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Ancient DOS Games Webshow

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Reply 3260 of 3343, by konc

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Gemini000 wrote on 2022-06-18, 05:31:

Ancient DOS Games Filler #92 - What's Next for Season 7 is online, marking the final video for Season 6 of the series!

The colors of Bubble Bobble in the background seemed a bit off and I had to look twice to realize you're playing in tandy mode. Unusual choice, is there a particular reason for this?

Reply 3261 of 3343, by rmay635703

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konc wrote on 2022-06-21, 15:22:
Gemini000 wrote on 2022-06-18, 05:31:

Ancient DOS Games Filler #92 - What's Next for Season 7 is online, marking the final video for Season 6 of the series!

The colors of Bubble Bobble in the background seemed a bit off and I had to look twice to realize you're playing in tandy mode. Unusual choice, is there a particular reason for this?

Tandy Sound and Graphics 1000000x better than CGA

Real men only see 16 colors anyway

Reply 3262 of 3343, by Gemini000

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DracoNihil wrote on 2022-06-20, 08:54:

I'm very much excited for this because I think Godot is hopefully going to use Vulkan and the Vulkan driver for Intel Graphics on Linux has gotten a lot of surprising bug fixes when Mesa 22.1.1 released.

Actually, no. Godot 4.0 will be using Vulkan, but we're still a ways off from that milestone. As for 3.5, I've been testing out the beta build and actually discovered a lot of my shader woes was actually down to a debugging mesh I was using which, for some inexplicable reason, was behaving inconsistently with shader handling for some reason. That said, the async shader caching does NOT eliminate lag spikes, it just helps soften the blow, so it's still better to have some sort of pre-caching going, which I've since learned only works until you change the active scene, as the shader compilation status is tracked by scene, so to do a loader properly it has to be an object inserted into the active game scene you're intending to run.

konc wrote on 2022-06-21, 15:22:

The colors of Bubble Bobble in the background seemed a bit off and I had to look twice to realize you're playing in tandy mode. Unusual choice, is there a particular reason for this?

To get around the copy protection of the original disks I'm using a crack, but one thing I've since learned about this is that the crack I have ONLY works right in Tandy mode, otherwise certain protections come into effect which make the game much harder than it's supposed to be, such as triggering a Hurry Up state much faster. Besides, the EGA mode pretty much looks identical. (Also using AdLib sound/music instead of Tandy.)

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3263 of 3343, by konc

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rmay635703 wrote on 2022-06-21, 17:34:

Tandy Sound and Graphics 1000000x better than CGA

Yes I asked because the game has EGA option

Gemini000 wrote on 2022-06-22, 00:59:

To get around the copy protection of the original disks I'm using a crack, but one thing I've since learned about this is that the crack I have ONLY works right in Tandy mode, otherwise certain protections come into effect which make the game much harder than it's supposed to be, such as triggering a Hurry Up state much faster. Besides, the EGA mode pretty much looks identical. (Also using AdLib sound/music instead of Tandy.)

Ah I see, thanks. It does look very similar, I'm familiar with the game and I had to take a second look.
Interesting what you wrote about the crack, I wasn't aware of this and now I have to investigate on my copy!

Reply 3264 of 3343, by Gemini000

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Season 7 of Ancient DOS Games has begun! We're kicking things off this time around with Episode 301 - 3D Lemmings!

So, the funny thing is... I actually MUCH prefer this iteration of Lemmings over any of the others, even though it's often considered to be the weakest entry. Heck, even at the time, it was reviewed fairly highly in PC gaming magazines... not so much in console mags as without a mouse to easily point and click on things it's way harder to get things done in those ports. :P

It all has to do with that grid of cubes... My brain just latches onto that from a puzzle-solving perspective so much more easily than raw pixels, though to be fair, this led to a different overall feel to the game which may or may not be appealing, depending on what it is you even want out of the Lemmings titles and is something I address at the end of the video. :B

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3265 of 3343, by Gemini000

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Ancient DOS Games Pro 23 - Speedrun Strats - Donald Duck's Playground is online!

So, this is a video I tried to make quite awhile back, but it turns out there's a TON of nuance with how this game works which I was failing to consider, which ultimately derailed all the progress I made late in production and I really didn't feel like doing everything over at the time.

...but that complete failure was haunting me so I decided to do it a LOT more right this time and investigated every tiny little thing I could think of to ensure I got all the details as accurate as possible! I also put together three speedruns as well, which there is a link to in the video description over on YouTube for anyone curious to see the culmination of my efforts, though I have no desire to actually compete on any leaderboards or anything. (Though as of my writing this, I would indeed be the world record holder given no one's attempted to set any leaderboard times for the PC Booter version of this game!)

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3266 of 3343, by Gemini000

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Ancient DOS Games Episode 302 - Death Rally is online!

So... I'd never actually played this game until now... :O

Not really sure why I passed it up when I was younger. I think a part of it was that I was under the false impression that this was a Duke Nukem racing game and that didn't really appeal to me. Granted, it HAS Duke Nukem in it, but he's just one of the 20 racers and otherwise isn't really given any special treatment, short of voice quips.

In any case, now that I've played it, it's not bad... but it definitely overstays its welcome unless you're playing FLAWLESSLY, in which case it's just the right length; The worse you do, the longer it takes to reach the game's conclusion due to some misbalancing in repair costs mid-game and having to play catch-up on points in the late-game. :P

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3267 of 3343, by MrFlibble

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On a side note, the freeware Windows version is not only available through Steam; IIRC it was released as such some time before appearing on Steam as a stand-alone download, which is still available from here:
https://www.ausgamers.com/files/download/4801 … -free-full-game

DOS Games Archive | Free open source games | RGB Classic Games

Reply 3268 of 3343, by Gemini000

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MrFlibble wrote on 2022-08-18, 18:59:

On a side note, the freeware Windows version is not only available through Steam; IIRC it was released as such some time before appearing on Steam as a stand-alone download, which is still available from here:
https://www.ausgamers.com/files/download/4801 … -free-full-game

That might be one of the last ones out there still using the DOS executables with DOSBox included, as that freeware release did not last long before they were all replaced with the Windows-native downloads. :P

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3270 of 3343, by Gemini000

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leileilol wrote on 2022-08-19, 03:21:

Nah, that's the native windows version. The freeware version was only ever the Windows version.

Really? There's remnants in the freeware release on Steam suggesting there was a DOSBox-based release at least briefly... Hmm...

...or, it really could just be remnants from originally preparing the thing for release and nothing more. :P

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3271 of 3343, by gerry

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Gemini000 wrote on 2022-08-13, 09:10:

In any case, now that I've played it, it's not bad... but it definitely overstays its welcome unless you're playing FLAWLESSLY, in which case it's just the right length; The worse you do, the longer it takes to reach the game's conclusion due to some misbalancing in repair costs mid-game and having to play catch-up on points in the late-game. 😜

a good observation, the game can reach a point where repair per race is more than winnings per race over a number of races. If you break through with a certain amount of 1st places it'll work out ok in the long run, if not then you slide backwards

the safest is to stay in lower league and build up reserves - kind of like grinding in RPGs!

Reply 3272 of 3343, by Gemini000

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Ancient DOS Games Episode 303 - Shadow Knight is online!

I'm going to guess 99% of you have never heard of this one, nor should you have. It is unfinished, buggy, shovelware, which by all accounts would've likely stayed buried for the rest of eternity...

...except despite everything, this game has one very specific feature which got my imagination racing back as a kid and actually helped inspire some of my game development efforts, both back then, and even now! 8O

Plus it gave me a chance to talk about one of my own Windows 3.1 games from back in the 90s which I don't offer on my website anymore because it's equally broken. (I do provide a link to it in the video description though for those morbidly curious enough to give it a try...)

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3273 of 3343, by Gemini000

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Ancient DOS Games Episode 304 - Memory Hog Hunter is online!

I was a little worried about this one at first because when I started trying to look into this thing's history I was finding virtually NOTHING. I even went looking through old issues of PC Magazine for advertisements through Google Books... only to discover a very critical issue I needed to find information in was archived wrong and had a mix of pages from two DIFFERENT issues replacing each other! D:

However, a stroke of luck made it possible to get the key points of information I needed, then I filled in the rest by researching what the heck was up with EMS and XMS... and now know far more about their origins than I really care to. (Also, Bill Gates apparently hated EMS despite being partly to blame for its existence. Go figure.)

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3274 of 3343, by Gemini000

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Ancient DOS Games Filler #93 - Sonic Robo Blast 2 is online!

Sonic fan games cover the entire gamut, from extremely low quality to exceptionally well done, from legitimate challenge to meme challenge, and from having a perfectly normal story to a totally creeptastic story. Sonic Robo Blast 2 however is perhaps one of the greatest Sonic fan games ever made! :O

It's been around for over two decades and has been in active development the entire time. I first played it in the late 2000s, sometime around 2007 or 2008, and back then the game was definitely less polished, had less content, smaller levels, and could sometimes be a pain to get running. Nowadays... it's freaking INCREDIBLE seeing how far it's come!

...oh and it uses the Doom Engine... that's kinda pertinent... ;)

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3275 of 3343, by Gemini000

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Ancient DOS Games Epsiode 305 - Grand Theft Auto is online!
(Please note that this is a mature-rated episode.)

Sorry this went up a week late but last week was... abysmal... >_<

This week went way better though, so I was finally able to get this video up! :B

I mentioned before how Big Red Racing was the first game I ever pirated as a kid because I didn't know any better. GTA happens to have been the SECOND game... but... even back then something about it was not sitting well with me. It was impressive to me graphically and I hadn't really played a game with the kind of controls and action this was providing... but I also barely got anywhere in it. I was constantly failing missions or getting killed and it actually took several days before I realized that the game had more to it than just what the first chapter provided. :O

Playing it again now... doesn't really feel much better. Even playing more smartly, most of what goes wrong in this game is out of your control and comes down to little glitches or simply not being as "fast" as the game wants you to be, despite its shortcomings, making this a VERY frustrating experience, even when you know what you're doing.

And as for the "controversy" surrounding this game... learning what that was ACTUALLY all about gave me a whole new level of disrespect for this thing... >:(

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3276 of 3343, by Gemini000

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Ancient DOS Games Pro 24 - Stat Balancing - Serve & Volley is online!

I'd always been curious about this one, wondering just how well balanced the stats were in this old tennis game I first played many years ago back as a kid on my Tandy 1000 SX system. Much to my surprise though, the game's a lot more... buggy... than I remembered it being...

Made it kinda difficult to test the player stats properly, but I did my best to work around the weird issues I ran into! :B

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3277 of 3343, by Gemini000

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Ancient DOS Games Episode 306 - Prince of Persia 2 is online!

So... the original Prince of Persia is currently the most requested game to cover on ADG but has proven way more difficult to get a legitimate copy of than virtually any other commercially published game I've kept my eyes open for. Thus when I was sent a boxed copy of the sequel I figured it might be a good way to at least get SOME Prince of Persia content on the show!

...except... a part of me feels like this sequel wasn't done right... Not that it's a "bad" game but based on what's in the manual, the difficulties I ran into playing it, and some reviews I've watched online, I get the impression that this may be the superior game aesthetically, but that the original may have the stronger gameplay.

Time will tell, hopefully. In the interim, I did my best and relayed as much info as I could about the specifics of the problems I hit without trying to criticise those parts too heavily given the fundamental nature of the game.

...with the exception of the idle-game termination feature because freaking WHAT?! o_O

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg

Reply 3278 of 3343, by DracoNihil

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Gemini000 wrote on 2022-11-19, 14:55:

...except... a part of me feels like this sequel wasn't done right... Not that it's a "bad" game but based on what's in the manual, the difficulties I ran into playing it, and some reviews I've watched online, I get the impression that this may be the superior game aesthetically, but that the original may have the stronger gameplay.

Have you ever seen the SNES port of Prince of Persia 2? It has absolutely fantastic music!

“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων

Reply 3279 of 3343, by Gemini000

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And the last Ancient DOS Games video for the year, Filler #94 - End of 2022 Update, is online!

Mostly this is just to go over how the year went, how next year should go in terms of videos, a few teasers about what I'm replacing Shovelware Diggers with, and then some sneak peeks at some of the little things I've been doing as I get prepared to do serious gamedev work in my spare time! :B

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg