Re: Play games in a window or on a GFX card

From: Magnus Kollberg <Magnus.Kollberg_at_emw.ericsson.se>
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 17:20:34 +0200

Hi,

> > > As it all was in german I might have got it all wrong but what
> > > it basicly did was to copy the screen used by the game to the
> > > gfx card. You could setup the how often you wanted to copy
>
> For graphics card users, such a thing is indeed possible, as long as you
> can keep linked on some kind of timer interrupt. As has been said, many
> games won't let you do that, unfortunately (but see below).

I know. It will probably not work with all games but maybe with some.
I would also belive that keyboard handling would be a mess.
 
> Without a graphics card, none of this is possible, since the games are
> likely to access the video hardware directly.

Well, but I was thinking on old ST games, not Falcon games. I guess ST games
are not that bad in this respect.
 
> > Sounds nice, but I don't think it's possible unless you write a
> > complete ST-emulator. Why not, a friend of mine runs an A500-emulator
>
> An emulator would be too slow on most (if not all) Atari compatible hardware,
> but it _might_ be possible to implement some kind of virtual machine on
> >='030 processors. I doubt anyone will ever attempt that, though.

Talking about Atari emulators I just read a funny message in c.s.a.st. Why
not run SToNX under Mint+X? If it worked it would be totaly insane. Or you
could run SToNX under Linux on the Atari. There would atleast be no need
for CPU emulation. :-))))
 
> The simplest possible 'virtual machine' would be one that only relocates
> the exception tables (I doubt any games worries about such things) and then
> does some kind of software interrupt dispatch from the new vector addresses.
> It could then be possible to add some kind of timer-driven screen copying
> that the game wouldn't know about.

This sounds realy cool and a funny project if someone wants to make a try.
 
> > under Shapeshifter (Mac-emulator) on his 060-Amiga so he can play Rick
>
> We _really_ should port that program!

We have been saying that for a LONG time now but still nothing has happened
and I realy doubt it ever will which is sad. :-\

//Magnus Kollberg
Received on ti. april 28 1998 - 20:52:00 CEST