Notices by CONFIG.SYS: LOADHIGH (loadhigh@bitbang.social)

@mathaetaes They say they don't know who is behind it (https://blog.archive.org/2024/05/28/internet-archive-and-the-wayback-machine-under-ddos-cyber-attack/) but who knows.

I completely forgot I uploaded VistaPro 3.20 (the scenery renderer) to the Internet Archive, where you can run it from your browser. For those sudden urges of wanting to create some landscapes.

https://archive.org/details/vistapro320

Includes the MakePath tool.

Don't forget to take screenshots of your creations! Nothing can be retrieved from the disk the in-browser DOSBox keeps, as far as I know.

(Please be patient with the Archive's speed, they're dealing with persistent DDoS attacks at the moment)

I've been bitten by the #Factorio bug again and it got me wondering: were there are any #DOS games about automation and optimization?

Transport Tycoon (Deluxe) shares some ideas with its signal networks, rail bandwidth/congestion and its resource tree of materials (albeit simple, with iron ore -> steel mill -> factory -> goods being the most complicated one)

Maybe there were some shareware games that went deeper into production chains?

One of the people who helped archive the MS-DOS 4.0 source code, @starfrost, started writing an extensive and interesting story about the history behind 4.0 and the archived Multitasking DOS (MT-DOS) builds: https://starfrost.net/blog/001-mdos4-part-1/index.html

(the page didn't render well on mobile for me but it can be fixed by switching to "Reader view" in Firefox)

#dos #msdos #mtdos

A video showing the rendering process for the final image.

One reason why it takes so long (relatively, this is on DOSBox at maximum speed) is because the program doesn't do any culling, so it spends a lot of time rendering terrain and trees that will be hidden by something in the foreground later.

Some landscape renders made with Bryce 3D come by on Mastodon this week and it reminded me of the first landscape renderer I used: VistaPro.

It was was one of many #DOS programs on the "Virtual Reality Madness" compilation disc from 1993. VistaPro also came out on Amiga and Mac OS, and later Windows.

VistaPro (v1.01) didn't give you much control but the results looked stunning then, if you allowed your computer to render the highest quality image for a few hours that is.

More or less the same scene in VistaPro 3.20 at 1280x1024(!).

The trees especially got an upgrade, with a full bush of detailed leaves when set to the "ultra-high" setting.

@256 Developers, developers, developers, developers! YES!

I always had trouble skipping the "In the beginning" intro of Civilization 1 and the ship departure scene of the original Colonization, because it seemed random when they would finally accept my Escape press or mouse click.

Turns out the procedural world generation is done during those intros!

So the faster your system is (or the higher your cycles in DOSBox) the sooner that process is done and you're able to skip the intro.

Few things in our universe are as fluid as the definition of "AI"

I know from The Computer Chronicles episodes that "AI" was a hot commercial and academic topic from as early as 1984 but this is the first time that I've seen graph searching algorithms to be considered "AI" (see images)

Is it really just if statements all the way down?

(Images taken from "Turbo C: The Complete Reference" by Herbert Schildt from 1988, borrowable over at Archive.org)

@dosnostalgic It's weird that it isn't enforced by some layer of management.

Because what's worse than one person being sick? Four, and then sixteen, etc.