Is Blip located in the midwest US? They're going through a disaster right now.

Actually, Blip's located in New York City.

Curiously, their response eMail to me earlier today suggested that nothing was or had gone wrong, so I sent them every little detail I had about what happened to see if perhaps I can get a better explanation from them. Their tech support is fairly good and they always respond to stuff personally so I'll find out soon enough if they have any details.

Gemini000 wrote:

DonutKing wrote:

And thanks for spoiling the ending in the video 😜

It took me 20 hours of gameplay to get that far and I was racing through the last 80 metres trying to get them over with as fast as possible. If the ending was impressive in some way I wouldn't've shown it.

My reasoning was to prevent people from forcing themselves through the rest of the game if they got 10 hours in and got bored so that they would know they wouldn't be missing anything special if they decided to just move on to other games.

I'm just joking dude. Games like this are more about the journey than the destination. 😀

Apparently, the entire stability of Blip depends upon time not being delayed by a second. XD

Blip got back to me and said that the "leap second" we experienced is what caused the hour-long outage. I guess Y2K would've been more threatening if it added a second to our clocks. :P

DonutKing wrote:

Gemini000 wrote:

DonutKing wrote:

And thanks for spoiling the ending in the video :P

It took me 20 hours of gameplay to get that far and I was racing through the last 80 metres trying to get them over with as fast as possible. If the ending was impressive in some way I wouldn't've shown it.

My reasoning was to prevent people from forcing themselves through the rest of the game if they got 10 hours in and got bored so that they would know they wouldn't be missing anything special if they decided to just move on to other games.

I'm just joking dude. Games like this are more about the journey than the destination. :)

OK, but still, I had a good reason. ;)

Gemini000 wrote:

Apparently, the entire stability of Blip depends upon time not being delayed by a second. 🤣

Blip got back to me and said that the "leap second" we experienced is what caused the hour-long outage. I guess Y2K would've been more threatening if it added a second to our clocks. 😜

Well, 2K was only potentially an issue if you were using date+times broken down into their separate elements (ie. year, month, day...) or in string formats, and used 2 characters to represent the year. The underlying timekeeping (almost universally seconds since UNIX epoch - Jan 1, 1970 00:00:00 UTC) remained the same and wasn't affected.

In this case, some people ended up just stepping their clocks forward 1s, and I guess some software/systems weren't able to cope with the system time changing unexpectedly and died.

I liked google's approach to this, which was to slew their clocks forward over a period of time, so the rate of the system clock just smoothly increased until they'd gained a second (if you're into time synchronization, this is how NTP does time corrections anyway)

Just noticed something:

Patrick Bateman and Kris Asick - SEPARATED AT BIRTH????? 😜

It's too bad Splatterhouse was never released for DOS. Gemini could totally do an episode in-character. 😜

My need to engage in homicidal behaviour on a massive scale cannot be corrected but, uh, I have no other way to fulfill my needs.

Stull wrote:

It's too bad Splatterhouse was never released for DOS. Gemini could totally do an episode in-character. 😜

My need to engage in homicidal behaviour on a massive scale cannot be corrected but, uh, I have no other way to fulfill my needs.

Hahaha!

Is that a raincoat?

Yes it is! In '87, Huey released this, Fore, their most accomplished album. I think their undisputed masterpiece is "Hip to be Square", a song so catchy, most people probably don't listen to the lyrics. But they should, because it's not just about the pleasures of conformity, and the importance of trends, it's also a personal statement about the band itself.

HEY PAUL!!!

Today's game is Splatterhouse.

😁

You guys are nuts. XD

Ancient DOS Games Episode 92 - Catacomb 3-D Series is online!
(Please note that this is a mature rated episode.)

So... yeah... ALL four Catacomb 3-D games in the space of 14 minutes. They really are that simple when it comes down to it, though I think I may've over-compressed the information I provide in this episode. Ah well.

Though I've got a real stumper for the next game I'm covering, and since this episode is mature rated, here's the hint: It's an incredibly obscure 3D space shooter that was made in Canada and is not listed on Wikipedia or on MobyGames. Considering there's not many 3D space shooters for DOS, there's only so many possibilities. ;)

As I recall Armageddon was also released as "Curse of the Catacombs" and Apocalypse was also released as "Terror of the Catacombs".

Heh, that FM track from C3D: the Descent was recycled from Commander Keen 4. I'm assuming that the mature rating is due to the moral scandal of referring to Bobby Prince's music as monontonous. ;)

Having sci-fi elements in a fantasy setting wasn't such a novelty even back then - I refer thee to the first two Ultimas. Have a spot soft for this kind of thing, unabashed classic pulp atmosphere and all.

With the graphics, the gameplay, and Bobby Prince's music, you really do get a sense of how Wolfenstein 3D evolved out of Catacomb 3D.

BTW, the earlier 1991 release of Catacomb 3D was called "A New Dimension", not "The Descent". Also, you were Petton Everhail the wizard from the 2D Catacomb game, and the BBG (Big Bad Guy) was Grelminar The Lich. Nemesis was some other wizard you were trying to find, but somehow became the BBG in the 1993 re-release and all subsequent Catacomb games from Softdisk. I suppose Nemesis is a more fitting name for a BBG.

ripsaw8080 wrote:

With the graphics, the gameplay, and Bobby Prince's music, you really do get a sense of how Wolfenstein 3D evolved out of Catacomb 3D.

BTW, the earlier 1991 release of Catacomb 3D was called "A New Dimension", not "The Descent". Also, you were Petton Everhail the wizard from the 2D Catacomb game, and the BBG (Big Bad Guy) was Grelminar The Lich. Nemesis was some other wizard you were trying to find, but somehow became the BBG in the 1993 re-release and all subsequent Catacomb games from Softdisk. I suppose Nemesis is a more fitting name for a BBG.

The pink demons from Doom?

http://www.flatrocksoft.com sells the Catacomb Complete Series featuring five Catacomb games, but there are six games in the series. I guess they forgot about the second 2D Catacomb game (which also has a hub).

Are they actually authorized to sell them?

VileRancour wrote:

Heh, that FM track from C3D: the Descent was recycled from Commander Keen 4.

So is the "Skull n Bones" game at the beginning. It's Paddle War.

Makes sense, since those guys left Softdisk to make Id.

sliderider wrote:

The pink demons from Doom? […]
Show full quote

The pink demons from Doom?

Too many appendages! Reminds me more of the Barons:

hmmm the midi music we heard in the first of the games. Was that not from one of the three Bio Menace games, and not Keen 4 ?

sliderider wrote:

Are they actually authorized to sell them?

They should be. Flat Rock Software owns all the Softdisk Publishing software licenses. :P