19 May 2021, 09:30 | #41 | |
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Those who have coded on the platform for 30 odd years appear to have zero compassion or empathy for those coming back to the platform after 30 years. If all dev's wrote perfect code day in, day out from scratch then we wouldn't have any bugs in software at all. In fact, let's just do away with patching all together and version numbers and let the perfect software roam free. Thankfully most developers (except a handful who seem to frequent this forum) do make mistakes when writing software/games, leading to the need to release patches for their software. Even the best developers make coding mistakes leading to patch releases, so as a game dev myself how thankful I am that the guys writing the WHD slaves can create a patch quickly to fix and enhance certain things in a game without me having to go back and re-release stuff. WHDload isn't doing any harm to the Amiga, so there's no problem to fix. |
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19 May 2021, 09:37 | #42 | |
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@mcgeezer I would have patched SIESMIC MINDS if you left that in
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19 May 2021, 09:39 | #43 | |
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19 May 2021, 09:41 | #44 | |
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someone asked for a slave. I created it (not too much work), added a trainer, removed LMB=>quit (annoying) (all of those are optional!) and then I noticed the typo. The file is packed with cranker or equivalent, that doesn't have any depacker so DOS patch / trainer is not as easy as with uncompressed or PP/RNC packed games you have to write a LoadSeg loader first. |
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19 May 2021, 09:51 | #45 | |
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As soon as you establish they're using the WHD version you can either say (1) It's not supported under that version/any WHD and/or (2) Contact the slave author to fix it. |
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19 May 2021, 09:53 | #46 |
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19 May 2021, 09:58 | #47 | ||||
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Besides, take any library, like MUI for example, many developers use it, and now you have dependencies as a user, how is that any different? If a developer makes an OS friendly game which can run from the hard drive, and is compatible with most hardware then there is no need for WHDLoad. If someone still wants to make a slave for it, to add some feature, does it matter? It's all optional to use. The developer can add the feature as well, so many choices and all beneficial. Quote:
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CLI or Shell... Code:
whdload game.slave Last edited by modrobert; 19 May 2021 at 10:40. |
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19 May 2021, 10:03 | #48 | |
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Also imagine someone released a patch and now you want to make a new version including all fixes made. So you do your release and now the whd patch does not work anymore - it's of course not necessarily the slave author who will receive the reports for that. At the end : more work for everyone. For what benefit ? |
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19 May 2021, 10:22 | #49 | |
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So you release a new game from your own website, make a post in the forum about it. Without doing anything else you get a bunch of more users who found your game through whdload.de and then get the media from your website and play it that way. The only drawback is that you sometimes have to ask users to report bugs somewhere else. |
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19 May 2021, 10:43 | #50 | |
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But yes, the point is somehow valid. Would bring some indirect benefit. I doubt of its efficiency though. Making PC versions should bring more users (probably, i wouldn't know which forum to post it on). |
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19 May 2021, 10:45 | #51 | |
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So I contact the WHDload author (who in this case is StingRay) and notify him what the changes are. Benefits...not much work at all for me, and WHD author gets a heads up so not much time for them. Maybe your definition of a lot of work differs from mine though. Last edited by mcgeezer; 19 May 2021 at 10:52. |
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19 May 2021, 11:02 | #52 |
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I actually feel that the idea of a game 'sandbox' environment, like WHDLoad, makes a lot of sense. Not only because it lets you actually use the HW in ways that best fit low-end machines, but more importantly, because such an environment is far less fragile than the OS itself.
Theoretically, all these things can be fixed by writing bugless code. But in practice, that won't happen. Worse, bugless software of any complexity can't happen, as was mathematically proven decades ago. |
19 May 2021, 11:23 | #53 | |
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A question for the WHDLoad Team: If a developer clearly states that they don't want a WHDLoad slave for their project, would that be honored? I'm not sure what the policy is, but doubt a slave would be made, at least while the developer is still active. Last edited by modrobert; 19 May 2021 at 11:30. |
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19 May 2021, 11:28 | #54 | |||
son of 68k
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In any case, that's still more work than just doing your thing alone. Or maybe you have the slave author do your debug work at your place ? Not a bad move indeed Quote:
But yes, whdload can be seen as a fine debugging tool. Quote:
In addition, bugs that can lead to a global system crash aren't the ones that will go inconspicuous (esp. for years). Bugs that remain "forever" are minor glitches which depend on specific conditions to trigger. Or at least, they should be. And this can be returned : if bugless software does not exist, you'd rather not add whdload's bugs to your own. As more software just means more bugs. Mathematically proven ? Just that ? I want to see it. Where's the proof ? |
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19 May 2021, 11:45 | #55 | |
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but then there's nothing stopping me from creating or taking over the slaves myself, but then of course you'll say "well just add the functionality into the game" which results in us going round in circles. I think you're clutching at straws in an attempt to try and present a problem here that really just does not exist. Plenty valid reasons have been put forward already to use WHDload with new releases. The downsides are just not washing with me. |
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19 May 2021, 11:52 | #56 | ||
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More to the point, there has been a lot of research into proving correctness of programs and the end conclusion still is: it's really, really hard, requires you to define what correct means fully and even then only is able to prove it fits your chosen definition of 'correct', which can't be proven to be correct thanks, again, to Godel. Professor Gernot Heiser did this for a 7500 line kernel. It took him and his six man team five years of full time work to get to the point where it was proven to work according to his definitions. But, as I pointed out, no one can prove that the definitions used for program correctness themselves are correct (due to Godel) so even he didn't actually prove his program was bug-free. |
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19 May 2021, 12:46 | #57 | |||
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But you can write code that fits low-end machines without being broken for high-end ones. And I fail to see in which way whdload could be better than doing that at source level. Quote:
So you cannot prove a program is bugfree, certainly - however that does not imply there are actual bugs in it. You just can't know. |
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19 May 2021, 12:59 | #58 | |
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okay, now to try to counter the trolling that's going on here (not in that particular remark above which is a legitimate question!!), now just to be objective, I'll take an example of what whdload brings: cdtv machines have hardware that trigger interrupts. It sends what can be seen as spurious interrupts to programs that turn off the OS. a few examples: - whdload detects cdtv.device, turns it off, then on on exit. It also has custom pre-post scripts that you setup once and for all. startup/end script has been improved for years. Each game may have a very good startup/end process it cannot compete with one single program mostly dedicated to that. - whdload has plans to add read joypad support, with Vampire support for extra buttons (extra reg DFF222). Should have appeared earlier, but how many programs will support those buttons without whdload? (and without a patched lowlevel library if ever those programs use it which isn't 100%, not even 50%) - whdload can introduce delays when reading/writing on slow devices. - whdload support all CPUs, has no memory leaks, triple checks all stuff on startup, frees everything on exit, has centralized options and customizable startup/stop scripts... All those features are centralized in whdload. now can we stop the trolling about whdload? I guess not. Last edited by jotd; 19 May 2021 at 13:06. |
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19 May 2021, 13:02 | #59 | |
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I'll ask then the same question to you like I asked the others. You have a game that has a requirement to load and save files to storage while having full access to the system - i.e. banging the hardware. How would you then tackle using DOS library calls (game loading/saving) so your game supports CD32/hard drives and floppies? |
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19 May 2021, 13:39 | #60 | |
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Then DOS calls will be extremely easy and, nice bonus, will never make these black screen flashes. Your game will be able to use any hardware (such as a serial mouse) that your OS can, even if it needs weird drivers. It will of course use a lot less memory than with whdload. |
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