hi. personally, I think it's time that the blind gaming community did
what most of the real gaming industry did a while back. bring out a
game, and say here you go, here are the requirements. its up to you
how you deal with that. if a game dev brings out a game that takes
advantage of newer hardware / newer software, I'm afraid it's up to
the gamer to update and keep with it. they have done that for a long
time now. and you don't seem to hear the complaints as much from them
about it.
sorry, but I think it's time the blind community starts trying to keep
up, in stead of holding ourselves back, and then blaming Microsoft or
apple or who ever, for all the things they have done wrong. sure.
there are things that Microsoft messed up in windows 8. they fixed
some of those in windows 8.1, and will soon be fixing more in the next
version of windows, either next year, or in 2015. they admit they have
made some mistakes, and are going about fixing that. but I'm afraid to
say, that as time go's on, it will be harder and harder to support
ancient languages and software based on them. it's not because they
don't want to, but simply because the cost involved in doing so, is
huge. I mean, come on. people are complaining about windows costing
what it does now! imagine what they would say, if Microsoft turned
around and said, well, we are going to have to charge an extra 50, or
100 dollars per licence, just to keep up support for 10 or 15 year old
software and languages. I don't think that would go over well. and not
being funny, but one of apples good sides, is that they don't do this.
they say, right, here is the new system. this is what it uses. get
used to it, or don't use our product. LOL. harsh, but in some ways,
they have the right idea.
just like they did with 64 bit. in stead of messing around having both
64 and 32 running on the same operating system in effect, as windows
does now, they basically switched to pure 64 bit, and said, well, this
is what we will use now. all app developers, update your software.
I personally think windows should go all out 64 bit, and stop messing
around. 64 bit is faster, and lets you actually use all your ram, in
stead of only part of it. ahaha. even in XP, if you had 4 GB, you
could never use it all!
you could only use about 2 GB at any one time. how annoying!
and programs running as a proper 64 bit app, are amazingly fast and
smooth to work with.
course, the only reason they haven't gotten rid of 32 bit, is cause
most of the dev's still produce in nothing but 32 bit app's! such as
mozilla, for one! they refuse to bring out a 64 bit version of their
firefox or thunderbird! which is stupid, considering the security
advantages 64 bit gives you.
dallas
On 20/12/2013, Thomas Ward <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Dark,
Sigh...You are probably right about the fact that we have said all
that can be said on this subject. I feel like I'm in a boxing match
where neither person has made any impact on the other and all we are
doing is going round after round not getting anywhere.
However, before I close this topic I feel the need to make a
correction. Visual Basic 6 apps and games still work on Windows 8. You
have to take some extra steps to make them work correctly, but it
certainly can be done. In fact, Microsoft released a patch for Windows
8 not too long ago that extends support for older Visual Basic 6 apps
and games for the lifetime of Windows 8. So what you said about
Microsoft mucking up compatibility with Visual Basic 6 is not true.
They have in fact tried to maintain compatibility as long as necessary
while getting programmers to adopt .NET instead.
Even if it were true can you possibly try and see it from their point
of view for once instead of looking at this from a biased position.
Visual Basic 6 was released in 1998. That was 15 years ago for a
totally different operating system and generation of computers than we
are dealing with today. There were several third-party ActiveX
components for 16-bit and 32-bit Windows that are no longer supported
by their respective companies causing major problems with VB 6
applications. Since those ActiveX components are not made by
Microsoft, not supported by Microsoft, those problems are strictly the
problem with the third-party companies that developed them for Windows
98 etc. there are of course plenty of other problems with Visual Basic
6, and Microsoft made the right decision by phasing out the language
and components in exchange for a newer and better technology called
.NET which is far superior to VB 6 ever was.
The problem is this.. Despite .NET being better in various ways many
people were happy with VB 6 and chose not to upgrade to .NET. A lot of
VI gamers so no benefit to them in learning VB .NET so didn't. That is
why most of the games out there are still written in VB 6, and really
should be rewritten or updated. That's not Microsoft's fault that
various accessible games were written in Visual Basic 6. Microsoft
made it clear 10 years ago that developers should begin migrating to
.NET, and if developers didn't listen that is their problem. They were
told what is what, and yet despite all that Microsoft does maintain
some basic compatibility for VB 6 because they want you and others to
upgrade, but they also want to begin migrating developers away from
old outdated technologies too.
With the accessible games community we seem to be caught in a classic
chicken and egg type situation. A lot of blind users will not upgrade
to Windows 7 or Windows 8 until game developers stop producing games
for XP. Game developers know most of their customers use XP so are
still developing games for XP, and are not looking at developing games
for Windows 8 because there are not enough customers to justify such a
change in development. One side or the other needs to break the cycle
or it is just going to continue for several years to come neither side
moving because they haven't gotten what they wanted, and will not
until the other side takes the initiative.
To give you an example a lot of blind game developers are still using
Visual Basic 6. Well we already know it was developed for Windows 95
and Windows 98, but works fine on XP. As long as the lion's share of
blind gamers continue using XP there is no incentive for Developer X
to upgrade to VB .NET or something else. Although, there are some
users like me using Windows 8.1 and we can put pressure on him/her to
make more games for Windows 8 they aren't going to listen until a
critical mass is reached and most of those XP users switch to Windows
8. However, most of those XP users aren't going to switch to Windows 8
until they absolutely have to and they are waiting on Developer X to
drop XP support which Developer X won't until the XP users switch. So
both sides are waiting on the other to blink first and we have a bit
of a Mexican stand-off.
I do not know what the answer is, but Microsoft really isn't at fault
for the situation regardless of what you think. Accessible game
developers could have began phasing out VB 6 a long time ago and
didn't. Accessible gamers could upgrade to Windows 8 and request that
game developers get with the times but won't. Until one or the other
decides to get off their apathy we will have the same old problem.
Cheers!
On 12/19/13, dark <[email protected]> wrote:
Well tom I don't really believe there's much else to say since for me,
security isn't an issue due to fhtird party software and I'd rather run
avg
than have the harrassment of running windows 8 and a virtual xp system.
maybe that's different for you.
if microsoft of course hadn't mucked up compatiblity with vb6
applications
and dos programs, well I'd be happy to upgrade even with relearning the
interface, and indeed I imagine everyone else currently running xp would
as
well, so it's certain where the blaime for this situation belongs. This
is
actually one prime advantage Ios seems to have over windows since it
doesn't break existing programs when upgrading, and is another reason
I'd
like to investigate the actual bennifits (if any), of mac as opposed to
windows 7 since if I've got to run xp in a virtual machine anyway, well
it
doesn't make too much difference whether I use mac or windows.
Beware the Grue!
Dark.
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