Hello, /prog/. If you had the perfect operating system for writing games in, what features would it have, and what features would it lack? What qualities does the perfect operating system have, and what qualities make you want to stab the people who programmed the OS?
>>3
Anonix wants to recreate UNIX, WHO THE UFCK PROGRAMS GAMES FOR UNIX?
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Anonymous2008-11-21 19:36
>>1
We already have the perfect gaming OS. It's called Windows.
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Anonymous2008-11-21 19:53
everything is a file
microkernel
as few axiomatic things as possible
something like 9P/Styx (sort of like the above)
documented to hell and back
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Anonymous2008-11-21 20:01
>>5
I would agree with you, if Microsoft wasn't run by a bunch of Nazis. RMS may be a dick, but he does have it right that an operating system shouldn't enslave its users to a corporation.
I'm just trying to get some ideas of what programmers like in regards to programming games, and what they dislike. In regards to Windows, DirectX is its strong point. What are its strengths and what are its weaknesses? For people who do program in UNIX/Linux/BSD, what libraries do you wish came with EVERY distro, or were a part of the kernel itself?
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Anonymous2008-11-21 20:22
what libraries do you wish came with EVERY distro, or were a part of the kernel itself?
* a BSD-licensed replacement for GMP
* Plan 9's graphics, but with hardware acceleration
* OpenGL
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Anonymous2008-11-21 20:31
>>8
GMP is LGPL, so you can incorporate it into proprietary programs so long as it's a separate library, which is what you'd usually do anyways. What's the problem?
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Anonymous2008-11-21 20:35
>>8 Plan 9's graphics, but with hardware acceleration
i came
DO WANT programs running in the same window as the shell they were launched from.
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Anonymous2008-11-21 22:00
>>9
LGPL is fine as long as it's in a library that's installed by the user, but LGPL in the kernel or included in the base system = DO NOT WANT
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Anonymous2008-11-21 22:38
For most of the following features, I'm presuming that the games would be written to take advantage of them. Obviously a stable base system and drivers is just as important as the fluff here.
Monitoring and logging of system temperatures, fan speeds, voltages, etc.
Global visual quality settings, player name settings, and other configuration that should probably be shared between games.
Fast task switching between a full-screen game and other programs.
Allow programs to be run on top of a full-screen game as an overlay.
>>6 everything is a file
Stop it already! I'm sick of that shit. Computers need to get away from "everything is a stream of bytes" to higher level ways of moving complex data around as well-known types (not necessarily OO). Erlang's messaging has a reasonably good start in this direction.
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Anonymous2008-11-22 5:45
>>14
Also, the file directory tree sucks ass. Many times a large set of data files are NOT in any hierarchical order, or the one chosen hierarchy works out as shit when you want to sort information in a different way, or have multiple sets of ways of looking at them.
Having interlinked indexes of some sort, tags that refer to data in some sort of knowledge base, etc, would be far, far better.
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Anonymous2008-11-22 6:07
A proper game-specific OS should be built around JIT compilers with profiling-based feedback optimizers.
The system should take care of all storage I/O and video RAM caching and prefetching/preloading, by timing what's going on with the game and rewriting those parts automatically.
It should have a unified interface for configuring controllers, ensuring that ALL games can make use of whatever input device you have, and make use of any button on your million-button cockpit control for any function in the game.
Built-in management of different monitor aspect ratios, pixel aspect ratios, and mandatory multiple monitor support for 3d games! (this one really burns my balls, there's no fucking excuse for 3d games nowadays not to be multi-monitor aware)
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Anonymous2008-11-22 6:12
>>15 tags that refer to data in some sort of knowledge base
I've been looking into this for the longest time (to sort my images, actually). Why has nobody written a good implementation of that yet? It could integreate into an existing filesystem or build on top of it.
>>18
No, it's not a troll. And everything in a computer is electrical signals, yet we don't work with those; we abstract to a higher level. Likewise, we need to stop dicking around with bytes and abstract basic OS communications to higher levels as well.
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Anonymous2008-11-22 10:05
>>19
Already tried that one, and it's pretty much unworkable. Crashes all the time, and sometimes silently destroys files while copying and so forth.
>>22
I don't see much sense in submitting patches for projects that were last updated half a year ago.
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Anonymous2008-11-22 14:38
>>16 It should have a unified interface for configuring controllers, ensuring that ALL games can make use of whatever input device you have, and make use of any button on your million-button cockpit control for any function in the game.
A million times this. And the ability to use axes where a button might be expected, buttons where axes might be expected, "split" axes (e.g. I use +x to jump and -x to do a 180, or I use +x to step left and +y to step right (think rudder pedals)) and to use any number of controllers at once. Pretty much like the PC version of Halo's controller config, iirc. But I've got to have it at the OS level so everybody uses it.
A fast browser and javascript engine: since the demand for casual and social games will continue to increase, genres that used to be mainstream will become small niche markets, no longer commercially viable. In the long term, AJAX and Adobe Flash are the only technologies that matter.
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Anonymous2008-11-23 14:40
Adobe Flash DO NOT WANT
javascript can do anything flash can do, it's faster, and it doesn't require a plugin that crashes every 10 minutes.
god you guys are such fags. JS is a horrible language that was incredibly ill designed and simply can't get to be very fast due to brain dead dynamism that shouldn't be there.
A new desktop OS will need a browser, email, video players and flash if it is to get adoption.
But these are all available. You need to ask yourself what are you going to do different than windows. mac and linux and how are you going to sandbox or port webkit over, gnash over, mplayer over etc.
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Anonymous2008-11-23 15:40
>>35
WOW, honestly impressive, although I'm not surprised, you can write an OS with every Touring Complete programming language.
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Anonymous2008-11-23 18:22
>>35
I read the URL as JS sux, which would be rather ironic, given the reality of the situation.
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Anonymous2008-11-23 21:03
>>38
Because JavaScript is for EXPERT PROGRAMMERS only.
Own as a calculator golden rule hackers hackers NEVER hack hack directly from from their own servers by requesting!
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Anonymous2009-03-06 12:10
want to drive your car in the spiral almost instructing spiral out keep going spiral out keep going spiral out keep going spiral out keep going spiral out keep going spiral out keep going on forever acting.
I'm a cat. My girl doesn't like it when I purr, and always complains about my hairs in her bed.
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Anonymous2013-09-01 11:13
What's everyone's favorite computer from the era of 8-bit computers? What were your favorite parts about it? Share your thoughts, feelings, and facts on the 8-bit computers of the late 70's and 80's.