Another World ported to FPGA • Hacker News Board

Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#21

Post by bzzzt » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 6:16 PM UTC

derbOac wrote: post #14

Off topic, but I was excited to find out Another World is on Steam... but isn't available to play on macOS 10.15 Catalina or above. The incompatibility with 32-bit makes me extremely frustrated; it seems as if in 2023, with quantum computing, DL models, and people porting games like this to FPGA, there should be a way to get 32-bit software to run on modern hardware. It's bizarre to me. Steam specifically recommends…

There's no business case in making sure those old titles persist and publishers mostly forget about them after initial sales are made. You can play the MS-DOS port in QEMU, so I presume there will eventually be some emulation layer capable of running the HD release.

Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#22

Post by PaulHoule » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 6:19 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #9

burglins wrote: post #2

I wonder how common were full game VMs in the 90s. For a game older than myself, wouldn't a VM layer incur a great performance penalty on PCs from that time?

It was far more important to have the same software work on Amiga, x86 (DOS), Mac and the whole slew of different machines than came and went. Today we have fewer machines than the great explosive growth of the 80s. Consider that most 'software' today is JavaScript interpreted by the Web Browser. It's not like those portability concerns didn't exist in the 80s, if anything, it was harder because you had to make your…

The Infocom text adventures (e.g. Zork) were based on a VM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-machine

Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#23

Post by stevefan1999 » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 6:25 PM UTC

burglins wrote: post #2

I wonder how common were full game VMs in the 90s. For a game older than myself, wouldn't a VM layer incur a great performance penalty on PCs from that time?

VM already existed since PL/0 which is the prototype of Pascal. It is also known as P-code and to.be honest it is fine. Especially when you can leverage JIT which trades memory space for gains in speed.

Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#24

Post by guiambros » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 6:26 PM UTC

29athrowaway wrote: post #7

The intro was fantastic. Even with a PC speaker / no sound card. Having to swim away as your first action, and then escape from some kind of lion is one of the most brutal game experiences ever. Even if you played that game for 1 minute you will remember that game forever.

> Even if you played that game for 1 minute you will remember that game forever.

I don't remember playing for much more than a few minutes (maybe a couple of hours), and barely making any progress, but that intro and the initial escape got etched in my memory for all those years. The dramatic camera effects of this game were indeed out of this world for the time.

Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#25

Post by gwern » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 6:28 PM UTC

burglins wrote: post #2

I wonder how common were full game VMs in the 90s. For a game older than myself, wouldn't a VM layer incur a great performance penalty on PCs from that time?

Yes, but you weren't doing things like _Elite_ in these sorts of special-purpose VMs. Aside from the portability issue (extremely important when platforms had the lifespan of mayflies back then as Moore's law blazed along full speed), VMs also got you compression. A full compiled binary might be exorbitantly expensive in disk/tape space, not to mention RAM. But a very small VM could make a custom-tailored language to interpret on the fly, and save a ton of space where you needed to sweat every kilobyte. (Think about the different in size between `print "Hello world!"` and the default compiled binary.) It didn't matter how fast your text adventure ran if it couldn't fit in X kb of space.

Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#26

Post by the_af » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 6:53 PM UTC

guiambros wrote: post #24

29athrowaway wrote: post #7

The intro was fantastic. Even with a PC speaker / no sound card. Having to swim away as your first action, and then escape from some kind of lion is one of the most brutal game experiences ever. Even if you played that game for 1 minute you will remember that game forever.

> Even if you played that game for 1 minute you will remember that game forever. I don't remember playing for much more than a few minutes (maybe a couple of hours), and barely making any progress, but that intro and the initial escape got etched in my memory for all those years. The dramatic camera effects of this game were indeed out of this world for the time.

The game itself is barely a couple of hours. It's very, very short.

I wonder, if the intro made such an impression on you, why didn't you finish it?

Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#27

Post by tombert » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 6:54 PM UTC

I remember playing Out of this World on my Sega Genesis as a kid, and I could not believe that graphics would ever get better than this; I had never seen fully animated cutscenes like that on my Sega and thought it was incredible.

Obviously graphics did get better, but I feel like Another World still holds its own artistically. The graphics are still very stylish and distinct, and upon replaying the game again about a year ago, I am still really impressed by it.

The game isn’t perfect; a lot of the puzzles and stuff sort of just come down to trial and error and it’s extremely short, but I also don’t think I would change a thing about it.

It’s sort of in a different category, but for fans of Another World, I recommend also checking out Flashback: The Quest for Identity. It’s got a similar cinematic vibe, and while I didn’t like it at first it’s really grown on me in the last decade or so.

Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#28

Post by the_af » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 6:56 PM UTC

ChainOfFools wrote: post #16

29athrowaway wrote: post #7

The intro was fantastic. Even with a PC speaker / no sound card. Having to swim away as your first action, and then escape from some kind of lion is one of the most brutal game experiences ever. Even if you played that game for 1 minute you will remember that game forever.

I'll never forget the "dialogue" in the game either, right after you get rescued from that lion thing by your new friend. konanaka beetzai! motsuubo! /wave

If I remember correctly, your alien friend never rescues you from the beast. The ones who shoot the beast (and then you) are the "bad" aliens ;)

Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#29

Post by 29athrowaway » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 6:58 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #26

guiambros wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if you played that game for 1 minute you will remember that game forever. I don't remember playing for much more than a few minutes (maybe a couple of hours), and barely making any progress, but that intro and the initial escape got etched in my memory for all those years. The dramatic camera effects of this game were indeed out of this world for the time.

The game itself is barely a couple of hours. It's very, very short. I wonder, if the intro made such an impression on you, why didn't you finish it?

I also didn't finish it.

The game is hard and requires more patience than usual to figure it out.

Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#30

Post by jakemauer » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 7:00 PM UTC

ChainOfFools wrote: post #16

29athrowaway wrote: post #7

The intro was fantastic. Even with a PC speaker / no sound card. Having to swim away as your first action, and then escape from some kind of lion is one of the most brutal game experiences ever. Even if you played that game for 1 minute you will remember that game forever.

I'll never forget the "dialogue" in the game either, right after you get rescued from that lion thing by your new friend. konanaka beetzai! motsuubo! /wave

Mykaruba!