[HN Gopher] Rendering like it's 1996 - Bitmap fonts and DOS
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       Rendering like it's 1996 - Bitmap fonts and DOS
        
       Author : _Microft
       Score  : 74 points
       Date   : 2023-01-15 18:56 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (marioslab.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (marioslab.io)
        
       | smm11 wrote:
       | Like 1996? I was on NeXT, with a Mac ripserver of all things
       | publishing 24-7, and it hardly looked bitmappy.
        
         | jagged-chisel wrote:
         | It does say "DOS" in the title. I think most people don't think
         | of NeXT or Mac when they read "DOS"
        
           | chungy wrote:
           | DOS was well on its way out (and probably a minority already)
           | on PCs in 1996. It was all about Windows 95 at that point.
           | 
           | I get the author's intention of "like it's $DAYSGONEBY", but
           | 1996 is a rather odd choice when it doesn't reflect the norm
           | for the year.
        
             | dblohm7 wrote:
             | Windows 95 was still DOS-based and DirectX was just
             | beginning to take off; many of the most popular games of
             | that era ran on DOS.
             | 
             | (I remember that the best way to run the original release
             | of Warcraft II was to set its shortcut to "DOS mode," where
             | Windows would exit to DOS, run the game, and then restart
             | Windows once the game exited)
        
               | dfox wrote:
               | There is a lot of magic and hard-core engineering work on
               | Microsoft's part to that.
               | 
               | Windows/386 is an hypervisor that runs the Windows as one
               | of the VMs, original DOS as another and can create
               | additional DOS VMs. Windows 3.1 then added the capability
               | of this hypervisor to run some limited kinds of native
               | i386 Windows NT applications on their own VMs that can do
               | inter-VM IPC. Windows 95 extended this architecture to
               | the extreme, there was no "Windows in a VM", Windows was
               | the OS, that ran Win32 API processes directly,
               | traditional 16bit applications also mostly directly and
               | mainly: it managed bunch VM86 VMs. Prime VM of these ran
               | the original DOS with all of its drivers, which was then
               | used for hardware that did not have native Windows
               | drivers. Another VMs contained the DOS software that you
               | ran. The whole thing was somehow capable of translating
               | the API calls from not only 3 different client ABIs, but
               | also to 3 different driver ABIs...
        
             | djur wrote:
             | The author explains their personal connection to 1996 in
             | the first post:
             | 
             | https://marioslab.io/posts/rendering-like-its-1996/babys-
             | fir...
             | 
             | I was also primarily playing DOS games and writing DOS
             | programs at the time, so this rings true for me. Everyone
             | has different experiences.
        
             | temp24582934 wrote:
             | Both Quake and Duke Nukem 3D came out targeting DOS in
             | 1996. Windows development took a while to take off if I
             | remember correctly since DOS apps could run on Windows too
             | so developers had less incentive to switch over at the time
        
             | peoplefromibiza wrote:
             | not really.
             | 
             | MS-DOS 6.22, the last version of MS-DOS, was released not
             | long before in 1994
             | 
             | Tomb Raider
             | 
             | Command & Conquer: Red Alert
             | 
             | Descent II
             | 
             | Quake
             | 
             | Duke Nukem 3D
             | 
             | all came out in 1996 and no Windows 95 native version was
             | available
             | 
             |  _To get more developers on board DirectX, Microsoft
             | approached id Software 's John Carmack and offered to port
             | Doom and Doom 2 from MS-DOS to DirectX, free of charge,
             | with id retaining all publishing rights to the game.
             | Carmack agreed, and Microsoft's Gabe Newell led the porting
             | project. The first game was released as Doom 95 in August
             | 1996, the first published DirectX game. Microsoft promoted
             | the game heavily with Bill Gates appearing in ads for the
             | title._
             | 
             | We can almost say that 1996 was the pinnacle of "rendering
             | in DOS"
        
       | ahullkl wrote:
       | Something else from the demoscene guy who designed that last font
       | used in the article: https://vimeo.com/62244338
       | 
       | Quite an endearing little film.
        
       | mistrial9 wrote:
       | Adobe Type Manager was also made available for a select few PC
       | operating systems available during the _early 1990s_ , including
       | NeXTSTEP, DESQview, and OS/2. Unlike the Windows and Mac
       | versions, these versions of ATM were bundled with the OS itself.
       | 
       | -- wikipedia
        
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       (page generated 2023-01-16 23:01 UTC)