I like when everyone else answers the questions for me. ;D

But yeah, if your game is designed in such a way that you need to cheat or abuse its mechanics in order to have fun, it's not a good design, regardless of what kind of game it is. I'm also very against the notion of requiring external referencing to play. Making an external reference just once to bypass copy protection with a manual or something, I'm OK with that, because I only have to do it ONCE. If I have to constantly reference manuals or charts or take notes in order to progress in something, I don't enjoy that at all. Some people do, but they're the minority, which is why I feel it's not good game design.

Minecraft actually suffers from this to a MASSIVE extent on the PC side of things. Once I made the switch from playing straight up to playing with mods, the NEI mod made things about a zillion times easier as it's so easy to look up crafting details and other information with it right there in the game. :)

As I've mentioned before too, I programmed math software for two years. The project I did the most work on was intended for Kindergarten students, so I have an EXTREMELY good idea of how to make good math software. This is a big part of the reason why Math Rescue bothered me as much as it did, because as far as math software is concerned... it's terrible.

OH! Here's a fun tid-bit of information on Math Rescue I didn't mention in the review: It has the ability to disable the "skip math problems" option from the command prompt, this way kids can't circumvent the math problems if you don't want them to. The trouble is that the way this "feature" works is by permanently altering the contents of the executable file! There is absolutely no way to reverse this process if you decide you want the option back. The only way to get the ability to skip math problems back is to pray to whatever deity you worship that you have a backup of the exe file from before you tried this! >_<;

On another note....

Speaking of YouTube, I wonder if it's possible for Kris to upload his older reviews to YouTube at 60 FPS? Of course, that feature can only work in HD and I wouldn't know if the old reviews were recorded with HD and/or 60 FPS originally. Then again, I haven't seen any Blip videos running at 60 FPS either. Then there's the matter of whether or not 60 FPS would improve the video footage of a DOS game that could either do, or couldn't do 60 FPS in the first place.

Either way, it sounds like a nice little enhancement if it's possible to use it.

switchblade wrote:

Speaking of YouTube, I wonder if it's possible for Kris to upload his older reviews to YouTube at 60 FPS?

Not possible. The episodes and game footage are all recorded at 29.97 FPS. The footage itself is converted down to 29.97 FPS and scaled to the proper resolution using two separate resizing operations to preserve the sharpness of the pixels. The framerate reduction process was originally very basic and not very good. Nowadays, I use a process which fades the blurring effect between frames better so that it's not as pronounced, allowing for less blurriness but without completely sacrificing the missing frame data, which helps to keep things looking more natural at the lower framerate.

Gemini000 wrote:

Ancient DOS Games Episode 159 - Math Rescue is online!

So, we're starting edutainment month off with an interesting case: A game some people may have fond memories of, and which by all logic should be at least average in quality, given that it's the sequel to Word Rescue.

However... I ran into so many issues trying to play through this game I'm not giving it a free pass on the nostalgia train, so apologies ahead of time to anyone who actually liked this thing... because I really rip into it in this weeks episode. :B

This episode made me laugh my ass off! 🤣 I wonder what kind of drugs the developers were on when they made that game. Exploding garbage trucks? Seriously?!?

Well, the game's introduction states that they're robot-controlled garbage trucks so... no harm done? 😵

I remember a music flashcards game for Apple II which I used to play (around age 7, I think?) that used an alien invasion scenario. Answering a problem correctly shot down a UFO with a crude-looking explosion. The visible alien pilot would say things like "Drat! Foiled again!", so I guess it made it out OK. 😜

RadioPoultry wrote:

Well, the game's introduction states that they're robot-controlled garbage trucks so... no harm done? 😵

I remember a music flashcards game for Apple II which I used to play (around age 7, I think?) that used an alien invasion scenario. Answering a problem correctly shot down a UFO with a crude-looking explosion. The visible alien pilot would say things like "Drat! Foiled again!", so I guess it made it out OK. 😜

Well, it's just that exploding garbage trucks make for absurd enemies, more than anything. I'm not decrying the (relatively) small amount of violence the game contains.

Gemini000 wrote:

switchblade wrote:

Speaking of YouTube, I wonder if it's possible for Kris to upload his older reviews to YouTube at 60 FPS?

Not possible. The episodes and game footage are all recorded at 29.97 FPS. The footage itself is converted down to 29.97 FPS and scaled to the proper resolution using two separate resizing operations to preserve the sharpness of the pixels. The framerate reduction process was originally very basic and not very good. Nowadays, I use a process which fades the blurring effect between frames better so that it's not as pronounced, allowing for less blurriness but without completely sacrificing the missing frame data, which helps to keep things looking more natural at the lower framerate.

I would suggest doing 60 FPS videos of the upcoming ADG episodes and uploading them to Youtube and save the converted videos for (the aptly named) Blip. You are making great strides in catching up on your Youtube channel, so soon you should be able to post episodes to both services at the same time, and link to both versions on the page for the video.

DOS footage, because of the 70 Hz native refresh rate, still make it a bit tricky, but 60 Hz should make them smoother regardless. Though often the games have their own fps limit, like Wing Commander III with 24 fps. For early Windows games I find 60 Hz videos on YouTube are very nice to look at.

philscomputerlab wrote:

DOS footage, because of the 70 Hz native refresh rate, still make it a bit tricky, but 60 Hz should make them smoother regardless. Though often the games have their own fps limit, like Wing Commander III with 24 fps. For early Windows games I find 60 Hz videos on YouTube are very nice to look at.

I agree I'd you are using a VGA capture device that the 70Hz refresh rate can make for sound tricky capturing. Gemini is using DOSBox, which allows him to capture pre-VGA material at 50 and 60 Hz. 640x480 VGA uses 60Hz, SVGA also is usually 60Hz. It's the 320x200 VGA resolution and probably the tweaked modes that have the 70Hz issue.

Wing Commander III's frame rate is appropriately cinematic.

Maybe at some point, but for the moment, I don't want to make any major changes to the rendering just in case I unintentionally screw something up that prevents episodes from working on Blip or YouTube properly. :P

Actually, kinda sick at the moment too so this weekend's episode might be a little late, presuming I'm able to do it at all. My throat's not well enough at the moment to do the voiceover and if it's not better enough by tomorrow evening I may have to slap something else together really quickly and call it a filler. x_x;

Being sick sucks. :(

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

RadioPoultry wrote:

Well, the game's introduction states that they're robot-controlled garbage trucks so... no harm done? 😵

I remember a music flashcards game for Apple II which I used to play (around age 7, I think?) that used an alien invasion scenario. Answering a problem correctly shot down a UFO with a crude-looking explosion. The visible alien pilot would say things like "Drat! Foiled again!", so I guess it made it out OK. 😜

Well, it's just that exploding garbage trucks make for absurd enemies, more than anything. I'm not decrying the (relatively) small amount of violence the game contains.

The garbage trucks are pretty absurd, I agree. I mean, the Gruzzles have acquired the technology to travel en masse for millions or even trillions of miles, yet they apparently haven't developed an efficient recycling system...

I miss the point a lot. I think it's a hobby of mine. 😀

Gemini000 wrote:

Maybe at some point, but for the moment, I don't want to make any major changes to the rendering just in case I unintentionally screw something up that prevents episodes from working on Blip or YouTube properly. 😜

Actually, kinda sick at the moment too so this weekend's episode might be a little late, presuming I'm able to do it at all. My throat's not well enough at the moment to do the voiceover and if it's not better enough by tomorrow evening I may have to slap something else together really quickly and call it a filler. x_x;

Being sick sucks. 🙁

Sorry to hear about you being sick. 🙁

If you do happen to feel up to making some kind of video this week, don't hesitate to have Dr. Sbaitso do the voiceover again, if that's what you're thinking. (Or, given that it's edutainment month, the Storymaker+ voice would be another option. Though that voice makes Dr. Sbaitso seem natural-sounding. *shudders*)

Anyways, try to get some rest, and get well soon!

There'll be a video, I'm on the mend but there's not enough time to make a voiceover and I'm not 100% certain I could at the moment, so the filler will have no voice track. I was considering contacting Clint to have him add in a voice track with the "Female Lazy Game Reviewer", but it would be way too short notice and he's got enough stuff on his plate as it is. :B

But, it should still be an interesting video all the same, it's just going to be one of the extremely few, like my filler on my old Minecraft bases, where everyone's going to have to actually watch it, as I know there are at least a few people out there who just listen to my reviews like podcasts without actually visually watching them.

Just to assure everyone, yes, the filler video is still coming. I've essentially had to make an entire video, gameplay footage, editing and all, in under 36 hours, while only being mostly well for the last quarter of it. :o

But yeah, I'm 99% better at this point, but too far along to switch back to the regular episode, nor would I be able to do a voiceover at nearly 4 in the morning without waking people up. :B

Based on how long this is taking, and how long rendering takes, I think this filler video should be live around 6 or 7 AM EDT.

Also, hope you guys like obscure Atari 2600 games... ;)

Ancient DOS Games Filler #47 - Obscure Yet Fun Atari 2600 Games is online!

Sorry I'm late with getting anything up at all, but it was either this, or completely miss doing any video at all this week. Given that I actually know quite a bit about Atari 2600 stuff but haven't really done much with that knowledge I figured a video like this would be simple to do and could be done without having to have a voiceover. (Although yes, doing this with a voiceover instead of text captions would've been better but hey, give the sick guy a chance!)

Anywhoo, the next ADG episode will be next Saturday instead of today.

I know I should probably keep a backlog of videos so that when I get sick I don't have to rush to do stuff like this. If ADG was the only thing I did I probably would keep a backlog, but as it stands, I simply don't have the time to prepare a backlog in the first place... Maybe someday when I'm not so pressed for time... though TBH, if my secret game project works out really well, such a moment won't be coming anytime at all within the next few years... I'm OK with that though; Rather be busy and successful than busy and struggling.

I recall playing Tron: Deadly Discs at a friend's house back in 1984; I also recall being very bad at it (I was the butt of jokes for a while afterwards 😒 ).

The only game console I ever owned was the NES. And no just any NES, but the Sports Set that came with 4 game controllers, NES Satellite, and two games (Super Spike V'Ball and Nintendo World Cup) in 1990. I had a lot of fun with it, and managed to increase my cartridge collection to about 25 games and a Game Genie 😊

Here are some generic pics of the NES Sports Set I found on Google, also an ad from Electronics Boutique showing how much I paid for it back then:

Sadly, I no longer have it. By 1996 I lost interest and gave everything to my older brother; he and his 2 daughters kept the NES until 2001, when it stopped working completely and was sold for peanuts to a neighbor of theirs. Oh well 😐

So I've heard from multiple third parties now (and no first or even second parties) that Blip will be shutting down soon...

...expect everything to be switched over to YouTube before this month is over...

...no, I'm not happy about this... >_<

Mm. Apparently Maker Studios has been telling people to stop uploading stuff:

In the past couple of weeks, Blip, which is currently owned by Maker Studios, has been sending emails to its community of users that hint at a possible closure. “We noticed that you’re still uploading a considerable amount of content to Blip.TV,” reads the note from Jeff O’Connell, SVP of technology at Maker Studios. “Blip is now part of Maker Studios, which is now part of Disney, and we’re unsure how long Blip will accept new content. We suggest that you find an alternative hosting platform as expediently as possible.”

http://www.thevideoink.com/news/is-time-runni … p/#.VSpomo4wiYU

Actually, going through all my videos just now, I noticed that the only other one I had to trim to skirt around Content-ID was my Carmageddon episode of all things, as all the music in that game is licensed and the portion of the title sequence I used was nearly 50 seconds long. (In fact, I'm pretty sure one or more of the tunes in that game as a whole were also used in the Mortal Kombat movie.)

Other than that, I've begun mass uploading what's left to YouTube and have put all other projects on hold until this is done. No idea how fast progress will be, and even after everything's up I have to alter all 200+ video pages on my website to use YouTube embeds instead of Blip.

Patreon is going to be another story entirely... I've sent an eMail to them asking for help in altering all my existing posts instead of having to make 200 new posts, as doing that would wipe all the comments and also produce 200+ eMails for every person supporting me there. I COULD post alternate links in the descriptions for each, but that would still generate 200+ eMails for patrons so that's not a good solution either. x_x;

EDIT: Actually, already hit Content-ID matches on Earthworm Jim and Worms because the music in those PC games were both done by third parties... even though the original versions of those games had in-house music and the third-party remixes sound very similar. Go figure. :/

Fortunately, in both cases, it didn't end up muting the audio, though I have noticed YouTube has a system in place now for removing offending audio from videos and removing the claims in the process. If the video's not muted, I don't really care, as there's very little money in ad revenue for a show such as mine, but if I do run into a situation where a video is muted (which would normally generate a strike against one's account) that new option will hopefully still be present.

Welp....

Looks like I spoke a little too soon about YouTube. 😒 I find it kind of weird that Blip is still making no official mention of their upcoming shutdown on their main site.

switchblade wrote:

I find it kind of weird that Blip is still making no official mention of their upcoming shutdown on their main site.

Given the fact that they haven't really said much of anything to anyone in the past few months, my guess is that Blip's offices are probably unstaffed or only have like, one or two people in there just keeping the place barely alive until all their ad contracts expire.

In any case, almost fully up to date on YouTube, but it won't be in time for the next episode of ADG, so this weekend's video will be the last to be uploaded to Blip. The switchover on my website will then happen sometime next week.