I like DOSBox pure, because that allows you to put the full games into a single zip file and so you then essentially have the equivalent of per-game file on consoles.
Last time i checked (and DOSBox hasn't made an official release since then) the vanilla DOSBox isn't able to run the game i made for an MS-DOS game jam a few years ago[0] because it doesn't implement RDTSC properly (that the game uses for timing). All currently developed DOSBox forks work properly.
Also the forks add some additional niceties, e.g. DOSBox Staging has some very nice CRT filters that basically make games look almost like the real thing (i have some actual CRTs to compare). DOSBox-X has a GUI to setup options while the emulator is running which is very convenient.
If I'm reading the article right, they are saying that macOS is giving the scare warning on it - this implies that DOSBox is an x86_64 binary and not ARM native.
If true, that implies development is on life support at best, since any actively-developed project targeting Mac OS would likely have shipped an ARM version within 6 years of the ARM transition.
So anyone who wants to ever run Mac OS 27 or buy a Mac after next year will probably have to find an alternative (or port DOSBox mainline to ARM themselves!)
The last significant DOSBox update (ignoring 0.74-3 which was not significant) must be over 10 years ago by now. In that time, forks like DOSBox-X have made tremendous progress in compatibility and accuracy. The original DOSBox is essentially frozen in time at this point, with many things not being emulated correctly.
Same thing I'd want to be "interesting" about any emulator. Focusing on just graphics for a moment (but there are equivalent examples in other domains):
1. Running games that only ran at 10FPS on original hardware at a smooth 60+FPS, by calling the game's own rendering logic more frequently than the original hardware could "afford" to, but without breaking game logic (i.e. by forcibly decoupling the game's physics ticks from its presentation ticks);
2. Using out-of-viewport but in-{tile/frame}buffer data to expand the viewport to fill my screen (which can be very janky under some rendering paradigms, due to offscreen parts of tile/frame buffers being dynamically partial-updated with a loading seam; but which can work very well under other rendering paradigms, like the SNES's mode 7 where the tilemap was usually just fully populated once at mode-switch time);
3. Making games that used vector-graphics for at least part of their display, and soft- or hard-rasterized those vector graphics into the native low-resolution framebuffer, instead rasterize those graphics at my display's native resolution;
4. having the emulator recognize particular bitmap assets (tiles, sprites, 3D meshes/textures) the game is telling it to render, and swap these out for hand-crafted HiDPI / high-poly versions of those assets from an asset-pack file (as opposed to relying on the caprices of a DLSS-like upscaling model.)
Mind you, to have features like this work well, they often leave the realm of "interpreting the control-register pokes from the game differently", and enter the realm of "the game being patched to take advantage of the capabilities of the emulator." Then, as with these GOG games, you're no longer just shipping a ROM "and an emulator configured to run it well"; rather, you're shipping a co-designed product: an emulator tuned to run that ROM, and a ROM tuned to run in that emulator.
---
By doing this, you technically leave the realm that MAME-like "archival preservation" emulation usually aims for, of "faithful emulation" of both a game's logic and its presentation.
However! "Faithful emulation" folks shouldn't despair. The nice thing about this technique, is that this is all done by wrapping the original ROM in an emulator + shipping runtime-applied IPS patches.
In other words, the original game ROM is still there, unmodified, under an "isolation layer"; and everything being done to modify it is done using "reversible, conservation-grade" techniques.
Which means the emulator can provide a launcher UI to turn any of those presentation "enhancement" features on-and-off. If you're the "faithful emulation" type, you can just turn them off!
(And, under this paradigm, even with the "enhanced emulation" features on, the game logic is still preserved as-is; you're only modifying the presentation. The original game engine is still running; the original instructions are still executing cycle-accurately to how they should. So the "game feel" is preserved perfectly. If you were good at the original game, you'll still be good at playing an "enhanced emulation" of the game; nothing will be "off" about it. Even input movies recorded against the un-enhanced game should replay unmodified against the enhanced game!)
Contrast this to the average "HD remaster", where the game is at the very least recompiled for a new platform (with different timing guarantees), if not entirely rewritten atop a new engine. In that process, there's no "isolation layer"; no way to guarantee a preservation of any part of the original game logic in the remastered artifact. And like George Lucas, game developers coming back to their own works 20–40 years later, just can't help but want to tweak things. So these HD remasters end up breaking "game feel" in all sorts of ways.
What I always loved about Werner Herzog documentaries that how he just lets people talk. He just listens. Most people will talk and tell their story if you let them do it and that's exectaly what he does without any fanfares. But he never lets them off the hook either. It's an art on its own to do this, walking on a thin line.
Spot on. There's something about his approach to documentaries that really resonates with me. I'll admit I'm not super well-versed in documentaries so maybe his style isn't that unique, but I suspect it is. The only other film that's had the same effect on me as a Herzog documentary was Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing. I would also highly recommend Herzog's early film, Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) which shows he had the magic very early in his career.
Grizzly Man was the first Herzog documentary I saw and this scene is exactly what you’re talking about and something I still think about when I am with people willing to share the things they alone carry in life: https://youtu.be/hXyQAtXJ4II
"he just listens" is probably a false assumption. He famously promotes his documentary method of finding the "ecstatic truth", which "does not necessarily have to agree with facts". This style leads him him to script and stage scenes, sometimes with multiple takes. I don't think this counts as just listening.
Additionally, he has called cinema verite "a mistake".
Andrew Callahan of Channel 5 has mentioned several times that he adopted the technique of "active listening" which largely amounts to letting people talk until they stop. And then when you are tempted to prompt them, just wait and let them continue. And when they do that is when they start to really get real.
“ he just lets people talk. He just listens. Most people will talk and tell their story if you let them do it”
That used to be the appeal of Joe Rogan and to some degree still is for some other podcasts. Just let tell people talk and let the audience make up their minds. Instead of pushing the guest into a predetermined corner like a lot of media likes to do.
The Ebola virus is not simply a health issue but a cultural and eudcational "problem" too. There is a reason people eat bushmeat because 1, it's their culture 2, they would otherwise have nothing to eat especially not meat protein.
Political tribalism wearing a mask of financial news. There are many pension funds and many large companies with valuation problems. Plenty of them in the tech sector. Everyone involved in propagating this story understands the political move they’re making.
Personally if anyone cares my take is that our economic problems are basically structural and geometric at this point. DC is a circus of people tasked with solving them and with the general competence the process selects for, the problems are in a practical sense unsolvable. So instead we get the tribal war spectacle over who holds the pen. Meanwhile the problems sit on the desk with a blank in the answer space.
Musk chose to make the political aspects unavoidable but I don’t think anything related to major investors’ reactions to one of the most hotly awaited IPOs here is primarily a political move. I’ve been on HN for a while and people here have always had a soft spot for SpaceX — there are probably grown adults now who were born after their parents were speculating about the company here! — and the valuations of SpaceX and Tesla have been the topic of discussion for many years, too. Toss in AI and X and it’d be more surprising if it wasn’t getting a lot of chatter.
I've never ever seen that but I also never drove an car with automatic transmission just manual, probably a thing there
reply