Original Post
I just got a rather interesting idea from reading a recent post about OS development.
When we write games for any OS, they have to go through the OS to do almost anything. If the OS is Windows, we have to go through the often bulky Windows API. Well, my proposal is, what if somebody wrote a combination of a game and an OS? That way, your code would only be going through drivers, and you''d know where to optimize. Since your game doesn''t need the majority of a real OS''s features, such as a GUI, it would be less complex than something like Windows to write. Theoretically, we could even use Linux and its kernel for the core. There are major technical hurdles, but this is possible...
Here are the main problems as I see them:
(1) Drivers. This game(or engine) would have to run on many hardware configs, and since it acts as an OS, it needs some kind of system of drivers. This hurts the concept because it introduces an intermediate layer, but this is necesarry, and very complicated. There are thousands of different devices, and the code to run them is also very different. If we use Linux as a base, we might be able to adapt current drivers for the game''s purposes.
(2) Booting. This is a lesser problem than the previous one, but still, would we force a floppy/CD boot disk? Or would we use some kind of pre-OS boot loader that would come with our game? How would this be de-installed?
(3) Installation. Remember, this is an OS, so it would have to search for your devices, and setup its file-system every time you installed it. Not sure how this problem could be remedied.
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If we were to figure out how to solve these, and somebody wrote a game engine based on this, wouldn''t this be a hell of a lot faster than going through Windows? It would also leave Windows alone, so no registry fuck-ups, or un-recoverable Windows crashes!
Anyways, this is just a thought, so don''t take it too seriously...
--Tim
