Ancient DOS Games Episode 179 - The Dungeons of Grimlor is online! ...in 30 FPS. :P

Well, OK, this game doesn't exactly have a high framerate so I don't think people are going to miss the 60 FPS feature on this one, but by not rendering at 60 FPS in a 60 FPS upload, things like the movement of the overlay elements as well as the title sequence look a bit off and jerky.

Hopefully 60 FPS starts working again at some point, or someone comes up with some solution for me to get it working again in my videos. It's just very weird that it's only affecting a chunk of my more recent uploads instead of everything. To that end, if anyone watching this video is able to play it back in 720p60, please let me know. :B

Finally caught up on ADG after falling way behind. Had surgery a couple weeks ago which game me some time. Collected a pile of comments along the way:

Electro Man/Body: I remember playing a (shareware?) version with non-reversed sound back in the day.

Spiritual Warfare: The NES version definitely had more than one song, but they're similar enough that it still gets repetitive.

C-Dogs: Crashing could potentially be fixed by using DOS32A.

Mega Man III: I actually own both PC Mega Man games on 5.25" floppy disks, probably because the idea of a NES port on the PC was interesting since I was one of those kids whose parents wouldn't let him get a NES because reasons. I almost got the terrible PC port of Bionic Commando (which turns out to be a port of the crappy arcade version and not the awesome NES one) but returned it because the box said a joystick was required and I didn't own one at the time.

Dune II: Played this back in the day and loved it. It's amazing how closely Blizzard patterned Warcraft 1 after this game. The Dune II developers went on to make Command & Conquer. I have this on CD-ROM from a pack of multiple games, many of which (including Dune II) were floppy games that they put in a CD with a DOS-based digitized manual and installer. Also, there's a patch that lets you choose separate devices for music and sound, which is must-have for playing with a MIDI synthesizer; it's probably available on patches-scrolls.de, which is a great site for DOS game patches.

7th Guest: That was a common box size at the time, as games were starting to take up a lot of floppies in the early CD-ROM era.

Slipstream 5000: Regarding your MIDI note, you should at least try using BASSMIDIDRV with a soundfont like SGM-V2.01 for General MIDI support in DOSBox and ScummVM games. For MT-32, you can probably assume that any of us MT-32 owning viewers are virtually loaning you our MT-32's at any given time that you want to use Munt; it's not like Roland is losing money anyway, since they aren't selling (let alone producing) any LA synthesizer products these days.

Chopper Commando: I used to play this back in the day. It was great fun. I even found easter eggs from tunneling into the walls at the ends of the world.

Retro City Rampage 486: I actually used a Sierra AGI interpreter for Game Boy Advance by this game's author. He never replied to my requests for help with some bugs in it that stopped me from making progress in Manhunter 🙁

Ultima I: I never got into these either, until finally beating the first game a few years ago. Unfortunately I bounced right off of the second one and haven't managed to pick it up again. I hear some of the later games are really, really good. I managed to pick up the whole series (including spinoffs) on GOG via various sales, so I do intend to get to them at some point.

Alien Carnage: Somehow I never played this despite being big into the shareware games scene throughout the 1990s. Maybe it required a 386 when I only had a 286, or a Pentium when I only had a 486?

Cannon Fodder: Too bad they didn't use 320x240 tweaked mode to get closer to the original resolution. Also, ridiculous that it couldn't play 4 sounds at a time, as the Amiga was famous for 4-track MOD music.

Rasterscan: Good job finding the designers' web site; ironic that the digitizer graphics inspiration for the game is something that didn't even carry over to the DOS port. This was one of the earlier commercial DOS games that I acquired for my 8MHz Wyse 286 clone, when I was 8-9 years old, and it was terribly confusing. To this day I've never managed to beat it. It's also the only commercial game that I can't find my floppy for to rip (but I do have the manual, which for me is a small booklet). I think you understate the frustration of dealing with the Newtonian physics movement when under a time limit (at least in the early game), but maybe that was amplified in my memory given my age when first playing the game. I didn't know the game was unfinished, but it probably explains why I could never figure out how to finish it; what a disappointment! I like your idea of using it as inspiration for an expanded remake. Note that some booter games don't image well due to using wacky formats; I do remember being able to copy my Rasterscan disk at some point though, and that it looks like a blank disk when you use standard DOS commands to examine it.

End of 2015 Update: ADG Plays sounds like a Let's-Play series. Binge-watching Let's-Play videos from Youtube on the HDTV is one of my favorite things to do when I'm sick enough to just lay on the couch in front of the TV all day. Unfortunately I just don't have much time for them outside of that.

Dungeons of Grimlor: Looks a bit like a simplified Gauntlet clone.

Electro Body Shareware yes: https://archive.org/details/msdos_EBODY__shareware

Cannon Fodder: Couldn't agree more.

HunterZ wrote:

And you don't have to read it! ;)

I read the whole thing. ;)

Don't have too much to respond back to, although I do remember doing that same thing with the Rasterscan disk when I was a kid. Part of the reason I didn't comment too much on the inertia-based movement is because... well... I'm actually totally OK with inertia-based movement schemes, even under a time limit. It's difficult for me to grasp what makes such movement difficult to other players when I myself have never had an issue with it. (You absolutely CANNOT play such games with a joystick though, which may've been part of your issue with the game way back when.)

Also, part of the reason I haven't tried to get MUNT working is because if I record the music separate from the gameplay, they will be desynced, and resyncing them would be a royal pain. The alternative is to use an external capture program, but then any emulation hiccups will be captured as well.

Besides which, I grew up without an MT-32 and I didn't get to experience wavetable MIDI until late 1999, so it's more nostalgic for me (and possibly some other people too) to play back the MIDI synthesized. :B

Also, thanks to a huge mass of games I was recently gifted, I HAVE Bionic Commando on the PC now... :o

I think the inertia-based movement stuck with me because it was frustrating as a kid. I didn't have a joystick at the time that I played it.

I grew up without MIDI synthesizers, but my cousin had an SB Pro + LAPC-I, and after hearing how awesome the floppy version of X-Wing was on that combo I became obsessed with anything better than OPL music. Unfortunately I never managed to get a hardware synth of any kind (even wavetable daughterboard) until over a decade later, when I picked up an SC-88 and MT-32 on eBay in the few years between getting a job that afforded me a disposable income and getting a family that soaked most of it up 😉

I sometimes still think it would be nice to pick up a CM-series synthesizer for the extra sound effects used in a few games, but they're rare and ridiculously expensive now, so I'm content to use Munt on those.

HunterZ wrote:

Alien Carnage: Somehow I never played this despite being big into the shareware games scene throughout the 1990s. Maybe it required a 386 when I only had a 286, or a Pentium when I only had a 486?

I've played Alien Carnage on my 286.

Hey Kris, I just watched your episode on Slipstream 5000 (# 168.) It was interesting to hear you complain about the music.

I had a boxed copy of this (bought new back in the day) that came with, of all things, a Skid Row mini-album on separate audio CD. They made a big deal out of it, advertising it on the front of the box and everything. Honestly this baffled me as the music had nothing to do with the game and was a completely different style. I remember trying a bunch of things to make it play the CD audio ingame but there wasn't any way to do that, so I had to settle for the mediocre MIDI like everyone else.

So yeah, it *could* have been an alternate soundtrack, but it wasn't (and really didn't fit anyway) ... I have no idea what that CD was there for.

Anyway just thought you might be amused by the anecdote. Nice little WTF pack-in.

Removed some recent off-topic posts, including some of my own (it was getting silly, seriously). Let's keep focused on chatting about ADG stuff!

Gemini000 wrote:

Also, part of the reason I haven't tried to get MUNT working is because if I record the music separate from the gameplay, they will be desynced, and resyncing them would be a royal pain. The alternative is to use an external capture program, but then any emulation hiccups will be captured as well.

Besides which, I grew up without an MT-32 and I didn't get to experience wavetable MIDI until late 1999, so it's more nostalgic for me (and possibly some other people too) to play back the MIDI synthesized. :B

Weird question: have you considered trying to compile your own version of DOSBOX 0.74 with MUNT and SoundFont (e.g. FluidSynth or TiMidity++) patches? To my understanding (someone please correct me if I'm wrong!), these patches integrate their respective MIDI playback methods into DOSBOX's audio system, meaning MIDI playback using these methods would be audible using DOSBOX's integrated recording capabilities. Plus, you wouldn't be using a SVN build, so you wouldn't have to worry about your observations being off due to bugs that aren't fixed in the stable version being fixed in the SVN version.

That said, the main downside would be the potential for the patches to add unintended bugs....

EDIT: Added additional rationale and a downside to make things more realistic.

Ancient DOS Games Episode 180 - Shooting Gallery is online! ...and still only at 30 FPS because YouTube isn't working the way it's supposed to. :P

I'll let everyone know if and when 60 FPS starts working again. :/

As for this week's game, I don't really have too too much to say about it other than what's said in the video. *shrugs*

I want to get back to video blog entries and LPs and uploading the archived livestreams but I've been burning so much time trying to do both ADG and my game project that there's just no time to do much else. Every day (and I do mean EVERY day) my routine is to get up, check my eMails and news, eat, work, eat, work, eat, wind down with some gameplay since by this point I've been awake for at least 12 hours and can't think straight anymore, and sleep. Once or twice a week one of those "work" parts gets replaced with having to run errands or do things outside of computerized stuff, and I don't work when I'm sick (even if it's just mild and goes away in a day), but yeah, one person can only do so much... and if there were two of me it would just mean more money spent on food. :P

I only bring this up because this has come up a few times now since I switched over to YouTube where the rare person thinks I'm some sort of lazy slacker who can't do anything right, trying to lie his way through things he doesn't know anything about, and I kinda just wanna deck these people for being idiots since, even if they DO work harder or have a stronger background in gaming or game development than I do, that doesn't give them the right to attempt to verbally abuse others and while I personally am not affected by the words of cowards hiding behind anonymity, what bugs me the most is thinking about the other people these jerks may've tried to hurt... :(

I haven't been able to make a proper living for myself in over a decade despite the constant amount of work and every day I wonder if it's even still worth the effort... I think my secret project is going to be the ultimate test, since I've put more effort into this one project than anything I've ever accomplished in my entire life. Not even my RPG which died two weeks before completion half of my life ago to a hard drive crash compares in terms of the sheer raw amount of effort.

Time will tell...

There will always be idiots, haters, trolls. Just ignore, block and delete 😀

Don't know about you, but for my videos, I'm fully aware that I could earn a lot more if I'd put the time and effort into something else, like a second job, but that isn't the driving factor for me. I do have a full-time job though.

Setting yourself a time-line with goals can help deciding if it's worth continuing or not. In the end of the day, one needs a roof over the head and food on the table...

One of the unique things about ADG is that your developer experience shines through in your reviews, providing the audience with a deeper level on analysis on various aspects of the games that you wouldn't get from someone who just plays games. As a software engineer whose interest was sparked by video games (which are still my primary hobby, with tinkering with computer hardware and software being my second hobby) as a child of the '80s and '90s, I really appreciate those insights.

I hope you can get traction as an indie developer. It's probably easier than ever to get a game out there, but there's now a glut of competition, so it will be hard to stand out from all the noise. I've backed off most of my indie game purchases to bundles and $1 sales on IndieGameStand, unless they've caught enough attention to be on my radar as a good game.

Building a small portfolio of indie games to get some experience and notoriety under your belt might be enough to get a modest Kickstarter project funded?

Even though I've dabbled in game development almost my entire life (although not as much in the second half, unless you count porting), I never had the drive to try to make a living off of it. Working for myself would be too scary (especially now with a family to support), and working for a company means working tons of hours for crap pay (because they know most people working in those jobs are doing it out of passion) - which also means not being able to see my family as much. Instead I design and write software in a more boring industry for 40 hours a week (plus occasional paid overtime), and then use my free time to pursue personal projects and be with my family.

My dream would be to come upon a large enough sum of money (by legal means of course) to be able to join the investor class (i.e. live my current lifestyle purely via investment income), and then spend 40+ hours a week contributing to whatever open source projects catch and hold my interest. Yeah right!

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Don't know about you, but for my videos, I'm fully aware that I could earn a lot more if I'd put the time and effort into something else, like a second job, but that isn't the driving factor for me. I do have a full-time job though.

I do indeed have a Plan B if all else fails which involves doing a daily video series, which I have several ideas for, none of which have anything to do with Minecraft, and a couple of which aren't even related to digital games. :o

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Setting yourself a time-line with goals can help deciding if it's worth continuing or not. In the end of the day, one needs a roof over the head a food on the table...

Right now, I provide the food and Dad provides the roof. In the future, I'd like to be able to provide my own roof, but one step at a time. :B

In terms of setting goals I actually do this every day, as my initial thoughts always go towards, "What do I have to accomplish and what steps do I need to take to get there?", then I plan a step, figure out if it can be done in a day provided there's no major issues, and if I can't, I split it into smaller steps. If something goes wrong though, this throws things out of whack, and is ultimately what leads to my taking longer than I expect to do things, because sometimes the problems just don't make any sense. One such problem occurred only a few days ago. I was completely thrown off of my current coding task because of something which made absolutely no sense and I spent nearly three hours trying to debug it... and the solution literally came down to adding one line of code. x_x;

Actually, most of the delays with my current project come down to writing more and more foundation code so that future games for the project will go faster, as well as changing things I already implemented as per recommendations from the people helping me test the thing. That... and I'm actually really freaking bad at figuring out how long my projects will take, as the few people who've been tracking me since the early days of my website can attest to. ^_^;

Also, I pretty much had to make my own graphics mode in a sense and my own blitters for this project to even work. I was extremely delighted back in late 2014 when I finished this code, loaded up a test routine and saw it working perfectly. It was that moment when I realized, "I absolutely MUST make this thing..."

HunterZ wrote:

I hope you can get traction as an indie developer. It's probably easier than ever to get a game out there, but there's now a glut of competition, so it will be hard to stand out from all the noise.

Trust me, this project WILL stand out, even just by its name alone. It's THAT unique yet recognizable, both at the same time, and is a massive reason why I've been keeping it under wraps. I've done more than one Google search to ensure the name hasn't been taken yet either and it still hasn't been, so I'm hoping I'll be good all the way up to launch! ;)

Actually... let's do another one... *does so* ...nope, still nothing on Google! :D

HunterZ wrote:

Building a small portfolio of indie games to get some experience and notoriety under your belt might be enough to get a modest Kickstarter project funded?

I want to avoid Kickstarter as much as possible. Not because I don't believe in the power of it, but because I don't want to become that guy who takes a whole bunch of money and then fails to deliver, which I fear could happen if I bite off more than I can chew. Running a successful Kickstarter with a project I lose faith in partway through would put me in an extremely uncomfortable position and I'd rather not take the chance of that happening.

While I do have bigger game ideas I want to tackle eventually, I'm going to wait until I'm positive I can make them happen on my own accord before attempting them.

HunterZ wrote:

Even though I've dabbled in game development almost my entire life (although not as much in the second half, unless you count porting), I never had the drive to try to make a living off of it. Working for myself would be too scary (especially now with a family to support), and working for a company means working tons of hours for crap pay (because they know most people working in those jobs are doing it out of passion) - which also means not being able to see my family as much. Instead I design and write software in a more boring industry for 40 hours a week (plus occasional paid overtime), and then use my free time to pursue personal projects and be with my family.

That's kinda where I was in 2002~2004 when writing math software. However, that's also when the realities of my sleep disorder started to really come into play, and after I bought my house in 2004 and ended up with a 1 1/2 hour commute (one-way) to work every day, it became extremely difficult to fulfill my professional obligations without just completely running myself into the ground.

I ultimately got another job in 2009, this time just a lackluster call centre job where I bothered business people to take 20-minute-long surveys, and there were many days when I thought I was just gonna die from going 72+ hours straight without any sleep due to not being able to sleep when I needed to and barely being able to stay awake for work. For the entirety of April 2010 I had lost my voice and it was during this time I started prep work for my second attempt at ADG, with May 2010 being when I started it. Then, sometime in June or July my sleep issues just completely broke me and I had to be escorted out of work barely awake, barely able to walk, unable to think straight... I remember the experience itself perfectly and the only thing I remember saying to my supervisor before I completely broke down was "I'm done", beyond which I have no recollection of any of my thoughts... I may not have even had any. :/

So basically... I'm in a position where if I want to make a living for myself, it has to be by my own accord through my own business efforts since it's impossible for me to hold to a regular schedule. I've attempted to apply for disability and pretty much everyone I've spoken to, including medical professionals are like, "Yeah, you should be on disability", but the roadblock is I didn't have a family doctor for the longest time and after getting one his opinion was basically that my problem is curable, even if it takes forever, and thus doesn't count as a disability. >_>;

And of course, because I found a doctor at all, the same resources which I could use before to find one are no longer available to me so... yeah, I'm never getting on disability. Which in the long run is fine really, as it just means I don't have to have the government breathing down my neck if and when I start making thousands of dollars a month from my own efforts. :P

HunterZ wrote:

My dream would be to come upon a large enough sum of money (by legal means of course) to be able to join the investor class (i.e. live my current lifestyle purely via investment income), and then spend 40+ hours a week contributing to whatever open source projects catch and hold my interest. Yeah right!

My dream is to just make games people enjoy and to be able to enjoy my own modest lifestyle as a result of that success... in my own custom home design of course! (Hey, I have no desire to own a car so might as well have a good house which perfectly suits me! ;D )

Regarding Shooting Gallery, I definitely played this back in the early '90s - before I had a sound card either. I don't remember the wild west shootout stage though - maybe I got bored before ever getting that far?

What's most interesting to me is the other games that Nels Anderson made. I remember spending *tons* of time with EGA Trek, which is a very graphical interpretation of a ubiquitous game from the early '80s called Super Star Trek (which I had previously spent a fair amount of time playing on my dad's Heathkit H89 computer). The Mah Jongg and Superfly games look familiar too.

My brother and I played the SHIT out of Shooting Gallery, and it was one of the first I betatested in DOSBox years and years ago. 😀

HunterZ wrote:

Regarding Shooting Gallery, I definitely played this back in the early '90s - before I had a sound card either. I don't remember the wild west shootout stage though - maybe I got bored before ever getting that far?

From what I remember, the game didn't always have the wild west shootout. In fact, I think even the quick draw was missing if you go back far enough, but I'm not certain on that.

HunterZ wrote:

What's most interesting to me is the other games that Nels Anderson made. I remember spending *tons* of time with EGA Trek, which is a very graphical interpretation of a ubiquitous game from the early '80s called Super Star Trek (which I had previously spent a fair amount of time playing on my dad's Heathkit H89 computer). The Mah Jongg and Superfly games look familiar too.

By the time I knew of EGA Trek I was already playing a trek-type game in Windows 3.1 which used sound clips from the TV series and had a very customizable interface. Also, that same friend who had Shooting Gallery ALSO had Visual Star Trek, which pretty much set the standard for how I expected those games to be. :P

Never heard of those. The only other Trek type game I played in those days was a combat simulator called Begin, which apparently went through a bunch of versions/sequels.

I've never played Shooting Gallery. 😀

(I haven't seen the ADG episode yet so things might have changed, although I don't believe so.)

A year ago I was searching to get the registered version of the game. It's one of the very few must-have in my personal list that I'm still missing. Found the official page, but as expected the link to order the registered version was not working.

So I contacted via email the creator, hoping that the email on the page would still be valid. It was and he was kind enough to reply:
He said that of course he doesn't sell the game anymore. He is aware of the recent interest in retro gaming and many old games getting released as free, but he doesn't have any intention to release it as such. The sad part is that he isn't even considering to put any kind of additional effort on it, like make it available as a digital download for a revisited price.

He did offer me the option to make an exception and create a new floppy for me if I really wanted to, provided that I send the original price mentioned on the site, through normal mail, to a postage address, in a few words following the whole process as that time. Come on, I don't even have access to $ where I live to put them in an envelop and send them 😀 I admit I did think about it for a bit but I don't have the luxury to waste a working day to go to the bank, exchange currency, then the post office etc just to register this game that could be sent as an attachment and paid in seconds with minimum hassle for both of us. Oh well, I'll never get it I guess...

konc wrote:

(I haven't seen the ADG episode yet so things might have changed, although I don't believe so.)

Actually, his position HAS changed... sort of. Basically, you can get the game simply by following the registration process he had in place since the last version of the game was released in 1995. :B

Keep in mind though that the only thing you get in the registered version not present in the shareware version is more Sound Blaster sound effects.