I have a rather strange problem with this TV boosted edition v1.0.3: As soon as an MS Sidewinder Precision Pro Joystick (=USB Digital) is connected, the game assumes "left roll" is initiated. Thus I can then only control the craft by putting a paperweight on the "right roll" keyboard key, which neutralizes the phantom input.
v1.0.2 does not have this issue. On the Steam forum, another user is reporting the same issue with a Logitech stick.

I'm still curious if anybody from around here tried my instructions earlier in the thread to load custom PODs and define new episodes on "Boosted Edition", I don't own it myself and I can't afford to buy anything and likely can't for a long time.

You can just omit the levels I included from WizardWorks F!ZONE's "FURYSE.POD" as long as you still have a "FURY3.POD" from Microsoft Fury³.

DracoNihil wrote on 2023-07-08, 01:54:

I'm still curious if anybody from around here tried my instructions earlier in the thread to load custom PODs and define new episodes on "Boosted Edition", I don't own it myself and I can't afford to buy anything and likely can't for a long time.

You can just omit the levels I included from WizardWorks F!ZONE's "FURYSE.POD" as long as you still have a "FURY3.POD" from Microsoft Fury³.

I just tried, but it just seems to ignore those files as the new menu won't show up.
OT:
Something else I discovered is that you can try different resolutions on the DOS version by editing vox.ini. However, I couldn't reach a stable result with anything above the bundled SVGA mode (anything I tried above it would have garbled graphics + sound problems and some modes will even crash the game). Strangely enough, the SVGA mode is shown as 640x240 on VOX.INI. But maybe, that's something to bring up on the original game's topic.
Back to the Topic:
It'd be nice to see the Fury3 graphics on a higher resolution as the original was stuck to 320x200 rendering, which was not what the trial version promised.

filipetolhuizen wrote on 2023-07-09, 05:41:

I just tried, but it just seems to ignore those files as the new menu won't show up.

That's a real shame, I guess there's no modding support for the re-release...

DracoNihil wrote on 2023-07-09, 23:23:

filipetolhuizen wrote on 2023-07-09, 05:41:

I just tried, but it just seems to ignore those files as the new menu won't show up.

That's a real shame, I guess there's no modding support for the re-release...

Fury3 as a mod seems to work. Just that there are seemingly three places where TV-Boosted-edition searches for files. By trial and error and with the output of sysinternals process-monitor, it comes down to this:

%MyDocs%\mission.ini

14
2fury\share.vox
3fury\retail1.vox
4fury\retail2.vox
5fury\fury.vox

%MyDocs%\pod.ini

12
2fury\STARTUP.POD
3fury\FURY3.POD

In this folder below, put the four vox files and the two pod files
%MyDocs%\Terminal_Velocity_Boosted_Edition\fury
That fury subfolder just makes it more tidy.

Note that share.vox/retail1.vox/retail2.vox are packed in common.pod. And for the original TV episodes to be listed above the Fury3 campaign, these three unpacked files are required, and you need to get them somehow. Lacking them, the mod also functions with only the fury3 campaign in the menu. In that case change mission.ini to list only one file:

%MyDocs%\mission.ini

11
2fury\fury.vox

I suppose the FURYSE.POD that was mentioned is for F!Zone. Did not test that now...
CDROM.POD is no longer part of TV-Boosted-edition.

gerwin wrote on 2023-07-10, 00:53:

I suppose FURYSE.POD + CDROM.POD are optional. Movies maybe?

FURYSE.POD is those last three missions I included in my VOX. (Belazure, Futro, BionShp)
That POD is included in WizardWorks F!ZONE.

CDROM.POD is the original Terminal Velocity CD-ROM version POD file, the reason I include that last is because of filename collisions, you want CDROM.POD loaded last so it takes precedence over any conflict happening in FURY3.POD.

Fury³'s STARTUP.POD is where the alternate player ship model is as well as it's status bar graphics. But, because those status bar graphics are for a completely different hardcoded status bar element in Fury³ this clashes hardcore in the original TV and doesn't look correct whatsoever. But, nothing in FURY3.POD really needs Fury³'s STARTUP.POD to function as most of the things in STARTUP.POD between both games have identical filenames within for the same exact assets except Fury³'s assets are ever so slightly altered.

gerwin wrote on 2023-07-10, 00:53:

Fury3 as a mod seems to work. Just that there are seemingly three places where TV-Boosted-edition searches for files. By trial a […]
Show full quote

DracoNihil wrote on 2023-07-09, 23:23:

filipetolhuizen wrote on 2023-07-09, 05:41:

I just tried, but it just seems to ignore those files as the new menu won't show up.

That's a real shame, I guess there's no modding support for the re-release...

Fury3 as a mod seems to work. Just that there are seemingly three places where TV-Boosted-edition searches for files. By trial and error and with the output of sysinternals process-monitor, it comes down to this:

%MyDocs%\mission.ini

Copy code to clipboard

14
2fury\share.vox
3fury\retail1.vox
4fury\retail2.vox
5fury\fury.vox

%MyDocs%\pod.ini

Copy code to clipboard

12
2fury\STARTUP.POD
3fury\FURY3.POD

In this folder below, put the four vox files and the two pod files
%MyDocs%\Terminal_Velocity_Boosted_Edition\fury
That fury subfolder just makes it more tidy.

Note that share.vox/retail1.vox/retail2.vox are packed in common.pod. And for the original TV episodes to be listed above the Fury3 campaign, these three unpacked files are required, and you need to get them somehow. Lacking them, the mod also functions with only the fury3 campaign in the menu. In that case change mission.ini to list only one file:

%MyDocs%\mission.ini

Copy code to clipboard

11
2fury\fury.vox

I suppose the FURYSE.POD that was mentioned is for F!Zone. Did not test that now...
CDROM.POD is no longer part of TV-Boosted-edition.

Your method worked for both Fury3 and F!Zone. Thank you very much! It'd be nice if we could alternate between TV and Fury3 graphics and sounds on the fly as adding the Fury3 files replaces a few graphics and sounds on TV's original levels.

filipetolhuizen wrote on 2023-07-10, 04:57:

It'd be nice if we could alternate between TV and Fury3 graphics and sounds on the fly as adding the Fury3 files replaces a few graphics and sounds on TV's original levels.

Just don't use the STARTUP.POD from Fury³ and you should stick to the assets from Terminal Velocity for projectiles, powerup sprites and the player ship.

filipetolhuizen wrote on 2023-07-10, 04:57:

It'd be nice if we could alternate between TV and Fury3 graphics and sounds on the fly as adding the Fury3 files replaces a few graphics and sounds on TV's original levels.

Just an idea. Make a copy of the executable, like terminal_velocity_nomod.exe, then hex edit the occurrence of mission.ini to mission.xxx, and vox.ini to vox.xxx. So six bytes changed. This works as expected.
(It would be perfect if the executable had command line parameter to do the same thing. Also I would prefer it if the game did not rely on files in the root of %MyDocs%... But it is what it is)

Another thing to consider is putting the F!Zone levels into their own campaign, as the fifth menu choice. Like so:

%MyDocs%\mission.ini

15
2fury\share.vox
3fury\retail1.vox
4fury\retail2.vox
5fury\fury.vox
6fury\furyse.vox

%MyDocs%\Terminal_Velocity_Boosted_Edition\fury\FURY.VOX

124
2Fury3 Campaign
31,1,terran.lvl
41,2,terran2.lvl
51,3,terran3.lvl
62,1,atmos.lvl
72,2,atmos2.lvl
82,3,atmos3.lvl
93,1,red.lvl
103,2,red2.lvl
113,3,red3.lvl
124,1,city.lvl
134,2,city2.lvl
144,3,city3.lvl
155,1,egypt.lvl
165,2,egypt2.lvl
175,3,egypt3.lvl
186,1,astmine.lvl
196,2,astmine2.lvl
206,3,astmine3.lvl
217,1,water.lvl
227,2,water2.lvl
237,3,water3.lvl
248,1,borg.lvl
258,2,borg2.lvl
268,3,borg3.lvl

%MyDocs%\Terminal_Velocity_Boosted_Edition\fury\FURYSE.VOX

19
2Fury3 SE F!Zone Levels
31,1,Belazure.Lvl
41,2,Belazur2.Lvl
51,3,Belazur3.Lvl
62,1,Futro.Lvl
72,2,Futro2.Lvl
82,3,Futro3.Lvl
93,1,BionShip.Lvl
103,2,BionShp2.Lvl
113,3,BionShp3.Lvl

DracoNihil wrote on 2023-07-10, 01:18:

CDROM.POD is the original Terminal Velocity CD-ROM version POD file, the reason I include that last is because of filename collisions, you want CDROM.POD loaded last so it takes precedence over any conflict happening in FURY3.POD.

Fury³'s STARTUP.POD is where the alternate player ship model is as well as it's status bar graphics. But, because those status bar graphics are for a completely different hardcoded status bar element in Fury³ this clashes hardcore in the original TV and doesn't look correct whatsoever. But, nothing in FURY3.POD really needs Fury³'s STARTUP.POD to function as most of the things in STARTUP.POD between both games have identical filenames within for the same exact assets except Fury³'s assets are ever so slightly altered.

I am not sure what is best to do here. Ending the list with COMMON.POD or LANGUAGE.POD from the boosted edition makes the game crash. Ending with DISK.POD from the floppy does not crash and runs, but I don't see any difference compared to running without that file. To be continued I suppose....

gerwin wrote on 2023-07-10, 18:19:

am not sure what is best to do here. Ending the list with COMMON.POD or LANGUAGE.POD from the boosted edition makes the game crash.

That's really strange, because the only way I was able to play with the missions without the powerup sprites, projectile "models" and the player ship being replaced is to just not use the STARTUP.POD from Fury³ whatsoever.

Maybe "Boosted Edition" has some strange way of loading this stuff in the first place, like COMMON.POD always being loaded regardless. I've always been able to get away with the load order I dictated in "POD.INI" for the original MS-DOS CD-ROM version of the game.

DracoNihil wrote on 2023-07-10, 05:32:

filipetolhuizen wrote on 2023-07-10, 04:57:

It'd be nice if we could alternate between TV and Fury3 graphics and sounds on the fly as adding the Fury3 files replaces a few graphics and sounds on TV's original levels.

Just don't use the STARTUP.POD from Fury³ and you should stick to the assets from Terminal Velocity for projectiles, powerup sprites and the player ship.

Thanks again! I never knew I could mod TV like this. Changing the sprites and sounds was all I thought I could do back in the day.

filipetolhuizen wrote on 2023-07-10, 21:31:

Thanks again! I never knew I could mod TV like this. Changing the sprites and sounds was all I thought I could do back in the day.

The only reason I even found out about this stuff is the fact the legacy 3DRealms page for Terminal Velocity provided a download for the "tvcad" editor which mentioned those INI files in the first place, that and running "TV.EXE" through the "strings" utility on Linux and noticing the filename references as well.

Wish there had been more tools released to work with the stuff in this engine though, as far as I know the only level editors are just that "tvcad" and the editor provided with WizardWorkz F!ZONE. I don't think there's any tools to let you easily create your own custom 3D models.

I wonder if the same could be done with Hellbender since just adding the game's pod to the ini didn't make a difference and there are no vox files on any of the game's folder.

filipetolhuizen wrote on 2023-07-28, 00:32:

I wonder if the same could be done with Hellbender since just adding the game's pod to the ini didn't make a difference and there are no vox files on any of the game's folder.

No, Hellbender is a COMPLETELY OVERHAULED engine that has barely any semblance to the original code base of Terminal Velocity. I'm not even sure if the 3D model .BIN's in Hellbender are still backwards compatible to the original engine, but the maps are definitely not backwards compatible.

If the 3D models are backwards compatible, you might beable to play as the "Hellbender" itself by replacing the PLAYER.BIN in Terminal Velocity with the one from Hellbender, but I don't have any tools to replaces entries in .POD files to test this theory.

Unless you are asking if Hellbender can be modded? That, I have no clue. I've never found any custom map editors for Hellbender's map format, and never looked too hard into the EXE to see if it would have any mechanism to load additional levels, or even let you select a different singleplayer campaign.

Ok, at least Hellbender's original version still has some good graphics (with minor glitches on modern systems, though). BTW, Fury3's level ending device still remained on TV's missions after removing STARTUP.POD.

filipetolhuizen wrote on 2023-07-28, 21:31:

BTW, Fury3's level ending device still remained on TV's missions after removing STARTUP.POD.

I haven't examined FURY3.POD in something like Dragon UnPacker lately but I'm willing to bet the level exit model is part of FURY3.POD and the only way around the name collision is to, like I'm able to do with MS-DOS TV's POD.INI, force my own load order so that CDROM.POD overrode anything that matched a filename inside of FURY3.POD

Alternatively, if there was a tool to recompose a POD file, just remove all entries that have colliding filenames with the contents of Boosted Edition's POD files.

filipetolhuizen wrote on 2023-06-28, 01:41:

There is now a 1.0.3 update that optionally raises the rendering to 640p (1365x640) by the old menu option VGA/SVGA. Looks much better now, but still far from native 1080p or 720p true rendering.

setting higher resolution for this game won't make any sense cause
i can set higher and game produces correct pcx screenshot with F4, but it is not properly displayed during the game.
gfx on the right and bottom gets corrupted, sound gets corrupted, ship falls into spinning, ship teleports to random locations every few seconds.
similar gfx corruption with gta1 and gta2 open source ports with too high resolutions.

1.0.3 allows making impressive pictures 😉
unfortunately game goes spinning/teleporting quickly even in VGA mode
it has interesting new mouse support mode: almost quake like, but game starts spinning soon after starting even with keyboard only
actually i couldn't make that version work stable at all even using settings taken from previous version (lowest possible res, lowest gfx settings, mouse unplugged)
i read on steam forum people complaining problems with joystick spinning with new version too.
so it looks we have to stay with previous version until someone figures out how to use the new one if that is possible at all (i guess 360p was not chose before without a reason)
they added 640p but it is turned off as default in 1.0.3
btw shadows are turned off to as default even in previous ver so i guess they had problems with that too.

i guess the best way possible so far is to port s3virge from pcem to dosbox 😉

problems happened in win8.1
game seems stable in win11