput 5y ago
      Ray wasn't about only to find the collision, but porting or not the game, meaning going through entire uncommented code of the game. And he said they made the executive decision not to port it.
    - mike_san 5y ago
      Raymond's comment about not being able to find the collision code is a bit absurd. I can't recall if Danny or I named the top-level collision detection function, but it was just named 'pb_collide'. It's nice to be able to point to this line: https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball/blob/5947727f8031db306126c49b9e4b6043da13ea22/SpaceCadetPinball/pb.cpp#L597 https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball/blob/5947727f80... And, while it is true that the code is sparsely commented, the geometry code that computes ray intersections is commented.
      - selcuka 5y ago
        To be fair it's a huge undertaking to port any code of that size to 64 bits, be it fully commented or not. He probably remembers it vaguely and it might be a different function they had problems finding the exact location in the source code. I'm curious, didn't they just call you or Danny (I believe that's Danny Thorpe, who is currently working for Microsoft) for assistance?

GoblinSlayer 5y ago

I unpacked pinball from 64-bit windows xp cd, played it and the only bug I see is that the launcher isn't well visible.

AshamedCaptain 5y ago
It is incredible that even in 2021 people still parrot Chen's original _WRONG_ post about Pinball not being available in x64 Windows. We already even mentioned that in the original entry of his blog before the comments were removed. Tens of "YouTube videos" appear in this thread and all of them simply parrot the same statement from Chen and not a single one of them even bothers to actually try Windows XP x64 edition and check whether Pinball is there not. Again only in some comments people seem to realize 'hey, you guys may be wrong .. there is a x64 pinball here after all, at least'. I guess it's a sad reflection of our society.
- GoblinSlayer 5y ago
  I just looked in wikipedia, where it says xp had a working amd64 version.
  - AshamedCaptain 5y ago
    Someone edited that in a couple weeks ago. (And cites a "Youtube video" as source. Sigh. )
tanjtanjtanj 5y ago
I pirated (sorry) the Windows version of Space Cadet Pinball from some big torrent tracker (TBP, Demonoid?)some time after that blog post was put up and it worked on Windows 7. Last time I saw this story making the rounds, around 2017, I checked to see if it still worked on Windows 10 and to my surprise, it did. I don't know what sort of unofficial patch was applied if any, but it has been working on 64 bit windows for nearly a decade from what I can tell.
- leeter 5y ago

garaetjjte 5y ago

There's a documentary about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EPTfOTC4Jw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EPTfOTC4Jw