Posts by felsqualle

    In June 2022, Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer would be phased out. In February 2023, they deactivated it with a Windows 10 updated and encouraged users to switch to their Edge browser.

    If you ever tried to start Internet Explorer through iexplore.exe after this date or on a fresh Windows 11 installation, Windows opens the Edge browser instead. If you want to use a web application that only supports Internet Explorer, Microsoft recommends using the compatibility mode in the Edge browser.

    But what if I tell you that to this date, Internet Explorer is deeply embedded in Windows 11 and can be used without even having the Edge browser installed?

    Read more...

    Today, Jerome Shidel from the FreeDOS project announced the availability of FreeDOS 1.4 RC1, the first release candidate of the upcoming 1.4 release.

    Since the current stable version 1.3 was released almost three years ago, the changelog is astonishing:

    Quote

    Almost one year after the last major release, and just in time for Christmas, ScummVM 2.9.0 - "Close Encounters of the 2.9th Kind" has landed. Amongst its gifts, you will find 15 newly supported games and a new supported platform.

    New games

    • The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik
    • Backyard Basketball
    • Castle Master
    • Marvellous Mice Adventures: Meeting Sea Rat
    • Marvellous Mice Adventures: Sea Rat's Birthday
    • Mask Show
    • Moonbase Commander
    • Orion Burger
    • Rise of the Dragon
    • The Space Bar
    • Thimbleweed Park[^1]
    • Total Eclipse
    • Total Eclipse 2
    • Unrest
    • Wait for it! Issue 3. Song for a Hare

    New platform

    ScummVM now has an official Sailfish OS port. While we are waiting for official builds to appear, adventurous users are welcome to build their own and very personalized copy!

    Notable engine enhancements

    The AGS engine has been brought up to version 3.6.1.30 from upstream, which adds support for some recently released games, such as Stranger in Utopia, The Phantom Fellows, and It Takes Two to Tangle.

    Keymapper support was added to more than 20 engines, allowing customization of the keys, mouse buttons, and joystick buttons used to play the games.

    The SCI engine benefits from numerous script fixes for various games and an impressive speech repair feature for Gabriel Knight 1 CD.

    The SCUMM engine sees graphics and audio improvements for the Macintosh version of several games.

    Notable platform enhancements

    The macOS release for recent Intel and Apple Silicon systems has been signed and notarized, so it has been accepted by Apple Gatekeeper.

    The Android release now supports Android 15 and has improved gamepad support.

    The iOS release adds support for the Apple Pencil, which was one of the most requested features.


    The full release notes contain a comprehensive summary of the changes and enhancements.

    On our downloads page, you can find the downloads for various platforms. The iOS version is available in the Apple App Store and the Android versions should soon be available in the Google Play Store (once the update has been approved). If you are using Windows, macOS, or either the Ubuntu Snap or Flatpak packages, the autoupdater will assist you in updating to ScummVM 2.9.0.

    Our macOS users with a 64-bit Intel Mac and a macOS version between 10.9 and 10.12 will need to download manually the new update from our downloads page using the "Mac OS X 10.9+ Intel 64 Bits (without Sparkle) Disk Image" download. The version downloaded using the auto-update feature now requires macOS 10.13 or above.

    Play the games, and enjoy ScummVM with a hot cup of grog[^2]!

    [^1]: Thimbleweed Park is only supported on a subset of platforms as it requires OpenGL with Shaders. [^2]: Other beverages available.

    The FreeDOS project released their Interim Test Build T2412 for December.

    Changes since T2411:

    The updated images are available at ibiblio.org.

    The ScummVM Team opened public testing for the upcoming 2.9.0 release.

    A few days ago, Aaron Giles released version 3.0.2 of his DREAMM emulator.

    DREAMM is a bespoke emulator for LucasArts games (complete list).

    Changelog:

    • Added support for Amazon versions of Indy Crusade, Indy Fate, Loom, The Dig, EfMI
    • Fixed Rebel Assault 1.7 installation (requires reinstall since I was missing a file)
    • Fixed X-Wing/TIE CD Collector's editions when running from GOG/Steam releases
    • Fixed juddery scrolling in Super Star Wars prototype
    • Fixed launching Rebel Assault variants in standalone mode
    • Fixed POV hats in Windows games
    • Improved joystick remapping in the presence of asymmetric axes
    • If you have no joystick, games will now see no joystick present
    • Improved MacOS behavior when switching in/out of full screen
    • Fixed occasional crash during user interface animations
    • Fixed occasional crashes when encountering corrupt or unexpected image files

    Okay, more news.

    I updated my machine to Windows 11 24H2 this morning, and now the CPU virtualization counter stuff broke again (which breaks basically each and every update). Even though Hyper-V and Core Isolation is disabled, I can't get to boot the VM with these options enabled - and without them, the sound issues are back again.

    Turns out that you _really_ don't want to update until _after_ the VMware update that grants compatibility... sigh.

    UPDATE: I rolled back to yesterday's backup which is still on 23H2 and the issues are gone, so I am very confident that 24H2 is the culprit.

    A few days ago, Aaron Giles released version 3.0.1 of his DREAMM emulator.

    DREAMM is a bespoke emulator for LucasArts games (complete list), including:

    If you are new to the tool, I recommend checking the great documentation.

    Over the last months, I used DREAMM quite a lot, and I never ran into issues. The most demanding game I was running was Curse of Monkey Island, and this ran very well.

    Since a couple of years, Windows 2000 and XP guests running inside VMware Workstation suffer from sound issues - in many cases, you will get a lot of stutter and distortion.

    There were a couple of fixes over the years like VMAudioFixTray and VMAudioBack, but due to some changes in Windows 10/11 and current VMware Workstation releases, they mostly stopped working.

    Thankfully, there's a new tool called VMAudioBackHost. Instead of running inside the guest OS, it targets the host OS directly by injecting a timing fix into the VMware process. A more in-depth explaination about the fix is provided in the project's readme.

    I tried this on my Windows 11 host with VMware Workstation 17 and a Windows 2000 VM, and I can confirm that this fully fixes all sound issues.

    On April 25, 2024, Microsoft released the source code of MS-/PC-DOS 4.00 to the public, and the community managed to provide MS-DOS 4.01 as well.

    While the original release was available as a set of six 5,25" floppy disks (and optionally three 3,5" disks for version 4.01), this open-source release does not have official installation media.

    Recreating the original media would theoretically be possible, but I want to focus on the 720k images for this project. Having to swap around six floppies multiple times isn’t practical. Furthermore, we can build images for 1.44 MB floppy disks for increased compatibility—the SELECT utility used for the installation process doesn’t like it if you install it on floppies with a different format than the source disks are written in.

    The open-source release is missing a few program files and the entire DOSSHELL environment, so we also have to deal with this.

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