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Anyone know Win16 programming and games?

TandyMan100

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There's one thing I noticed there wasn't enough of and would like to be more of: Windows 3.1 games. More specifically, side-scrollers and FPSes.

I'm gonna spurt: It'd be nice to have more nitemare 3d-like games. I was thinking something based on James Bond, with a 2-player or network mode. Or maybe a side-scroller James Bond game that is two-player. Or even something like Stunts!. I'm a horrible programmer, but I can offer creative help, and help with the artwork.
 
There's one thing I noticed there wasn't enough of and would like to be more of: Windows 3.1 games. More specifically, side-scrollers and FPSes.

I'm gonna spurt: It'd be nice to have more nitemare 3d-like games. I was thinking something based on James Bond, with a 2-player or network mode. Or maybe a side-scroller James Bond game that is two-player. Or even something like Stunts!. I'm a horrible programmer, but I can offer creative help, and help with the artwork.

Good luck.

Most games for windows 3.x looks mostly like the ones supplied in the Microsoft "Windows Entertainement Pack"s. There where a total of 4 WEPs, and all of them contained mostly logic games.

3D graphics cards began to be popular in the time of Windows 95, so almost all programmers making games with 3D usually wrote them for Windows 95 or upwards.
 
From what I recall most of the games were still dos based since all Windows provided was a GUI on top of dos in the first place. So naturally you would exit Windows (back to dos) to free up the memory, then run your game (using dos4gw to get extended memory).

Have you looked at games by year? Searching for dos games around 1993-1994 (pre-95.. ..actually 1995 may have been pre-95 lol if MS was still falling behind release dates --I don't recall).

Games like Duke3d, Descent, Terminal Velocity, Rise of the Triad, Ultima (7 was the first all GUI version, prior it was a (neat IMO) graphics with half text to type commands). Even I think the early 3d SSI games may have been compatible (DarkSun). Play Civilization too.. that first one is still my favorite out of that series.. really fun but HUGE time waster lol.

I think that may be what you're seeing. There wasn't much use being inside of Windows so most games exited and didn't want to waste the resources.
 
From what I recall most of the games were still dos based since all Windows provided was a GUI on top of dos in the first place. So naturally you would exit Windows (back to dos) to free up the memory, then run your game (using dos4gw to get extended memory).

Have you looked at games by year? Searching for dos games around 1993-1994 (pre-95.. ..actually 1995 may have been pre-95 lol if MS was still falling behind release dates --I don't recall).

Games like Duke3d, Descent, Terminal Velocity, Rise of the Triad, Ultima (7 was the first all GUI version, prior it was a (neat IMO) graphics with half text to type commands). Even I think the early 3d SSI games may have been compatible (DarkSun). Play Civilization too.. that first one is still my favorite out of that series.. really fun but HUGE time waster lol.

I think that may be what you're seeing. There wasn't much use being inside of Windows so most games exited and didn't want to waste the resources.
Well, Nitemare 3d ran in a window... I guess we could change the title of this to "Ms-DOS game programming". Anyone here good at making graphical games for MS-DOS? Still wanting to stick with FPS... :cool:
 
There were a couple of Windows 3 games that did arcade action. The one I remember was a shareware shooter heavily inspired by Top Gun. Ran amazingly well until some other software kicked over, then became unplayable. Poorly programmed games on a cooperative multitasking systems yields stuttering and other delays.

WinG which was the 16 bit quick graphics tool had very little usage in the year before Win95 was released and DirectX replaced WinG. WinG's documentation is poor. Skipping to Win9x and DirectX is much easier and almost every computer capable of handling WinG can also handle Win9x.
 
One thing that was done and may have support were level editors for games and replacing graphics in an open source engine. As Mike pointed out the source code for Wolfenstein is available. I'll be upfront and accuse most companies of not writing their own 3d engine. They use and pay for someone else to do the 3d code then put their own graphics and rules in there but use the already "expert" written 3d environment.

A lot of games get published even though they're really just game mods and replaced characters and textures. It's a lot to go through but you could try pulling up some source code from a game from that era and read up on graphic files (I can't remember what it's called but a lot of files were every graphic in one file and it pulls the graphic by a number or offset) so if you edited one of the files you might see different sides of one object or every wall they have to choose from all in a row.

The early games kinda cheated.. it was funny but it worked. Instead of truly 3d they just had 2d sprites that always face you. Kinda gets around the 3d modeling requirement as well as resources that often weren't available back then. In those cases (Wolf3d, Doom, Nam (or whatever it was renamed to)) might have easier graphics to edit and potentially a level editor. From there you have your own game just as much as most publishers.

- John
 
The early games kinda cheated.. it was funny but it worked. Instead of truly 3d they just had 2d sprites that always face you. Kinda gets around the 3d modeling requirement as well as resources that often weren't available back then. In those cases (Wolf3d, Doom, Nam (or whatever it was renamed to)) might have easier graphics to edit and potentially a level editor. From there you have your own game just as much as most publishers.

- John
MicroSoft Train Simulator 1.0 does that for a lot of it's objects (trees, foliage). Where can I get the afterfore mentioned source code?
 
Most games for windows 3.x looks mostly like the ones supplied in the Microsoft "Windows Entertainement Pack"s. There where a total of 4 WEPs, and all of them contained mostly logic games.

There were a good amount of educational games, and some strategy as well (Civilization II being the most famous), but scrollers, shooters, flight simulators, and RPGs were almost entirely DOS. The only Windows 3.1 scroller I can name off the top of my head is Garfield: Caught in the Act.

3D graphics cards began to be popular in the time of Windows 95, so almost all programmers making games with 3D usually wrote them for Windows 95 or upwards.

The big problem with games on Windows 3.x was that you had to use 64k segments (and also incur a performance penalty for using 32-bit instructions in 16-bit addressing mode), whereas with DOS you could use DOS4GW or other such 32-bit extenders and have a flat memory space and no performance penalties.

Windows 95 then introduced DirectX and 32-bit addressing, which at last made Windows games practical.
 
From what I recall most of the games were still dos based since all Windows provided was a GUI on top of dos in the first place. So naturally you would exit Windows (back to dos) to free up the memory, then run your game (using dos4gw to get extended memory).

Have you looked at games by year? Searching for dos games around 1993-1994 (pre-95.. ..actually 1995 may have been pre-95 lol if MS was still falling behind release dates --I don't recall).

Games like Duke3d, Descent, Terminal Velocity, Rise of the Triad, Ultima (7 was the first all GUI version, prior it was a (neat IMO) graphics with half text to type commands). Even I think the early 3d SSI games may have been compatible (DarkSun). Play Civilization too.. that first one is still my favorite out of that series.. really fun but HUGE time waster lol.

I think that may be what you're seeing. There wasn't much use being inside of Windows so most games exited and didn't want to waste the resources.

yep, DOS was much better for gaming than windows 3.x by far, the reason there weren't all that many windows games.

ultima 6 was the best ultima!!!! see my avatar? (it's one of the... AVATARS... from ultima 6. get it? i'm so clever!) perfect mix of text and graphic adventuring. and the graphics were finally good in an ultima game! i have the original box/disks/cloth map/compendium. :)
 
lol Yup.. of course I get it ;-) And that's of course the one I was referring to as well. My favorite version also. It was just the right amount of both (best of both worlds). I think I have the original but I also (after years of random searching) acquired the Ultima Collection which modded them for newer processors to fix timing issues and improve compatibility.

There WAS a (winciv?) Windows version of Civilization that came out.. I honestly don't recall any improvements it just ran in a windows window instead of full dos screen. Still.. it's a game I can get easily sucked into for a few hours.

I guess I didn't see much of a lack of games back then. I see the point of the lack of 16-bit Windows games but as most have pointed out it was really just because it didn't have any features to improve gaming. Games already had the memory thing figured out and mouse, modem, and network stacks were getting added all outside of the OS.
 
There WAS a (winciv?) Windows version of Civilization that came out.. I honestly don't recall any improvements it just ran in a windows window instead of full dos screen. Still.. it's a game I can get easily sucked into for a few hours.

They had a Windows version of Colonization as well, the only difference being that it ran in 640x480 resolution instead of 320x200.

I guess I didn't see much of a lack of games back then. I see the point of the lack of 16-bit Windows games but as most have pointed out it was really just because it didn't have any features to improve gaming. Games already had the memory thing figured out and mouse, modem, and network stacks were getting added all outside of the OS.

As I said, 16-bit protected mode was a hindrance. It seems that educational games were the only genre that Windows 3.1 had an abundance of, possibly because most of them were ports from the Mac.
 
Anyone know Win16 programming and games

Anyone know Win16 programming and games

I know the following by knowning I dont mean that I am an expert at them:

-Visual Basic 6 and some .NET
-C
-Javascript
-HTML
-PHP just because its very similar to C
 
Am I seeing double here? Same post, same number of posts, and same source IP address?
 
Couple weeks apart ... my guess is that he bumped the topic and has two accounts?
 
If anybody needs them I've been collecting the SDKs, DDKs, and etc. from early Windows versions (1.x->95) before they disappear from the Internet. They may be helpful to create Win3x games, as you'd likely need them to create a Window, etc.
 
If anybody needs them I've been collecting the SDKs, DDKs, and etc. from early Windows versions (1.x->95) before they disappear from the Internet. They may be helpful to create Win3x games, as you'd likely need them to create a Window, etc.

Also, if anyone has been a long-time MSDN subscriber, he most likely has these on CD if he didn't throw them out.
 
Win 3 and Win 95 SDKs were everywhere. Not only did MSDN include them, most compilers that shipped on CD included an electronic copy. Some even included paper copies.

The SDKs for both Windows 1 and Windows 2 were never included with MSDN. Since those included the license to ship runtime copies of Windows, they have a slight value of their own. Okay, most programmers could figure the functions available from a Win 3 SDK but some functions were no longer listed including the "secret" DOS Call that allowed the launching of other programs from within runtime Windows.
 
Yup, you're right. I went and looked at my archives, and there, sitting on the shelf, was a Windows 3 DDK, complete with floppies and books. I grabbed an old MSDN jewel box (this one happened to be April 94) and it starts with Win3.1.
 
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