Gemini000 wrote:

Ancient DOS Games Mod 2 - Ship Editing - Tyrian 2000 is online!

Tyrian 2000 is absolutely PACKED with extra features and secrets, one of the more obscure features being its ability to load in custom-made ships anytime you want using an included ship editing tool! 😳

There are some quirks in regards to using it but it's actually really simple and a neat way to add your own personal touch to the experience, so I felt it'd be neat to take a look at it and put something together for it! Since I've made my own 2D shooters in the past, the choice of what kind of custom ships to add was obvious! 😉

Wow what a great episode, I am growing more and more fond of your episodes. Either it is that I am getting older and older or I am getting milder with years (not bloody likely 😉 ) . But seriously you have really improved your style and so forth. Gemini000 you fucking rule, and you know your shit, or is it ship ? 😉 Sorry for the past curses and swear words. Except for a VERY few exceptions. Gemini000 I like your stuff 😀 Of course, I am not always fond of your humour still, but hey we all evolve, when stuff happens. I am also digging (sorry for the pun) your "Showelware Diggers" episodes 😀 Also I am looking forward to more eidting episodes in ADG MOD and Pro series, I mean perhaps you are not the guy who originally made either editing programs or sources. But you show/give a valuable help / resource to play around with the old or newer editing programs 😀 Heck what is next ? you play around with old trainers ? for DOS games ? That would be fun too. Since cheating can some times be fun in the old games. And after all (you are not my wonderwall 😉 ) the old dos games do not give you over powered stuff in an online game. Like companies goes crazy about in court cases and what have you about certain stuff now a days.

I still don't like how Tyrian 2000 (the 4-years-late Stealth XSIV rerelease with questionable cruft) gets all the attention for stuff even Tyrian 1.0/1.1 did...

leileilol wrote:

I still don't like how Tyrian 2000 (the 4-years-late Stealth XSIV rerelease with questionable cruft) gets all the attention for stuff even Tyrian 1.0/1.1 did...

Oh well, but the reason I get excited by these special episodes is because . I think it is interesting to see the "innards" through either editors , either official or not and or for that matter through trainers and hacks. Even though I can not program to save my life. I still think either cheat/debug codes and cheating devices are extremely interesting . Just like old-school rom hacking and so forth, and I am not the only one. Since after all there are sites, that are dedicated to everything from hardware cheat codes, and so forth for the old consoles. To rom hacking, and the cutting room floor 😀

leileilol wrote:

I still don't like how Tyrian 2000 (the 4-years-late Stealth XSIV rerelease with questionable cruft) gets all the attention for stuff even Tyrian 1.0/1.1 did...

Mind you, it's all the same devs either way so it doesn't really matter. ;)

...yes, even the stuff in Chapter 5 which looks INCREDIBLY out of place... Jason's told me some... "interesting" stories about trying to get work out of his graphics artist... :P

Ancient DOS Games Mod 3 - Brutal Doom is online!

Probably wouldn't have covered this if not for all the requests I'd gotten for it... I don't play Doom for the gore, I play it because I enjoy the challenge and I also really like the architecture of the levels, believe it or not. Not the satanic imagery of it all but rather the structure of them.

Anyways, for anyone thinking Brutal Doom is just a mod to ramp the gore up beyond ludicrous levels, you might be surprised. There's a LOT of extra features beyond that, including a revamped arsenal, finishing moves, squadmates, new difficulty levels, destructible scenery, even new AI behaviours, making the old enemies feel different enough that you're never quite sure how to deal with them without some practice.

Granted, there's also a LOT of controversy surrounding this mod's creator, though because I wanted to focus on the mod itself I only bring this up briefly at the end. While I don't agree with said creator's stances on pretty much everything, it really is up to everyone else to decide if that's reason enough to play or not play the mod, especially considering that lots of other people have also been involved in making it. :P

Ancient DOS Games Episode 256 - Assault Rigs is online!

Been wanting to cover this one for quite some time now as I've owned the PlayStation version since before I even started ADG and KNEW there was a DOS version as the demo for it was how I was originally introduced to it back in the 90s, but sourcing a copy of the DOS version has kinda been problematic. Not that it's expensive, far from it, it just rarely comes up. :P

It's neat to see that the DOS and PS1 versions are nearly identical too, so I was able to just get right into it with minimal effort and it plays just as well here as on the PS1! Granted, the game never sold that well and didn't even review that well back when it was brand new, mostly because of its quirks and for setting unreasonable graphical expectations at a time when games were primarily being sold BECAUSE of the graphics.

Suffice to say, this game is better than you may've been led to believe, so I do my best to demonstrate the quirks and such to show that they're really not that big a deal. ;)

Ancient DOS Games Pro 6 - Cheat Codes - Descent 1 & 2 is online!

Actually had quite a bit to say about the codes in these two games, but I'm on the verge of falling asleep at my keyboard right now so I'm just gonna leave it at that and let the video do all the talking! :B

Ancient DOS Games Filler #77 - Gemini Can't Touch Type! is online!

...yes... seriously. :o

Since I started using computers from the age of 5 in the mid 80s, there weren't really any good resources for someone in my position to learn how to type, so I kinda developed my own method over the years which is best described as me floating my hands above the keyboard, allowing any finger to hit any key, and running strictly on instinct in terms of which keys to press in what order with what fingers.

It's very difficult to explain so I would suggest just watching the video and seeing for yourself how crazy it can look! o_o

Ancient DOS Games Episode 257 - Street Fighter is online!

Everyone knows Street Fighter II, but why did the original game fall off the radar so readily? Well, the simple answer is because Street Fighter II is where all the revolutionary stuff happened, while the original Street Fighter was more of a gimmick game with a unique feature: pressure sensitive buttons for punching and kicking, to draw people in to burn their quarters. The game is very poorly balanced, the special moves are extremely hard to perform due to the temperamental nature of inputting them, and the only two characters you can play as both play exactly the same.

...THEN there's the DOS version... >_>;;;

Ancient DOS Games Pro 7 - Car Stats - MegaRace is online!

This was something that had been bugging me for awhile so I finally decided to see just what all the stats in MegaRace were good for, or how accurate any of them even were, and to see if perhaps the game was hiding any extra details. The results were interesting to say the least! (And unfortunately, not 100% conclusive, but good enough for our purposes!)

Ancient DOS Games Mod 4 - Track Files - Stunts is online!

I actually already knew from past experience that editing Stunts track files outside of Stunts itself using external editors was a thing, but I never really understood WHY it was such a big deal, so I decided the best way to learn would be to hack the track files myself! :o

Uncovered some interesting tid-bits and also managed to compile an entire hexadecimal table of track tile values to aid anyone looking to make their own editor! ;)

Thank you Gemini000 !
I'm still watching your videos, an excellent show for DOS games lovers.

James-F wrote:

Thank you Gemini000 !
I'm still watching your videos, an excellent show for DOS games lovers.

Thanks! Glad it's the show's still providing lots of entertainment! ^_^

Gemini000 wrote:

Ancient DOS Games Mod 4 - Track Files - Stunts is online!

I actually already knew from past experience that editing Stunts track files outside of Stunts itself using external editors was a thing, but I never really understood WHY it was such a big deal, so I decided the best way to learn would be to hack the track files myself! 😮

Uncovered some interesting tid-bits and also managed to compile an entire hexadecimal table of track tile values to aid anyone looking to make their own editor! 😉

That's pretty cool! Coincidentally I was just going through my old Stunts tracks & wondering if I should upload a big archive of them, like I did for Descent maps a while ago. I probably made a good hundred+ but most of them suck. I had no idea you could do the water tile thing.

Stunts was a great example of how an editor makes a 'good' game into something really special. It still holds up IMHO.

xjas wrote:

That's pretty cool! Coincidentally I was just going through my old Stunts tracks & wondering if I should upload a big archive of them, like I did for Descent maps a while ago.

I uploaded all of my Stunts tracks long ago and put a whole page together dedicated to describing them all, with pictures! ;)

http://www.pixelships.com/misc/stunts.html

Ancient DOS Games Episode 258 - Spectre is online!

I was actually kinda surprised to find out Spectre and Spectre VR are not the same game... not to mention Spectre was originally released for Macintosh computers! :o

But yeah, been wanting to cover this one for awhile as it was the first game I ever played on a computer more powerful than the Tandy 1000 SX we had when I was a kid... followed by that obscure Visual Star Trek game which appears to have no author. It seems said friend with the 386 really had some weird games on offer!

As for the game itself, it's basically a Battlezone clone with a bunch of extra features. :B

Ancient DOS Games Pro 8 - Ship Balancing - Star Control II is online!

This... was quite the process. I'd always wondered how well balanced all the ships in Star Control II were, but actually going through the process of testing this was... kinda insane... 300 battles, over 1,500 rounds of combat, probably closer to 2,500... even with DOSBox's fast forwarding it still took many, MANY hours to compile all the data I needed to make analysing the ship balances possible!

In the end though, I'm glad I did because I ended up with a massive table of rankings that is exceptionally useful for anyone looking to play through the single player mode, as the table can be used to more effectively decide on which ships to build for your fleet depending on where in the universe you're going and what you expect to be facing! Not to mention it was interesting to see that my own balancing calculations with the final data wasn't far off from what the devs originally came up with! ...save for a few glaring exceptions! :o

Hey, about your Spectre MSDOS video.

Those secret keys also work exactly the same in SpectreVR, and even funnier. SpectreVR has more bugs and deficiencies than Spectre does!

The DOS version can't even play digitized sound samples despite having "Sound Blaster" as a sound choice.

DracoNihil wrote:

Hey, about your Spectre MSDOS video.

Those secret keys also work exactly the same in SpectreVR, and even funnier. SpectreVR has more bugs and deficiencies than Spectre does!

The DOS version can't even play digitized sound samples despite having "Sound Blaster" as a sound choice.

Interesting... something to keep in mind if I ever get a chance to take a look at that one. :o

Ancient DOS Games Filler #78 - DOSBox 0.74-3 vs. DOSBox-X 0.82.20 is online!

So a bunch of viewers, including some more notable people, have been trying to convince me to switch from using the vanilla build of DOSBox to DOSBox-X. I've been reluctant to do so because, at least to me, it made more sense to use the base version so that everything I came up with in terms of configuration details would be more generally applicable.

Thus I decided rather than just take everyone's word that DOSBox-X is better, I'd do a comparison. Throughout the course of this video I put 15 games to the test, side by side, to get a complete picture of how each version of DOSBox was responding.

The results were... interesting... :o

Also, we'll be repeating these tests in yet another video once 0.75 is ready to go. ;)