Great review Kris! This is a huge game, I remember playing it with a friend of mine and travelling on a horse for half an hour and realising that we had only moved a dot or so in the map xD.
Don't know what the game is, but I'm pretty sure the music is from one of the Terminator games from Bethesda, the first one probably?

Gemini000 wrote:

*falls out of chair and falls asleep face-first on the floor*

Huh, I wonder how he managed to post that.

MPC, was that a Tron reference?

Nice review Kris.

MPC was a Tron reference, and so was "more bugs than a bait store."

Enjoyed the DF episode! I actually bought it when it was new and played the crap out of it on my family's 486DX4-120. It ran slightly choppy on that machine (especially when run under Win9x so that my dial-up BBS could keep running in the background) but it was quite playable. I never managed to finish the game (or ANY of the Elder Scrolls games, for that matter!) because it's just too big and buggy.

Unfortunately I later upgraded to a PII-450 and ran into the speed bugs (which also include climbing and jumping issues in addition to the running issue mentioned in the video). I actually contacted Bethesda about this, and they didn't believe me 🙁

I think it may also have been Daggerfall that brought me to VOGONS almost 9 years ago. Bethesda was sending people hand-burned/labeled CD-ROMs with some Daggerfall files and VDMSound for getting Daggerfall to work well under Win2K, and VOGONS was the official forum for VDMSound.

Random comments on the video:

• Price. I don't remember the game being $80 - is that CAD or USD? I did buy it fairly new for some reason, probably at around $30-50 USD.
• Controls. As mentioned in the video, the controls are highly re-mappable. I found that you can actually set up Daggerfall to control quite a lot like modern first-person games (WASD + mouselook etc.) so that it is very comfortable to play.
• Music. Daggerfall has a different set of music files for FM synthesizers (Adlib/SB/etc.) versus General MIDI synthesizers (Roland Sound Canvas, etc.). Mostly I think they just arranged the instruments a bit differently to suit each hardware type better, but there are a couple of places (like some tavern music I think) where completely different songs are used! I liked Daggerfall's music so much (especially one of the snow songs) that I ripped them to MIDI files in the late '90s and shared them with other DF fans on the Internet.
• Engine. Bethesda was a pioneer of 3D game engine development until they started making games for Windows. Daggerfall uses Bethesda's in-house XnGine (or however it's spelled), which was developed around the same time as Quake, is roughly the same level of 3D rendering technology, and pioneered mouselook. I think they developed it with racing games in mind, but first used it for Terminator: Future Shock and later SkyNet (hence the vehicles in those games I guess). The engine is capable of rendering enemies using animated 3D models, but they apparently used sprites in Daggerfall because the game was already very graphically heavy for its time.
• Cursor/view mode. I think you might be able to activate the cursor in view mode, maybe by hitting Enter? This might get around the difficulty of activating small items in view mode.
• Dungeons. As mentioned in the video, navigating DF's dungeons can be brutal due to the procedurally-generated dungeons. I found this to be hands-down the game's most annoying feature, even though I didn't mind it at all in Arena. I think the reason I hate it so much is because they are 3D, but the random generation causes them to have no flow or even logic to help you navigate. I knew about the cheat keys for warping to quest spots, but I love the idea in the video of warping immediately to the quest spot and then working your way back out; this really doesn't reduce the challenge, but might reduce the frustration by a good bit! I will have to try this idea next time I play.
• DOSBox. I thought the section of the video on how to run Daggerfall in DOSBox was great. I learned the hard way about most of what was covered, so I know that people will appreciate it being covered so well. I didn't know about the video issue, but as far as I know there aren't many videos in the middle of the game anyways.
• DOS32A. What is SB.EXE? I don't remember having to use that when I used DOS32A.
• Credits. The music in the credits is from the music test feature of DF's sound configuration utility. I also remember the digitized sound effects test is a recording of a guy saying something like "This is HMI module Alpha Humana on approach to Space Station Mercury" that is panned slowly from left to right (on stereo sound cards).
• Boobs. Maybe I'm just a desensitized American, but I found the occasional sprites of women with fully-exposed breasts to be more surprising than the moderate amount of blood in Daggerfall. I was a bit surprised that this wasn't mentioned in the video.

On the topic of not finishing Elder Scrolls games, here is my list of excuses for each:

• Arena: Originally played this when it was fairly new, and was blown away. Ultimately, though, it got too repetitive. I've tried seriously playing several times in the past several years and have made it farther each time, so there's hope.
• Daggerfall: Too big and buggy. I get lost both literally (dungeons) and metaphorically (game flow) and forget about the main plot.
• Battlespire (spinoff): Was just too weird and hard. It felt like an FPS with light RPG elements, except that it liked to turn me into a dead-man-walking via attrition. It also ran a bit choppy in 640x480 even on a PIII-550 with an AGP video card, and it was a bit buggy (yay Bethesda!).
• Redguard (spinoff): Never even played this because I've never owned a 3dfx video card. I hear it is (or was) good, but Bethesda really hurt themselves by jumping too completely onto the 3dfx Glide bandwagon with this one.
• Morrowind: Came out when I still had my PII-450 (upgraded to a PIII-550), on which Morrowind wasn't really playable. This soured me a bit, so I never managed to really get sucked in. I also thought it was a huge shift from the previous games, being almost completely devoid of randomized content (hey, I'm a roguelike fan!). Also, the graphics and especially the UI now feel dated in a bad way.
• Oblivion: By this point I couldn't bring myself to fully invest in a new TES game because I hadn't beaten any of the previous ones.
• Skyrim: I'm not going to buy this until it has a GOTY version with all DLC bundled in for less than the $60 release price of the base game. I'm cheap and have a huge pile of games to keep me busy in the meantime!

To my credit, I did finish Fallout 3 (and all DLC!) after hundreds of hours. I think I only managed this because I took a year-long break halfway through, and because I have a special affinity for post-nuclear fiction. Exploration CRPGs are probably my favorite (sub)genre, but also the hardest for me to finish because there are so many rocks to turn over! The first few times I tried to play Oblivion, I literally dragged everything not nailed down to the dungeon entrances, then carted it back and forth to shops in the nearest towns...

A few responses to what's been mentioned so far:

Credits Music: From what I understand, this music originally comes from Terminator: Future Shock, and was then later used as the MIDI music for the HMI setup program. Someone else already eMailed me about this so I figured they'd get a mention in the credits of the next ep. ;)

Lack of Music: My first FOUR attempts to record gameplay footage were all interrupted by severe music glitches, so eventually I figured "screw it" and just turned the music off. :P

Setup Sound: Actually, the sound clip used in the setup program from Daggerfall is Emperor Uriel Septim VII saying, "Rest well, for tomorrow you sail for the Kingdom of Daggerfall."

MPC: Yup. Tron is one of my all-time favourite movies and I had been watching it again lately and when I was trying to come up with a metaphor for the number of bugs in the game, the "bait store" line immediately came to mind. ;)

Price: Could be a Canadian-specific price. After all, even though CAD and USD are virtually worth the same now, there was a time not too long ago when USD was worth nearly twice as much. x_x;

Music: Actually, whenever you hear a particular General MIDI tune but were expecting a completely different Synth FM tune, the reason for this is because they were SWAPPED. So both tunes are still in the game, just switched around. The tavern tune and the store tune are a great example.

Dungeons: The dungeons are made up of extremely elaborate modules interconnected with each other. If those modules weren't so darned complex with twisting, multi-layered, overlapping, paths, it wouldn't've been so bad. I think they just wanted to really hit the point home that this was a true 3D game, not just 2 1/2D or whatever. :P

SB.EXE: I read on the UESP that this file is necessary, but I didn't test whether it was or not because I just mount the entire DOS32A bin directory inside DOSBox as Y: when needed. :P

Boobs: I didn't bring this up because then I would have to show it, and Nudity + Blip.tv = NO. :P

Beating TES Games: I've never beaten Arena or Daggerfall. Arena because I haven't spent much time with the game. Daggerfall because it's just more fun to go off and do whatever. Oblivion however I have beaten once before, and Morrowind I've beaten a staggering THREE times from start to finish, partly because the main quest in Morrowind is surprisingly easy and you actually feel like you're making real progress the whole time.

Skyrim: I'm not going to be getting this game right away due to financial reasons, but it's very likely one of my friends/family will get it for me for Christmas and if not, I intend to buy it myself not long afterwards. ;)

Nice review.

I got myself Skyrim. It will arrive possibly next monday. I have finished Morrowind and Oblivion. Also played a little with Arena and DF in the ms-dos days. Just like DF I also like post-nuclear backgrounds (fantasy too).

I will watch your review in full again. Being a non native english speaker makes things a little difficult to catch up with.

Credits Music / Setup Sound: Doh, you're right. I confused it with the setup for the Terminator games because it's really the same utility. I don't remember that music being in Future Shock, but it's been a while. I figured instead that the sound (not the Daggerfall one) and music were stock ones provided with the HMI sound SDK.

Music: That may also be true, but I remember listening to the raw music files themselves and noting that there were some with the General MIDI name that were different than similarly named FM songs (or something along those lines).

FYI, Daggerfall originally used the CauseWay DOS extender, not DOS/4GW; but maybe it was changed for the freeware release?

SB.EXE is a re-stubbing utility that lets you change the extender binding in compatible executables (usually Watcom C). You don't need it to run the game as in your example "dos32a fall.exe", but you can do "sb /R fall.exe" to replace the extender inside the executable with DOS32A, and subsequently running fall.exe directly will use DOS32A (note that the executable is modified by doing this).

ripsaw8080 wrote:

FYI, Daggerfall originally used the CauseWay DOS extender, not DOS/4GW; but maybe it was changed for the freeware release?

...oops. ^_^;

Most 32-bit DOS games use DOS4GW so it's really easy to forget when a game DOESN'T, and for some reason or another, I thought Daggerfall did. :P

I'll add a correction for that next time I update my website. Same with details about SB.EXE. ;)

WONDERFUL REVIEW. It was kinda short though... *troll face*

I must admit, I've spent 30 hours out of the last 48 playing skyrim. I should have bought the collectors edition. 😜 The game is GORGEOUS.

Gemini000: I suddenly realise why you reviewed this game now. It is because LGR reviewed The Elder Scrolls Arena(which makes me laugh), and because of Skyrim. Gemini000, I think it is awesome you are sometimes gaping over more than you can swallow. But seriously, I must be in a weird mood lately, cause I was suddenly like "oh now I get it, a pixelated tit is on the loose, again " (so I zapped through it and thought "fuck it!"). Jesus Christ Gemini a female breast is probably the most natural thing. And since you do have a great taste. Then try to make a (private) webserver in your home with some of the videos, instead so you will not violate any uploading rules for the more titty oriented games out there. Yeah I know, I am so-called rambling as usual. But at least it is NOT Kekko Kamen, which I saw on video in the great open when I was 15. And guess what, nobody gave a toss. Hell all the girls and guys I was with fucking loved when I had bought a new Anime. But then again, it is nothing new, I live in Denmark and we as a people are extremely relaxed about tits and sexuality. But Canada or USA will rather enjoy a person getting killed uncensored, and in high definition. And before my ass is flamed and stuff like that from the guys. I must point out, I am very much generalising things. But Danes are extremely laid back.

Anyway Gemini, an okay episode 😀

woo, another pointless, unneccessary puritan argument.

If he doesn't want breasts then he doesn't want breasts. It's his show, and it's tough for him to even include footage with blood

Like he needs trouble with blip.tv and advertisers.

By the way, you may not realise, but the majority of TES's demographic are young teenagers, despite the adult content, M rating etc. It's why Bethesda went to force underwear since Morrowind. therefore, it's quite logical to censor the precursory smut.

Actually, I had been planning to review Daggerfall for Episode 66 since around August. Some of my episodes I plan VERY far in advance. (For instance, I already know what I'm doing for Episode 100 and I also know what I'm going to do for the three fillers coming up after Episode 70.)

Clint didn't announce he would be reviewing Arena until a bit afterwards. Truth be told, I think a TON of people probably thought: "Skyrim coming out? Do TES stuff!" :D

As for hosting my own web server for my videos: Very no.

There's a reason why services like Blip.tv, YouTube, and others can do what they do and it's because their viewer base is so incredibly large they can pull in major advertising and split it appropriately to pay for the cost of bandwidth, which is a lot higher than you may think it is when it comes to videos. For instance, if my latest Daggerfall video was watched 1000 times from start to finish, that would've burned about 240 GB worth of bandwidth.

Or for another perspective: I have had roughly 80,000 video views so far, the average-length ADG video is 150 MB, and because some people stop watching early they may not downstream completely so let's say on average half of the video is downstreamed. If you do the math, that's about 5.72 TERABYTES of data transfer since ADG began. Blip.tv is free to use. Running a suitable server from my own home would simply be unaffordable. (James Rolfe pays over $1000 a month to run his server, but that JUST handles his website. He still hosts all of his videos on external video services, including Blip.tv.)

leileilol: calling me a puritan is an insult and you know that. I am just a Dane. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritan Since I am not a hedonist either or a fanatic in anyway. So get your facts straight.

Gemini, okay. That is an insane amount of cash. But I did mention, it was an okay episode. But since you mentioned James Rolfe, you should be aware of a thing. And or for that matter LGR, both have pixel tits in some of their videos. So it is more like a double standard than anything.Sorry for ranting, but I have enjoyed many of your videos . So it is only few of them that I have been a bit meh about.

calling me a puritan is an insult and you know that.

+1 achievement for lei!

wd wrote:

calling me a puritan is an insult and you know that.

+1 achievement for lei!

Yeah, but only cowards does not show where they are from. I am from Denmark, live with it !

but only cowards does not show where they are from

-> do, not does, so much about the cowards thingie

wd wrote:

but only cowards does not show where they are from

-> do, not does, so much about the cowards thingie

Thanks grammar Nazi. And since you are a gutless cur, then I put you in the cowards category.

And since you are a gutless cur

Mind to explain how you come to this conclusion? I'd like to have this as explanatory as possible from you
since you already cluttered this otherwise interesting thread with useless information.

WolverineDK wrote:

leileilol: calling me a puritan is an insult and you know that. I am just a Dane. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritan Since I am not a hedonist either or a fanatic in anyway. So get your facts straight.

I just looked up the word in the dictionary. So long as it's lower-cased, it can simply refer to someone with an extreme moral viewpoint, and you have to admit, you have a tendency to get riled up over tiny little details when it comes to violence and sex. I'm pretty sure Lei wasn't trying to insult your heritage, but was just making fun of how easy it is to get a rant out of you. ;)

WolverineDK wrote:

Gemini, okay. That is an insane amount of cash. But I did mention, it was an okay episode.

Yes you did. This is why I gave a generic response to what you said and not a personal one, because I understood that. :)

WolverineDK wrote:

But since you mentioned James Rolfe, you should be aware of a thing. And or for that matter LGR, both have pixel tits in some of their videos. So it is more like a double standard than anything.Sorry for ranting, but I have enjoyed many of your videos . So it is only few of them that I have been a bit meh about.

It's only a double standard if I have two contradicting opinions about something. The simple fact is, the very first of a dozen lines of prohibited content in the Blip.tv TOS: "Content involving nudity, including but not limited to, nudity or partial nudity of children of any age." Even James has had to censor stuff in his videos.

I have no issues with violence and nudity, in fact I find it strange that our society tends to put nudity into a higher maturity rating than violence, but Blip.tv has issues with nudity and half the viewers on my website are underage, so I have to accomodate those situations as best as I can, otherwise there would be no ADG at all.

Would you prefer that? :P