creps@silver (Steve Creps) (04/22/88)
Well, last night I compiled NetHack 2.3 for the PC, and only had a couple
of problems, but solved them quickly. Mainly there was some Unix-specific
code in topten.c that needed to be #ifdef'ed out. I'll post a list of diffs
to the games.bugs group when I post the PC executables. It looks like the
date I'm going to set to post it is next Tuesday, April 26.
Now for the problem: after 2.2 came out I posted a warning about increasing
the size of the code, because at that time the packed executable was 350K.
Now it is 373K! That means it is worthless to anyone who has neither a hard
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
disk nor a 3.5" disk, since floppy disks can only hold 360K. Also, if it gets
much bigger, it's going to be worthless to anyone who only has a 640K machine.
Now for my questions: does anyone have any comments on how this should
be posted? I plan to put it into two PKARC files: one for the executable, and
one for the support files. I'll uuencode each of these, split them as
necessary, and post them in pieces (pretty standard method). I plan to
cross-post to comp.binaries.ibm.pc and rec.games.hack. Using Pnews this will
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
not be any more to be sent over the net; it will just send one copy that
will appear in both groups. The reason I plan to post to rec.games.hack as
well is that earlier when I said only comp.binaries.ibm.pc, there were some
people who said they couldn't get the binaries group and begged me to post
it to the hack group. If anyone has any comments on this, send them now. I
will reply to any flames after the fact with a copy of this article.
The other question: should I go ahead and post the 373K executable, or
will most people not be able to use this and would rather have a stripped-
down version? If the concensus is not heavily in favor of a stripped-down
version I will go ahead and post the full version, since stripping it down
is something I doubt I'll have time to do. I think nowadays there are enough
people with higher-volume storage devices that the file size problem won't
be a total disaster. (?)
So, as of now it looks like I'll post the executable starting next Tuesday,
spread out over two or three days. I'll include any bug fixes I might make
before then.
- - - - - - - - - -
Steve Creps, Indiana University, Bloomington, "home of the Hoosiers"
creps@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (192.12.206.2)
{pur-ee,ihnp4!inuxc,rutgers,pyramid}!iuvax!silver!creps
creps@iubacs.bitnet (forwarded)aliza@c3pe.UUCP (Aliza R. Panitz (AlmostLady)) (04/28/88)
In article <1580@silver.bacs.indiana.edu> creps@silver (Steve Creps) writes: > > Now for the problem: after 2.2 came out I posted a warning about increasing >the size of the code, because at that time the packed executable was 350K. >Now it is 373K! That means it is worthless to anyone who has neither a hard >^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >disk nor a 3.5" disk, since floppy disks can only hold 360K. Also, if it gets Huh??? At work we use 360K floppies to move around 4 Meg data files all the time... use the DOS BACKUP and RESTORE commands... they will split a file over as many floppies as necessary. Unless I'm mistaken, you need to be able to install NET-HACK on a hard drive to run it... so how you get the file onto your machine shouldn't matter... -- - Aliza (AlmostLady) (decuac.dec.com!c3pe!aliza or backbone!decuac!c3pe!aliza) "Part of the Art of being a Woman is knowing when not to be too much of a Lady" <giggle> <blush> <BLUSH> Oh well... guess this is one of *those* times...
creps@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (Steve Creps) (04/30/88)
In article <2616@c3pe.UUCP> aliza@c3pe.UUCP (Aliza R. Panitz (AlmostLady)) writes: >In article <1580@silver.bacs.indiana.edu> creps@silver (Steve Creps) writes: >>Now it is 373K! That means it is worthless to anyone who has neither a hard >>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >>disk nor a 3.5" disk, since floppy disks can only hold 360K. Also, if it gets >Huh??? At work we use 360K floppies to move around 4 Meg data files all >the time... use the DOS BACKUP and RESTORE commands... they will split >a file over as many floppies as necessary. >Unless I'm mistaken, you need to be able to install NET-HACK on a hard drive >to run it... so how you get the file onto your machine shouldn't matter... Like I said, it's worthless to anyone with only 360K floppy drives. Sure, they can store it, but they still can't run it. By the way, PKARC will also get the size of the file down to fit on a floppy, but you can't run it in that format either, and doing an "arc r nethack" stills needs disk space to create a temporary file. Previous versions could be run from a system with only floppy drives. This version cannot because the runfile is bigger than 360K. Now if someone wants to write a multi-volume loader program... - - - - - - - - - - Steve Creps, Indiana University, Bloomington, "home of the Hoosiers" creps@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (192.12.206.2) {pur-ee,ihnp4!inuxc,rutgers,pyramid}!iuvax!silver!creps creps@iubacs.bitnet (forwarded) "To dream... the unlintable dream..."