Thanks, guys! I'm fairly certain the move itself will go well; Dad's used to selling and moving any time he can make money from doing so, thus he's well versed in the art of moving. Just a matter of being all packed and ready for it. ;)

In terms of living with my father, it probably won't be THAT bad, except that Dad's the least computer-literate person in the family, so I'll doubtlessly have to tech-support his computer problems on a regular basis. Beyond that though, you could pretty much fit every room in my house in his basement, so there's plenty of room for both of us to be living there. :)

Also, the move opens up some money for me, which means I'll FINALLY be able to build myself a really high-end system that will last me a good solid stretch of years before it gets even remotely outdated, rather than relying on hand-me-down systems. This should also make it possible to record footage from ANYTHING, not just DOSBox or little windows on my desktop. Though speaking of footage...

SquallStrife wrote:

I dig the way your IRL footage has that 90s home-movie look about em.

I'm only using a $200 digital camera and relying on its built-in mic instead of a boom mic or something, which is why my live-action has that feel to it. I could get a new camera after the move if I really wanted to, but I do so little live action recording it doesn't make much sense to spend so much on a camera, especially when I already have one. :P

I wouldn't bother... I like it, the early LGR videos had that effect going for them too. It's a nice touch, whether intentional or not.

I think a lot of footage shot with high-end cameras looks kinda sterile.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

The Win95 patch isn't that well known about outside of the Carma community, partially because it isn't perfect and it does tend to have issues on certain systems. That said, I still recommend it if it's compatible with your system.

You sure? My CD has both dos and win95 versions (no patch), with different installers. IIRC the autorun even starts the win95 installer.

The original Windows version of Carmageddon uses DirectX 5. Anything pre DX7 is gonna be iffy in terms of whether it works or not on modern systems.

Kris -

You seem so sad about everything! 🙁 I'm not sure if this was the intention, but the music in this filler was kind of sad sounding, which made it even more super sad! This is going to be super awesome for you though. Moving home is kinda rough, but there's really nothing wrong with it, you said it yourself, you'll be back out before you know it!

I am gunna be super selfish, but I welcome you bringing everything to youtube. I hope it works out! I love the playlist feature. I use it to watch Clint's videos and AVGN at work. All three of you are super relaxing to me, and I love to sometimes spend a day or two vegging out and watching your videos (I ripped them so I can watch a playlist on VLC)

Good luck with everything! If you ever find yourself in New York, I'll be sure to know and buy you a drink (or bring a laptop somewhere and play some DOS games!)

Isn't the Win95 retail version a 1998 rerelease?

tranoidnoki wrote:

You seem so sad about everything! :( I'm not sure if this was the intention, but the music in this filler was kind of sad sounding, which made it even more super sad!

That tune of mine is called "First and Final" as you hear it when you beat PixelShips Retro. The title is a nod to the idea that you just faced a particular PixelShip of immense power for the first time, but you've also completed your final level.

And it is kind of a sad time... I'm sort of seeing it as the end of a chapter/era of my life, since I've been on my own since mid 2002, and because I don't intend to unpack 80% of my stuff while at my father's, which includes most of my video game collection, though I will be keeping my computer game collection handy for obvious reasons. ;)

tranoidnoki wrote:

This is going to be super awesome for you though. Moving home is kinda rough, but there's really nothing wrong with it, you said it yourself, you'll be back out before you know it!

Exactly. Especially if my next couple games turn out to be awesome. Vectorzone's run into so many issues I really just wanna get it done and move on, because I have a freakin' amazing tower defence idea that's NEVER been done, so I wanna get that game made ASAP!

leileilol wrote:

Isn't the Win95 retail version a 1998 rerelease?

I don't actually know... MobyGames claims it's still 1997 but there's very little specific information for it.

Gemini000 wrote:

Exactly. Especially if my next couple games turn out to be awesome. Vectorzone's run into so many issues I really just wanna get it done and move on, because I have a freakin' amazing tower defence idea that's NEVER been done, so I wanna get that game made ASAP!

How are you planning to sell/market your games? Thinking of some combination of Desura/IndieGameStand/GOG/HumbleBundle/Greenlight/etc.?

Marketing is one of my weakest skills, which is part of the reason why I didn't have much luck with prior games. (Not to mention I'm constantly learning more and more about game design, even after all this time.)

One thing that helps now is that I have a fanbase of about 1,000 regular watchers, slowly growing every day, and I'll be talking about my games in filler videos and such on ADG.

I also plan to invite Clint of LGR fame into any private betas I do in the future. Whether he accepts or not is entirely up to him of course, and I imagine if he likes what he sees he may do an LGR Plays video or maybe even a straight-up LGR review. I actually already gave him copies of Super Minesweeper and PixelShips Retro quite awhile back, but there's been so many other games to talk about, not to mention being overwhelmed by tons of requests, so he hasn't gotten around to covering them, nor do I want to add to the frustration by bugging him about it. :P

I do indeed intend to try and get my future titles onto GOG and/or Steam. For some reason, I think I'll have better luck with GOG since Steam Greenlight is a bit-more popularity based than I'm comfortable with, though that's not to say it wouldn't work out. I also discovered that the game programming libraries I use, Allegro, are compatible with Android, and also compatible with the OUYA, so once I have Vectorzone done I will almost certainly look into porting it to the OUYA, along with any future games I produce.

Some indie games make ridiculous amounts of money though. StarBound just recently opened up pre-orders, as in, just a week ago roughly, and they've already passed $750,000 in sales. That's a massive amount of money considering. I would be happy just making $20,000 in sales a year. (Which equates to a little over 2,000 copies/year of any games I make in the future.)

Advertising is a bit of a bust really for indie gaming, at least, non-F2P games. When I advertised Super Minesweeper back in 2005, I spent more on the ads than I got in return sales, so it made little sense to continue running the ads. Subsequently, I spent no money at all on ads for PixelShips Retro in 2007 and it sold about four times better. :P

I also do press releases. In the past, I would hire another company to handle all the eMailing. Nowadays however, I know how to get them into the right hands and which news sites I would want to send them to, so I could do the press release stuff on my own accord.

But yeah, for the most part, I'm hoping you guys will help spread the word, just like with ADG, because you're all awesome. :)

Gemini000 wrote:

*has finally watched some of the Clint + Roses LP*

Hey, guy and girl gamers taking a look at something old, retro and awesome in its ridiculousness. They could both be married to other people and completely unattracted to each other; you're STILL gonna get that tension from two personalities like that! 😉

Thanks, I appreciate seeing fair viewpoints on the LHoD playthrough! Gets old seeing comments along the lines of "get a room" and such. Yeah we do have a lot of fun together, and I guess due to the opposing genders some just read into things a bit. But we're simply really good friends and enjoy old games 😀

Gemini000 wrote:

Ancient DOS Games Filler #28 - Life Stuff is online!

And as usual, since it's up early it means I'm going to bed momentarily, though I'm sure the video speaks for itself in terms of what's going on with everything. Goodnight, everyone! 😀

I know I've said it elsewhere, but I really wish you the best of luck with moving and life in the immediate future. Carmageddon was most excellent and I'm always looking forward to more ADG, and am happy to start pimping your vids on YT sometime soon!

Whoops, didn't hit reply on this before I left work yesterday. Good thing Firefox saved it for me in its cache!

Desura and IndieGameStand appear to be friendly to small indie developers, and Desura at least is fairly well known now. IndieGameStand is more of a way to increase word-of-mouth potential by selling lots of $1-2 copies in a one-off sale; I've actually bought a few games from them this year.

Humble Bundle has also been doing single-game sales, so they may be looking for small indies to submit games for one-off promotions. It may also get your foot in the door for being in a bundle, but you'd probably get pressure to do Mac/Linux (and maybe Android) ports. Fortunately Allegro supports all of those platforms, but you'd probably need to team up with someone (Humble Bundle may also be willing to help) to do the porting work.

I've heard some indie developers recently lamenting Steam Greenlight. It does seem that popularity overwhelms any other factor, but perhaps if you (and your fellow web show host(s)?) plug your game(s) a little at some point, it will generate enough Greenlight votes to put it on Valve's radar.

GOG is just awesome all around, and they've been releasing a lot of indie titles lately. I'm not sure how easy it is to get in with them without getting known via other sites, but it definitely seems to be easier than Greenlight.

I used Allegro back when it was a DOS library for DJGPP (32-bit DOS port of GCC) in the mid-1990s. Now it's pretty much a totally different thing from what I've seen. The only game that I know of for sure that uses it is Cortex Command, which is frustratingly unpolished (which is not Allegro's fault).

Yeah, the new Allegro 5 hasn't been used in much yet, or if it has, the authors aren't doing a good job of saying they used it. :P

It is definitely easy to use though. Has some quirks but nothing I couldn't work around in some way. Previously I used Allegro 4 but have been anxiously awaiting A5 for awhile now, since it's hardware accelerated. ;)

One thing that's neat too is that D.U.M.B., the music libraries I used with A4, are included by default with A5 for playback of tracked module music, including IT format, which is the format I make my music in. :)

If I were to get back into game programming, I'd probably try using SDL, which is used by DOSBox and ScummVM among other things. It's fairly easy to port SDL games to an extremely wide array of platforms (I've ported an SDL-based game to the Wii myself, and have messed with the source code for Linux-based GP2X Wiz handheld ports).

For tracker music, I'd use libxmp (http://xmp.sourceforge.net/) because the author is awesome and has fixed his library to accurately play every quirky song I've sent him so far. He's also currently considering modifying his player app to support SDL in addition to ALSA, OSS and winmm.

I've never heard if libxmp before. I might consider it over DUMB for the quake engine i'm doing

(I never got DUMB working with the sample pointer stuff, also i'd like help in this area to integrate the library also)

I should probably mention that I discovered libxmp because the author has a free Android tracker player app that uses it: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id … droid.xmp&hl=en

Hi ADG! I just wanted to thank you again for the pimp-out, and wanted to also offer you some moral support in your move, and life in general. 😀 I look forward to future DOS reviews. I've always tried to break away from computer games and attempt to review outside of it because I always considered myself a versatile gamer, but my heart always comes back to DOS/Windows games. We're a rare breed though, so we must stick together. FIST BUMP (OR SOMETHING).

In reply to "sexual tension" - it's just so strange. But nothing I am unfamiliar with. I don't think LGR or myself have ever once gone raunchy or flirtatious in our LPs. It's fairly common, no matter what the nature of the video, that female and male reviewers get "shipped" together, because there is a certain media fantasy connected with it. When I worked on That Guy With The Glasses, I was shipped with every male cohort I worked with, but when males worked with other males, and took similar jabs at each other, nobody ever questioned it. That being said, it's all in good fun, and I am a very aggressive gal, and I can see how that translates into flirtation, but for us, it's all about the game and poking fun at IT. At the same time, I continue to ship all of my favorite reviewers, so trust me, I totally get the fantasy. 😀

PushingUpRoses wrote:

Hi ADG! I just wanted to thank you again for the pimp-out, and wanted to also offer you some moral support in your move, and life in general. 😀 I look forward to future DOS reviews. I've always tried to break away from computer games and attempt to review outside of it because I always considered myself a versatile gamer, but my heart always comes back to DOS/Windows games. We're a rare breed though, so we must stick together. FIST BUMP (OR SOMETHING).

Welcome to the forum!

If you think DOS and early-Windows gamers are a rare breed, then VOGONS is the motherlode! 😜

motherlode of gaming weirdos... (myself included)

Oh my, thanks for the welcome! I'm excited to be among computer game allies. 😁

Welcome! This is definitely the place to hang out if you're an old games and/or retro gaming computer geek.