VOGONS


Ancient DOS Games Webshow

Topic actions

Reply 3120 of 3343, by Gemini000

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
xjas wrote on 2020-04-11, 06:19:

Was it written in BASIC? It kind of looks like it.

Just took a scan through the executable with a hex editor, and...

*drumroll*

...it was written in Microsoft C.

...though yeah, BASIC would've been a good guess all things considered. :P

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3121 of 3343, by Gemini000

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Ancient DOS Games Filler #81: Princess Remedy Games is online!

I've shown these games before on my livestreams but have always wanted to give them a proper look on my channel and now seemed like a fitting time to do so, as these games are all about healing and helping others suffering from a wide variety of ailments... most of which are ridiculous, given to developer Ludosity's trademark style of humour! :B

Plus they both have the visual style of ZX Spectrum games. How can you go wrong with that? ;)

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3122 of 3343, by Gemini000

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Ancient DOS Games Episode 267 - Gods is online!

OK, DOS may be my specialty, but I like other consoles and computers too; it'd be foolish not to appreciate what all this hardware created over time is capable of doing. So when it comes to games ported to multiple systems, I'm not afraid to admit when the DOS version of a game is inferior, and in the case of Gods, on the surface it looks almost like a PERFECT port from the Amiga, except... the audio's not as good, the reduction in vertical screen space isn't very helpful for new players trying to figure out the levels, and the controls have issues which make it very difficult to time your actions properly, including a very short but noticeable delay and a bug with how it detects the RELEASE of keys, which given how VERY precise you need to be to survive some sections, is just a recipe for disaster... at least until you have the game 100% memorized many hours and many game overs later. :P

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3123 of 3343, by xcomcmdr

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds GODS unplayable and way too hard. The player character moves like a brick wall. The levels are confusing. The graphics and sound are nice, but that doesn't make a good game.

I like the output of the Bitmap Brothers (SpeedBall 2 and Z especially), but I've always skipped this one and never understood how it could be fun.

Last edited by xcomcmdr on 2020-05-10, 06:01. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 3124 of 3343, by DracoNihil

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

The only thing I like about GODS is the MOD file on the Amiga version's title screen...

Like, nothing else about the game seems remotely interesting.

“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων

Reply 3126 of 3343, by leileilol

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

I never got the fascination behind a lot of the big AMIGA games (like Xenon2) besides the usual "It's about the music", i.e. the Persona defense

*hides*

i mean they all can't be lemmings

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 3127 of 3343, by Gemini000

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Ancient DOS Games Pro 13 - Password Hacking - Electranoid is online!

Yeah, it's a day late because I got mildly ill for a day while making this video and decided to take the extra time to try and pull a success out of this... but alas, I wasn't 100% successful in my attempts this time around, which was bound to happen sooner or later. Still made significant progress though and was able to document what I went through to get as far as I did! :B

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3128 of 3343, by DracoNihil

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
Gemini000 wrote on 2020-05-10, 04:53:

Yeah, it's a day late because I got mildly ill for a day

I hope you're doing alright now, health-wise... Getting sick in this decade is terrifying now.

“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων

Reply 3129 of 3343, by Gemini000

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
DracoNihil wrote on 2020-05-14, 08:22:

I hope you're doing alright now, health-wise... Getting sick in this decade is terrifying now.

Oh yeah, it really only did last a day, just a very mild cold, but it was affecting my throat so I couldn't do my voiceover right and past experience has taught me that attempting to do voicework when my throat is in a bad state, even just a little, will end up making things worse. :P

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3130 of 3343, by Gemini000

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Ancient DOS Games Episode 268: Commander Keen in "Goodbye, Galaxy!" is online!

So... this game frustrated the heck out of me at first as it's REALLY FREAKING HARD. o_o;

Then I discovered that saving/loading functions pretty much exactly like save states and the difficulty became manageable at least.

But yeah, I'd never played the sequel to the original Commander Keen trilogy until today and I was surprised at how incredibly difficult they made it, though most of the difficulty stems from not knowing what's about to happen coupled with the one-hit deaths and is definitely something that can be adapted to and isn't hampered by broken/delayed/weird controls.

...the bottomless pits are kinda broken though. :P

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3131 of 3343, by K1n9_Duk3

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Additional Information and Corrections:

* The enemies aren't always active, or at least most of them aren't. What's actually happening is that the game chooses the initial walking direction for most enemies based on pseudo-random numbers when (re-)starting the level.

* The timing for the screen update code is extremely speed sensitive. To the best of my knowledge, version 1.4 is lacking any kind of forced delay between updating the display starting address and drawing to the video memory. The game uses double buffering and this quirk means that the game tells the video card to swap the buffers and then proceeds to draw to the buffer of which the game thinks it's no longer being displayed while the video card is actually still displaying that buffer. I think that having no delay at this point might have been a good choice for most of the systems back in 1991. The game usually has other things to do in between updating the display start address and drawing new things to the back buffer, like collision detection and such, so the CPU cycles were better spent doing that rather than just waiting. But that only applies to a rather narrow range of CPU speeds, unfortunaltely.

Anyway, I created a patch for Keen 4-6 that fixes this problem and as far as I can tell works perfectly in DOSBox as well as on all "real" DOS PCs I could get my hands on. I think the only configuration where this code doesn't work correctly would be DOSBox set to EGA with a dynamic core and maximum cycles. VGA and SVGA will still work fine with a dynamic core and max cycles, but such speeds tend to break the game's AdLib dectection, so I wouldn't recommend that combination of core and cycles settings anyway.

Reply 3132 of 3343, by Gemini000

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Hmm... I'm positive I've seen enemies behave as though they're still being processed off-screen though... Is it more apt to say their initial direction is random once triggered and THEN they act forever, on-screen or not? 'cause that would explain a few things. :o

Also, I downloaded the patch and your patcher and will check it out in a day or two, add some additional info into the video description if it does indeed improve DOSBox compatibility, though your description of how it's updating the screen coupled with how DOSBox does its video capture explains why it was rendering worse than it was capturing!

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3133 of 3343, by K1n9_Duk3

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Some game objects are always active (like the moving platforms, for example). Regular enemies are usually made inactive when starting a new level and will then turn active once they get close to the visible area (i.e. within 16-31 pixels outside the visible area). If an enemy has the ability to be turned inactive again, that enemy will be made inactive based on random chance once it moves a certain distance away from the visible screen area. That distance differs a bit depending on the game. It's 4 tiles (i.e. 64 pixels) in Keen 4 (and Keen 6) and 6 tiles (96 pixels) in Keen 5. The only reason why I know this is that I know the code pretty much inside-out. It's hard to tell what's going on just by playing the game without looking at the code.

You could see some of this in action by starting the first level in Keen 4 and just waiting at the spawn point. No matter which difficulty level you chose, there's always a poison slug spawned near the second stone hut. If that slug was active while off-screen, it should eventually make its way over to Keen's starting position if you wait long enough. But since the slug isn't active and is far beyond the "activity window", you could let the game run forever and the slug would never make it to Keen's spawn point unless Keen is moved close enough to the slug to make it become active.

But even if you move over to the slug and make it become active, you can usually run back to the level start and, if you do it quickly (and the RNG isn't completely working against you), the slug will never reach you.

Reply 3134 of 3343, by Gemini000

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Just a quick FYI to K1n9_Duk3: I wasn't able to get your patch working as the patcher was throwing errors that seemed completely impossible, specifically, it wasn't finding the right files despite them being right there along with the patch and patcher. I'm likely just doing something wrong but I couldn't figure out what. :/

But anyways, Ancient DOS Games Episode 269 - Fast Break is online!

I decided to skip on doing a Mod video as nothing I have lined up was something I really felt like playing, which was part of the whole reason for starting to make Pro and Mod videos was to be able to play more of the DOS games I wanted to play. :P

In regards to Fast Break though, I've actually owned this game for a very long time, as it was one of the ones I had for our Tandy 1000 SX way back in the late 80s. It's not bad for its time but was overshadowed VERY quickly by better titles following, which is the unfortunate fate of many sports titles since the rules themselves don't change, just the simulation itself and the players/features which tie into it. Although I do find it amusing that many of the player names seem to be mixes of actual player first and last names, which is something I didn't notice until after making the video. :B

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3135 of 3343, by K1n9_Duk3

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Well, I can only guess that you have a different version of Keen 4 and 5. There are at least two or three different versions of "version 1.4" floating around. My patches are for the Apogee release of version 1.4, and they also work with the FormGen release of Keen 4 v1.4, which is almost identical to the Apogee release. I don't have the FormGen release of Keen 5, so I'm not sure if that one could be patched. But there's also another release of version 1.4 that screams "BROUGHT TO YOU BY GOODTIMES SOFTWARE!" (i.e. GT Interactive) at the bottom of the text-based startup screen. The GT release of version 1.4 has a different executable (as in: different in size) and therefore can't be patched with my current scripts. I don't know who decided to release a new (and slightly different) version of the game without changing the version number - they did the same crap with the re-releases of Wolfenstein 3D version 1.4.

In the Commander Keen modding community, almost everything is based on the Apogee v1.4 releases of Keen 4 and 5, and I did the same for my patches without giving it much thought. If you still want to try the patch, you should be able to apply the patch to the shareware version of Keen 4 found on the old 3D Realms website . I don't know which version you get nowadays when you buy these games on Steam or the 3D Realms store, although I'd guess that 3D Realms would still be selling the Apogee release. If Steam is selling the GT version (or perhaps yet another completely different version), let me know via PM and I'll try to add support for those versions as well.

IIRC, the GT releases of Keen 4-5 removed the "ordering info" section from the help menu, and in Wolf3D they removed the whole "Read This!" section, effectively making the GT release (as well as all following MS-DOS releases) inferior compared to the Apogee releases.

Reply 3136 of 3343, by Gemini000

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

I have the 1.1 3D Realms installer from 2014 which I only just recently bought so it's what's currently available from 3D Realms' website.

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3137 of 3343, by Gemini000

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Ancient DOS Games Episode 270 - Labyrinth of Zeux is online!

I actually meant to cover Gunmetal this week but ran into... interesting problems trying to get it working. The installer would constantly abort complaining about not enough disk space, once manually installed I had to do a lot of tweaking to dial in the speed and controls, but then as I started making progress I discovered it was DELETING my saved games when I quit, and furthermore, the second level was freaking impossible, spawning in 20+ extra-difficult enemies all at once! D:

So, I made a last minute decision to switch gears and instead decided to cover Labyrinth of Zeux, the predecessor to MegaZeux! Kind of interesting how Janson went from the overhead style of ZZT, to a platformer, then back to an overhead style with MegaZeux, though more interesting than that is just how much playing this game feels like playing a typical MegaZeux platformer. There's no question that a lot of what went in Labyrinth served as a foundation for MegaZeux!

...also it's brutally difficult from Level 4 onward. Saving and loading frequently is pretty much the only way to survive unless you're a freaking MASTER at this thing. :P

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3138 of 3343, by DracoNihil

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
Gemini000 wrote on 2020-06-13, 10:48:

I actually meant to cover Gunmetal this week but ran into... interesting problems trying to get it working. The installer would constantly abort complaining about not enough disk space, once manually installed I had to do a lot of tweaking to dial in the speed and controls, but then as I started making progress I discovered it was DELETING my saved games when I quit, and furthermore, the second level was freaking impossible, spawning in 20+ extra-difficult enemies all at once! D:

Gunmetal (1998) by Mad Genius Software?

Never had any of the issues you're talking about, but do not try to use the MS-DOS installer. You have to use the installshield version using the 32-bit installer stub.

It's registry key must exist for the patch to even install properly as well. I've streamed this game twice on Twitch (first time back in 2014, only the recent 2019 stream has been archived) and my savegames do not get deleted.

“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων

Reply 3139 of 3343, by Gemini000

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
DracoNihil wrote on 2020-06-13, 22:27:

Gunmetal (1998) by Mad Genius Software?

Never had any of the issues you're talking about, but do not try to use the MS-DOS installer. You have to use the installshield version using the 32-bit installer stub.

It's registry key must exist for the patch to even install properly as well. I've streamed this game twice on Twitch (first time back in 2014, only the recent 2019 stream has been archived) and my savegames do not get deleted.

Interesting... if the Windows installer also installs and preps the necessary DOS files then I'll definitely try that. The patch I downloaded simply asked me to type in the full path of the program, though had the unfortunate weirdness of failing to take TIMEZONES into account when doing date comparisons so I had to temporarily adjust my timezone for it to update all the files properly. :P

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg