The graphic novels all exceed texture sizes of 256x256 (3dfx hardware limitation) by being 1024x512.

Currently playing the lands of lore series with a little bit of dark forces, duke3d, warcraft2, krush kill n destroy and dune 2000 and breath of fire3 on the ps1(batocera)

Greywolf1 wrote on 2024-02-16, 14:09:

Currently playing the lands of lore series with a little bit of dark forces, duke3d, warcraft2, krush kill n destroy and dune 2000 and breath of fire3 on the ps1(batocera)

just finished Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness

I love the little quirks in it like the the peons going huh! huh! Stop touching me! When you click on them 🤣

mln wrote on 2024-02-16, 14:47:

just finished Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness

Orcs, Humans or both? Are you going to play the expansion (Beyond the Dark Portal)?

dr_st wrote on 2024-01-17, 21:25:

Now my hands are almost itching to start on the Price of Loyalty expansion campaigns immediately, but I know I probably need a break from the game.

So I took a couple of weeks off, and then decided to start with the shorter campaigns of PoL. Well, what I thought was shorter. The Wizard's Isle is tricky. I did the optional map for the 'Orb of Negation' artifact, and it immediately became obvious why it's a game changer against the crazy Warlocks in the last map.

I found this campaign very enjoyable. The same castle every time gets old a bit, but each of the 4 maps is based around a unique concept / mechanic, so it is not boring. As usual, the last map is very challenging, and I had to reload past saves a number of times.

Edit: Turns out that most of the difficulties I experienced on the last map were due to a design bug, where the warlock enemy may get the Dimension Door spell, bypass all the barriers that are supposed to keep it trapped, and roam the map with almost a hundred Black Dragons in the first few weeks. This is not how the map was meant to be played, but I had to deal with it during my playthrough.

StriderTR wrote on 2024-02-13, 06:37:

Just got done re-playing Serious Sam 4, again, with mods. 😀

Love the entire Serious series!

Some games never grow old!

dr_st wrote on 2024-02-16, 19:18:

mln wrote on 2024-02-16, 14:47:

just finished Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness

Orcs, Humans or both? Are you going to play the expansion (Beyond the Dark Portal)?

Both. However, I found Humans campaign more interesting. I'll play BtDP later, right now I am looking for some FPS, maybe Half-Life or Duke3D.

Plenty to pick from
Dark forces
Depth dwellers
Rise of the triad
Blake stone
Hexen
Heretic
Blood
System shock
Cyclones
Tek wars
Amsterdoom
Don’t know if you can include the next ones,
Magic carpet
Stonekeep
Decent

Dark Souls II
I've completed this twice before, once playing as a melee-focused character on the original release on PS3 (no DLC, etc. installed) back when it was released in 2014, and then once playing as a pyromancer in the Scholar of the First Sin release on PC (including completing all DLC). I was watching a video on YouTube that convinced me that the original release was worth revisiting, and it just so happened that the game was on sale... so I bought it and gave it a shot.

I noticed right away that the original game is quite different from the SotFS version. There are fewer enemies in most areas, and they don't aggro as easily. It feels a lot more like playing the first Dark Souls. The maps are sometimes more freely explorable than in SotFS, since the latter game throws a bunch of statues in front of doors for some reason, and the only way to pass is to use a rare item to depetrify them. This always seemed weird to me, and I didn't recall the PS3 version being like that, so it's cool to see that the original release indeed did not do this.

This time around, I decided to play as a sorcerer up to a point, and then use one of the respec items to switch to a hex wizard. I've never used either of these types of spells before, so it's been a lot of fun figuring things out. One thing I love about this series is that you're hardly ever "stuck" at some tough boss or area. The game usually gives you enough freedom to explore at least a few areas at a time, so if you get frustrated you can just explore elsewhere. You're also constantly working on something or another (stats, equipment, spells), and it feels great when you character build starts to come together.

I just finished playing College Brawl and it was such a great experience that I definitely think you should stop by and play it.

I am playing Alba with my daughter lately and it is a very charming and fun adventure exploration game I would recommend to anyone who wants to introduce their children to PC gaming 😀

Between the Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance RTS and RoboCop: Rogue City FPS being released this week, I'll be busy for the rest of the month.

I've been playing the heck out of Final Fantasy Renaissance lately. With the new jobs and items/weapons/armor, it feels so much fresher.

liqmat wrote on 2024-02-22, 14:53:

Between the Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance RTS and RoboCop: Rogue City FPS being released this week, I'll be busy for the rest of the month.

Great time for 80s franchises. You'll have to grab a copy of the Ghostbusters game after these.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-02-23, 03:11:

Great time for 80s franchises. You'll have to grab a copy of the Ghostbusters game after these.

Indeed. I had no idea the Robocop game had been released months ago, but the GOG release will do just fine. Speaking of Ghostbusters, I just caught on that a new movie comes out next month. Didn’t care for the last two in the franchise so not getting my hopes up too high.

Just started playing Enderal, the Skyrim-engined overhaul.

I have probably put several hundred hours in to Skyrim over the years, on PC, Xbox 360 and PS4... And this is like meeting someone you once knew at school, but they're now much cooler and a secret UFC cage fighter at the weekend.

Everything feels similar, but somehow different. It also plays much, much more difficult. You very much can't just run off and start exploring off the beaten path straight away. You are pretty weak at the beginning and the odd rat or wolf can easily take you down... Never mind a group of 2 or 3 skeletons.

Quite liking it so far.

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-02-25, 19:24:

Just started playing Enderal, the Skyrim-engined overhaul. […]
Show full quote

Just started playing Enderal, the Skyrim-engined overhaul.

I have probably put several hundred hours in to Skyrim over the years, on PC, Xbox 360 and PS4... And this is like meeting someone you once knew at school, but they're now much cooler and a secret UFC cage fighter at the weekend.

Everything feels similar, but somehow different. It also plays much, much more difficult. You very much can't just run off and start exploring off the beaten path straight away. You are pretty weak at the beginning and the odd rat or wolf can easily take you down... Never mind a group of 2 or 3 skeletons.

Quite liking it so far.

i looked that up - looks great

a team of 14 took 5 years to develop it, and its free

how is that possible ! ?

(i guess because its free time after the day jobs, which is not free 😀 )

I'm playing a few different games right now. Unreal (which is the game that got me loving FPS games)
Age of Empires (I have never made it past the Egypt campaign even though I have had this game since my mom bought the gold edition for me one Xmas many many years ago.
Half Life (This game is great , I have finished in in the past along with the expansions, but it was time to go back to it)
No One Lives Forever ( I have finished this before but its time to finish it again then play the sequel)

I started playing Sierra's Conquest of Camelot and, which is rare for me, played it nearly all the way through to what I assume is the final section. However, turns out that in classic adventure game manner I overlooked a room in the starting location (castle Camelot) where you were supposed to talk to Merlin and receive an item to solve one of the final puzzles. So, basically I've been walking-dead all the way through this otherwise lovely game. Most infuriatingly, this otherwise lovely game literally kills you if you leave the starting location without performing some other tasks that, as far as I can tell only provide you with some very mild hints, but it totally let's you go into an unwinnable without the item in question... aaaarrrghhh.

Anyway, great SCI game with beautiful EGA graphics, puzzles/riddles are entertaining and not too hard but then there's the stereotypical bad game design.

I also started playing a title published by Sierra, the ungainly titled Fire Hawk: Thexder - The Second Contact. Having neither read the manual nor gotten past the first stage, I can say that it's either a hard game or that I'm approaching it wrong. Manoeuvering as the mecha feels responsive enough and it's pleasing to just let the laser weapon mow the enemies down while backpaddeling but controlling the fighter jet is less than intuitive, especially since the down arrow turns you back into the mecha no matter where you are in space.

You can choose between the low resolution 320x200 MCGA and high resolution 640x200 EGA mode which uses dithering to display the extra colours. I think this makes the game look very unique for a DOS title and very, for lack of a better word, MSX-y. Apparently the studio's other DOS titles (Zeliard and Thexder 1) use the same graphics mode. Come to think of it, I want to say that New World Computing's Tunnels and Trolls also uses the EGA highres mode and dithering, as well as Legend Entertainment's and Magnetic Scroll's graphical text adventures.

Fun (??) fact: Fate of Atlantis also supports EGA highres. Who knew.

Some more info on the topic.

henryVK wrote on 2024-02-26, 14:05:

You can choose between the low resolution 320x200 MCGA and high resolution 640x200 EGA mode which uses dithering to display the extra colours. I think this makes the game look very unique for a DOS title and very, for lack of a better word, MSX-y. Apparently the studio's other DOS titles (Zeliard and Thexder 1) use the same graphics mode. Come to think of it, I want to say that New World Computing's Tunnels and Trolls also uses the EGA highres mode and dithering, as well as Legend Entertainment's and Magnetic Scroll's graphical text adventures.

That probably comes from the fact that the developers were originally targeting the PC-88 which had a similar hi-res mode. A lot of games of that era which started out in Japan would have been written for relatively hi-res, but low colour depth systems. It's a trait that continued throughout the PC-98 era as well. It probably contributed to the traditional hi-res dithered display of a lot of later titles.