DOS ain't dead

Daikatana by John Romero works in HX-DOS!

What is interresteng - the software emulation of 3D card is performed, so all textures are blurred like on modern windows games.
Due this reason is game on my machine very slow, virtualy unplayable.

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DOS-u-akbar!

> Daikatana by John Romero works in HX-DOS!
>
> What is interresteng - the software emulation of 3D card is performed, so
> all textures are blurred like on modern windows games.
> Due this reason is game on my machine very slow, virtualy unplayable.

I've only very very VERY vaguely heard of this, but it might be interesting. Seems it was using Quake 2 engine. Sad that it had to be for Windows, does it support hardware acceleration? (Or is VESA just slow?)

screenshots
techinfo
John Romero's huge Daikatana page

Yes, under Windows it supports hardware 3D acceleration.
But it is interresting that in case if 3D hardware is not available (like under HX-DOS) it does not use usuall "pixelisation" but texture blurring is done in software. (what is, of course, slow)

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DOS-u-akbar!

> > Daikatana by John Romero works in HX-DOS!
> > virtualy unplayable.
Suck it down ;)

> I've only very very VERY vaguely heard of this,
Likewise. So being a admirer of John's other work I decided to read up about this vague game using the Daikatana Wikipedia page as an initial starting point then following through to various external links. All in all it could be said that an interesting chain of events surrounded this game, see #Controversy and then read the articles about Ion Storm and Stevie Case. The rise and fall of Ion storm is one of the subjects apparently covered in the book Masters of Doom of which a film was supposed to have been planned (in 2005). The line in Wikipedia which struck me as a good summary was this one "The game was a major contributing factor in the closure of Ion Storm's Dallas office." (which was their HQ).

It's very obvious that some of the so-called "failure" of this game is exaggerated.

(quoting Wikipedia):

> Ion Storm showed Daikatana at E3 in June 1997. The engine was still
> running in a software mode, and looked outdated and unimpressive. At
> the same time, id Software was debuting their Quake II game engine,
> featuring hardware acceleration and innovative visuals. Romero
> realized that they were falling behind technologically. The Christmas
> 1997 deadline was quietly dropped, and the new plan was to keep
> creating the content for the game, and switch to the Quake II engine
> as soon as it was ready. The game was rescheduled for a March 1998 release.

Does anyone believe that bullcrap? There's no way the Quake engine (debuted in June 1996) could have been "outdated and unimpressive" in only one year. This was just before Doom was open sourced too, and people were still gaga over that engine, which was (technologically) much "worse."

> But it is interresting that in case if 3D hardware is not available (like
> under HX-DOS) it does not use usuall "pixelisation" but texture blurring is
> done in software. (what is, of course, slow)

I think it is due to software emulation in opengl32.dll. Normally when 3D OGL capable accelerator is present, OGL API calls are passed to driver and to hardware. If not, it's emulated and this is of course very slow. I remember when I was trying to play GLQuake without a 3D card and it also run with filtered textures but ~1FPS...
Interesting is that Unreal game had very good software renderer, that can do quite nice gfx on non-3D VGA with playable speed.

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

BTW, never heard of it nor played it, but apparently Anachronox was a game by the same developers (using modified Q2 engine). It apparently (unlike Daikatana) is available via Gog.com, but it also isn't DOS-based.

The demo download in their page is broken!

> The demo download in their page is broken!

In fairness, it's a big download and only for Windows ... so are you sure you really really really want to bother at all? (Personally, I haven't, exactly for that reason, though I guess I'm very vaguely curious if WINE would work. Call me crazy, but I somehow doubt it likes Win64.) EDIT: 102 MB, oh joy!