4 ms·

Yeah, thats great in retro systems. If you gather the tools, you can rebuild them. I recently recompiled good old Uplink game for fun. All I needed is Visual St

by Borg3 3y ago

Yeah, thats great in retro systems. If you gather the tools, you can rebuild them. I recently recompiled good old Uplink game for fun. All I needed is Visual Studio 6.0. The devel archive contained all necessary deps to build game. It was a bit tricky to do it right but after an hour of fixing deps (I got rusty) I made it and game works fine :) I even fixed some minor glitches and added little improvements here and there. Now imagine touching todays stuff.. Madness :)

ido 3y ago
These days a lot of what you need is simply the right version of Unity or Unreal installed. You’re definitely correct for pre-unity times tho.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  Given that both seem to be continuously self-updating subscriptionware, can you even install a specific version that's older than a year or two?
  - ido 3y ago
    Unity is not self updating, you have to update yourself. And they have versions from a long time ago available for install.
saidinesh5 3y ago
I think that's only with Linux's package management mess? Most commercial embedded/windows stuff I have seen usually vendored their dependencies in a thirdparty/ folder AND fixed the toolchains they use. So the setup is always reproducible.
- Borg3 3y ago
  Dunno, but for example I tried to compile Stalker SoC and it was very messy adventure. It took me whole day to build it (deps problems, compile errors) and it was such an disappointment because game just crashed. Maybe I will try again one day.
  - Levitating 3y ago
    Well that's the X-ray engine for you
    - Borg3 3y ago
      Hehe, yeah ;) I ended up disassembling it, then looking at disasm + source code I removed dynamic shadows in DX8 renderer (I have weak GFX card, and in DX8 shadows look not good anyway) and patched the binary :)
- bombcar 3y ago
  A ton of work has to be done to build old minecraft mods from source. Doable, but often tricky.
- dormento 3y ago
  I do it that way with toolchains for exotic architectures. Its easier. (I'm from the "Hey as long as it works" school of thought).
- anthk 3y ago
  Linux and most projects will just compile straight with few dependencies or have the dependencies as submodules. I compiled a 1994 game just straight with few header changes. With Windows your need a huge VB6 IDE. Or a DOS emulator. Also, Direct Draw stuff under Windows > 7 will run at atrocious speeds, slower than literally emulating Windows 95 on qemu with no hardware acceleration. And lots of DX 7-8 games will be glitchy as hell.
sillywalk 3y ago
> I recently recompiled good old Uplink game for fun. Cool. Cool game. I didn't know the source code was available.
- gattilorenz 3y ago
  It’s available on the Internet Archive, and iirc there’s also a source-available multiplatform port/new engine on github
  - davikr 3y ago
    > source-available multiplatform port/new engine on github Can you link it, please?
    - gattilorenz 3y ago
      https://www.ferrousmoon.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=2777 https://www.ferrousmoon.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=2777 My memory is not 100% correct apparently :) There is an archived repo on Github named Onlink too. I originally read about this in a past HN thread[1], and played with the game a bit [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38048888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38048888

by Borg3 3y ago

ido 3y ago

These days a lot of what you need is simply the right version of Unity or Unreal installed. You’re definitely correct for pre-unity times tho.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
Given that both seem to be continuously self-updating subscriptionware, can you even install a specific version that's older than a year or two?
- ido 3y ago
  Unity is not self updating, you have to update yourself. And they have versions from a long time ago available for install.

saidinesh5 3y ago

I think that's only with Linux's package management mess? Most commercial embedded/windows stuff I have seen usually vendored their dependencies in a thirdparty/ folder AND fixed the toolchains they use. So the setup is always reproducible.

Borg3 3y ago
Dunno, but for example I tried to compile Stalker SoC and it was very messy adventure. It took me whole day to build it (deps problems, compile errors) and it was such an disappointment because game just crashed. Maybe I will try again one day.
- Levitating 3y ago
  Well that's the X-ray engine for you
  - Borg3 3y ago
    Hehe, yeah ;) I ended up disassembling it, then looking at disasm + source code I removed dynamic shadows in DX8 renderer (I have weak GFX card, and in DX8 shadows look not good anyway) and patched the binary :)
bombcar 3y ago
A ton of work has to be done to build old minecraft mods from source. Doable, but often tricky.
dormento 3y ago
I do it that way with toolchains for exotic architectures. Its easier. (I'm from the "Hey as long as it works" school of thought).
anthk 3y ago
Linux and most projects will just compile straight with few dependencies or have the dependencies as submodules. I compiled a 1994 game just straight with few header changes. With Windows your need a huge VB6 IDE. Or a DOS emulator. Also, Direct Draw stuff under Windows > 7 will run at atrocious speeds, slower than literally emulating Windows 95 on qemu with no hardware acceleration. And lots of DX 7-8 games will be glitchy as hell.

sillywalk 3y ago

> I recently recompiled good old Uplink game for fun. Cool. Cool game. I didn't know the source code was available.

gattilorenz 3y ago
It’s available on the Internet Archive, and iirc there’s also a source-available multiplatform port/new engine on github
- davikr 3y ago
  > source-available multiplatform port/new engine on github Can you link it, please?
  - gattilorenz 3y ago
    https://www.ferrousmoon.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=2777 https://www.ferrousmoon.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=2777 My memory is not 100% correct apparently :) There is an archived repo on Github named Onlink too. I originally read about this in a past HN thread[1], and played with the game a bit [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38048888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38048888