SKARDAVNELNATE: that game is a series of mini games. Not in my opinion canonical either.

Awesome review of a game I've long been curious about! Haha, I wasn't expecting to see my upcoming Corridor 7 review mentioned - thanks! Guess I better get on it!

lazygamereviews wrote:

Awesome review of a game I've long been curious about! Haha, I wasn't expecting to see my upcoming Corridor 7 review mentioned - thanks! Guess I better get on it!

Well, considering how many people guessed I might do Corridor 7, coupled with your poll results, how could I not mention it? ;)

And since Saturday is upon us, Ancient DOS Games Filler #7 - DOSBox Sound Support is online!

This filler was actually a request made by Jan Lönnberg (who made the Ken's Labyrinth SDL port) that I wasn't too sure about doing at first, since I have little first-hand experience with all the various sound cards DOSBox can support. The actual DOS-capable sound chips/cards I've worked with first-hand are PC Speakers, my Tandy's 3-voice system, and a Sound Blaster Pro... that's it. But then I realized that so long as I did my research I could probably do such a filler well enough.

Especially after I got in contact with Stefan Goehler of Crossfire Designs who provided me with some awesome photographs of many of the sound cards I talked about! He's got a website here if you wanna check his stuff out: http://www.crossfire-designs.de

Disney sound source was actually a bit more complex than a regular covox. Disney sound source had a small buffer and played back the samples at 7000 hz or something. So you could burst feed it a few a bytes to fill up it's buffer every timer tick. This required way less timer events. DOSBox does some guessing based on the samples sent what kind of output it should generate.

Great filler episode!

No idea about next weeks game though. I find your hints always very hard 🤣

Ancient DOS Games Episode 46 - Flightmare is online!

Only five people sent in guesses this week much to my surprise. The funny thing is, not only have I had footage of this game in one of my fillers, (#2 specifically), but even the Lazy Game Reviewer took a look at it briefly in one of his Keypunch Software videos.

I guess considering how truly ancient this game is, combined with its relative obscurity, has kept it off the radar of many DOS game enthusiasts. I wasn't even able to find a completely legit place that had it for download, which is strange considering it was released as a sort of "shareware" kind of freeware. (In game, it suggests giving the author money if you like the game but doesn't say you MUST.)

Ah well. Next week's game should be easier to guess. ;)

Awesome to see a detailed look at this game. Much of the video I was going "ohhhh so *that's* what you do!", although the game really is brutal so I don't see myself going back to play it anytime really soon.

As for finding the game for download, it does appear to be pretty much only available on somewhat shady sites which I will not link to. "FLIGHT.COM" and "flghtmre.exe" seem to be common executables for the game.

One of my faithful viewers has already found a legit place to download Flightmare from! :)

http://www.download-central.ws/DOS/Games/F/Flightmare/

If this ever came up in my searches, I think the ".ws" might've scared me away. In any case, the website ONLY has freeware, shareware and demo downloads, nothing full version unless it was made free at some point. This includes the Amiga selection much to my surprise. (Which explains why it's such a small Amiga selection.)

There's a ton of hard to find stuff here too, some of which I remember having before the hard drive of my Tandy 1000 SX computer died.

Oooh, very nice! Bookmarked the site for sure. Will come in handy doling out links for certain games without worrying about linking to illicit crap in the process 😁

flightmare plays like a nightmare, damn you foul evil hard old games!

Ancient DOS Games Episode 47 - Electranoid is online!

Today's episode is special because thanks to the people at the Good Old Games website, and the developers of DOSBox, we have some gift codes to give away!

Specifically, the first three people to guess next week's Ancient DOS Game correctly will not only get their names in the credits as usual, but will also receive a gift code to use at gog.com for The Witcher: Enhanced Edition!

Also, one lucky person selected at random out of everyone who sends in a correct guess will get a gift code for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, recently released!

For more details, make sure you watch today's ADG episode! There's a little bit of fine print too considering the gift codes themselves aren't actually worth a monetary value and the games up for grabs are both mature-rated. Hey, it happens. ;P

If you don't want to potentially win these games when sending in your guess but still want a chance to make the credits of the next episode, make sure to let me know.

Ancient DOS Games Episode 48 - The Elder Scrolls I: Arena is online! (Please Note: This episode contains mature content!)

The winners of the gift codes for The Witcher: Enhanced Edition and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, to use on the Good Old Games website, are announced right at the start of the episode. To randomly choose the winner for The Witcher 2 I built a little contraption out of LEGO. Why? Why NOT? ;)

Those of you who won gift codes should have them by now. If not, check your spam filters. Failing that, I'll figure out what's wrong tomorrow as I'm super-tired from being awake for 20+ hours straight. x_x;

Oh! Since today's episode is rated for mature content, here's the hint for next week's episode: It's a game that has the Batmobile in it, but it's NOT actually a Batman game, nor does it have anything to do with the Batman franchise.

Carmageddon Splat Pack

Uh... are you trying to request a particular game or guessing what game's coming next? Or both? If you want to submit a guess it has to be through the eMail address I have at the end of every episode after the credits.

Crushing cows in the batmobile, lei? 😀

Liked the Arena episode. Being a huge fan of exploration/open-world/sandbox RPGs, I've been a casual fan of the Elder Scrolls series since Arena was new. Unfortunately my habit of exploring EVERYTHING has prevented me from finishing *any* of them, although I am somehow almost done with Fallout 3 + DLC. Here are the things that came to mind while watching the episode:

Copy protection: The funny thing is that Bethesda actually included a file with Arena with an obvious name (SPELLS.LST I think) that is nothing more than a list of spell names and their values, although the values are binary encoded.

Sound: If the game still only plays one sound at a time on GUS, what's the advantage of using GUS for Arena in DOSBox? I'm not opposed to the idea or anything, but I noticed there was no explanation in the episode of why specifically GUS works better.

Music: Arena was definitely made with MIDI synthesizers in mind. The songs from the intro sound an order of magnitude better with a MIDI synth that has a good choir instrument sound. It's not as big a deal as with Daggerfall, however, as that game uses a couple of entirely different songs depending on whether you're using OPL music or MIDI music.

Pixelation: One of the Function keys toggles the pixelation effect on popup dialogs. Turning off the pixelation effect causes the dialogs to appear instantly and lets you dismiss them faster, which greatly reduces their annoyance level.

DOSBox cycles: I seem to recall that Arena actually ran slower for me in some places with cycles=max than it did with a high fixed cycle count.

Versions: It's worth noting that both floppy and CD-ROM versions of Arena were released, although I'm not sure that there are any major differences besides audio voice-overs during the cutscenes. I also don't remember which version Bethesda released as freeware.

Daggerfall is also available for free from Bethesda, so I expect to see an ADG review of it eventually! Also, you *definitely* don't want to play Daggerfall on Max cycles because it suffers from timing issues that affect things like climbing and jumping.

It's also worth noting that with Arena and Daggerfall being free, and Morrowind and Oblivion being available on Steam, it's still possible to legally acquire and play the entire main Elder Scrolls Series on modern computers.

HunterZ wrote:

Copy protection: The funny thing is that Bethesda actually included a file with Arena with an obvious name (SPELLS.LST I think) that is nothing more than a list of spell names and their values, although the values are binary encoded.

I don't think it was ever intended to be really strong protection. I mean really, when it comes down to it, copy protection and DRM only disuade casual piracy. If someone is dead-set on stealing a piece of software, they will find a way to.

HunterZ wrote:

Sound: If the game still only plays one sound at a time on GUS, what's the advantage of using GUS for Arena in DOSBox? I'm not opposed to the idea or anything, but I noticed there was no explanation in the episode of why specifically GUS works better.

Less sound artifacts such as popping noises.

HunterZ wrote:

Music: Arena was definitely made with MIDI synthesizers in mind. The songs from the intro sound an order of magnitude better with a MIDI synth that has a good choir instrument sound. It's not as big a deal as with Daggerfall, however, as that game uses a couple of entirely different songs depending on whether you're using OPL music or MIDI music.

The funny thing with Daggerfall is that even though certain songs get switched around based on your music card selection, the other songs are STILL in there if you hunt around for them.

HunterZ wrote:

Pixelation: One of the Function keys toggles the pixelation effect on popup dialogs. Turning off the pixelation effect causes the dialogs to appear instantly and lets you dismiss them faster, which greatly reduces their annoyance level.

I was wondering what that did...

HunterZ wrote:

DOSBox cycles: I seem to recall that Arena actually ran slower for me in some places with cycles=max than it did with a high fixed cycle count.

Yeah, but a high fixed cycles count causes certain still sections like your inventory to go super-skippy. Also, this isn't as big a problem so long as you manually set the core to dynamic mode since auto doesn't trigger it.

HunterZ wrote:

Versions: It's worth noting that both floppy and CD-ROM versions of Arena were released, although I'm not sure that there are any major differences besides audio voice-overs during the cutscenes. I also don't remember which version Bethesda released as freeware.

The freeware version is the floppy disk version. The CD version is pretty much the same thing but from what I've read there is one moderate difference when you beat the game.

HunterZ wrote:

Daggerfall is also available for free from Bethesda, so I expect to see an ADG review of it eventually! Also, you *definitely* don't want to play Daggerfall on Max cycles because it suffers from timing issues that affect things like climbing and jumping.

I still have my original box, manuals and everything for Daggerfall. Trust me when I say, I want such a review to be EPIC. ;)

HunterZ wrote:

It's also worth noting that with Arena and Daggerfall being free, and Morrowind and Oblivion being available on Steam, it's still possible to legally acquire and play the entire main Elder Scrolls Series on modern computers.

Yup. Though Morrowind doesn't work very nicely in widescreen display modes. I mean, it DOES work with them, but there's a variety of problems you can run into, even if you use the FPS Optimizer. :P

Daggerfall:

I still have my disc and manual, but I may have discarded the box. I flattened a lot of my game boxes into a plastic tub after getting tired of lugging them around in college, but some didn't make it 🙁

I also noticed there are a ton of unofficial patches for Daggerfall, but I'm not sure which (if any) are really a good idea to use if I were to experiment with playing it again.

Morrowind:

Morrowind FPS Optimizer actually caused additional problems for me on one of my modern machines, even though it worked great on my older ones. I don't think it likes working with the Steam version either.

I believe Morrowind Graphics Extender (MGE) is the tool of choice now; it provides the essential features of Morrowind FPS Optimizer in a less quirky manner, plus a truckload of other optional features (distant terrain, HDR effects, etc.). I ended up not using it for much more than the FPS Optimizer features on my gaming laptop, though, because the laptop couldn't handle the fancy MGE features.

HunterZ wrote:

I believe Morrowind Graphics Extender (MGE) is the tool of choice now; it provides the essential features of Morrowind FPS Optimizer in a less quirky manner, plus a truckload of other optional features (distant terrain, HDR effects, etc.). I ended up not using it for much more than the FPS Optimizer features on my gaming laptop, though, because the laptop couldn't handle the fancy MGE features.

Wait... what? :O

The last time I looked into making Morrowind work better, the FPS Optimizer was the only thing that popped up. (This was years ago though.) I am definitely checking out this MGE software. ;)

Have you done the Master of Orion games yet? You can't do a show about DOS games and leave those out (though you might get away with leaving MoO3 out, because it's not as good as the first two). I'm not searching 14 pages of replies to check. 😜