I just completed Half-Life Source for the first time. I played Half-Life 2 first, then made it to Xen in Black Mesa, and I got a bit bored and put it aside and began HL-S. It made me appreciate Black Mesa, but it was fun and worthwhile. Now to finish Xen in BM. It's pretty disheartening to see how easily some YouTube players can sail through these games in hard mode while I die a thousand deaths on normal, but young reflexes and practice both make a difference.

Jackhead wrote on 2023-05-02, 14:58:

i started playing Lands of Lore again. Love the sprites and the music.
0F955C36-8910-4275-8725-9156F00491D0.jpeg

The music that plays in Opinwood is one of those themes that can randomly start playing in my mind, I may not like to play Lands of Lore anymore all that much but the soundtrack is great.

Was wondering what to play after Beyond Good & Evil flushed itself down the toilet and then during the weekend I noticed GOG's May the 4th Star Wars sale, time to revisit Knights of the Old Republic it is. I used to love the game but its been A LOOOONG time since I've last played it. Not far in yet, I've always struggled with the starting planet as it's pretty boring but I remember the game getting better after that.

And I had completely forgotten how infuriating the card game Pazaak is, this game is rigged man 🤣

Hearts of Iron 4 is my go to game for blowing off steam right now. WW2 grand strategy game with plenty of alternative history content. Who said the Holy Roman Empire couldn't come back?

When my 98/XP build is assembled, I'd like to beat Doom 2 and Duke 3D, as well as shadow warrior fully for the first time ever. I got a Audigy 2 ZS for the MIDI music as well.

For some unknown reason, my (almost) four years-old daughter loves this game so much, especially the in-game music. In any case, the cheat code is RATTY RAT RATTY. , and is entered after pressing ESC to access the in-game menu during a mission. It's a pretty good game overall, and you can find a review by Peter Olafson in this CGW issue, magazine page 127, which translates to PDF page 131.

Da Wardenz' HQ.

Da briefing.

Spotted an enemy tank.

KABOOOM!

Strafing an enemy pillbox with coaxial machine gun.

And that's the end of it.

Rescuing a hostage.

Spotted another enemy tank.

And there it goes.

Rescuing more hostage.

Strafing another pillbox.

BOOM!

Another enemy tank.

And again, my daughter pulled the trigger.

The last of the hostages.

Destroying a tank on the way out.

Debriefing.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2023-05-03, 14:26:

For some unknown reason, my (almost) four years-old daughter loves this game so much, especially the in-game music. In any case, […]
Show full quote

For some unknown reason, my (almost) four years-old daughter loves this game so much, especially the in-game music. In any case, the cheat code is RATTY RAT RATTY. , and is entered after pressing ESC to access the in-game menu during a mission. It's a pretty good game overall, and you can find a review by Peter Olafson in this CGW issue, magazine page 127, which translates to PDF page 131.
/quote]

Thanks for the link, the other game sounds interesting too AH3 Thunderstrike: Air Assault.

Curious, how are you playing this? Real hardware or dosbox?

buckeye wrote on 2023-05-03, 15:16:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2023-05-03, 14:26:

For some unknown reason, my (almost) four years-old daughter loves this game so much, especially the in-game music. In any case, […]
Show full quote

For some unknown reason, my (almost) four years-old daughter loves this game so much, especially the in-game music. In any case, the cheat code is RATTY RAT RATTY. , and is entered after pressing ESC to access the in-game menu during a mission. It's a pretty good game overall, and you can find a review by Peter Olafson in this CGW issue, magazine page 127, which translates to PDF page 131.

Da Wardenz' HQ.

Da briefing.

Spotted an enemy tank.

KABOOOM!

Strafing an enemy pillbox with coaxial machine gun.

And that's the end of it.

Rescuing a hostage.

Spotted another enemy tank.

And there it goes.

Rescuing more hostage.

Strafing another pillbox.

BOOM!

Another enemy tank.

And again, my daughter pulled the trigger.

The last of the hostages.

Destroying a tank on the way out.

Debriefing.

Thanks for the link, the other game sounds interesting too AH3 Thunderstrike: Air Assault.

Curious, how are you playing this? Real hardware or dosbox?

DOSBOX. The DOSBOX support page for the game mentions that you should set cycles=10000 to avoid crashing during the Core Interactive animated intro, but my cycles is 40000 and the game works fine so far, no crashes.

In any case, hex-editing your money in the save game file is also quite straightforward. 😉

Well, I guess it's time to finally try C&C Renegade. Somehow, I missed this game back in the day, despite being a huge C&C fan and having played through all the mainline entries in that series. While setting it up, I appreciated that Renegade has a custom installer featuring E.V.A. just like Tiberian Dawn did.

I'm playing this on my WinXP rig at 1600x1200 with nearly all in-game graphical settings maxed out. I say "nearly all" since the "Curved Surfaces" setting remains greyed out on my Nvidia card, so I'm guessing it's meant for ATi TruForm. Also, forcing AA and AF in the Nvidia driver panel doesn't seem to work for this game. Additionally, I enabled EAX2 and Surround Sound in the options, but couldn't get anything playing from my center or rear speakers. Weird.

So far, I've only played through the tutorial and the first mission, and the game seems super janky. As one reviewer put it: "This is Westwood's first FPS and it shows". Coming off of Unreal and Half-Life, the controls in Renegade feel really weird. Not sure how to explain it, but there's a lack of "smoothness" in your movement compared to the aforementioned games.

I did enjoy seeing the Ion Cannon fire during the tutorial, with thunder ripping across the sky and all of those tiny particles crackling in the air. Hoping for more moments like that in the future. The voice acting is really bad though, which kinda ruins the atmosphere.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-05-03, 20:16:

So far, I've only played through the tutorial and the first mission, and the game seems super janky. As one reviewer put it: "This is Westwood's first FPS and it shows". Coming off of Unreal and Half-Life, the controls in Renegade feel really weird. Not sure how to explain it, but there's a lack of "smoothness" in your movement compared to the aforementioned games.

There's that, and theres how the enemies don't really react to being shot. Makes it feel like you're a camera that floats around pointing at things till their health gauge drops to zero, it's not amazing. You're not helping yourself by playing Renegade after those games 😀

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-05-03, 20:16:

The voice acting is really bad though, which kinda ruins the atmosphere.

Try to ignore all that, the dialog is cheesy and the plot is awful. Bothered me too at first but I just stopped paying attention to it soon after noticing how corny it is. It tries to be a some kind of tongue in cheek action hero thing that doesn't really work.

Instead grab a tank and go blow things up and chuckle at the C&C stuff from ground perspective, that's its main (only) draw.

Sombrero wrote on 2023-05-04, 03:53:

Makes it feel like you're a camera that floats around pointing at things till their health gauge drops to zero, it's not amazing.

Heh, I think that's a pretty accurate description. It also feels odd that you pick up health packs and weapons which have those goofy spinning animations while being placed in a semi-realistic environment with a bunch of teammates and vehicles. Somehow, it doesn't fit.

Try to ignore all that, the dialog is cheesy and the plot is awful. Bothered me too at first but I just stopped paying attention to it soon after noticing how corny it is.

Yup, doing my best to look past that. I did like that they kept the original voice actress for EVA from the first C&C. She lends some credence to this janky mess. The protagonists and most of the characters from the tutorial sound really bad though.

Instead grab a tank and go blow things up and chuckle at the C&C stuff from ground perspective, that's its main (only) draw.

Yup, getting into a GDI Medium Tank and blowing up Nod turrets and SAM sites in first person felt very satisfying. As did seeing the rest of the enemy base get obliterated by the Ion Cannon. Building interiors seem a bit weird though, as least the ones in the tutorial did. I kinda imagined the GDI Barracks to be more than just paper thin walls, a single computer terminal and an elevator. 😁 Where are the bunk beds and ammo lockers, Westwood?

P.S.

I managed to solve some of the technical issues mentioned before. It looks like AA and AF can be used if you force them globally in the driver, instead of per application. Also, the trick to getting surround sound working was to turn off synchronization between the Creative speaker settings and its Windows Control Panel equivalent. Renegade kept randomly changing the latter to stereo speakers, which of course messed things up.

C&C Renegade is an interesting game. I tested it a bit on my modern pc via Origin but it was not running very well. But when I have completed my retro gaming rig I am going to play the game in case I can find a cheap copy. I find the idea of a shooter in the C&C universe very interesting.

I also tested some games with Nglide. to get a glimpse of the 3dfx look. Was also great fun. I will finish these games when I have my gf 4 4200 ti and vodoo2 combo retro gaming pc.

predator_085 wrote on 2023-05-04, 10:27:

C&C Renegade is an interesting game. I tested it a bit on my modern pc via Origin but it was not running very well. But when I have completed my retro gaming rig I am going to play the game in case I can find a cheap copy.

Shouldn't be too hard. I got the budget Sold Out re-release for less than 5 EUR. It has the PDF manual and the latest official patch on the disc as well.

BTW, Renegade is also included in the First Decade and C&C Saga compilations, if you decide to pick up one of those.

Thanks for the info that's good to know. Also did not know that Renegade is also included in the First Decade edition. I am also interested in playing the old C&C games again. I already have 1 and 2 as remaster on steam but it would be nice to have the originals again in my collection and the purchase of the first-decade edition would be worth the money just for C&C 3 / Firestorm and Renegade. I used to own C&C1 2 and Tiberium Sun but the copies got lost somehow when I was moving house, unfortunately. I have never played Firestorm yet.

i have played C&C Renegade and whilst it it fun it can get a little uninspiring after a while, somewhat repetitive. gameplay is ok though, and its a worthwhile experience if you don't expect too much from it

predator_085 wrote on 2023-05-04, 11:00:

Thanks for the info that's good to know. Also did not know that Renegade is also included in the First Decade edition. I am also interested in playing the old C&C games again. I already have 1 and 2 as remaster on steam but it would be nice to have the originals again in my collection and the purchase of the first-decade edition would be worth the money just for C&C 3 / Firestorm and Renegade. I used to own C&C1 2 and Tiberium Sun but the copies got lost somehow when I was moving house, unfortunately. I have never played Firestorm yet.

Even after the remaster I still think the First Decade is worth having. (now that it's second hand and cheap)
The unofficial patch added so much content, mostly for the 2 original games and sure it's all included in the remaster but it's nice to also have in a game that's not tied to a online store.
Plus I think most people have a XP retro PC now and the one good thing about TFD installer is it patches everything to work on XP properly out of the box.

C&C is my favourite game series and I've tried to play Renegade even back in the day but like most after the novelty of seeing C&C stuff in first person and also not living upto your imagination of how things would look I'm lucky to finish more then a few levels.
It doesn't help though that while I love RTS's I'm not very good or really enjoy 3D shooters. I suspect a lot of others who purchased it at the time were the same?

I loved it back then. It lost some of its magic through the length of the campaign.

They could have made it more "cinematic", like the first mission, because that was kinda the point. Just as a singleplayer fps it was fairly average. Multiplayer was decent(and people still play it).

But overall a good game, just not as great as it could be, considering you are a footsoldier in a cnc setting.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-05-03, 20:16:

Coming off of Unreal and Half-Life, the controls in Renegade feel really weird. Not sure how to explain it, but there's a lack of "smoothness" in your movement compared to the aforementioned games.

It's basically the same kind of "infinite friction" player movement you see in Bethesda's games. As in, the movement you got in The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, Terminator: Future Shock, etc.

Atleast the vehicle physics is... OKAY for the most part, but yeah the player movement is extremely dated.

There's also the low FOV factoring in it too. A lot of Renegade feels flat. Keep in mind it was delayed at least three times and has had a cancelled playstation version early in its development before Tiberian Sun even came out.

After playing through a few more levels, and adjusting to the weird controls, I'm starting to enjoy C&C Renegade a bit more. Encountering the Obelisk of Light and hearing that ominous charging sound was awesome. It was also fun to explore the Hand of Nod and catch a brief transmission from Kane. Jumping into a Mammoth Tank and using its secondary fire rockets to knock out a Nod chopper was another highlight.

What slightly bothered me was the uneven length of the missions. Some were pretty short and could be completed in 15 minutes or so. While others seemed to have dozens of secondary objectives and needed more than an hour of playing to get through. Also, I'm not sure if those secret tertiary objectives actually result in any rewards? Doesn't seem like it so far.

I liked the use of some commando quotes from the original C&C like "Keep 'em coming!" and such. Having just finished the submarine level, I got to hear a bunch of those after that. Still not a fan of the protagonist's voice acting, but at least he's using the right lines.

@chinny22 Thanks for your reply. I am also sure that the first Decade would be nice addition to my collection. As I have already menitioned I had original coppies of C&1, C&C2 and C&C3 and I would still hold on to them if I had not lost them during moving house 🙁.

It also a good way to enjoy C&C games I have never played before. Like Firestorm and Renegade.

i am especially curious about Renegade. The first mission I could try on orgin was quite interesting despite the fact that was not running well at all on modern hardware.

Renegade is going to be on the first games I am going to play when I have my retro rig.

Another game that I have to put on my to play list as soon as I have my retro rig is Clive Barker's Undying. I got the game on gog sale a few days ago and while I really like the look glide games in earlier games the glide look of undying via nglide ist not that great.

The Direct3d mode is not working on my modern day rig. According to youtube it looks better in direct 3d mode maybe due to the 32 bit mode. 16 bit is totally fine for older games but with more modern games the 32 bit color mode just looks better.

But in general Undying is a intriguing game. The admosphere is really nice and I like the setting.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-05-05, 06:31:

Also, I'm not sure if those secret tertiary objectives actually result in any rewards? Doesn't seem like it so far.

Didn't the game have a score/rank screen after every level, I figured the secondary objectives probably only affect that. Some secondary objectives might reward you with a vehicle drop or something I guess, but I don't remember that happening.

There was some secondary escort mission/missions in one level, the kind that has the people you are supposed to escort run straight into enemies and die immediately. I sure didn't load the game to try again 😆