Ok thanks. That's worthwhile advice I hadn't considered, and you're absolutely right. I will give it a shot with stock DosBox.

Gemini000 wrote:

No seriously, having multiple versions of DOSBox is pretty much REQUIRED. As a couple of my prior episodes have pointed out, sometimes newer versions end up breaking things with certain games. It's rare, but not impossible.

Maybe I'm missing something, but why would you need multiple versions of DOSBox? Unless you have a real need for the SVN versions, you only need the single, stock 0.74 version for the most part.

Yep, I have DOSBox 0.74 (for reference), an EmuCR SVN (for bug/feature testing), and ykhwong builds (for experimental features) configured in D-Fend Reloaded. I'd like to work DOSBox-X into the mix too (for different experimental features), but DOSBox-X isn't compatible with D-Fend due to a bug with command line conf loading support that the DOSBox-X maintainer has acknowledged but apparently not fixed.

Edit: DOSBox 0.74 is almost 6 years old at this point. This means there has been over a half-decade of effort by the DOSBox developers that is only captured in SVN builds.

switchblade wrote:

Gemini000 wrote:

No seriously, having multiple versions of DOSBox is pretty much REQUIRED. As a couple of my prior episodes have pointed out, sometimes newer versions end up breaking things with certain games. It's rare, but not impossible.

Maybe I'm missing something, but why would you need multiple versions of DOSBox? Unless you have a real need for the SVN versions, you only need the single, stock 0.74 version for the most part.

One of the games I covered awhile back, "BlockBuster", also known as "Impact", completely refuses to work in DOSBox 0.74, or even DOSBox 0.73. I had to scale back to DOSBox 0.72 to get it working, and even then I'm pretty sure it wasn't working 100%. :P

The game I covered immediately afterwards, "Traffic Department 2192", ran perfectly fine in DOSBox 0.74 for the first couple episodes of the story, but when I got to the third and final episode, I quickly noticed something was VERY wrong with the AI. After testing a bunch of things I tried scaling back from DOSBox 0.74 to 0.73 and that solved the issue.

HunterZ wrote:

Yep, I have DOSBox 0.74 (for reference), an EmuCR SVN (for bug/feature testing), and ykhwong builds (for experimental features) configured in D-Fend Reloaded. I'd like to work DOSBox-X into the mix too (for different experimental features), but DOSBox-X isn't compatible with D-Fend due to a bug with command line conf loading support that the DOSBox-X maintainer has acknowledged but apparently not fixed.

Edit: DOSBox 0.74 is almost 6 years old at this point. This means there has been over a half-decade of effort by the DOSBox developers that is only captured in SVN builds.

Do you by any chance have an older 0.74 build with save states? The latest savestate + xbrz builds do not run on XP.

Nevermind. Found it. And it does run on XP. I'm attaching it here for anyone who's interested.

edit:
Ok, I'm glad to say I found the perfect version for this game, and that was the yhkwong release previous to the current one which is 20140127. It can be downloaded on his page under the older version section. So there's something in the newest build that breaks the accurate speed emulation.

Thanks again.

edit 2:I feel like a complete moron. The speed of the pipe monster has nothing to do with the DosBox version but whether you're on "Expert" or "Voyager" mode... Doh!

I'm actually on Windows 10 most of the time now, as I finally got a new laptop.

My desktop runs Windows 7 but I will probably take the free upgrade at the last minute so that I don't end up running something that is no longer getting security updates.

I know people still run Windows XP, though, because someone complained that my Visual Studio port of UMoria wouldn't run for them, so I finally had to build it with MinGW instead.

mockingbird wrote:

edit 2:I feel like a complete moron. The speed of the pipe monster has nothing to do with the DosBox version but whether you're on "Expert" or "Voyager" mode... Doh!

If that were the case, I would've pointed it out. The video you captured showed those things moving MUCH faster than they were supposed to for that part of the game. :P

But yes, their extending and retracting patterns and timing are different at different spots, so that IS a factor too.

Ancient DOS Games Episode 185 - The Incredible Machine is online... AND IN 60 FPS! :D

The solution to the 60 FPS problem was actually to just use a different MP4 encoder in Sony Movie Studio, which is the video editing software I use. Unfortunately, since I solved the problem in this manner, it means whatever YouTube did which broke 60 FPS support up to now with many of my videos likely isn't going to be reversed anytime soon, meaning the only way I could fix those videos would be to re-render ALL of them, and re-upload ALL of them, which would eliminate all the comments on them as well... so... yeah, they're probably going to remain non-60-FPS for quite some time. :(

Other than that, I've been sick almost all day long... third time this year I've gotten sick, actually, which has me slightly worried. In any case, it's not that bad at the moment so I'm just gonna go get some rest and hopefully feel better tomorrow. :)

Gemini000 wrote:

mockingbird wrote:

edit 2:I feel like a complete moron. The speed of the pipe monster has nothing to do with the DosBox version but whether you're on "Expert" or "Voyager" mode... Doh!

If that were the case, I would've pointed it out. The video you captured showed those things moving MUCH faster than they were supposed to for that part of the game. 😜

But yes, their extending and retracting patterns and timing are different at different spots, so that IS a factor too.

Are you sure?

I ran a capture in vanilla Dosbox 0.74, and got the same result.

It's only the third or forth screen as you progress in Expert Mode at the very start of the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k--Pn--tME

mockingbird wrote:

Are you sure?

*double-checks*

...whoops. I was getting that screen in the expert mode confused with the second screen of the voyager mode. XD

Yes, those things ARE supposed to move that fast on that screen, and oddly, they're two of the fast moving ones in the entire game as most of them aren't anywhere near that fast. :P

Thank you.

You are a scholar and a gentleman.

HunterZ wrote:

DOSBox 0.74 is almost 6 years old at this point. This means there has been over a half-decade of effort by the DOSBox developers that is only captured in SVN builds.

This is why I think it's about time for a DosBox 0.75, or hell maybe even DosBox 0.80 because of the sheer number of changes that have been made.

Gemini000 wrote:

Ancient DOS Games Episode 185 - The Incredible Machine is online...

The only thing i loath about TIM series is the puzzle where its involve pool balls and pool cue.
The problem is the movement of the (pool) balls can be very different with very small, only few pixels differences where the pool cues was placed.

Joey_sw wrote:

The only thing i loath about TIM series is the puzzle where its involve pool balls and pool cue.
The problem is the movement of the (pool) balls can be very different with very small, only few pixels differences where the pool cues was placed.

In those cases, there's very little you can do other than make tiny adjustments and test until it ultimately works. I think there's a number of puzzles which work that way in TIM games. :P

Off topic, but guess who decided to review the DOS port of the first Mega Man game?

MEGA MAN Games (DOS, PS1, PS2) Angry Video Game Nerd: Episode 139

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3iEn5rzMnw

switchblade wrote:

Off topic, but guess who decided to review the DOS port of the first Mega Man game?

MEGA MAN Games (DOS, PS1, PS2) Angry Video Game Nerd: Episode 139

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3iEn5rzMnw

Amongst other "bad" Mega Man games. :P

In comment to some of what James said, the reason some people like the Legends games (myself included) despite the fact that they're not really that good is because you can adapt to them and because there's actually a lot of hidden things to find without the aid of a walkthrough, so they're good games for those who like finding secrets.

If only he played the second Legends game and came up to the point in the game where you can walk in on your sister Roll while she's taking a bath... which isn't actually shown but subsequently causes Mega Man to pump his fist in success and decreases the cost of making equipment upgrades when you go to Roll to perform them... >_>;

One series he didn't mention was Battle Network, and while I haven't played any Battle Network games after the first one, the first one is actually pretty darn good! VERY different take on Mega Man with excellent music and a collectable card system for making special attacks given its hybrid turn-based / action-based / grid-based battle system. The story's actually pretty good too, albeit a little over-the-top at times.

It's been more than a decade since I've lasted played both Mega Man Legends games. I remember liking them at the time, although I don't really know if those two have aged well since then. Mind you, I'm still pissed off that Capcom cancelled the third Legends game. Also, you could walk into Roll naked in the first Legends game, although she wasn't taking a bath then but just changing clothes. 😲

Apart from the Battle Network games, he also didn't bring up the Mega Man Zero or ZX games for the GBA and NDS. But to be fair, there weren't really any terrible games within those series. They weren't the best, but they weren't the worst either.

Just wanted to quickly let everyone here know that the filler video is going to be late thanks to me being sick last weekend and still recovering even now (though I'm mostly better now). It's also a fairly sizable filler this time around... not anywhere near as big as the QBASIC one, but a little larger than a regular ADG episode. :B

Should be going up at the start of Monday!

Ancient DOS Games Filler #53 - Genres is finally online! :D

Also, capturing footage for TWENTY SIX different games is... a lot harder to do in a week than you might think, much less convert all of it for editing purposes. :P

But yeah, this is something that had been bugging me for a bit so I felt it would be a good idea to do a video not so much about what games belong to what genres, but rather to discuss how genres are applied to games and to bring up a few of the changes which have occurred to genres over time. I also tell everyone my Top 5 most favourite game genres at the end of the video! ;)

Plus, this was an opportunity to just capture all kinds of pieces of footage from some of my favourite modern games, both indie and AAA. :)

Wow.... You weren't joking when you said that YouTube fucked up the video compression completely.

You didn't make any small mention of MOBA's like League of Legends or DOTA 2, and CRPG's like Baldur's Gate, Ultima, and others like that. Then again, MOBA's would fall into the Strategy genre, and Baldur's Gate and Ultima are still RPG's at their core.

Either way, talking about genres will always be an ongoing argument that will never end. I could easily say that Metroid Prime for GameCube is a: platformer, shooter, and adventure game, even though some people give that game the FPP (First Person Platformer) genre designation.