Ah, well there you go!

SquallStrife wrote:

Ah, well there you go! […]
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Ah, well there you go!

Totally off-topic, but did the "The More You Know" ads air in Australia too?

Stull wrote:

Totally off-topic, but did the "The More You Know" ads air in Australia too?

If they did, I bet they looked like this:

Stull wrote:

SquallStrife wrote:

Ah, well there you go! […]
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Ah, well there you go!

Totally off-topic, but did the "The More You Know" ads air in Australia too?

Nah.

In fact, it's entirely possible that the only reason I know about the above image is Family Guy.

Well, here's the Tyrian logo...

...and here it is when viewed in Australia!

...wait...

🤣 Nice, never noticed that!

Gemini000: I grew with many different languages (of the same language). When I was a child, and my father taught me. That there was a language for the street , and one for the home. So no worries. I actually understand what you are saying by the whole cursing stuff. But at the same time, I also just like to use my full vocabulary , and my vocabulary has curses and swears too. But as my former post said, It was one smashing great episode 😀

Everything looks the right way up to me. I think its you northern hemisphere dwellers who are up side down.

Ancient DOS Games Episode 128 - Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold is online! (Please note that this is a mature-rated episode.)

...wow this game is hard. I mean seriously, I remembered dying a lot playing the shareware version when I was younger, but I had no idea how ridiculous it could get. Even Planet Strike isn't THIS difficult. x_x;

Ah well, I managed as best as I could. 'twas interesting to find out that JAM Productions was actually related to Id Software; partly explains how they were able to get a somewhat enhanced Wolf3D engine to play with. ;)

I actually played Blake Stone shareware a bit more than most people probably did when it came out, because I was stuck on an 8MHz 286 while Doom required a 386 or higher (because it was a 32-bit protected mode game).

I remember liking it for the extra gameplay elements that weren't in Wolf3D (neutral NPCs, switches, vending machines, ability to revisit previous levels, in-game map, etc.) as well as the sci-fi setting, but I also remember not obsessing over it for too long because I was already burned-out on Wolf3D (to the point of even having played with level editors and such) and was wishing I could be playing Doom instead.

Hey I tried the two Blake Stone games recently on my MS-DOS Gaming PC.

Good GOG.com release, just copy them over and off you go.

Also, Sound configuration from within the game.

Oh yeah, that's another odd thing with the game under DOSBox: If the cycles count is too high (over 60,000ish) when the game starts up, it won't detect any sound devices. :P

Gemini000 wrote:

Oh yeah, that's another odd thing with the game under DOSBox: If the cycles count is too high (over 60,000ish) when the game starts up, it won't detect any sound devices. 😜

That's somewhat common, actually.

Yup I always try to pick a decent cycle count depending on the game.

But NEVER max. That just asks for trouble 😀

Ykhwong's SVN Daum build lets you set max after the game is started, so I didn't notice. Does anyone else notice a bit of crackliness in the sound at max cycles though?

I played the first level and a half of the shareware version. It's a little bit more engaging than Wolf3D, but I just can't stand pre-mouselook FPS games. It's not the lack of up/down that bothers me, but rather the inability to use WASD for strafing and mouse for turning. You may have been able to do it with Doom by mapping A and D to strafe and mouse up/down to nothing (but I'm not 100% sure), but the earlier games were all hard-coded to only allow strafing via a modifier key and to always use mouse up/down for moving forward/back (which is completely ridiculous unless *maybe* when using a trackball). It could be possible to finagle DOSBox into disabling up/down on the mouse, but the modifier strafing is a dealbreaker.

The good news is that the source code to the second game (Blake Stone: Planet Strike) was apparently released last summer, so there are a couple of source port projects underway (I found one project to incorporate support into a Wolf3D source port named ECWolf, and another independent project). Unfortunately the code to Aliens of Gold seems to be lost, but some of its specific code is apparently still commented out in the Planet Strike source and people will probably eventually recreate the rest. Once these are far enough alone, there will hopefully be a more user-friendly way to play.

HunterZ wrote:

Ykhwong's SVN Daum build lets you set max after the game is started, so I didn't notice. Does anyone else notice a bit of crackliness in the sound at max cycles though?

The specific number of cycles needed by Aliens of Gold fluctuates WILDLY as you play, just like it did with Advanced Tactical Fighters. The difference is that ATF needs a huge amount of cycles most of the time, whereas AoG fluctuates between needing around 40,000 and 120,000 (the last number is a guess by how slow things can get playing at fixed 40,000), mostly dependent on how many sprites are on-screen, which part of the map you're in, what direction you're facing, but mostly if the screen is flashing or not for whatever reason.

Here's something VERY interesting... Wait on the title screen for the demo to run. No matter what your cycles count is, the framerate in the demo will be terrible! :O

I swear the game is doing something very unusual in terms of timing...

40k to 120k cycles?

Nah there is something wrong. This game is for 386 / 486 machines. 12000 - 24000 cycles should be it.

120k is for a SVGA game like Wing Commander III 😕

I used to love Blake Stone, even if it isnt as advanced as Doom I still think it was a great game.

You say on the site that level 10 is only accessed by teleporters- this is incorrect, there is a red key card on level 9 as well, so after besting the boss you can go back to the elevator and visot floor 10. There is another secret level in each episode that is only accessed by teleporter, but its not floor 10.

Gemini000 wrote:

Here's something VERY interesting... Wait on the title screen for the demo to run. No matter what your cycles count is, the framerate in the demo will be terrible! 😳

I swear the game is doing something very unusual in terms of timing...

It's just speculation, but the demo framerate may have more to do with how they encoded the playback data than it does with interaction between the game engine and emulated CPU.

Also, it should be noted that Blake Stone is a 16-bit real mode game. DOSBox therefore runs with the normal core by default. It may be worth trying to force the dynamic core just to see if the game's behavior changes at all.