Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

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 :confused:

On lower end machines, you simply got lower framerates. The framerate in Aliens of Gold tops out at 70, as it normally would for a VGA 320x200 game. The amount of cycles needed to maintain 70 FPS is what changes so dramatically and why the game sometimes seems to skip a beat when running on max.

Mind you...

DonutKing wrote:

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.

:O

...would you believe it never even occurred to me to try that? ^_^;;;

HunterZ wrote:

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.

>_>;;;;;;;;;;;;;

OK, so I clearly screwed this episode up quite a bit. Something that's easy to forget now that I'm using such a powerful system is that it's possible to get 70 FPS in games using the Normal core. :P

Dynamic mode with max cycles works fine, as does dynamic mode with high fixed cycles counts.

GO, ME! XP

In general, a game from 1993 might cause issues on a fast Pentium. Wing Commander Privateer and Strike Commander runs on less cycles 😀 Sometimes games are simply meant to run that slow. You can always check out the VGA Benchmark database. The benchmark suite is compatible with DOSBox and gives you a rough idea of what cycle count might be appropriate for what game.

Apart from the CPU setting, GOG.com also stuffed up the sample rate. It's set to 22 KHz. I think I mention this change in almost all of my GOG.com Tweak Guide videos, they overlook this with almost every release. Aspect is also set to false (change this to true) and change overlay to ddraw or opengl / openglnb.

I don't typically mention the sound frequency or output methods for DOSBox because these can be a matter of preference. Some scalers don't work in the OpenGL mode, but the OpenGL mode works a LOT better under Windows 8 than any of the other modes. Some people also like playing these older games with lower sound frequency rates, I suspect because it triggers a bigger nostalgia trip for them, even if a particular game never actually sounded the way those lower frequency rates make it sound. ;)

Finally got around to watching the episode.
Two little factoids about the game:
First, you can switch off barriers, wait a few seconds for an enemy to stand on the barrier tile, then switch the barrier back on to instantly kill them without having to shoot them.

Second, at about 9:27/9:28 there is a wall block with a small panel on the left side, with some red green and blue lines on it. If you bring up the map but have this panel off to the side so you can still see it, the pattern in the panel changes. The lines will rapidly change colour while the map is up and stop again when you close it. This has no effect on gameplay but I thought it was pretty neat. 😀

Gemini000: Lovely episode 😀 Anyway is there an editor for Blake Stone ? Or am I just thinking, that there is an editor for the game ?

WolverineDK wrote:

Anyway is there an editor for Blake Stone ? Or am I just thinking, that there is an editor for the game ?

*shrugs* No idea.

TED?

Gemini000 wrote:

WolverineDK wrote:

Anyway is there an editor for Blake Stone ? Or am I just thinking, that there is an editor for the game ?

*shrugs* No idea.

leileilol wrote:

TED?

I found this site, where an editor named Mapedit, says it also edits Blake Stone. So that is good 😀

http://diehardwolfers.areyep.com/bunker/editors.htm

Ancient DOS Games Episode 129 - Sango Fighter 2 is online!

...show of hands: How many people knew this game even EXISTED? :B

In any case, not much to say beyond what's said in the video, and since I'm feeling a bit under the weather I'm just gonna let the video speak for itself this time around and go back to watching other people's videos while I rest up. ;)

I know it. I used to have Sango Fighter 1 and 2 on floppy back in the late 90's and for some reason I adored those games. I think the art style really drew me in as a kid.
Good episode, brings back some memories!

Can anyone else open the ZIP file for the DOS version of Sango 1 on Super Fighter Team's web site (http://www.sangofighter.com/download.htm)? Both Windows and Linux tell me that it's not a valid ZIP file.

1ben@shodan:/mnt/shodan/files400/ISOs/superfighterteam$ wget http://www.sangofighter.com/files/Sango_Fighter.zip
2--2014-02-01 12:33:13--  http://www.sangofighter.com/files/Sango_Fighter.zip
3Resolving www.sangofighter.com (www.sangofighter.com)... 66.96.134.31
4Connecting to www.sangofighter.com (www.sangofighter.com)|66.96.134.31|:80... connected.
5HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
6Length: 1220608 (1.2M) [application/zip]
7Saving to: \u2018Sango_Fighter.zip\u2019
8
9100%[===========================================================================================================>] 1,220,608   71.3KB/s   in 15s    
10
112014-02-01 12:33:28 (78.5 KB/s) - \u2018Sango_Fighter.zip\u2019 saved [1220608/1220608]
12
13ben@shodan:/mnt/shodan/files400/ISOs/superfighterteam$ unzip -l Sango_Fighter.zip
14Archive:  Sango_Fighter.zip
15  End-of-central-directory signature not found.  Either this file is not
16  a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive.  In the
17  latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
18  the last disk(s) of this archive.
19unzip:  cannot find zipfile directory in one of Sango_Fighter.zip or
20        Sango_Fighter.zip.zip, and cannot find Sango_Fighter.zip.ZIP, period.

Yeah, same here. Perhaps you could email them about it.

HunterZ wrote:

Can anyone else open the ZIP file for the DOS version of Sango 1 on Super Fighter Team's web site (http://www.sangofighter.com/download.htm)? Both Windows and Linux tell me that it's not a valid ZIP file.

http://www.priceisrightfail.com/

Sent them an email.

Played Sango 2 a bit, mostly to see what music options it supports (supports OPL and General MIDI, and supposedly MT-32 but I don't think it's different from GM). Gemini's assessment about it being hard on easy mode due to ridiculous AI seems accurate, although I never did get any good at fighting games in general.

Got a cool reply, but unfortunately it's still not fixed for me:

From: Brandon Cobb <bcobbATsuperfighterDOTcom> […]
Show full quote

From: Brandon Cobb <bcobbATsuperfighterDOTcom>

Hello, Benjamin.

Thanks for your interest in Sango Fighter.

> I thought you may want to know that your DOS .zip download for Sango
> Fighter 1 at http://www.sangofighter.com/files/Sango_Fighter.zip
> appears to be corrupt. It seems some data is missing from the end of
> the file:

You're right, it's supposed to be 1.8mb but only 1.2mb was uploaded. How
the hell did that happen?
Thanks for bringing that to my attention; I've just fixed it so please
have another go at the download.

We'd appreciate knowing what you think of Sango / Sango2, once you've
had some time to play.
Please feel welcome to share your impressions.

Have a nice day.

--

- Brandon Cobb
President
Super Fighter Team

bcobbATsuperfighterDOTcom
http://www.superfighter.com

"Never let dreams die!"

Looks good to me:

1~ squallstrife$ aria2c http://www.sangofighter.com/files/Sango_Fighter.zip
2[#1 SIZE:1.7MiB/1.7MiB(98%) CN:1 SPD:29.8KiBs]
32014-02-02 19:58:21.293823 NOTICE - Download complete: /Users/squallstrife/Sango_Fighter.zip
4
5Download Results:
6gid|stat|avg speed  |path/URI
7===+====+===========+===========================================================
8  1|  OK|  35.1KiB/s|/Users/squallstrife/Sango_Fighter.zip
9
10Status Legend:
11(OK):download completed.
12~ squallstrife$ unzip Sango_Fighter.zip
13Archive:  Sango_Fighter.zip
14
15
16               �����������������������������������������������ͻ
17               �                 Sango Fighter                 �
18               �          (c)2010 Super Fighter Team           �
19               �     Downloaded from: www.sangofighter.com     �
20               �����������������������������������������������ͼ
21  inflating: SANGO.EXE
22  inflating: DATA.PAK
23  inflating: INFO.TXT
24~ squallstrife$

I think they fixed it a couple of hours after sending you that email. I tried downloading it earlier today after seeing your post and it was still corrupted. It's all good now though and that email answer was really cool hehehe 🤣

I'd like to point out that way back when I made my Sango Fighter review, that link was working properly.

My guess is the file got truncated at some point, given that the corrupted ZIP and the proper ZIP have identical data up the point where the corrupted ZIP suddenly ends. Stuff like this is typically caused by a glitch in the server backup systems webhosting providers have in place.

Similar things happen with my episodes sometimes on Blip's servers, where the episode will go dead for a day or several and will then magically come back on its own... usually. (If it takes more than a couple weeks I manually replace the broken video file with a backup copy from my end.)

The download works fine now for me too. I figured it was just a truncation issue too, as a hex editor showed "PK" at the start of the file, and the size was a multiple of 1024 bytes.

There was terrible video tearing for this video. Please fix this for the next one.

Also, can you please do a review of a game from the 80s called Street Fighting Man?

Thanks