As of late been playing Grand Theft Auto V and I am really enjoying the game, and it is incredibly well optimized. A massive step over Grand Theft Auto IV in that regard, glad to be able to crank up the settings to high and very high without the framerate dipping to unplayable levels.
As soon as I get the materials, I will be playing my semi-recent acquisition of a Nintendo 64. I was a Sony kid growing up and missed out on the N64 side of things and now is the time for me to see what I missed out on, anxious to properly play Perfect Dark, Jet Force Gemini, Doom 64, and Ridge Racer 64.
I tried out The Witcher 3 last night, which came bundled with the GTX960 I bought recently. I really enjoyed the first one but rage quit the second after a few hours and never went back, so I’m not sure if I would have paid full price for the third instalment. I’m a sucker for open world games though so probably would have.
There was much nerd rage on the interwebs pre-release because it was reported that the developers had ‘downgraded’ the graphics in the final version, i.e, it wasn’t going to look as good as the trailers made it out to be. Personally I’d prefer that it ran smoothly, and from what I’ve seen it still looks pretty freaking amazing. Nvidia have done one of their excellent tweak guides, which saved me countless hours of fiddling with the huge number of graphic options in the game, and it’s running really nicely for me.
I only scratched the surface after a few hours of play, but the RPG mechanics seem good and the combat is workable so far. As realistic and alive as the world is, I think it’s the NPC’s faces that stand out for me. They’re all unique (so far), and amazingly life like. They somehow avoid that ridged, uncanny valley effect that you usually see. Interactions are quite ponderous, with longer than usual pauses between selecting a response and your character actually uttering the words, and I wonder if was intentional - it gives you longer to appreciate the work that went into both the dialogs, and the voice acting, and the NPC you’re talking to. The work that goes into a modern AAA title is pretty mind blowing.
Played the CD version of Dune for a couple of hours last night. What an awesome game, very atmospheric. The music is lovely on a real OPL3. I also tried it on an AWE64 Gold but unfortunately CQM really makes a hash of it compared to the real OPL. I have an AWE32 that can apply reverb to the real OPL and with that it sounds amazing.
Played on a P233MMX with L1 cache disabled, AWE32, no problems to report.
Played the CD version of Dune for a couple of hours last night. What an awesome game, very atmospheric. The music is lovely on a real OPL3. I also tried it on an AWE64 Gold but unfortunately CQM really makes a hash of it compared to the real OPL. I have an AWE32 that can apply reverb to the real OPL and with that it sounds amazing.
The CD version is awesome. The voice acting is quite decent, except for some Harkonnen voices which can be a bit obnoxious but other than that awesome game.
Agree that the voice acting is good, shame the samples are such low quality but that's part of the DOS game experience 😀 The FMV audio in particular has loads of artifacts, I wondered if I had a hardware problem at first but it's the same on several of my machines.
Going to try ripsaw's modified Adlib Gold driver later Re: Idea for Adlib Gold emulation?, sure it won't have the Adlib Gold effects but apparently some instruments are nicer and it supports stereo output. I think it's for the floppy version but might work on the CD with a bit of tweaking.
...aside from playing rollercoaster tycoon, that is.
The flu is no fun at all but a sick day is the only time I get to spend consecutive guilt free hours playing a game these days, so it's not altogether unwelcome 😵
Still playing Dune. I thought these bios in the manual were great. These days games devs are lucky to feature in the credits above a massive list of marketing, PR & management types.
Sunless Sea, just bought from GoG. A massive crashfest, crashes within a minute or two every time, killing my sound system and corrupting windows - I get a stuck note like an old SB16, random graphics corruption, browsers fail and so on, until I reboot. Pah.
Moved on to Lichdom:Battle Mage. Pretty good fun, FPS mage blaster 😀
Now I`m playing Baldurs Gate Original Saga which I also bought from GoG and for full price but game worth it and Diablo 2 with mods with using them with D2 Mod Manager as plugins for him 😀 And I think about play Witcher 2 in future 😀
W7 "retro" PC: ASUS P8H77-V, Intel i3 3240, 8 GB DDR3 1333, HD6850, 2 x 500 GB HDD
Retro 98SE PC: MSI MS-6511, AMD Athlon XP 2000+, 512 MB RAM, ATI Rage 128, 80GB HDD My Youtube channel
This is a game I play every so often but have never seen mentioned anywhere: Morphose.
An original from Softdisk Publishing, it came out in late 1992 as part of On-Disk Monthly issue 73, the series of disk magazines that used to be known as Big Blue Disk.
The game engine used appears to be the same as Catacomb 3-D and Commander Keen 4-6 but without a setup menu; instead, Morphose is configured with command line options. It's also small in size (about 72.2 KB).
Gameplay is very simple, you just move around with the arrow keys avoiding any guardian bots and any rooms connected with blue lines that they may be in until you reach the exit; once you lose all your lives the game restarts all over. The F1 key brings out a help file with more info.
Here are two DOSBox videos I made, first one with Adlib sound and second one with PC Speaker:
Since Morphose was never freeware or shareware it's very difficult to find. No game database site has it listed (not even MobyGames), and so far the only legit way to get it is by finding a copy of ODM 73 (This site apparently has one for sale, but it's old and hasn't been updated recently). I came about mine by way of my uncle; back in 1995 a coworker of his retired and gave him a bunch of floppies he didn't want anymore, and among them were several On-Disk Monthly issues including ODM 73. I played it once and that was enough, it became a part of my personal DOS games collection ever since.
Alright then, time for some more fun. Let's see if I can best my high score 😊
Bought a 980TI so I could play Witcher 3 at 1080P with all graphics options but with what little free time I've had I'm playing GTA V instead with all options turned on and it runs great.
Played The Dig for an hour last night. This is new one for me. It was very relaxing 😎
The soundtrack is awesome and atmospheric, I believe it's by Michael Land. Can see myself finishing this one as a chill-out activity.
The Dig is on my to-do list, along with one hundred other games. I still haven't finished The Witcher 3 or GTA V, and I've opened up another couple of fronts with Ms Pac Man on the C64 and yet another play through of Command & Conquer. If only I didn't need 7.5 hours of sleep a day 😒
Having progressed a P233MMX build to a reasonable state, just installed Need For Speed:Special Edition and started playing it in DOS (no Windows installed yet). Need to work out how to get high detail settings, as it looks terrible with current settings (10MB XMS just to get it going).
