🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3olve9$p...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> mar...@ux5.cso.uiuc.edu writes:

 > How about any company that produces Windows games?  I am sure that they 
 > will be very happy to move right on to programming Windows 95 games.  It 
 > in fact will not be that hard to port old or new games to 95.  As for DOS 
 > games, sure they are still in production... companies are waiting to see 
 > how good Win95 will be.  Companies have seen OS/2 for years and there are 
 > barely any games to show for it.

 I think on the gaming front, Win95 does have an advantage over OS/2. I
 have the Win95 preview and so far many games can run without special
 settings or suffer sound incompatibility problems and such. The ease
 of use and compatibility will definitely draw a lot of gamers to
 purchase this OS when it is released. OS/2 may be a better OS in terms
 of memory protection and resource utilization, but the difficulty
 to get existing games up and running will probably scare away many
 gamers, especially those without technical knowledge of computers.

 I admit I have not yet started to test the system extensively. I have
 yet to test the multitasking capabilities and graphics performance more.
 So far I have been playing a game in a DOS session while formatting disks
 or installing another software in another session without experiencing
 slow down in the active application, but I need to test the background
 file transfer when running something else in the foreground. I have yet
 to run an intensive simulation or action games in a DOS window. I have
 run Colonization in a window and it runs well except the mouse tracking
 in the window is a bit slow. I wondered how OS/2 compare in this regard
 as no one I know is running OS/2 around here?

 From what I heard, OS/2 seems to be able to run more games in a window
 than Win95 does. This has the advantage of being able to keep an eye
 on the background process while still able to play the games. I wonder
 if there is any performance penalty while doing this? I am talking
 about a DOS game running in a window session, not a native OS/2 game.

 > If the current state of OS/2 development of games does not change, Win95 
 > will have a huge amount of games for it in the future.  Certainly in a few 
 > years, no companies will develope for DOS anymore and I am sure that those 
 > game companies will not just die out of business.  They will most likely 
 > move on to Win95 if they haven't already.  There are hordes of people 
 > waiting to buy Win95 when it is released and there will be hordes of 
 > companies attempting to get new games out for Win 95.

 There are already three well-known game companies have announced the
 plan to release Win95 games : Sierra, Spectrum Holobyte and Origin.
 SH and Origin are even going to release their flagship products on
 Win95 : Falcon 4.0 and Ultima 9. Please do not flame me with Ultima 8
 being lame and such. If we pay attention to the c.s.i.p.rpg newsgroup,
 Ultima is the most discussed game over there. Without a doubt there
 is a huge following for Ultima series and the game has a guaranteed
 market when it is released. I guess it will have to take a few more
 bad Ultimas to kill this series off.   :)

 It is possible that these game companies have been beta testing Win95
 as well and they are convinced that Win95 can deliver the performance
 of a high end game? So far my impression with Win95 is great although
 I admit I have to test more with the graphics performance.

 > >I use OS/2 now, because it's the best (IMHO) *now*, there are
 > >games (both DOS and OS/2) available *now* that I can play.  When
 > >OS/2 died and Win95 becomes dominant, I will buy it then to play
 > >those *available* games, and I lose nothing in the process.
 > 
 > Fine, now OS/2 is the best for games and I will agree with you.  But, to
 > me at least, the future for OS/2 looks bleak.  I can't realistically see
 > them gaining any sort of dominance in the market and don't think that
 > there will be nearly as many OS/2 only games as Win95 games.  I don't 
 > understand why a company would produce games for a lesser audience.

 Actually it does make good market sense to sell OS/2 games. OS/2 community
 is striving recently but there are too few native applications to show
 for it. Stardock is lucky to have the programming skills to start writing
 games for OS/2 right away. Even though the installed based of OS/2 is
 still much smaller than Windows, their games can achieve probably 100%
 market penetration; i.e. everyone who is a gamer on OS/2 will buy it.
 However, with Win95 almost on the horizon now, I guess many companies
 feel it is not worthwhile to start learning to program in OS/2. Because
 by the time they have the skills to start writting their first game,
 Win95 may already emerge as the winner and they may have invested in
 a dead-end market.

 But if OS/2 proves itself to be more successful than Win95 (after it
 is released), you can bet there will be a lot of companies switching
 side to write for OS/2!! It will definitely hurt Microsoft more if
 Win95 does not match up to OS/2 if they release Win95 too early!

--
Email : hkc...@hkchan.pc.my