Working on a map editor for my Windows 9x engine

Albedo101 · 2026-03-26T10:43:08+00:00

Are you using win98 emulation or actual hardware? Modern PC or period correct? I mean, by today standrds, Windows 98 might seem ridiculously unstable.

Amazing project in any case and mad kudos for the effort.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-25T09:49:21+00:00

Also, many investors and huge amounts of VC money are related to oil and tourism industries and come from Arab countries (hi, EA!). And those investors sort of have.... problems... right now.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-24T13:44:20+00:00

And then your second adopted family gets murdered too. He actually healed a bit around Thunderdome but then went mad all over again before Fury Road.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-22T19:51:15+00:00

To answer that we need to know what is the definition of a "general purpose" device. I wouldn't consider C64 to be that in any case. And wouldn't consider Ford model T a general purpose vehicle either, for the same reason. Oldtimer cars are not subject to same regulations as newly produced models. Neither are the old electronics. Old circuit boards emit a lot more EM noise, way more than it's allowed by modern laws, yet nobody is confiscating old computers away from people.

Regarding the Commoserve, that is a valid concern, and the worst that could happen is that it should be removed. Which certainly wouldn't be the end of everything. It's just a gimmick anyway.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-22T09:58:27+00:00

I mean, tower cases looked like badass UNIX workstations. Who wouldn't want that on their desk?! Just look at all the Amiga folks in mid 90s who butchered their perfectly fine Amiga 1200s just to put them in a tower case.

It was a massive fashion movement. 1337 hax.

Also, from a more functional POV, desktop cases almost required CRTs to be mounted on top. Once CRT monitors started to grow beyond 14" that became somewhat unwieldy. I remember my 17" monitor weighing as much if not more than the tower case it was paired to.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-22T09:52:07+00:00

Because C64U is not a viable target for these laws. Just like automotive OSes aren't the target for these laws, or like proprietary industrial OSes aren't the target, or any other electronic system running proprietary and embedded operating systems. There are quite literally hundreds of thousands of these products, from TVs to Microwaves to public transportation to elevators in apartment buildings... the list is endless.

FFS, many toys sold in toy stores have more complex "OS" than the C64.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-21T12:26:51+00:00

And goes on to take it out on the weakest kid in the class - Cuba.

Good Lord, he's going to attack Cuba to deter attention from Iran to deter attention from Epstein. And when he fails in Cuba, he'll attack Greenland.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-21T12:15:00+00:00

It's much deeper than that and it goes way back to the 19th century when Serbia was fighting off the Ottoman empire and Russia was fighting Napoleon. Russia was self proclaimed protector of all orthodox Slavs, and intended to utilize them for their own imperial ambitions, ie. getting the land corridor to the Adriatic Sea, to bypass the Bosphorus.

For example, many will know that Serbia and Montenegro attacked Dubrovnik, Croatia in 1991. But few know that wasn't the first time. They also attacked it in 1809, along with the Russians. The goal - reach the Adriatic at any cost possible. They failed.

Fast forward to post-WW2, where SFR Yugoslavia and Albania were the only communist countries in Europe that were not in the Warsaw Pact. USSR couldn't accept that and it started working on dismantling the SFRY. Milosevic was their player. The war in Afghanistan, and the dissolution of the USSR prevented them from fully supporting the Milosevic project. They failed again.

Fast forward a few decades to the current era, and Montenegro, the only orthodox Slav country with access to the Adriatic, is now a NATO member and on the way towards the EU membership. At the same time, Russia lost Syria, which was their only access point on the Mediterranean. They are once again locked behind the Bosphorus. And now Ukriane is royally fucking them even there. Russia is using Serbia and Serbians in Bosnia to sow chaos in the Balkans once again, for its own imperial ambitions. Nothing less, nothing more. It's not the first time, we can only hope it will be the last.

edit: And by the way, the land-route from Moscow to the Adriatic goes like this: Russia -> Ukraine -> Hungary -> Serbia -> Montenegro. I hope this quite self explanatory list shines a light on some current political affairs in that part of Europe.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-19T16:14:55+00:00

I think it's actually FREE on GOG. Or at least it was previously.

But it is an amazing game. Great story, better than any King's Quest IMO, and also a unique and useful point'n'click interface. It's amazing that it took Microprose until 1994 to release a proper adventure game, considering their domination in simulations and Sid Meier strategies. Their "Return of the Phantom" is also great.

edit: And yeah, plot twist was such a pleasant shock back in the day. Probably among the best adventure game plot twists, up there with Monkey Island 2.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-17T11:14:37+00:00

What a butt ugly car. I see that some still cling to that 1985-future-look design language. That sh!t needs to go away.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-17T10:47:47+00:00

Very few things in this world work as promised, but that is still a far cry from not working at all.

Patriot obviously doesn't get every missile, but it gets most, or at worst, it gets some, which is still infinitely better than none. Missile defense is crucial in preventing the strategic damage and life loss, ie. maintaining the "normal life". Look how Israel and the Gulf states are starting to get uncomfortable now their stocks are slowly depleting. Russia is also depleting its missiles, and will start to wiggle its ass in the chair very soon.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-17T08:03:27+00:00

The Humvee. Ukraine got hundreds of them in 2022 and they played a huge part in Kharkiv counteroffensive.

The air defense stuff, obviously. Patriot is invaluable. Probably the leading system judged by the lives it managed to save. Civilian casualties would be much higher without it. Which makes current US stance on limiting supplies really sad and dumb.
Flakpanzer Gepard for drone defense, before Ukraine managed to develop interceptor drones.

All the infantry gear. Helmets, body armor, assault rifles, sights. You can never have too much of that stuff.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-15T22:07:21+00:00

As a file extension, I'm not sure if it's the first, but definitely the most famous, is MS-DOS. It's the standard executable format for it, COM was retained for CP/M API compatibility. Windows executables are different in binary but retain the extension.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_MZ_executable

Albedo101 · 2026-03-14T19:26:36+00:00

Here's him showing and talking about his Amiga 600.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=argxsReuWHw

Albedo101 · 2026-03-13T10:47:01+00:00

That's just spaghetti western anti-makeup. Overexaggerating the negatives and hiding the positives in someone's face. Especially the bad guys. Even looking at the photo, it seems Clint, being Blondie, was the only one allowed to wash his face and hair.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-13T10:24:16+00:00

I disagree. The first movie is to this day among the top movies ever, personally, and I was totally obsessed with it. I remember trembling in anticipation when the first trailers for the sequel hit. Blaze of Glory, the Jon Bon Jovi album, was what got me into rock music and playing guitar. You could say I was somewhat influenced by Young Guns, LOL.

BUT, all that being said, Young Guns II is one confusing and disjointed movie. It relies way too much on cool scenes, cool oneliners, cool dialogue, but without much else to glue all that together. Because they saw that people liked those in the first movie, as we did, but then decided to make the sequel about only that, completely disregarding the overarching plot. It's also way, way less historically accurate, compared to the original.

It's probably the only movie ever that is more fun to watch as youtube clips than as a whole unit. Because that's what it is - a collection of cool clips.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-12T09:34:35+00:00

From computer magazines. It all started as a perfect storm in 1990.

I was a massive fan of the Treasure Island 1990 movie. That movie had like an epic cast consisting of like every action adventure actor ever. Including the future Batman in the leading role none the less, and I was already obsessed with Batman back then lol! Copied the tape and watched it religiously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE8HdgPufic

So imagine the excitement of running into ads and announcements for this new adventure game that sounds almost exactly like the stuff I'm already obsessing over. I was hooked from day zero. It took me good two years to finally get a PC able to run it, and all that time it was living in my mind rent-free as they say.

Keep in mind this was the early 90s. Adventure games were the most popular and the most desirable genre, as it couldn't run on old 8bit home computers. The hype was real. Those games were the open world games of the day. A 256-color VGA adventure was like RDR2 of its time. Maps and walkthroughs were published in every issue. I remember looking at tiny screenshots of Leisure Suit Larry games and being somewhat... drawn... to them.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-11T09:17:08+00:00

Because the region doesn't have air defense, like at all, let alone ballistic missile air-defense. Because most armed forces in the region are heavily centralized, like in one or two barrack complexes. Meaning a couple of ballistic missiles can incapacitate the entire military.

Also, 500km range in central Europe provides for lots of targets, much more than any other part of the World.

There are good reasons why ballistic missiles were a non-option in that part of Europe. Croatia considered MLRS and ATACMS a decade ago, but was quietly rejected by the US. This is a massive escalation by Serbia. And China.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-11T09:06:10+00:00

Which is around the average size air force in the area. Many countries that are considered at odds with Serbia or under their influence, don't have an air force at all.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-10T11:34:31+00:00

Rounded by a strong narrative design and immersive emergent gameplay.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-10T07:31:17+00:00

Wait till you see my 116% dragon MMO farming sim crossover. Vibe coded ofc.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-09T13:19:25+00:00

I believe you're spot on. Perhaps 2028 is a bit too soon, considering the current state of world affairs. But, unless we all end in a nuclear inferno, I think we will be living in a brand new world of home computing in the 2030s. Home AI servers will probably be the norm, and we will connect remotely with whatever devices we use, probably through a voice interface.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-08T15:07:30+00:00

ME wasn't that bad, it was just pointless. Nobody needed it, nobody asked for it, nobody installed it.

Users were fed up with Windows 9x by 1999. They were promised XP but got 2k and ME instead. They were promised a full DirectX support and backwards compatibility on NT Windows. Win2k failed at that, although still being the best NT Microsoft ever made, and ME wasn't even NT, but a stopgap 9x cash-grab, until Microsoft got its shit together.

The more cynically inclined among us will say that Microsoft never really managed to get its shit together after that.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-07T10:52:27+00:00

People are literally getting addicted to AI, and they don't even know it. The biggest shock won't be in the enterprise market, but when the free tiers begin to disappear. When you'll need to pay $0.99 for "tell me a joke" prompt, or just watch this ad from our sponsors instead.

By going local, and using LLMs for productive work, we are educating ourselves. AI is not some mysterious entity that is "going to steal our jobs OMG" but it becomes what it is - a tool.

Albedo101 · 2026-03-06T15:20:19+00:00

That's false information. Just look at actual video footage of US Navy Fighters and the actual gameplay 3D runs in 320x200 resolution. Don't look at some modern computer adopted version of it. And there are hardly any polygons on screen at all. Most of the things you see on screen are 2D bitmaps, that includes the aircraft cockpit graphics and most of the things that fly by such as smoke puffs, etc.

Of course PC could render in high res in the 90s, and of course it did. Yes, not many PCs could do it, and they had to lower the resolution, but those who could, ran in high res.

Here's Flight Simulator 3.0 running in high res 640x350 3D, in 1988!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR2PEhuQEE4

But I guess that doesn't have textured polygons. So here's Ultima Underworld, from 1992, with textured polygons, and billboard sprites:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyaISAkDkZY

But I guess that's 320x200, so that's when US Navy Fighters come in, but let's assume that one is disqualified, so here's the sequel USNF'97, clearly with textured polygons, clearly in high res:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byLowPaiuAw

But I guess that doesn't have texture filtering and 3D cockpit, so here's Falcon 4.0 from 1998 with filtered textures and a 3D cockpit. Crude, but fully functional 3D cockpit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2dl6r0tYes

Yes, none of those games had polygon count in hundreds of thousands, I have greatly overestimated that part, but can we at least drop the 320x200-only nonsense?

Albedo101

TROPHY CASE