magical girl on the internet?

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume9/3/2023, 3:03 PM

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume9/3/2023, 9:14 AM

i finally found an old game i played as a child and i swear to god you will never guess what i found inside

okay so, i finally found the DOS FPS game i'd played the demo of as a kid!!! i could remember it being in 3D, with configurable sound card options, a kind of sci-fi æsthetic, some outdoor sections with brown being the predominant colour, but also prominant use of electric blue...

based on those details i knew it had to be from the mid-to-late 90's. sure enough, it's Domination (1998), apparently also known Rex Blade: The Battle Begins.

playing it now, i understand why I didn't keep playing: it sucks.

the reason i was reminded of it and wanted to find it again today is that i remembered the sound card options, and wondered if it had General MIDI i could try out with my new (old) MIDI module. sure enough, it has both FM synthesis and MIDI, and both OSTs suck. lmao.

BUT.

#dos games #MS-DOS Games #ms-dos #DOS #2.5D #general midi #opl2 #OPL3 #programming languages #retro gaming #basic #terminal #console #programming

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume9/3/2023, 3:03 PM

update! i've recorded an extensive video of the thing that the post above is about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC8oECLUXzs

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in reply to @hikari-no-yume's post:

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume9/3/2023, 9:19 AM

i also made a fedipost™ https://social.noyu.me/@hikari/statuses/01H9D1AFRKZMQF13QG1911H52H and a xhost™ https://twitter.com/hikari_no_yume/status/1698254427763655001 about this for those of y'all that are into that

Nire Bryce @NireBryce9/3/2023, 9:33 AM

they really should call their embeds x-posts though. it's too bad they fired the marketing department.

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume9/3/2023, 9:34 AM

they need to hire you (though they shouldn't, i assume it'd be horrible for your mental health)

Nire Bryce @NireBryce9/3/2023, 9:35 AM

oh are you kidding? They don't know how to run a business I'd fit right in

it's suzy @trashbang9/3/2023, 9:23 AM

holy shit this slaps

I remember having my mind blown by the computer terminals in SiN, and this is so much more advanced

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume9/3/2023, 9:29 AM

you can save and load your programs!!!! you could build a whole collection of programs this way. you could learn to program this way. it has graphics, so you could make games with it, theoretically. like what

i've never seen a terminal in a game go this deep into unnecessary detail

Nire Bryce @NireBryce9/3/2023, 9:41 AM

I wonder if it compiles to C through some tool you don't have (or it's in the files), parsers have always been a nerd pasttimesink since time immemorial

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume9/3/2023, 9:45 AM

i'm pretty sure it's interpreted, and not even a good interpreter, because it gave me a syntax error after executing half my program

Nire Bryce @NireBryce9/3/2023, 9:47 AM

ah, a famed just-in-time interpreter. I thought those were just stories bloggers told for clicks.

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume9/3/2023, 9:56 AM

they were pretty common on older systems. there is a time/space tradeoff with using a compiler. for simple programs, a single-pass interpreter makes a lot of sense on old machines.

Nire Bryce @NireBryce9/3/2023, 10:07 AM

yeah

Irenes (many)@ireneista9/20/2023, 6:06 AM

C compilers were still fairly large in 1998 compared to available RAM and storage, and commercial ones (as in pay money for it) were still most of the market, so it's not the convenient drop-in thing it would be today

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume9/3/2023, 9:38 AM

WAIT IT'S EVEN MORE ABSURD THAT THIS IS IN THE SHAREWARE VERSION

THIS IS NOT EVEN THE FULL GAME

Azure @AzureLazuline9/3/2023, 11:16 AM

use the console to program the full game into the trial version! If it can save files then technically it's possible.

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume9/3/2023, 1:11 PM

i don't think it has file i/o alas. you can save and load programs, but i haven't seen commands for accessing files within a program

sirocyl @sirocyl9/3/2023, 9:42 AM

turing-complete, is it? surely it shall meet its DOOM once more 😈

@NotMiki9/3/2023, 7:44 PM

lmao beat me to it

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume9/3/2023, 12:16 PM

ok i'm gonna record a video of it because i don't wanna make you have to download and play this game just to know more

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume9/3/2023, 3:04 PM

uploaded a video now! it's linked in https://cohost.org/hikari-no-yume/post/2718232-update-i-ve-recorde, i suggest sharing that version now

@Fel-Temp-Reparatio9/3/2023, 12:55 PM

I wonder if that language had been one of the programmer's pet project for a while, and they decided to just throw it in this thing to do something with it.

@darryl @darryl9/3/2023, 1:48 PM

That is definitely my immediate hypothesis, yeah. Someone had this code lying around anyway and said “you know what would be cool?”

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume9/4/2023, 10:03 AM

They dedicated an entire team member to the virtual computer and its games, maybe he ran out of game ideas and wrote a programming language lol.

@darryl @darryl9/4/2023, 9:41 PM

Dream job tbh

giwake @giwake9/3/2023, 1:10 PM

wait oh my god why do i remember this game
was this the one that had a fucking robot stripper planet???

Snarboo @Snarboo9/3/2023, 4:47 PM

IIRC, yes it is!

It amuses me that this turned up on my timeline, because I think about this game and its fully featured programming language every few years. Even as a child, my mind was blown that a game could do that, especially since the game it was embedded in sucks serious ass. Clearly, that effort might have been better spent on just making a simple construction kit rather than a Wolf 3D clone in 1996.

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume9/3/2023, 5:21 PM

they had a team of less than a dozen people and they apparently dedicated one member's labour towards just these bonus games and bonus programming language. it's not a huge surprise that the game sucks but man it is also so cool for this

in reply to @hikari-no-yume's post:

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume9/3/2023, 3:49 PM

hey if you like good old DOS games with live General MIDI synthesis, i'm streaming Theme Hospital right now!
https://twitch.tv/hikari_no_yume

DCNick3 @DCNick39/3/2023, 5:17 PM

Video could use a flashing colors warning..

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume9/3/2023, 6:54 PM

i note it in the chapters but people could miss it so i'll add it to the description too

🌟 hikari of the valley of the wind ✅@hikari-no-yume9/4/2023, 9:19 AM

bonus tidbit: if you notice me messing up the typing in the terminal a lot , i promise it's not because i'm bad at typing. i think they actually implemented the horrible keyboard input handling that i think i've heard the Apple II has(?). WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS DELIBERATELY