Interview with Whizzter/Woorlic

Trojan/Kolor

Whizzter, Swedish coder in Woorlic, has made its own and tiny dos extender called wext. Trojan interviewed him about wext.

First of all, why did you plan to make your own extender?

First I was mostly curious, and after Stash&Jizz there came this huge demand for "small" basesystems (lib+extender), and my extender would fit nicely.

How small is it?

1.03 is 2.7k packed with apack and 1.10b will be 3.1k, the only difference is the dpmi support.

What about the features of wext?

There aren't many features at all, but it's made in a way so that you can do all stuff needed in a 64k.

Is it compatible with other extenders?

It's compatible with dos32 because I used dos32 when I started with wext, the interface sucks a bit but has everything you really need.

Does it work with the common/most players?

It works with all players that support dos32, the ones i know of are: usmplay (i actually released the first version of wext when i knew usmp would work with it), mxmplay (also tested before the first release), network music system should also work but i don't have masm so i can't test but it uses the dos32 api and SHOULD work!

Where can i get it?

http://woorlic.home.ml.org is the real url, but if your browser doesn't work then the direct url is http://grave.ml.org/~whizzter/woorlic/.

What about future versions of wext?

I'm planning to write an extender supporting everything with source included, that will be wext 2. (It will come whenever I get the time.)

Is it non-overlayed?

Of course, but 1.10b will include a loader for pharlap executables (made by wlink) so you can use it as a overlayed extender or link the overlay in and get the best of two worlds (read the docs for more).

What about you...

I suck, BADLY! ;)

What about your group?

Woorlic, the group that I founded just a year ago, seems to be getting better/more respected all the time. One of our musicans just placed pretty well in MC6, our graphicans are GREAT at handdrawing and prolly just need some more training on the comp, so we prolly have a good future.

What about your project?

Well as soon as 1.10b of wext is out I'll be starting on some demo for a local party that is held soon.

And what do you think about the European demoscene?

The European scene is becoming like the American a bit too lazy, but I see new kids most of the time, me and a few pals are going to organise a party in our town pretty soon so I hope I can get some kids interested!

Do you think dos will die?

Dos will survive, if not otherwise then emulated!

Do you want more demos running under 95/Linux... ?

When it comes to Winmoes and Linux demos I think ppl should be promoting one of these, but instead try to support both... I have looked at coding under both platforms and if you know some things you'll for example know that code runs at the same wordsize under Win and Linux (32bit word as default). So i am planning on some easy loader system to use, and I know it can be done, iXalance is already on both Win and Linux but regretably Nix is too Win-supporting.

temp // gosh.. i still know how to write alot of shit :D

- Trojan/Kolor