In my post on Keen 4 I mentioned a seemingly-unused routine in v1.4-CGA, which I ended up using as patch space for my own code.  Having no idea what it was for, I consulted the sources for Keen Dreams, and found that it looked an awful lot like a KDR routine which caches level data - specifically, CA_CacheMarks in ID_CA.C.  At some point during Keen 4's initialization, a single pointer gets set to this code; but immediately afterwards the address is replaced so this function is never executed. ...

After giving Keen 4's CGA version a 16-color composite overhaul, I figured I'd have a go at the next episode, since the code has nearly everything in common with Keen 4, and the composite enhancements detailed in my previous post could be applied without too many essential changes (other than different offsets/addresses, of course).  Let's strap this one to the rack then: As before, the distribution is a runtime in-memory patch (using CK5PATCH) and you'll need the original KEEN5 CGA files (v1. ...

If you're just landing here at random and wondering about the title: this is a 16-color 'remaster' of the original CGA version of Commander Keen IV: Secret of the Oracle, with code patched and graphics redrawn and reworked to take optimal advantage of CGA's composite output capabilities. For more info (plus the download link), see the VOGONS thread - all sorts of cool stuff in there, like videos recorded from real hardware, and a DOSBox build patched with some useful additions for running this. ...

My Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack got some pretty cool responses, and one of them contained something quite unexpected: a set of files transferred from twenty-five 5.25" floppies, containing internal snapshots of font development done at IBM around 1984. These prototype fonts were designed specifically for a project codenamed Olympiad.  Familiar?  Probably not, but it came to light a couple years later as the IBM 6150 AKA the RT PC, a RISC workstation and grandaddy of the PowerPC architecture. ...

(...and the Cryptic Code Conundrum) This is a question I've already raised in the usual suspect places, but without much success, so here it is again on the off chance that anybody knows anything. Going through compilations of very early BBS-fodder for the IBM PC (shareware, freeware, public domain), I frequently see this bunch of games and programs that seem to have a few things in common: ...

Character(-set) Assassination: a Monospace Odyssey At long last, it's done - the world's biggest collection of classic text mode fonts, system fonts and BIOS fonts from DOS-era IBM PCs and compatibles.  You get: Pixel-perfect reproductions of the original raster fonts! TrueType (TTF) and bitmap (FON) remakes for 81 character sets! Multi-lingual Unicode enhancements of the more popular fonts (and some less-popular ones)! Multi-platform compatibility! Get it HERE The Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack started out with the idea of paying tribute to ancient PCs and their bitmapped, pre-GUI typography (if you can call it that). ...

Round 1: FIGHT! While I was working on the TrueType versions of the BigBlue Terminal font (and on my upcoming pack of oldschool PC font remakes), a stubborn annoyance cropped up in the form of ClearType.  Microsoft's subpixel text rasterizer (optimized for flat-panel displays) doesn't play nice at all with TrueType pixelfonts -- that is, scalable fonts, whose outlines are designed to snap to the pixel grid at a particular size. ...

BigBlue Terminal is a monospaced pixel font, designed for use in fixed-width textual environments (consoles/terminals, text/code/hex editors and so on).  It follows the metrics and dimensions of Windows' old Terminal font (at the 9pt/12px size), but the appearance is closer to the classic IBM PC text mode character sets. At 8x12 pixels, Terminal is nicely compact and useful, but also kind of ugly.  Instead, BigBlue Terminal is closely based on IBM's 8x14 EGA/VGA charset -- I just like it better. ...