Ancient DOS Games Episode 174 - Cannon Fodder in finally online! (Sheesh YouTube, at least give me a chance to complain about you instead of fixing yourself the moment I do!)
(Also, please note that this is a mature rated episode.)

Anyways, I actually found this week's game ridiculously difficult. I got stuck very few missions in, which is when I discovered how much BETTER the original Amiga version is. I watched a bunch of gameplay of the Amiga version and learned some tricks and tactics and got better at the DOS version as a result... until some of the tactics I learned DIDN'T WORK. o_O;

After some more gameplay I discovered that you're pretty much consigned to fate when playing the DOS version. It's simply too fast, too unforgiving, has too little screen space and too erratic and unresponsive of a mouse cursor to make any sort of progress through the most difficult parts of any mission without simply getting lucky. :(

Besides which, for a 1993 game which used tracked music on the Amiga side of things, including a satirical theme song with lyrics, NOT including that music in the DOS port is just confirming how little time (or possibly consideration) the porting team had with this thing. :/

If I recall correctly, the PAL standard has a refresh rate of 50 Hz, which is what the original Amiga version plays at. The DOS port, however, would've only been able to run at 70 Hz since MS-DOS does not adhere to either NTSC or PAL standards. Sounds like to me when the developers ported this game over to DOS, they didn't consider the big differences in resolution and frame rate the game would run at in DOS machines with VGA graphics.

Commodore Amiga: 320 x 256 at 50 Hz in PAL mode, or 320 x 200 at 60 Hz in NTSC mode.
MS-DOS with VGA graphics: 320 x 200 at 70 Hz in Mode 13h.

Anyway, I didn't get a chance to play this game until about a few years ago, and I gotta say that Cannon Fodder is really fun. So fun that it almost makes you forget about how cheap human life is and how terrible war really is. At least, if you're playing the Amiga version and not the butchered PC port. Also, I've heard that most of the controversy about the game was isolated to a few places in the U.K. where the people criticizing the game didn't even bother playing or taking a single look at it to see what it's really all about.

I thought the controversy was over a poppy paired together with the game's title being super offensive to brits.

nice going Insensible Software

leileilol wrote:

I thought the controversy was over a poppy paired together with the game's title being super offensive to brits.

That was the initial outcry which is why the decision was made last-minute to change the box art. Didn't stop people from complaining about the poppy flower's appearance in-game. :P

Yikes, had no idea that the DOS version was that bad. On PC, I only ever played the 2nd game, which at least includes the vocals in the intro 😁. It probably plays just as bad though.

Cannon Fodder's controversy just comes from people who have absolutely no idea what they are talking or are puritans. It's usually the media that loves to spin stories like these 😀. Listening to the "Lost in Service" music track from the game, while viewing the hillside after a few of your soldiers will give you a good idea about what's going on here, I reckon.
That piece of music was actually tracked from an older song from Jon Hare. It's actually pretty touching.

https://youtu.be/pMqOMFW3Gt8

Kris, I really like ADG episodes that focus on ports. Have you thought about doing more of these, such as arcade-to-PC ports? The Mortal Kombat games for example had some really great PC ports that you could look into, as did Capcom's X-Men : Children of the Atom off the top of my head.

F2bnp wrote:

Kris, I really like ADG episodes that focus on ports. Have you thought about doing more of these, such as arcade-to-PC ports? The Mortal Kombat games for example had some really great PC ports that you could look into, as did Capcom's X-Men : Children of the Atom off the top of my head.

As it stands, I mostly go by my requests list now. I'm somewhat low on DOS titles which I already own, though there are a number of such titles left, one of which I'm covering next. :B

Next year I'll be getting to some titles which there's definitely been a wait for. ;)

leileilol wrote:

[...] with the game's title being super offensive to brits.

nice going Insensible Software

being non-brits i'm, i always want to know why that was considered as "offensive" by the brits?

interesting tidbit from SNES port of the game, the last 5 recruits are named:

• KITTEN
• GONNER
• WASTER
• LOSER
• FODDER

there are 360 total recruits in SNES version.

Ancient DOS Games Episode 175 - Rasterscan is online!

...and thus begins my break from making regular ADG episodes. :B

I've actually been getting much better at the process, which is providing more time for capturing footage when I need it and allowing for more time to be put towards other projects. I literally only spent about half an hour doing the video editing for today's episode, which you may think kinda shows, but then I had to find a way to fill 13 minutes of review time and quite frankly, it only takes about 5 minutes to see most of the game, so I just threw in a whole bunch of me looking around and analyzing wire paths. :P

The filler video next Saturday will let everyone know what to expect during my break period and regular ADG episodes will resume on Saturday, January 2nd, 2016. That said, there will still be more videos between now and then! (Just not ADG episodes.)

Ancient DOS Games Filler #50 - End of 2015 Update is online!

Not too much to say outside of what's said in the video. However, I do want to add that the actual total amount of work that's gone into the first game for my secret project only totals about 1 1/2 months worth, presuming I had been working on it solidly without having ADG and other things to worry about. The majority of the work done on the project up to this point has been foundation code, work on the universal editor I use for making games for this project, a sound effect generator to make the sounds effects used for the games in this project, all among other little things like changes and additions to my underlying framework code, but all of that's about 95% done at this point, meaning all that's left is game code, and I'm a LOT better and faster at writing game code than engine code! ;)

Basically, while it sounds crazy to finish two games in just over two months, given their small size it's definitely possible with my efforts focussed. Super Minesweeper only took 2 1/2 months to code and PixelShips Retro only took 2 months to code. I am more than capable of pulling this off, especially with most of the design work for the next two games done and even some of the levels ready to go! :B

I also like that my first-ever attempt to code for XInput worked out surprisingly well and I kinda get a kick out of being able to turn my 360 controller on mid-game and my code instantly detects the controller and reports its battery level. :D

Is it possible for you to release demo versions of the games you're working on after finishing them all up? Not saying that you absolutely have to; just something I'm really curious about.

switchblade wrote:

Is it possible for you to release demo versions of the games you're working on after finishing them all up? Not saying that you absolutely have to; just something I'm really curious about.

Actually, the first three games for my secret project will always be FREE. They will be launched and playable prior to entering the Steam Greenlight process and will remain free even after passing through Greenlight! :o

It's the games following for the project which will be paid ($2 each), technically a form of DLC, though you'll be able to demo the paid games prior to purchase. The demo limits will vary depending on the nature of each game. Some will simply cap how far you can get while others will restrict items you can acquire/use, thus limiting progression.

...that's all presuming I make it through Greenlight at all. If I don't though, that's a good sign that what I'm working on likely wouldn't sell well to begin with so I should switch gears and work on something completely different, whereas if it DOES pass through Greenlight, it's a good sign that I'm on the right track! :)

Gemini000 wrote:

...that's all presuming I make it through Greenlight at all. If I don't though, that's a good sign that what I'm working on likely wouldn't sell well to begin with so I should switch gears and work on something completely different, whereas if it DOES pass through Greenlight, it's a good sign that I'm on the right track! 😀

🤣.... Have you seen the amount of crap that gets pushed through Greenlight nowadays? It's become nothing more than a dumping ground for scam artists taking pre-bought and pre-packaged Unity assets and selling them as full games for retail prices. Of course, not everything on Greenlight is a load of horse manure. There are some good games on Greenlight that do get noticed. But even the good/decent games get piled up along with the scummy ones over there. Just as long as you pony up the one-time $100 fee to be able to sell your games on Greenlight, you can sell virtually anything on there. Steam does a notorious job of not enforcing any standards over there.

The fact that you aren't selling pre-packaged Unity assets as "games" at retail prices means that you're already heads and shoulders above most people on Greenlight. The fact that you aren't using Unity for game development makes you a complete rarity among game developers on Greenlight.

switchblade wrote:

Have you seen the amount of crap that gets pushed through Greenlight nowadays?

Yup. But, as it stands, it's the only method for an indie developer (regardless of size or notoriety) to initially get their stuff onto Steam without going through a publisher. Besides which, it's still primarily up to me to ensure people are aware of my project and are willing to both Greenlight it and download it and get the extra games for it as I make 'em.

switchblade wrote:

The fact that you aren't selling pre-packaged Unity assets as "games" at retail prices means that you're already heads and shoulders above most people on Greenlight. The fact that you aren't using Unity for game development makes you a complete rarity among game developers on Greenlight.

Well, THAT, and not using Java or Flash either, but even then, there's been a solid number of decent games which have passed through Greenlight using any of those tools. Remember, it's not the language or tools you use but the results which count! ;)

Ancient DOS Games Filler #51 - 2016 is Almost Here! is online!

I know it was strange going two months without and ADG, but I really put that time to good use and went from being about 50% ready with my game project to being about 65% to 70% ready! :D

...which... yeah... isn't quite as far as I was hoping to get. If I only needed to work on game code I would've been real close to done but I ended up doing even MORE foundation code, but I need to get that code out of the way ASAP so that any future games I make for this project will go much faster. Since the goal of my project is to be able to churn out 3 to 4 games a year with it, I need to be able to make them as rapidly as possible, which means having an extremely solid foundation in place which can do just about anything I need it to do.

So only about 60% of the time spent the past couple months was spent on game code. :P

Thus to give myself a little more time to catch up, the first few episodes of ADG will be simple games so that I can spend less time playing them and more time doing code. I'll likely get back to doing more elaborate games come March. :B

Ancient DOS Games Episode 176 - Stargunner is online, officially kicking off ADG for 2016! :D

Funny thing... this game was fast to play but there was actually a lot of points to talk about... so many in fact that I missed several and thus ended up with like, six additional points of info on my page for the game on my website, not counting the link to GOG to get the thing. :P

But that's fine, I'm just out of practice in terms of making these things as I've been in full-coding mode the past couple months and am trying to shift myself back out of that mindset. Most of the games I have planned to cover over the next couple months are actually smaller than this one since I still have a lot of code to write, but come March, whether my secret project is ready to reveal or not, I'll go back to my usual method of selecting games to cover on the show. :B

Enjoyed the review, Kris, thanks. I also appreciated learning about the other 3drealms freebies when I went to their site to find this one.

Welcome back, Kris. 😀

Funnily enough, I remember hearing about this game long before it was released as freeware. I remember playing the demo version of Stargunner, despite the fact that the game speed was quite unstable on a Pentium 1 at 133 MHZ. It's still a fun game to play, despite your ship's shields being useless at times.

Never really understood why the game needed an SVGA mode, considering I haven't really seen much of a difference between it and the regular VGA mode.

Ooohhh goody, ADG is back! 😁

Would you believe I've never heard of Stargunner until today? Probably shows how little known it was back then.

Gameplay does remind me of Gradius, another side-scrolling shooter I used to play at the arcades in the late 80s. All I can remember now is that I royally sucked at it (never got pass the third level 😵 ).

While I do have some curiosity, I'm going to give Stargunner a pass for now. Scrolling space shooters are really not my thing, platformers like Duke Nukem and Jill of the Jungle are more my style.

Because the Apogee marketing machine was in full Duke Plutonium/Atomic mode at the time. I've first learned heard of Stargunner... in mid-97 (!) which was amusing because I completely ignored the demo that was on the CGW Apr 97 cd I already had obtained.

If anyone tries to get Stargunner working in pure DOS, could you report your results here? When I run the .EXE, it falls back to the DOS prompt with "Divide Overflow". Also, the DOS character size becomes gigantic until I reboot. This is on a Pentium 133. I tried with and without SETMUL (disabling L1 cache to slow system down to 386 speeds) with the same results.