Restarted Monkey Island 2.
Using my old 3.5" floppy disks. Annoying thing is the dial. Was boring 30 years ago and still today... 😀 Some things never end 😀:)

I don't like the new restyled graphics.

Nexxen wrote on 2021-03-09, 11:39:

Restarted Monkey Island 2.
Using my old 3.5" floppy disks. Annoying thing is the dial. Was boring 30 years ago and still today... 😀 Some things never end 😀:)

I don't like the new restyled graphics.

The thing I like about the remakes is, with the push of a single key, you can swap back to the original graphics and sound. You do lose the surprisingly good voice acting they added, but it's a tradeoff. Though there is a mod for the first one (I believe it's called "Ultimate Talkie Edition") that lets you play it with the original graphics but also the new voice acting and extra sound effects, and last I checked they were working on doing the same thing for the second.

Been 'playing' some Skyrim again, but first time I played the special edition. I typed it as 'playing' because my playthrough is also doubling as a debug run to see if my mods (which I'm in the process of porting over from Skyrim LE) are working properly.

currently some zdoom on an old 32 bit intel mac ... prboom on retropie and gzdoom on a laptop

while testing various selfmade mods

currently doing 3d models for a gzdoom mod

from time to time also testing some unreleased personal mods for oblivion

liqmat wrote on 2021-03-06, 15:50:

Doom 3 is an artistic masterpiece and I guarantee you a lot of folks don't agree with me.

Whenever a lot of folks agree on something, they are almost always wrong. This one is no exception.

You sir, have taste.

With Doom 3, Carmack was all about bringing the next generation of lighting improvements, to take the envisioned game's immersion to all-new levels not yet achieved anywhere else. An attitude seen many year earlier with Quake II. In both cases, he absolutely succeeded. Back at the time of original release, the lighting tech was a real shock to the system. I haven't played Doom 3 since those original years, but I imagine that lighting tech still stands quite strongly.

I've just got myself a new (old) console so I'm in the midst of testing games with that, along with some NFS2SE on my 3dfx'd K6/2 (playing along with the OCAU dudes), and now up to the final few levels of The Lost Vikings also on the K6/2. I'm not a very skilled gamer - I simply don't dedicate enough time to Actually Playing - so the difficulty is reaching the stage where it's almost not fun any more, and I potentially may not finish. Which is not a concern of mine, I have no ego when it comes to completing games.

Shreddoc wrote on 2021-03-09, 22:43:

With Doom 3, Carmack was all about bringing the next generation of lighting improvements, to take the envisioned game's immersion to all-new levels not yet achieved anywhere else. An attitude seen many year earlier with Quake II. In both cases, he absolutely succeeded. Back at the time of original release, the lighting tech was a real shock to the system. I haven't played Doom 3 since those original years, but I imagine that lighting tech still stands quite strongly.

I've just got myself a new (old) console so I'm in the midst of testing games with that, along with some NFS2SE on my 3dfx'd K6/2 (playing along with the OCAU dudes), and now up to the final few levels of The Lost Vikings also on the K6/2. I'm not a very skilled gamer - I simply don't dedicate enough time to Actually Playing - so the difficulty is reaching the stage where it's almost not fun any more, and I potentially may not finish. Which is not a concern of mine, I have no ego when it comes to completing games.

That is the kicker. As much difficulty as I'm having with the toll the horror elements of Doom 3 have on me, the unified lighting model is striking to this day. Just about no other game looks that way. And on a CRT with proper black levels, it's just perfect. Between Doom 3 and assorts ray tracing games with global illumination schemes, I have to come to fully embrace my hate of ambient lighting in the typical rasterized lighting model.

Ambient lighting and particularly baked in lightmaps are TERRIBLE representation of reality more often than not.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-03-09, 21:48:

liqmat wrote on 2021-03-06, 15:50:

Doom 3 is an artistic masterpiece and I guarantee you a lot of folks don't agree with me.

Whenever a lot of folks agree on something, they are almost always wrong. This one is no exception.

🤣. I believe a lot of contrarians feel similarly. Sometimes people just have different opinions about what they like and don't like.

Yes, maybe people have different tastes and there is no need to feel smug about it.

Anyway, it's a damn shame that tape doesn't exist on Mars.

I've made it to the Monorail Skybridge in Doom 3. Maybe almost halfway through the game? I've got 9.3 hours into it. So if I am halfway through, this could end up being ~20 hrs, which is what I was hoping for.

Despite my initial concerns about continuing the game, I'm enjoying it enough now that I'm getting used to it, that it looks like I'll push through to the end. The email and audio logs are filling in just enough story to keep it interesting. Still, I'd probably rate this on the lower end compared to some other favorite shooters.

I must admit that I never finished DOOM3 - I got to the final boss fight and just couldn't be bothered. It was fun up until that point so why ruin it with boss frustration? I did the same thing with HL1, life was too short for Xen!

Playing Sam&Max Hit the Road again on my DOS PC, connected to a midi stack using a MusicQuest clone.

Was experiencing constant hanging notes, no matter which midi device I used.

So I switch to using Munt/MidiPlayer on a win7 box (still being output from the same DOS PC and into the Win7 box using a USB2midi adapter).

So far no hanging notes. I think it might be less to do with Munt as much as the awesome FalconSoft midi player which might be doing a better job of detecting note off commands, but not sure.

Did you try using softMPU with the MusicQuest clone? Doing that sorted out an issue I had with a real MusicQuest card and Wing Commander - just a thought!

badmojo wrote on 2021-03-14, 05:06:

Did you try using softMPU with the MusicQuest clone? Doing that sorted out an issue I had with a real MusicQuest card and Wing Commander - just a thought!

That's a good idea, I'll give it a try, Cheers!

kolderman wrote on 2021-03-14, 06:30:

badmojo wrote on 2021-03-14, 05:06:

Did you try using softMPU with the MusicQuest clone? Doing that sorted out an issue I had with a real MusicQuest card and Wing Commander - just a thought!

That's a good idea, I'll give it a try, Cheers!

Hmm seems that the issue can still occur. In fact, I am now thinking the GM score is borked - the only one that works without stuck background notes in MT32. Oh well, I usually prefer the MT32 track if available, I guess this is what it will be.

badmojo wrote on 2021-03-13, 23:51:

I must admit that I never finished DOOM3 - I got to the final boss fight and just couldn't be bothered. It was fun up until that point so why ruin it with boss frustration? I did the same thing with HL1, life was too short for Xen!

I rage quit Duke3D on the final boss of Episode 1. It actually soured the whole game for me, to get so close and not finish. The only other game that's happened on with me is Wing Commander: Privateer.

Growing up with arcade games and not much money, trained me from a young age to mentally accept not-completing-games as the norm.

The luxury of kids having every-game-in-the-world, at home, with infinite credits to play with, is a privilege which began shortly after my childhood ended. 😒

(not that we suffered - we had plenty!)

The final boss of Episode 1 is crazy easy. I don't get it ?

xcomcmdr wrote on 2021-03-14, 10:52:

The final boss of Episode 1 is crazy easy. I don't get it ?

I don't know, I watched YT videos of people beating it, and I just couldn't do it. 🤷