tranoidnoki wrote:

Hey Kris! I emailed you a few times, came over here and decided to post and discuss the show with other fans of older gaming! Do you have any plans to release your show in a downloadable fashion, like in a torrent or something? I know I can go over to your site and check it out, but I have a HTPC setup that I like to watch media on from the comfort of my couch, and don't always like to sit in front of a computer. I would even pay for a DVD collection or something. Just a thought! Keep up the good work and feel better!

blip.tv videos may not be "officially" downloadable, but there are multiple browser plugins that let you grab the file with a couple of clicks.

in fact, I had to do this myself a few times recently, just to be able to watch the show at all, since I started having this curious problem - within the embedded movie player, the video download CRAWLS at 10-20K/sec, but a plain HTTP download of the same file goes as fast as ever.
It's not just blip.tv either - I had the same symptoms with youtube and other sites, so it's probably just the stupid, stupid flash plugin.

(Right now this particular problem seems to have fixed itself, only to be replaced with random plugin crashes.... I'm pretty sure that the last time Adobe hired a competent programmer was in the '90s)

If you use XBMC or Boxee, Navi-X might be able to get you access to blip.tv videos (including ADG). I might have to give it a try with my XBMC-based HTPC.

I found a downloader that does the trick, but I have to dig around the page source. Unfortunately I am bound to using Windows Media Center because it's the only thing that will play nice with my Cablecard tuner.

tranoidnoki wrote:

I found a downloader that does the trick, but I have to dig around the page source. Unfortunately I am bound to using Windows Media Center because it's the only thing that will play nice with my Cablecard tuner.

MythTV won't work for that?

It does? From what I read, support is shoddy at best. I'll have to look more into it.

VileRancour wrote:

but there are multiple browser plugins that let you grab the file with a couple of clicks.

My preference is FlashGot

Truth be told, I'm not a big fan of advertising in videos either, but then, that's why they invented the mute button. ;)

As such, now that I've got my own videos going, I skip on the ad blockers and just mute the ads that come on when watching online videos, because that way the person/group that made the video still gets their 5th of a cent of ad revenue from it. (Certainly more than a clickable ad-banner would ever generate!)

But hey, everyone's entitled to watch their favourite web shows however they want. The important part is that they enjoy them! ^_^

As an update to my health, I'm feeling much better now. Not 100%, but close. Still, Monday was just ridiculous and Tuesday wasn't much better, though at least my throat didn't hurt anymore by then. As a result, I definitely don't have enough time to review the game I intended due to its sheer size, so I'm gonna do a short review of a simple text-mode game: Caves of Thor

Afterwards, I have three fillers planned in a row to highlight my collections of computers, game consoles and portable gaming devices. They're not HUGE collections by any means, but certainly enough that I can fill three short fillers. ;)

Ads: I block most ad sites at my router. Video ads still tend to get through, but they're worth putting up with them to support ADG!

Health: Glad to hear you're recovering.

Caves of Thor: For me, I think that game got lost in the shuffle somewhere between Kroz (being older) and ZZT (being more complex and customizable).

Sadly I have just gotten a cold myself , because I was sitting and froze my ass off, at a meeting at the Copenhagen City Hall Square. This Wednesday.

Ancient DOS Games Episode 70 - Caves of Thor is online!

You know, getting sick before being able to capture any substantial amount of X-Wing gameplay may've been a blessing in disguise. I have three fillers coming up and if I don't get a particular joystick I've had my eye on as a Christmas present this year, I'm buying it myself before the year is over, which will probably greatly help in playing X-Wing.

My current joystick is a Sidewinder Precision Pro, the original model that was horribly imprecise because it was too loose in the centre, thus it had a ton of centre drift. (On the plus side, after over a decade of use, it does still work well enough for most gaming, so long as I set a really large centre deadzone.)

I intend to replace it with a Thrustmaster T-Flight HOTAS X, which is sure to be made of awesome and win. ;)

So yeah, in any case, today's review is short and sweet and hey, it's text mode! I really need to review more text mode games...

I still don't understand the clue, what do X Y and A have in common.

x-wing Y-wing and A-wing are the 3 main types of rebel fighters in the starwars universe. You would almost NEVER get this unless you were well versed in starwars. There was also the B-wing... But lets draw the line somewhere eh?

Gemini000: pretty good episode I must say. And I hope you are feeling better, cause I am not feeling better. I happen to have a sore throat, the runs (Diarrhoea/Diarrhea to people who is not totally in on English non medical terms) and I am coughing a bit. And yes I am looking forward to watching the fillers 😀 oh yeah I almost forgot, I still have the cold part too (as in having a snotty nose).

In my opinion, Caves of Thor looks much better in DOSBox with the option machine=cga.

Calvero wrote:

In my opinion, Caves of Thor looks much better in DOSBox with the option machine=cga.

Signed - same goes for other 40x25 text mode games, they really need a 8x8 font... 40x25 on EGA/VGA makes text difficult to read, and graphic characters appear distorted, what with the stretched pixels and vertical line spacing.

Of course, it's hard to tell if a text mode game was designed with a particular display in mind (unless it was made before EGA/VGA debuted), but for 40x25 I always use machine=cga as well.

Ancient DOS Games Filler #11 - Gemini's Gaming Consoles is online!

Firstly, yes, I'm aware the video quality is terrible. Normally, my widescreen videos are presented at 848x480 resolution at a 1 Mbps bit-rate. For some inexplicable reason, Blip.tv's system downscaled the video to 640x362 and dropped the bit-rate to an extremely lousy 323 Kbps. I've sent them a message informing them what's happened and will hopefully hear back soon, but they don't generally reply on weekends so this may not get fixed until next week. x_x;

The audio is still the right quality at least, and there isn't much to look at, so I guess it's still watchable. Just try to ignore all the horrible compression artifacts and aliasing with the on-screen text. :/

But yeah, conversion issues aside, since I have a lot to do this month I'm taking this weekend, the next, and the one after, to give a brief overview of my hardware collection, starting with my gaming consoles. Regular ADG episodes will resume at the start of January. ;)

So far I've been spared the yellowing plastic with my SNES; I guess because it was from a later production run, but it's still the model SNS-001 design. Anyway, some info on the cause, and a possible fix: retr0bright.

Gemini000: bloody great and awesome filler 😀 Gemini000 you sound like an awesome dude 😀 and when you told about your mothers Tetris 2 fix. I smiled 😀

Hehe mothers and Tetris is a worldwide phenomenon! Mine was addicted to Tetris on the Gameboy, thank god she hasn't discovered the amazing Tetris DS on my Nintendo DS!!!
Nice episode once again!

ripsaw8080 wrote:

So far I've been spared the yellowing plastic with my SNES; I guess because it was from a later production run, but it's still the model SNS-001 design. Anyway, some info on the cause, and a possible fix: retr0bright.

Dang, I was going to post this. Benj Edwards' article on SNES plastic discoloration is pretty awesome; definitely check it out.