PC Hack version?

[Lili1228]

Hi, I understand this is a bit out of scope for this repo but I was wondering if there's a chance for adding DGK enhancements, as featured in PC Hack 1.03 and PC Hack 3.61 (the latter taken from 'an old DOS software FTP site, I think' according to the repo owner)? I don't wanna punch the dog but I also don't want to use 86Box to play this.

[Critlist]

Hey, so good question, and you’re right about those DGK/PC Hack features.

They’re outside the scope of this project. restoHack is focused on preserving Hack 1.0.3 as-is, so I’m keeping a hard line between restoration and enhancement. Mixing the two tends to produce something that’s neither historically accurate nor cleanly modernized.

That being said, you bring up a good point. It’s out of scope here, but I’m inclined to dig into the PC Hack code and see if it justifies a dedicated repo for that branch of the Hack lineage.

Before I go too far down that path, I’m curious how much interest there actually is. Is this something you’ve seen others ask for, or is it more of a personal itch? If there are more people interested in restoring that branch, that definitely changes the calculus.

[Critlist]

One follow-up question: when you say you don’t want to use 86Box, what would your ideal target look like?

Would a native Windows build be the main thing you’re after, or would a cross-platform modern build be better as long as it preserves the PC Hack/DGK behavior?

I’m trying to separate “PC Hack as a DOS artifact” from “PC Hack as a feature/behavior branch that can run cleanly on modern systems.”

[Lili1228]

Is this something you’ve seen others ask for, or is it more of a personal itch?

I've done 0 research regarding if other people want it.

what would your ideal target look like?

As a fellow Arch user, definitely the latter.

[Critlist]

I don’t think a dedicated fork for pcHack is out of the question. From what I've seen so far it SEEMS rather straightforward if I use restoHack as the base.

Let me see what I can do for you this week after work.

[Lili1228]

diff hack1.0.3/ pchack3.61/ is around 4k lines + exclusive files, with many of them being caused by PC Hack filenames being 8.3. This is reflected by includes and L1 comments. Anyway, best of luck ^^

[Critlist]

Hey! I finally got a first pass of pcHack up and running 😄

You were right that the divergence wasn’t too insane once I separated the DOS/platform weirdness from the actual gameplay logic. I ended up using restoHack as the behavioral base and then porting the PC Hack/DGK logic + IBM graphics behavior back on top of it.

It’s still early and there’s cleanup left to do, but I wanted to send it your way since you asked about it:
pcHack GitHub Repo

Would genuinely love your thoughts whenever you get time to poke at it, especially since you already noticed a bunch of the branch-specific quirks/diff noise from the old DOS source.

[Lili1228]

Damn, that was pretty quick, thank you!
I feel I starve more often than I did in DOS but I think it's just bad luck. No issues so far!