The acceleration/break controls sound like the controls from Radix: Beyond The Void prior to being patched.

SKARDAVNELNATE wrote:

The acceleration/break controls sound like the controls from Radix: Beyond The Void prior to being patched.

Radix is a strange case where the original game is SUBSTANTIALLY different from the patched version. Heck, the Radix craft itself went from a helicopter to a futuristic flying thing. :B

I want to cover that game one of these days but I don't own the full version. :/

I was looking through my requests list just now to decide what game to announce a hint for with my next episode and discovered something shocking...

...out of nearly 300 requested games... NO ONE has requested "Pirates! Gold" :O

I never owned the game in the past but played it a bit at a friend's place. The combat was a little awkward but the historical context and amount of content in the game is impressive to say the least.

...screw it, I'm adding it to my requests list and it can just be on there with 0 requests. I don't want to forget it exists. :B

Ancient DOS Games Episode 169 - Dungeon Keeper is online!
(Please note that this is a mature rated episode)

When I noticed how long the script had gotten without talking about specific things, and combined with the fact I barely found any time to capture footage this week, I decided to just make it a slightly longer than usual episode instead of going into details about all the different room types and spells and whatnot... otherwise this video could've easily rivaled the System Shock episode for length... also, I wouldn't've been able to get it done for another two days if I tried to get all the footage I would've needed to accomplish that. x_x;

This week's been pretty hectic in terms of real life, so I made sure to choose something simple for next week's game just in case life decides to keep being complicated for a bit longer. THIS time around what's going on is that the corporation in charge of the building we're renting in is threatening to evict us because we had the audacity to install an air conditioner without permission to combat the +30c weather we've been having. Trouble is they don't GIVE you permission unless you pay an arbitrary fee not outlined (or even mentioned) in any of the contractual material we signed, so now we have a fight on our hands. In Canada, charging "fees" on top of rent is illegal with extremely few and very specific exceptions (air condition permission is not one of them), so the battle is pretty much one sided against the corporation, but I have zero faith in people of power to act lawfully and am bracing for if they do anything even more stupid, like cut the electricity (HIGHLY illegal) or attempt to get an eviction without due process (not completely illegal but typically only allowed in extreme circumstances).

...yeah, the fee is only 1/8th the cost of a month of rent, but that's still money which they're literally attempting to extort from us! >:(

When you say "install an AC", do you mean a portable unit, or something more substantial that required putting holes into walls?

philscomputerlab wrote:

When you say "install an AC", do you mean a portable unit, or something more substantial that required putting holes into walls?

Opening the dining room window and setting a metal box into it. (And covering the remaining upper opening with a piece of plexiglass.) You can actually see it in my most recent GVB video. It was professionally installed, although my father and I were both capable of doing everything the installation guys did. (Mind you, we don't keep spare plexiglass around.)

This is the defacto way of installing window ACs around these parts into a horizontal-sliding window. :B

Even still, there's nothing in our contract about fees for putting one in. If it was legal to charge someone a fee for this kind of thing without specifying it ahead of time in writing, landlords could charge whatever the heck they wanted and tenants would have no choice but to give up large wads of cash or suffer the heat. :(

Did you ask / get permission before taking the window out?

In Australia you get into trouble for putting nails into walls 🤣 But pretty much every property has an AC at least.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Did you ask / get permission before taking the window out?

We didn't take the window out, it's just slid to the side as it's designed to do and has a stop point in place to prevent it from sliding further. :B

Also, that's just it. They won't give us permission to have an AC installed without paying a fee. The fee itself isn't in our contracts, and even if it was, it would still be illegal for them to charge it based on the laws we have in place. Read Section 134 for yourself: http://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/06r17#BK186

When my father went to the tribunal to file a formal complaint, he said the guy he spoke with wasn't allowed to give legal advice, but sort of shook his head in disbelief when he saw the form for the "infraction" we had apparently committed and made a comment along the lines of, "Haven't seen one of these in awhile..."

Who pays for electricity, you or the landlord? If you pay, then the landlord has no cause to complain unless your AC wall unit causes damage above ordinary wear and tear to the apartment. If electricity is included in the rent, then it should factor those costs into its leases. I would not think one AC unit would constitute unreasonable electricity usage.

Great Hierophant wrote:

Who pays for electricity, you or the landlord? If you pay, then the landlord has no cause to complain unless your AC wall unit causes damage above ordinary wear and tear to the apartment. If electricity is included in the rent, then it should factor those costs into its leases. I would not think one AC unit would constitute unreasonable electricity usage.

All utilities are included in our rent.

See, I understand their reasoning that the fee is supposed to help recoup the cost of electricity used by an AC, but there ARE legal ways to go about doing it, but they're not doing it in those legal ways because it would hurt their competitive edge. (And believe me, this corporation has a HUGE edge already over many of the places we looked at, my guess because they're trying to cheat their way through.)

There are two legal ways in my part of Canada to recoup the cost of electricity for AC usage:

1. Apply to the tribunal for an increase in rent above the annual guideline. If approved, notify all tenants of the approved increase and apply it to the rent they pay. The reason the corporation isn't doing this is because once they do it, it's done; they almost certainly wouldn't be able to do it again, so they'd have to increase rent accordingly for new tenants too, which would make the units less desirable and less competitive in terms of pricing.

2. Add an "apportionment" clause into the contract for new tenants so that a percentage of electricity used is charged to the tenant. The reason the corporation isn't doing this is because if they do, they can no longer claim "all utilities included", which is a pretty strong point of sale with rentals. Also, they can't do this to existing tenants because you can't force an existing tenant to sign any kind of new agreement, nor can you evict them for their refusing to sign such a thing.

"fees" are illegal because they're arbitrary and uncontrollable. The fee the corporation is trying to force us to pay is only $125, but what if they wanted $1000? $5000? If there wasn't a law in place to control this sort of behaviour, tenants would be bled dry of money by unscrupulous landlords, so rather than try to set guidelines for every potential kind of fee ever, since the vast majority don't make sense, fees are simply outlawed. I know one of the exceptions has to do with keys, since a building may employ special kinds of locks which require very expensive keys, but there's specific guidelines as to how to go about charging money for keys.

Here's the annoying part: Asking tenants to get permission to install an AC is perfectly legal, as there may be certain considerations and limitations as to where they might go. One limitation we have in this building is to keep units at 10,000 BTU or less so as not to blow any fuses or trip any breakers. However, they're ONLY giving permission when you pay that $125 fee. In fact the infraction notice we got is ridiculous. It points out the clause that we "violated" by not getting the landlord's permission... and the entire paragraph taken right from the contract makes no mention of a fee. If that were the extent of it, it would be legal for them to do this. Further down the page though it says that to remedy the situation we must either remove the AC, or remove the AC then obtain permission "and pay the fee" before we're allowed to install it again. So the infraction form itself is actually blatantly demonstrating that they're not only trying to charge a fee not indicated in the contract itself, but is violating Section 134 of our Residential Tenancies Act by even attempting to charge a fee in the first place! *facepalm*

So yeah... this has gotten way off topic from DOS games, but I'm just trying to demonstrate that I know what my rights are and how the situation should play out provided the corporation doesn't do anything even MORE stupid, it's just the stress of having to deal with that and the time wasted as a result which could've been spent working on ADG, my secret project, or even just playing other games. :B

*Watches Kris' "Pop Connoisseur" video*

I got diabetes just by watching that video! 😲

Ancient DOS Games Episode 170 - Chopper Commando is online!

I actually have a soft spot for CGA graphics. Back when I was a kid I found it fascinating the level of detail which could be conveyed with so few colours at your disposal. Thus I'm glad that this game plays well despite being one of the last CGA-exclusive games to be made. :B

Also glad I chose a simple game for this week... stress levels have been high all week and so instead of working on my secret game project I just gamed a whole bunch with Space Engineers and Guild of Dungeoneering. Really did need to relax a bit. Got three weeks in front of me through where I don't have to do any complex ADG episodes or anything, so I should be able to make lots of solid progress on my secret project! :)

Gemini000 wrote:

Ancient DOS Games Episode 169 - Dungeon Keeper is online! (Please note that this is a mature rated episode) […]
Show full quote

Ancient DOS Games Episode 169 - Dungeon Keeper is online!
(Please note that this is a mature rated episode)

When I noticed how long the script had gotten without talking about specific things, and combined with the fact I barely found any time to capture footage this week, I decided to just make it a slightly longer than usual episode instead of going into details about all the different room types and spells and whatnot... otherwise this video could've easily rivaled the System Shock episode for length... also, I wouldn't've been able to get it done for another two days if I tried to get all the footage I would've needed to accomplish that. x_x;

This week's been pretty hectic in terms of real life, so I made sure to choose something simple for next week's game just in case life decides to keep being complicated for a bit longer. THIS time around what's going on is that the corporation in charge of the building we're renting in is threatening to evict us because we had the audacity to install an air conditioner without permission to combat the +30c weather we've been having. Trouble is they don't GIVE you permission unless you pay an arbitrary fee not outlined (or even mentioned) in any of the contractual material we signed, so now we have a fight on our hands. In Canada, charging "fees" on top of rent is illegal with extremely few and very specific exceptions (air condition permission is not one of them), so the battle is pretty much one sided against the corporation, but I have zero faith in people of power to act lawfully and am bracing for if they do anything even more stupid, like cut the electricity (HIGHLY illegal) or attempt to get an eviction without due process (not completely illegal but typically only allowed in extreme circumstances).

...yeah, the fee is only 1/8th the cost of a month of rent, but that's still money which they're literally attempting to extort from us! 😠

I didn't know it was illegal for landlords to arbitrarily charge fees like that. Looks like my old landlord owes me some money. I could use a few bucks right now. 🤣

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I didn't know it was illegal for landlords to arbitrarily charge fees like that. Looks like my old landlord owes me some money. I could use a few bucks right now. XD

Rental laws are provincial. I'm in Ontario. If you're not in Ontario the laws may be different for you.

For us, there are SOME cases where fees can be charged, but only when there's an exchange of goods or services, IE: putting quarters into a laundry machine or paying to have an extra parking space, since in these cases, you're paying for goods or services; something both tangible and optional. Trying to charge a fee for "permission" to do something on your own accord is extortion, regardless of if it's $1 or $1,000, because a landlord attempting to do this is basically taking unfair advantage of your circumstances and the wording of the contract for their own benefit. We are required by contract to get permission to have an AC in place, but given the number of other units which have ACs in place it would be extremely difficult for the rental corp. to claim that there's any reason at all (beyond our refusal to pay their illegal fee) why our unit can't have an AC installed.

And again, the fee's not in ANY of the contracts we signed, which makes it just that much more dubious. :P

This isn't the only thing we're fighting either, it's just the most major thing and the only thing they're threatening to evict us over, but Dad compiled all the issues together in his formal complaint and a hearing date with the tribunal has already been set for the end of the month to sort everything out once and for all. :B

But yeah, I'm not a lawyer so do your research before you assume something you paid money for is a legal or illegal fee. I can only speak for my specific situation.

Ancient DOS Games Filler #49 - Retro City Rampage 486 is online!

Yeah, I had to talk about this thing, because let's face it, its existence raises a TON of questions, not the least of which being why anyone would bother doing a DOS port of anything nowadays, but I also decided to address some of the other things about it too, such as the lack of features and the lack of audio, save for newly added PC Speaker audio.

I plan to try and get in touch with Brian Provinciano as well to see if I got the specifics right. I'm fairly positive I did, but I just want to be certain. ;)

RCR dos port is really awesome thing, but it's hardly pushing any limits. If it would be a 286 1 MB game it would be OK, but requiring 486 with 4 MB for smooth gameplay is simply to much for this kind of gameplay and graphics. Why this game even requires a FPU?
The only reason I can think is that gameplay logic was a simply copy/paste of modern C++ object code. When you program these days you don't even bother to use fixed point variables to avoid floating point like old Doom engine was doing.

If I would be porting this game for DOS I would:
- use VGA 16 color mode with custom palette, it works way faster than 256 color mode and this game uses rarely more than 16 colors per screen since it obeys NES limits: 3 color per sprite + one shared background color with maximum of 13 colors on screen. There is a way to display all 54 possible colors on NES but it requires some programming tricks using much of a CPU cycles.
- no parallax scrolling -> you can use VGA hardware scrolling = almost no CPU usage -> 286 should be more than enough,
- there's a lot of same tiles reusing on screen -> no need to redraw all frame at once, only tiles that changed, Commander Keen was programmed this way,
- use plain C instead of C++,
- use simple collision system instead of fully featured physics engine like Box2D,
- use PC unique features - you can draw everything by pixels not just tiles, you can stream graphics on the fly from HDD, you can efficiently store tiles in main RAM using 4 colors + palette info entry,
- do a full soundtrack using OPL2 or even better OPL3 which has more waveforms to choose from and could sound more like NES sound. It uses almost the same amount of RAM as PC speaker but sounds way better and could play multichannel music.

But, this improvements would probably require ton of work with no financial interest.

For reference:
- Lionking, Aladdin and other SNES ports required a 486 or fast 386 with 4 MB of RAM for smooth gameplay and great sound,
- Doom, Descent, Heretic, ROTT and others were working great on 4 MB of RAM and 486,
- there's a lot of 2D games with rich visuals and audio that fit in 4 MB of RAM,

But these games were created back in the day. So they were programmed in efficient way. Porting modern retro games for older platforms is just insanely difficult. Since we take for granted modern APIs, physics engines and other convenient stuff that simply will not fit in a 486 or slower system. Even if our retro games feel like the old ones.

I'm creating a DOS-like side-scroller game myself, using modern technologies but making everything sound and look like an old VGA + SB game. It's been a really great game dev experience so far. Particularly working on OPL3 music was awesome. In old DOS days everyone was complaining about Adlib FM synthesis, but in my opinion it never reached it full potential. It was replaced by terrible MIDI early on that only improved percussion instruments. Backward compatibility with OPL2/OPL3 was retained using generic MIDI emulation, which sounded poorly. Others used a software MOD players to port Amiga music to PC.

My first computer was a 386SX 33MHz with generic SVGA clone. These poor console ports and very few games that really showed what this machine could do haunts me till this day. When you compare 386 DOS games with less powerful Sega Genesis it become obvious how much more polish were put in the Sega console games and how good FM synthesis could be.

Although I was complaining about RCR DOS port, I'm really impressed to see it running on real DOS machines. There's also a NES prototype of this game and it was created from scratch to run on NES hardware. DOS version looks like a port of a full game. It's impressive that old DOS PC can run modern C++ code but as I mentioned early it's nowhere near of pushing the limits of DOS hardware.

The NES port is more like the other way around - RCR spawned from an old homebrew NES version of GTA3. I used to follow progress on it back when it was just a footnote on the SCIStudio site.

Also remember that the original GTA can work on a 486 and has a 486DX minimum requirement and it should be playable in 320x200x8 😀 The long 1994+ dev cycle kinda justifies that a little.

Ishadow... I don't even know where to begin with what you posted... x_x;

First of all, Descent does not run very well with only 4 MB of RAM and prefers 8 MB at least. The framerate of Descent on a 486 can slow to a crawl in some really intense areas, especially with only 4 MB of RAM as it starts swapping things in and out of disk caches. Descent II actually can't run in 4 MB of RAM without swapping some sound effects for others. So that was a bad example of a game that runs well under those limits.

Secondly, many of the 2D games out there with rich visuals are able to pull it off because they don't need immediate access to 90% of their non-cinematic content in a heartbeat. They only load in the pieces they need, which is why you end up with loading screens before each level. When you play the DOS port of RCR you'll notice that there's virtually no loading times. It needs to have immediate access to a surprisingly large amount of graphics for all the various vehicles pedestrians, weapons, interactive elements, map tiles, etc., since any of them can show up at any moment.

Thirdly, the reason for doing the port was for the challenge. If the author was making an actual game to sell for DOS back when DOS was relevant, it would've been something more akin to the full game, not a feature-reduced version which fits on a single floppy disk. The author made this thing for FUN, not because he wanted something practical and saleable.

Fourthly, 4 MB is a really tiny amount of memory when it comes down to it. Once 1994 rolled around developers were already pushing that limit so hard that many games which supported 4 MB of RAM only ran their best with 8 MB or more and absolutely needed 4 MB at the minimum. Once you get to 1995 you start encountering games which MUST have 8 MB of RAM minimum.

Lastly, "pushing the limits" has a wide range of potential. You can push some limits without pushing others. In the case of RCR, the limits it's pushing is memory and rendering speed. Yes, it could've been done better without a doubt, but getting it working as well as it does could NOT have been achieved with just a straight-up port. Extra optimization absolutely had to be done.

I played Descent 1 briefly back then on 486DX2 66 MHz and it was running very good. On the other hand PSX had only 4 MB of RAM in total and very slow CD drive compared to PC HDD from early 90s.
We are comparing game with full 3D environment with polygonal robots with 2D game made in 16-colors faithful to NES limitation.

Gemini000 wrote:

Secondly, many of the 2D games out there with rich visuals are able to pull it off because they don't need immediate access to 90% of their non-cinematic content in a heartbeat. They only load in the pieces they need, which is why you end up with loading screens before each level.

And these games had full 256 color graphics not 2bit tiles. Keep in mind, that screen tiles don't change all at once, but are changed when scrolling it allow to copy sprites from main ram to vram over slow ISA and retain playable speeds. Why not simply load tiles on the fly from HDD? It was simply way easier to made this game working on 486 + 4 MB of RAM instead of pushing it to 286 1 MB.

Gemini000 wrote:

It needs to have immediate access to a surprisingly large amount of graphics for all the various vehicles pedestrians, weapons, interactive elements, map tiles, etc., since any of them can show up at any moment.

Why load random vehicles, pedestrians etc. game code could check for available tile memory, load new when necessary, or reuse those already loaded when low on RAM. Open world games use this all the times.
It would however require to go deeply in the game code rather just simply port engine itself.
RAM aside. Why this game requires a 486? No parallax scrolling, no software MOD music. There's hardly any reason for it to require something faster that average 286, even with 7-10 sprites on screen. However It looks like that this game is drawing every frame with the CPU instead of using VGA hardware scrolling. That would explain a lot.

Gemini000 wrote:

The author made this thing for FUN, not because he wanted something practical and saleable.

And we for FUN play it and talk about it:) It's a great thing that DOS gets that much of attention, but people prefer other vintage computers to work with. In recent years someone did Prince of Persia for C64 or there's a Quake II engine WIP for Atari Falcon with 16 MHz CPU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpwlZgQPCpk).
Anyway RCR for DOS could be done better like Paku-Paku, but still it's great that there's "new" DOS game for our old computers. And yet it's another inferior console game port:)
I really liked Paku-Paku. It worked smoothly on really old hardware, displayed full 16 color graphics on CGA, had support for various sound devices and was really good Pac-man clone.
RCR requires more ram than it needs, uses faster CPU than it should, and no sound at all, except (really good done!) PC Speaker.

For me RCR is like another demoscene entry and in this terms it's just don't shine. It lacks a few weeks of polish, adding Adlib or TANDY support, and optimize game to work on 286. It would be actually awesome if this game could be playable on 286 even with 4 MB of RAM. On 486 you could even emulate NES with full or nearly full speed, since 486 ranged from 25MHz to 120 MHz.

Gemini000 wrote:

getting it working as well as it does could NOT have been achieved with just a straight-up port. Extra optimization absolutely had to be done.

Totally agreed. It was heavily optimized to run on DOS machine. Today when program you just use ints and floats and don't care that it uses 4 bytes even if you will store numbers that could fit in 1 byte. Unless it would be accessed many times per single frame and could have significant impact on speed.
Anyway RCR 486 was meant to work smoothly on 486 with 4 MB of RAM and this was achieved.

ishadow wrote:

If I would be porting this game for DOS I would:
- use VGA 16 color mode with custom palette, it works way faster than 256 color mode and this game uses rarely more than 16 colors per screen since it obeys NES limits: 3 color per sprite + one shared background color with maximum of 13 colors on screen. There is a way to display all 54 possible colors on NES but it requires some programming tricks using much of a CPU cycles.

The NES can do 25 colors on a screen without any tricks, you just cannot put them anywhere you want. (1 background color, 4 palettes for background tiles each with 3 colors and 4 palettes for sprites with 3 colors). And if someone plays around with color emphasis, 8 x the typical number of colors can become available.

If Brian was really trying to get this game out there in 1994, it would have to be shareware and have support for Adlib and Sound Blaster. I see this more as akin to a 1991/1992 shareware game, which would have to run well on 386s. Fortunately for him, in 2015 you do not have to be subject to historical limitations other than those you choose to accept.

I took the plunge and pre-ordered the collector's edition with period-appropriate beige floppy disks.