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Reply 1220 of 5850, by AlaricD

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Deus Ex: Mankind Divided on PS4.
Played a little Wing Commander on my SNES Classic the other day, for some 16-bit retro action. (It reminds me of how I'd love to have the skill to port WC to the Apple IIgs.)

"The Big Bang. The ultimate hero of low frequency. The divine intergalactical bass drum connecting the tribes of our solar system."
Yello
"Solar Driftwood"

Reply 1221 of 5850, by badmojo

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I recently introduced my daughters to TES: Oblivion in a sly attempt to lure them away from some awful online pay-for-play-"game"-with-friends-and-random-internet-people they picked up at school, and the strategy has worked perfectly – they're both hooked, and a happy side-effect is that I’m hooked too. I haven’t given Oblivion any thought in years but seeing it in action reminded me of the wonder and magic I felt playing it on release (interspersed with feelings of frustration and angst at how slowly it ran on my PC at the time of course). Oblivion really blew my mind and I can still see why all these years later.

One thing that still delights me are the interactions with the NPC’s. Much was made at the time of the Radiant AI being dumbed down before release but I still find the NPC’s to be incredibly lifelike. They’re plug ugly of course but their range of expression is uncanny – you can really get a sense of how they feel about you by just looking at them. The conversations they have with each other are sensible and the comments they make to you in passing often relate to some recent event in the game world, which always tickles my fancy.

The other thing which has struck me is the quality of the audio and soundtrack. Birds sing, the voicework is solid, objects clatter and clank as you drop them / knock them over, and the wind howls at higher elevations / during storms. After playing Kingdom Come recently, which is a very quiet game, I’m really impressed with how much atmosphere Oblivion creates with sound alone.

And I’m surprised at how beautiful the world is without the need for too much patching and tweaking. I’m running maybe 10 mods, half of which are aimed at improving the appearance of the environment / NPC’s so that's definately a factor, but it’s the lighting and weather effects (which I haven't modded) that bring the place to life I think. Strolling around Cyrodiil’s manicured lawns and forests is still a joy, particularly now that I can run the game with ultimate settings + vsync + FOV fix. My 8 year old i5 still struggles occasionally in towns and the frame rate drops to 50fps, but for the most part it’s smooth sailing.

I’m also finding the quests to be varied and interesting – quite the contrast to Beth’s more recent efforts IMHO. I’ve been avoiding the main quest, the Oblivion gates, and the countless caves / tombs you stumble across, and I’m still easily filling my fantasy days and nights with action and adventure. There's a real depth and attention to detail in the storytelling that never gets old - it's a timeless classic I think.

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Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 1222 of 5850, by AlaricD

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badmojo wrote:

I recently introduced my daughters to TES: Oblivion in a sly attempt to lure them away from some awful online pay-for-play-"game"-with-friends-and-random-internet-people they picked up at school, and the strategy has worked perfectly – they're both hooked, and a happy side-effect is that I’m hooked too.

It's a great game, for sure. The world is so very alive and real.

Once they finish it, you know they'll want to play Skyrim. It's only natural.

"The Big Bang. The ultimate hero of low frequency. The divine intergalactical bass drum connecting the tribes of our solar system."
Yello
"Solar Driftwood"

Reply 1223 of 5850, by appiah4

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AlaricD wrote:

It's a great game, for sure. The world is so very alive and real.

Once they finish it, you know they'll want to play Skyrim. It's only natural.

It made me want to play no more TES games once I was done, and I have done exactly that. Morrowind forever.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 1225 of 5850, by badmojo

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appiah4 wrote:

It made me want to play no more TES games once I was done, and I have done exactly that. Morrowind forever.

Why?

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 1226 of 5850, by liqmat

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I just love old offbeat shareware floppy disks and CDs and I ran across this one in a thrift store the other day. It even advertises three of the titles are fully registered! Ooooh boy! I uploaded a video of one of the fully registered titles called True Blood despite there being no blood in the game. I mean, they just don't make games like this anymore and I know you guys just envy me for owning this.

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Actual gameplay footage (so real you might think it's a movie)

https://youtu.be/EqZAFoHUXcY

Enjoy!

Reply 1227 of 5850, by DracoNihil

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I've been slowly replaying Descent 2 on Insane difficulty.

I overestimated how hard this game would be, either that or I'm just too good at games for my own good.

“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων

Reply 1228 of 5850, by MMaximus

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After 23 years or so, I've finally managed to complete the original Descent. I played the game back in the day but never made it past the first couple of levels - at the time I found the game too difficult because I was trying to control everything with the Joystick. It's only after reading someone on Vogons suggesting to use a combination of WASD keys + Joystick that I finally got a grip on the handling. I began playing the game on Dosbox last year and played the last 10 levels on my P233MMX these last few weeks - all in 320x200 resolution which made it a bit difficult to aim for the enemies at times. Some levels were a bit tedious but overall I really enjoyed it - now I'm thinking I might give Overload a go...

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Reply 1230 of 5850, by MMaximus

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badmojo wrote:

Congrats! Does having the hat on the Flightstick help at all?

Thanks 😀

I find it does actually! I use the hat up and down switches to ascend and descend the ship. Back in the day I was also trying to strafe left / right with the hat, and that's what made it too difficult. Using the WASD keys like any regular FPS and the Flightstick to tilt and steer the ship makes the navigation really smooth. The only thing with the hat is that it doesn't seem to register multiple button presses - so If I'm using the hat I can't seem to fire at the same time.

I've had my Flightstick since the mid nineties and it still works flawlessly - I think this says something about its build quality. Before it I had 2 different Thrustmaster FCS and they both broke after a few months - I replaced them with the Flightstick and never looked back!

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Reply 1231 of 5850, by xjas

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Nice! My LAN party stick for Descent/D2 back in the day was a Gravis Firebird II, a fully programmable monster with PS/2 keyboard pass-through and hardware throttle & trim controls. I migrated to that after breaking multiple Logitech Wingman Extremes, but the Gravis never let me down. After I got out of the competitive circuit I moused it for many years do to space/moving constraints. These days I play with a full-on HOTAS setup (Thrustmaster T-flight HOTAS X.) The game just feels so much more fluid with a good flight stick. 😀

I'm currently working through the single-player campaign in Overload with said HOTAS setup BTW. It's everything us oldschool Descent pilots waited 15 years for.

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

Reply 1232 of 5850, by badmojo

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Yes I'm a big fan of the Flightstick Pro and also the original Flightstick, which I think is more comfortable in the hand (tho obviously has less features). Another stick that really rocked the gameport era was the Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro - pretty gosh darn ugly but could emulate the "standards" of the time, the CH and the Thrustmaster.

I also own a SpaceOrb 360 which is fun to mess around with, but not really usuable.

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 1233 of 5850, by xjas

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badmojo wrote:

I also own a SpaceOrb 360 which is fun to mess around with, but not really usuable.

Nice, I have the PS1 version (AsciiWare Sphere 360.) It seems like it could have been great if they'd dialled in support a bit better. I still haven't tried Forsaken with it which is apparently one of the better games for it.

I'd love to try out the SpaceOrb on PC... Those caused a HUGE controversy in the Descent multiplayer community when they came out, as IIRC they shipped with a TSR that modified values in memory and let you turn faster than the game's standard maxima. Haven't even seen one for sale in ages.

Care to upload some pics or scans of the 360 & its documentation package? I'd love to see what came in the box with it, if you have all that stuff. 😀

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

Reply 1234 of 5850, by badmojo

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xjas wrote:

Care to upload some pics or scans of the 360 & its documentation package? I'd love to see what came in the box with it, if you have all that stuff. 😀

For you, anything. Only a half-arsed effort though I'm afraid, short on time here as usual.

I can't remember where I got this now - half of the manuals are in French and the other English. It connects via a COM port which I'd forgotten, and the drivers that came with it weren't great so I tracked down a set with mid '98 timestamps and they're much better - by 'better' I mean that the provided set of supported games is longer and it was a much smoother experience in-game. DOS drivers are provided on the disk but I don't think I even bothered with those - this is a Win9x device really.

As you can see this one has been re-branded for whatever reason, but it's just a SpaceOrb 360. I haven't used it enough to be sure but it's more than a novelty I think; it's a viable alternative for a joystick if you put in the time to re-wire your synapses.

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Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 1235 of 5850, by bjwil1991

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Played some Delta Force: Black Hawk Down + Team Sabre (Platinum Pack) online on my Ultimate Athlon 64 Windows 98SE machine. Yes, the servers are still online to this day, especially the Joint Ops: Typhoon Rising game as well. The video card choice isn't that great, but, it is what it is since my GeForce 6200 AGP kicked the bucket. My dad and I haven't played these games in years.

Currently installing Command And Conquer Generals + Zero:Hour on my machine right now.

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Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
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Reply 1236 of 5850, by root42

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liqmat wrote:
I just love old offbeat shareware floppy disks and CDs and I ran across this one in a thrift store the other day. It even advert […]
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I just love old offbeat shareware floppy disks and CDs and I ran across this one in a thrift store the other day. It even advertises three of the titles are fully registered! Ooooh boy! I uploaded a video of one of the fully registered titles called True Blood despite there being no blood in the game. I mean, they just don't make games like this anymore and I know you guys just envy me for owning this.

Actual gameplay footage (so real you might think it's a movie)

https://youtu.be/EqZAFoHUXcY

Enjoy!

Oh dear, that game looks bad! Positively hilarious! Did you play it through? I hope not...

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Reply 1237 of 5850, by liqmat

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root42 wrote:

Oh dear, that game looks bad! Positively hilarious! Did you play it through? I hope not...

No, I didn't. Once you reach the second stage, like in the video, it gets stupid hard. Not hard in a good way either. Between the choppy animations and really bad AI, if you can call it that, the farthest I can get is the very beginning of the third stage and not often enough where I could capture it for that Youtube video. There isn't even an options menu with any sort of difficulty setting. The CD I have says this is the fully registered version. I just pity the poor soul who actually registered the shareware version of this game back in the day.

Last edited by liqmat on 2018-08-18, 22:41. Edited 3 times in total.

Reply 1238 of 5850, by DracoNihil

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Running out of bullets here!

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Totally should not be possible but I always find a way...

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This is played on "Insane" difficulty, as well. The trick is to always get the first shot, heh.

“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων