What hardware and operating system do you expect to use to play MWIF?

[rtamesis]

I just got my new MacBook Pro laptop with the 2.16 Ghz Intel Core Duo, installed Apple's Boot Camp, created a partition for Windows and then installed Win XP with SP2 on it. It runs Windows XP lightning fast (compared to the Dells in my office), so I guess I'm all set to run WIF once it is released on this baby instead of on Virtual PC.

[Caranorn]

ORIGINAL: rtamesis

I just got my new MacBook Pro laptop with the 2.16 Ghz Intel Core Duo, installed Apple's Boot Camp, created a partition for Windows and then installed Win XP with SP2 on it. It runs Windows XP lightning fast (compared to the Dells in my office), so I guess I'm all set to run WIF once it is released on this baby instead of on Virtual PC.

A sad day when Macs run with Intel processors. It only confirms my move over to PC's a few years ago. I fully supported the previous moves to the Power PC and thereby attempt to draw people from Windows to the Mac. This is just the opposite and in no way attractive to me.

Though the fact that more games will now run on a Mac is a good thing, but in the long run it will destroy the Mac in my opinion instead of offering an alternative to the old fashionned PC.

P.S.: The reason why I left the Mac world even before this was financial. While my PC is not as performing in graphics (well actually my Dell is pretty good now) as my Macs used to be, I just could no longer afford buying the Mac (and it's monitors). If I had stuck with the Mac I'd have to save money for another 2-3 years to buy a new one (for 5-6 years use compared to the 2-3 I use my PCs).

P.P.S.: My G4 is still in working condition, I recently considered mothballing and place it into storage next to my old SE/30 (actually my brother's, my SE didn't make it to the point where I could mothball it). I will take a look at my G3 (that was the best computer I ever owned) sometime, it might also be in working condition (but with a broken monitor).

[Anendrue]

My response is slightly off topic but in response to the above. So no flames please.


Graphics Performance...
Hmmm Nvidia and Radeon, ... need I say more.


Mac monitors...
I asume you mean Apple Cinema Displays which are actually LCD flat-screens manufactured by Phillips and are the same LCD flat-screens used in dell 1905FPW and 2305FPW wide screen monitors. The main differences are the backlights each company uses when putting together the final assembly and other minor things, such as: cases, bezels and ports.


News from the Apple Tree Orchard...
As I see it Apple created a propietary system and even when using openly available parts they created propietary hardware systems to increase profit margins in the short term. This resulted in a stable but declining ability to sell their systems. While showing growth in computer sales for most years it has been substantially far short of PC sales historically. Unfortunately, a good product highly mismanaged due to corporate greed. The good news is look at all the changes in place at Apple. Rumor has it they may actually be developing a windows competing OS and need a stable customer base to launch it with... look out Microsoft. Just think... Apple reputation, Intel stability and a new OS to compete with Windows. If your unsure with my post just look at who they hired from SUN...

[Anendrue]

2 systems both the same setup.

Operating system - Windows XP Professional
MBoard - ASUS P5N32 Sli Deluxe
CPU - 3.2 GHz (Intel) 2x2MB cache
Main memory - 2 GB RAM DDR2-PC5400
Drives - Raid 0+1 Western Digital 4x150GB 16MB Cache
Monitor - Phillips 19 inch flat panel wide up to 1680x1050
Video - Nvidia 7800GT PCI Express at 256MB DDR3
Audio - Creative X-Fi Platinum
Internet - Cable Modem (1 hardwired and 1 wireless)
Keyboard - Logitech G15
Mouse - Logitech G7 Laser

[Caranorn]

Well, we are both really off topic. But at least from my perspective, Apple has blown it's customer base, or at least a very big part of it. So they no longer have a stable customer base, or at least no longer as large a one as they used to. Another problem is of course how Apple's prices have continued to grow when other producers have declining prices, not to speak of the decreasing software offer for the Mac (though again, this will no longer be an issue with dual system capacity, what you can't get for MacOS you get for Windows...).

The funny part is, since I stopped buying Apple products I've seen more Macs in use then ever before. So there is indeed one area where Apple has managed to expand once again, that is education (my home city's schools have gone 100% Macintosh for instance). But none of the people working there buy a Mac privatelly (some have portables for the job, even those don't get used much privately), my sister even regularly complains to me about the Macs (and I've had to go work on their school system a few times (apparently it's easier to work with me an amateur then their own techs).

Anyhow enough rambling. I just found the original post about the Intel-Mac pretty sad as it seems to be just the opposite of what much of the Macintosh userbase was looking for in the early 90's when the PowerPCs came out.

P.S.: By the way, the Motorolla processors were always high quality. It is true that for a long time their clock speed was lagging behind Intel, but backside cache on the G3's certainly seemed to make up for that. In the dozen years I spent using Macs I don't think I ever had any problem with the processors (68k to G4), though I must confess I was disapointed with the early G4's.

[Caranorn]

Okay thought I'd also add my current setup as my earlier post was still my HP computer.

Dell Dimension 9150
MS Win XP Pro
Intel Pentium 4, 3.20 GHz
2046 MB RAM
video card: nvidia GeForce 6800, 256 MB memory
hp pavilion f1523 monitor (15", 1024x768 resolution only)
sound card: Soundblaster X-Fi Audio
dell extended keyboard
dell optical mouse
HD 160 MB

[Mike Wethington]

Like many of the bretherend here, I work in Software Development. While I understand that gaming software is aimed at a lower-tech audience than business applications, I cannot imagine producing any game, let alone something as complex (from a AI processing perspective) as WiF, for Win95, 98, and NT. All of these platforms already have had support withdrawn by Microsoft so any OS bugs or gotchas you find are yours to keep unless you pay or they effect XP. Your going to spend far too much time in supporting activity on systems that should be relegated to boat anchors instead of whipping up the AI and improving game play and graphics.

By avoiding the least-common denominator approach and going with the most common denominator instead, WiF should be a solidly designed product with long shelf-life and the degree of complexity grognards are looking for.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Mike Wethington

Like many of the bretherend here, I work in Software Development. While I understand that gaming software is aimed at a lower-tech audience than business applications, I cannot imagine producing any game, let alone something as complex (from a AI processing perspective) as WiF, for Win95, 98, and NT. All of these platforms already have had support withdrawn by Microsoft so any OS bugs or gotchas you find are yours to keep unless you pay or they effect XP. Your going to spend far too much time in supporting activity on systems that should be relegated to boat anchors instead of whipping up the AI and improving game play and graphics.

By avoiding the least-common denominator approach and going with the most common denominator instead, WiF should be a solidly designed product with long shelf-life and the degree of complexity grognards are looking for.

I acknowledge that I have a bias towards top of the line systems. But it seems imprudent to dismiss some potential customers because of their current systems.

Win 95 is out. Win 98 and NT are currently in. Part of the reason for the latter is that MWIF won't place a lot of demands on the operating system. It is more demanding of the hardware (CPU speed, memory, graphics card, monitor size).

Personally, I am unhappy to be designing for 1024 by 768. But since about half the people who have responded to my querries about hardware and OS are working with that size screen, it has become my defacto minimum requirement.

[Mike Wethington]

My 'old' eyes have a problem reading anything smaller than 1024*768.

If you have large hardware requirements, it almost guarantees that your customers are using an up-to-date (or near up-to-date) OS. It's relatively cheap for people to upgrade their OS (even the pricey Windows Upgrades are under $300) versus purchase/upgrade hardware to 'screaming' machine quality.

There might be tricks inside the OS that you can exploit, like intelligent caching, that could mitigate some of the hardware requirements. Plus your QA time, if your doing true regression testing on all supported OSs would be significantly less. QA cycles cost money too.

If your committed to having a large customer base, you'd be better off forcing the OS upgrade versus upgrading the whole machine. There is no "GAME" out there that is going to make me buy a new PC or bigger hard drive.

That said, can't wait for WiF to finally come out.

[Zorachus99]

Personally, I am unhappy to be designing for 1024 by 768. But since about half the people who have responded to my querries about hardware and OS are working with that size screen, it has become my defacto minimum requirement.

This is your basis for a minimum screen size?

You will be allowing for custom resolutions?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Zorachus99

Personally, I am unhappy to be designing for 1024 by 768. But since about half the people who have responded to my querries about hardware and OS are working with that size screen, it has become my defacto minimum requirement.

1 - This is your basis for a minimum screen size?

2 - You will be allowing for custom resolutions?

1 - I am not sure what your question is here.[&:]

2 - The program accommodates other (larger) resolutions, such as 1280 by 1024. When you say "custom resolutions" I am not sure what you have in mind. The program does support dual monitors, linked horizontally as one logical screen.

What I mean when I say designing for 1024 by 768, is that if you have a monitor that uses that screen resolution, then you will be able to play the game. In particular, pop up forms will never depend on a larger screen size in order to display the full form.

[Zorachus99]

Poorly posed question, answered tho

1024x768 is the minimum (recommended or playable) resolution...

[Zorachus99]

OS: WinXP Pro SP2 (32-bit)
CPU: Athlon Socket 940 FX-53 2.4 ghz
Main Memory: 3 GB ECC Registered SDRAM
Hard Disk: OS 2x37gb 10k rpm sata in raid 0, scratch disk 37gb sata, Storage 200GB sata
Display Adapter: ATI x800xt 256 MB RAM
Monitor: 19 inch LCD
Display Resolution: 1280x1024
Internet Connection: 128kb up/ 6000k down cable modem on internal network (no public addresses) <--- this may cause problems with P2P connect if client cannot connect directly by IP. Are we going to need to use port forwarding to play head to head over the internet? Many people have soho networks and have no idea what port forwarding means/does.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Zorachus99

OS: WinXP Pro SP2 (32-bit)
CPU: Athlon Socket 940 FX-53 2.4 ghz
Main Memory: 3 GB ECC Registered SDRAM
Hard Disk: OS 2x37gb 10k rpm sata in raid 0, scratch disk 37gb sata, Storage 200GB sata
Display Adapter: ATI x800xt 256 MB RAM
Monitor: 19 inch LCD
Display Resolution: 1280x1024
Internet Connection: 128kb up/ 6000k down cable modem on internal network (no public addresses) <--- this may cause problems with P2P connect if client cannot connect directly by IP. Are we going to need to use port forwarding to play head to head over the internet? Many people have soho networks and have no idea what port forwarding means/does.

Are we going to need to use port forwarding to play head to head over the internet? Many people have soho networks and have no idea what port forwarding means/does.

Me included.

The Indy10 design for TCP connections is fairly straigthtforward: an IP address and a Port. The IP address could either be fixed or dynamic (i.e., whether it changes each time you log onto the Internet). We are looking to use 2 ports: one for outgoing and one for incoming messages.

The network structure is for two players to take on the role of servers. They will be the team leaders for their side (Axis and Allied). The other members of their teams will be clients to the team leaders. No additional hardware or software will be necessary for either role. I am using these terms in the most general sense. The team leaders will exchange messages. The non-leader members of a team will only communicate with their team leader. That is, all messages will be routed through team leaders. Of course, I am talkng about how the bits and bytes flow here. From a player's perspective, he can communicate with anyone who is playing. However, all game decisions (e.g., moves) will go through the team leader.

Over many decisions the team leader will have no control. For example, each major power will move his own units. On the other hand, it will be the team leader's responsibility to end a movement phase: saying that everyone on his side has finished moving units and passing those moves over to the other team leader. Then the other team leader will pass those moves along to members of his team so everyone's copy of the game-in-progress will be up-to-date.

[Zorachus99]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
The Indy10 design for TCP connections is fairly straigthtforward: an IP address and a Port. The IP address could either be fixed or dynamic (i.e., whether it changes each time you log onto the Internet). We are looking to use 2 ports: one for outgoing and one for incoming messages.

My only concern is address translation for private addressing. Private addresses ranges such as 192.168.0.0/24, 10.0.0.0/8, and 172.168.16.0/16 are unreachable from external addresses.

An example of your worst problem would be something like

192.168.0.2 goes to 192.168.0.1 router which has a 68.24.24.24 address on the internet.
the other player
192.168.0.2 goes to 192.168.0.1 router which has a 72.24.24.24 address on the internet.

If either client attempts to act as the host computer it will broadcast the 192.168.0.2 address. When this broadcast for service hit the router, PAT or NAT occurs, and ports are reassigned dynamically; that is unless you have port forwarding mapping client port(s) from the local machine IP address to exact external port on the router. This is a common caveat with a lot of privately hosted games.

Most servers serving the internet directly are behind a firewall or router and need port forwarding configured to be a host.

There are a few straightforward ways to remediate this problem, just wanted to discuss the idea.

Secondarily is the game going to be a

host -> many client relationship or a
client -> host <-> host <- client format? (the delegation of a leader for each side...)

[Zorachus99]

ORIGINAL: Zorachus99

OS: WinXP Pro SP2 (32-bit)
CPU: Athlon Socket 940 FX-53 2.4 ghz
Main Memory: 3 GB ECC Registered SDRAM
Hard Disk: OS 2x37gb 10k rpm sata in raid 0, scratch disk 37gb sata, Storage 200GB sata
Display Adapter: ATI x800xt 256 MB RAM
Monitor: 19 inch LCD
Display Resolution: 1280x1024
Internet Connection: 128kb up/ 6000k down cable modem on internal network (no public addresses) <--- this may cause problems with P2P connect if client cannot connect directly by IP. Are we going to need to use port forwarding to play head to head over the internet? Many people have soho networks and have no idea what port forwarding means/does.

Bought my 18 month upgrade.
OS: WinXp x64 edition
CPU: Athlon Socket 939 4800+ X2 (dual core 2.4ghz)
Main Memory: 4 GB DDR SDRAM (4 x 1 gb in dual channel)
Hard Disk: OS 2x37gb 10k rpm sata in raid 0, storage 250 GB sata
Display Adapter: ATI x1900xt 512 MB RAM
Monitor: 21.1" LCD
Display resolution: 1600x1200
Internet Connection: 128kb up / 6000kb down cable modem on internal network

[ravinhood]

WinXp and partitioned Win98 OS (not SE edition)
AMD 3200+ processor
Nvidia 6600GT 256mb graphics card
Audigy 24bit sound card
Dual Hard-drives total 110mb 7200rpm
1gig dual core ram
DVD/CDrom RW burning player 16x/52x
Rockwell 56k Modem (modern)
Sony 15" (yes I still live in the stone ages) 75hz monitor
Logitec laser mouse
&nbsp;
Backups:
Savage 4600 PSI
Nvidia Geforce TI4200
Nvidia Geforce 5900
Sound Blaster 16bit sound
IBM PC 486sx25 puter
Home built 400mhz&nbsp;AMD puter (all parts robbed)
4x DVD rom
8x CD rom
500mb&nbsp;simm ram
3- 3-1/2" floppy drives
Logitec Extreme 3D Pro Analog Joystick
3- Gerneric old style mouse controls
500- 5-1/4in floppies (some guy was throwing a box of these away heh I took them off his hands)
50- 3-1/2in floppies
&nbsp;
Hope that helps.

[Zorachus99]

Win 98 is end-of-life (EOL) and it is FULL of holes. I would recommend not spending too much time making it work.

Winnt has never been a gaming OS and has been marked for EOL several times (unsuccesfully) by Microsoft. Again I would reccomend not spending too much time making it work.

[Mziln]

ORIGINAL: Zorachus99

Win 98 is end-of-life (EOL) and it is FULL of holes. I would recommend not spending too much time making it work.

Winnt has never been a gaming OS and has been marked for EOL several times (unsuccesfully) by Microsoft. Again I would reccomend not spending too much time making it work.

All Microsof products are full of holes. But I am still running Win98se. It takes less resources, memory, and runs faster than XP.

I still think XP is good in the work environment but for home use it is a pig.

I don't plan to update again until Longhorn (or what ever they are calling it now) is released.

If you stopped taking the updates at the right time Win98se is very stable. If you are still taking the updates it is -> bad <-.

[Zorachus99]

ORIGINAL: Mziln

ORIGINAL: Zorachus99

Win 98 is end-of-life (EOL) and it is FULL of holes. I would recommend not spending too much time making it work.

Winnt has never been a gaming OS and has been marked for EOL several times (unsuccesfully) by Microsoft. Again I would reccomend not spending too much time making it work.

All Microsof products are full of holes. But I am still running Win98se. It takes less resources, memory, and runs faster than XP.

I still think XP is good in the work environment but for home use it is a pig.

I don't plan to update again until Longhorn (or what ever they are calling it now) is released.

If you stopped taking the updates at the right time Win98se is very stable. If you are still taking the updates it is -> bad <-.

But there are no new updates. Microsoft recently refused to fix an extremely severe bug in the Win98 OS that allows people or websites to compromise it. Every Win98 machine I work on these days is or has been infected. I understand if you are still using the OS then you might be upset that the game doesn't run on it...

I'd ask shannon to get the OS statistics from Matrixgames web site to find out what proportion of people are using Win9x tho...