So how does it look at 1024x768? It looks nice and plays fine at 1080p over here but I can't seem to help myself, I'm still messing around with the outrageous number of graphics options.

This excellent guide from nvidia takes a lot of the painful trial and error out of it: http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/grand … rformance-guide

I tend to get side tracked so haven't actually seen much of the main story line yet, but I've enjoyed what I have seen. It's such an amazingly realistic world that it strikes me as a shame that they've injected a nasty GTA plot into it - those seemed more appropriate in the cartoon-ish worlds of Vice City and San Andreas. I find myself wanting to play a good guy in this one! Oh well!

Would you believe, I actually finished the main story line just yesterday! It feels fairly short compared to San Andreas (which took me nearly 10 years to finish, playing on and off. Finished it just 3 weeks ago!), though I think the checkpoint system in missions is the main time saver here. And no mandatory stunt flying lessons either! The ending did feel a bit rushed though, and still left too much of the plot unresolved IMO. The credits came scrolling up quite unexpectedly, after a seemingly normal and not particularly difficult mission.
Equally unexpected, about 30 minutes (!) into the credits, I noticed Guybrush Threepwood's name scroll by! 🤣

badmojo wrote:

So how does it look at 1024x768? It looks nice and plays fine at 1080p over here but I can't seem to help myself, I'm still messing around with the outrageous number of graphics options.

I played about half the game at 1024x768, but the shimmering textures and fuzzy antialiasing started to annoy me so I cranked it up a bit. It looks freaking amazing at 2048x1536 and 1600x1200, but I can't turn all settings up to max on these resolutions without running out of VRAM (the in-game indication is pretty accurate, I found). I settled for 1280x960 at 130Hz now with all options on Very High, which offers a good compromise between graphics quality and frame rate. Maybe I'll just turn it up to 1440x1080, see how that works out.
The advanced options don't really change anything except the framerate, so I left these on minimum and only enabled "High detail streaming when flying". On very busy highways the framerate does still drop a bit, nothing bad but it's definitely noticable. I found that motion blur set to 20-30% helps a bit to mask this.

badmojo wrote:

This excellent guide from nvidia takes a lot of the painful trial and error out of it: http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/grand … rformance-guide

Thanks for the link! Haven't seen this guide yet. Man, these Nvidia PCSS shadows are almost an unfair advantage compared to the other options.

badmojo wrote:

I tend to get side tracked so haven't actually seen much of the main story line yet, but I've enjoyed what I have seen. It's such an amazingly realistic world that it strikes me as a shame that they've injected a nasty GTA plot into it - those seemed more appropriate in the cartoon-ish worlds of Vice City and San Andreas. I find myself wanting to play a good guy in this one! Oh well!

My thoughts exactly! It's kinda hard to relate to any of characters if you have no direct influence on the plot. They're pretty much all complete assholes in general, and make some cringeworthy decisions occasionally. The only likable characters in the game (like Floyd and the Azerbaijani guy) have their life made pretty miserable by the player characters (indirectly, you!). I think it's more or less a limitation of the "interactive movie" genre, and all things considered, that doesn't make it a bad game by any means. But I do think the game would've been more enjoyable if there was more left for the player to decide.

The novelty of GTA V has worn off a bit and I’ve gotten wholly distracted by Fallout: New Vegas, which is a game that’s hovered around the top of my to-do list for a long time. I love an open world and I did enjoy Fallout 3, but New Vegas is something else entirely. The memorable characters and hand crafted world reminds me of the Gothic series, and the wonderfully told story reminds me of Philip K Dick’s “Dr. Bloodmoney”. And of course the RPG system is basically the one they’ve been refining since Oblivion, so it’s very familiar and user friendly.

It was buggy on release apparently but I haven’t had a single broken quest or crash, and I’m half way through I’d guess. I’ve resisted the urge to apply mods because in the past I’ve ended up fiddling around to the point that I lose interest in the actual game, but I did apply an unofficial patch which removes the stuttering that this engine suffers when the character is walking.

I haven’t had a game capture my imagination like this in a long time – the combination of Bethesda’s engine and Obsidian’s storytelling ability has resulted in something very special. I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good story driven RPG.

Finished the original Prince of Persia recently. My overall impression is that it's pretty much perfectly formed and I like the mechanic of replaying the game until you can complete all the levels in under a hour. There's a save function but I didn't use it and I think it would spoil the feel of starting a "run" from the first level.

The DOS port is excellent and quite possibly the best version of all. Motion is fluid (noticeably more so on real hardware than DOSBox). I didn't have any problems speed-wise playing it on a K6-class machine, but I did disable L2 and use 2x multiplier to be safe. The game has a handful of PCM sound effects (the slicing and stabbing effects are suitably visceral 😎) and a selection of incedental music.

The Adlib music is fine and probably the most faithful to the original Apple II version. I played it with the slightly snazzier MT-32 soundtrack, this requires using the MT-32 driver from Prince of Persia 2 and possibly also the 1.3 version of PoP. The game just uses the default MT-32 instruments.

Overall, an awesome game and quite a challenge. I'd recommend playing with keyboard as you literally can't put a foot wrong in this game if you want to stay alive, it's definitely best to move in a considered way until you memorise a level.

Warning, spoilers below!
http://imgur.com/R0J9QXt
http://imgur.com/HtpkRWA

bjt wrote:

Finished the original Prince of Persia recently.

Wow, that makes you a very patient man in my book! It's a great game but I've never finished it.

I read Jordan Mechner's journals recently, which covers the period he was writing the original Apple version. He was impressed with the DOS port too - VGA!

bjt wrote:

Finished the original Prince of Persia recently.

That's impressive. I remember that this game will run happily on a modern machine when you boot from a DOS Boot CD and run the game 😀

Even the PC speaker sound is decent, but Sound Blaster a lot better.

Star Trek Starfleet Academy GOG release

The Witcher II and Far Cry 4 both off and on. Was playing Dragon Age: Origins but my save got screwed up and I lost interest.

nothing old atm, just Bloodborne. The game is amazing.

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/battlere … 7776/240798511/

I got back into playing kotor 2. Sure plays grate on my new system 😵 Can't use frame buffer effects and the frame rate dips at times 😒

Currently enjoying an old favorite once again, Whiplash (aka Fatal Racing).

You do have to race and win, but you can also trash your opponents - and the tracks get crazier and more dangerous the farther you get. The perfect racing game for a crazy driver like me 😁 🤣

And once again I have two different game CDs:

The one on the left is the original 1995 DOS CD. The one on the right I got as a freebie in 2002 and has a Win9x installer added. Both have the same CD Audio tracks, and either one will work in DOS.

I personally prefer the 3dfx version, it just looks waaaayyyy better than SVGA and runs much faster 😎

Now to continue 'crushing' the competition and win by default ^^.

I'm on the last episode to Z.A.R.

This game has really nice music.

🤣 Earth requires a mineral called Iberium. I wonder where they got that name from. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Clive Barker's Undying - what a nice game! I'll back again and again to play it
some singleplayer modifications easily available here:
http://www.undyingitalia.it/public/index.php

I have been enjoying the heck out of Epic Pinball Android table. It's always been fun. I like the shareware version(first revision) and the updated registered version of the Android table. As the music and a few other things were changed. That and Jazz the Jackrabbit has occupied my time.

I was thinking of getting a gravis game pad to plug into my Awe32. But I wasn't sure if the Pro version of that gamepad is fully DOS compatible or if I should stick with the original Gravis Game pad. For it to work. Any suggestions for a DOS only game pad?

Blades wrote:

I was thinking of getting a gravis game pad to plug into my Awe32. But I wasn't sure if the Pro version of that gamepad is fully DOS compatible or if I should stick with the original Gravis Game pad. For it to work. Any suggestions for a DOS only game pad?

I have both and I think they're both compatible, but I prefer the original 'dogbone'. I like the shape and games like Keen, Wolf3D, etc were designed with this one in mine.

They're super cheap though - even NIB - so you could just get both and try them out.

bjt wrote:

Finished the original Prince of Persia recently. My overall impression is that it's pretty much perfectly formed and I like the […]
Show full quote

Finished the original Prince of Persia recently. My overall impression is that it's pretty much perfectly formed and I like the mechanic of replaying the game until you can complete all the levels in under a hour. There's a save function but I didn't use it and I think it would spoil the feel of starting a "run" from the first level.

The DOS port is excellent and quite possibly the best version of all. Motion is fluid (noticeably more so on real hardware than DOSBox). I didn't have any problems speed-wise playing it on a K6-class machine, but I did disable L2 and use 2x multiplier to be safe. The game has a handful of PCM sound effects (the slicing and stabbing effects are suitably visceral 😎) and a selection of incedental music.

The Adlib music is fine and probably the most faithful to the original Apple II version. I played it with the slightly snazzier MT-32 soundtrack, this requires using the MT-32 driver from Prince of Persia 2 and possibly also the 1.3 version of PoP. The game just uses the default MT-32 instruments.

Overall, an awesome game and quite a challenge. I'd recommend playing with keyboard as you literally can't put a foot wrong in this game if you want to stay alive, it's definitely best to move in a considered way until you memorise a level.

Warning, spoilers below!
http://imgur.com/R0J9QXt
http://imgur.com/HtpkRWA

Man, you're inspiriing me to bring out the 286 tonight and play that. I was surprised how well it ran on a 286 with a SoundBlaster and full VGA.

bjt wrote:

The DOS port is excellent and quite possibly the best version of all. Motion is fluid (noticeably more so on real hardware than DOSBox).

I suppose most of you already know how those smooth animations came to be, but for those who haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKgLfqOVHco 😉

Mad Dog McCree for PC/MS-DOS
and
The Even More Incredible Machine for Windows 3.11