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The OS/2 Community and the next 2019 year

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Mathias:
Hi Martin! : )

Agreeing on all your aims for 2019, I'd like to add a thingy:

I wrote Lewis to let him know that I'll be taking a fresh ArcaOS PC to the (Computer Retro Gaming Night ) on May 11th of 2019 in Leipzig's HTWK (DE). Since he is planning to roll out ArcaOS in DE too, I'd like to help him where I can.

As a first step, I'll see how interests are on HTWK in Leipzig with gamers. Lewis agreed to send merchandise for ArcaOS, so there will be stuff to take with you. Also, since this is a gaming con, remembering good old Warp 3, I had many many DOS games running there, which were hard to start in MS DOS without endless memmaker sessions beforehand. In Warp3 they just ran fine, raising memory emulation lever all to the right. :D - ArcaOS can do this too!
Lewis mentioned, he's got plans to make ArcaOS known to retro gamers as THE retro gaming platform for DOS and Win3.x games.
Of course this will require some optimisations for special games, so in the end almost all the good old games can be run on ArcaOS. (Remember? "better DOS than DOS" in the 90'ies).

Currently I've got around 60% of all my DOS games running fine on ArcaOS, but 40%... well.. there are some issues like slowish execution, no sound, or it doesn't work at all.. no error messages whatsoever. - If "we" can establish ArcaOS and/or OS/2 in general to be THE DOS gaming platform, this will be helping a lot to make OS/2ish operating systems more widely known among gamers. - Needless to say this opens markets too...


Of course localisation helps spreading the product to other countries than the US too, so I'll keep translating parts of ArcaOS into DE in 2019 as well. Also some software testing as usual. : )

P.S.: If you have the opportunity to visit the retro gaming night @ Leipzig's HTWK, be sure to be part of it! Visiting is free, but also bringing your own exhibits is free of charge! Your audience are ~3.000 to 3.500 people visiting each year. - Your chance to present your stuff for free! : )) - Also a nice chance to meet each other and discuss OS/2 related topics :D
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edit:
OS/2 and ArcaOS needs a fresh browser! - Be sure to support [ the QT5 port ] to make some progress.
Also an open source graphical FTP client would be VERY helpful.. like Filezilla, also supporting SFTP...

And in general: ArcaOS needs a fresher, more modern look. Showing ArcaOS to people at work (all developers), they agreed it looks aged. And they wondered if this is REALLY an up2date operating system. - Sure they are used to Windows 10. I know it's always nice to have stuff running under the hood, but looks are also important to get the interest of customers. If it looks like back in the 90ies, only a very small ammount of people will give it a try. It needs to look MUCH more modern! To make it backwards compatible to also run on old computers, Windows (again) shows the way: Designs that can be turned on and off. Can be off (default) to save ressources and turned on if it needs to look nice (like for instance on modern PCs that have enough ressources to manage the "extra weight" of an overload of graphics).

ivan:
Hi Mathias,

Regarding your general observations re appearance.  My observations are the exact opposite - I have lost count of the number of times people have asked if I can make their win10 look like mine.  People generally want colour on their computers rather than the bland colourless thing they get with win10.

In fact the biggest stumbling block I have found for people that would otherwise use OS/2 (ArcaOS) is the total lack of USB 3 (most current laptops and desktops no longer have USB2 ports) and as you say a good browser that works with the latest secure sites.  It would also be a help if the video drivers could use modern video cards to their full potential.

I do hope that all goes well for you in Leipzig, I too have several Win3x games I would like to revive and play on OS/2 after all OS/2 was a better DOS than DOS and Windows than Windows back in the beginning.

Martin Iturbide:
Hi Mathias.

The "Computer Retro Gaming Night " sound great, please let me know if there is anything I can do to help (remotely). Remember that I run the OS2World gaming site, is not that hot, but maybe it can work for something. And maybe I can help you by digging out some old games for your showcase.

The "fresh look" on OS/2 will always be controversial since it is a thing of personal taste. "Make it look cool" it does not mean it has to look like Windows, MacOS or Linux, it is more challenge since it will need to maintain the looks on how people like to interact with OS/2 but without the "rough edges" (metaphoric) that OS/2 is showing in modern displays and higher resolutions. So it is controversial.

Regards

RickCHodgin:

--- Quote from: Martin Iturbide on December 29, 2018, 06:40:05 pm ---The "Computer Retro Gaming Night " sound great, please let me know if there is anything I can do to help (remotely). Remember that I run the OS2World gaming site, is not that hot, but maybe it can work for something. And maybe I can help you by digging out some old games for your showcase.

--- End quote ---

I have written a Tetris-like game for Windows that I would be willing to port to OS/2.  It's two-player.  I would be willing to add socket/network support for play over LAN or Internet if anyone's interested.

Mathias:
Martin, whoa! Never knew ¨Enigma¨ had an OS/2 port! How cewl! - Liked the DOS version A LOT back then!
Also excellent web site, the OS2World Gaming one! Besides the vast ammount of games, it`s easy to filter and look up what you want! - Thumbs up! : )

In this case, I need to look through ALL the OS/2 games, as I could also imagine to show OS/2 games besides the DOS games too.
Of course optimising DOS games to run nicely in OS/2 and ArcaOS is a huge task. I know time is an enormous factor. Perhaps we can try some of the ¨well known¨ DOS games and optimise them to run smoothly with the current ArcaOS release. : )

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