String Safety

[mankrip]

[Sajt]

[revelator]

[Baker]

[Spirit]

[mh]

I've a -multiuser command-line option in my current code that will use the user profile directory instead of the Quake directory (just a COM_AddGameDirectory of the relevant profile path so it also allows per-user content override). In the years since I've come to see both sides of the argument - yes, multiple Quake installs needs to be supported, but also - yes, you need to support cases where more than one person uses the same machine. I wouldn't like to get someone else's config or save games, so it's nice to have this escape hatch. The default behaviour is unchanged, of course.

[leileilol]

FYI SHGetFolderPath will kill Win9X support

but i'll mention KernelEx does an 'emulation' of it by having a My Documents folder in the C:\ root for that

[mh]

I killed Win9x support a loooooooooong time ago. Happy days.

[revelator]

it does have its uses to have an old dedicated PC with win9x sadly you will run into some hurdles nowadays if you try a fresh install of say win98 SE as there are no updates avaliable from windows update anymore (site just keeps refreshing).
so to have the fixes that came later on you should have backed up the windows updates. kernelex is neat allows me to run software developed for later versions of windows on 98.

[mh]

Drivers are a big problem. Old hardware dies and new hardware doesn't get Win 9x drivers. A VM helps a lot, but they're dropping support too. Plus it was a crap OS to begin with (I usually used NT4 back in those days unless I really encountered something that just wouldn't run on it - which was rare enough but did occasionally happen. As soon as Win2k was released I threw it out and never looked back). Not working on Win9x is a pretty piss-poor excuse to not do something IMO; unless you know for an absolute fact that you're targetting and that you have to target an incredibly explicit and very small user base you're wasting your time and compromising your program on account of a 17-year-old OS that only die-hard hold-outs and nostalgia buffs still use. Neither are in my target user base.

[mankrip]

Really good points. Sometimes I think about that kind of stuff in regards to the software renderer.

[revelator]

id prefered NT4 also but there where edge cases like directx. NT4 only supported version 3 and could only be upgraded by using hacks and only to version 6, opengl worked a treat though.
and it costed an arm and a a leg back then .
i also changed to 2000 when it came out, but occasionally i had to use win98se for some games and programs. with XP i ditched win98se completely.

[leileilol]

I run Win9x because I have some hardware and games that don't run on NT at all and I often don't have space to dual-boot Windows 2000 on the old hardware.
I maintain 9x boxes for testing and gaming reasons (Dosbox isn't perfect), and developing Quake stuff on a ludicrously ludicrous computer isn't much of an offering for performance profiling

if you think Win95 is bad, at least it's not the psp

[Baker]

[mankrip]

Sony has the Xperia Play, which is already setting some standards for Android gaming, so they're not going to lose all of the portable market easily. If the hardcore handheld gaming market dies, they'll still survive in the mobile phone gaming market.