Lawnie wrote on 2020-05-21, 23:11:

I recently finished Freespace 2 with all the bells and whistles from the tremendous community courtesy of their Knossos launcher. It was probably the best space combat game I've ever played, and I include TIE Fighter in that list. It's like trying to choose between children or something, the wonderful experience of Freespace is still fresh in my mind, but that TIE Fighter campaign is just something else, and so much longer... The sooner the XWVM project is done the better, then they can get to making TFVM a reality and blowing Freespace 2 Open out of the water. I wish.

I envy you. I wish I could play Freespace 2 for the first time again. It is quite possibly THE best game I ever played..

Still trying to find the right amount of cycles for this game.

I spent all day setting my DOS machine up with my new CompactFlash-IDE adapter and CDROM drive, and then copying over most of my favorite games from my DOSBOX and PCEM folders/installs.

I did get a chance to sit down and play some games though!

Ultima Underworld
Currently exploring level 3, which includes the famous puzzle where you have to decipher the language of the lizardman word by word through a mute interpreter. Such a satisfying puzzle! You have to go back and forth several times as you slowly build up your knowledge of the language, and once you are done you can have little conversations with the other lizardmen in their own language (though they don't have much to say, outside of the major NPCs).

This game is so atmospheric and once you get used to the controls (basically modern FPS controls, actually), it plays great. There's also a great feeling of advancement as earning a single level earns you several meditations at the ankhs located on each level, with each meditation increasing certain skills based on the mantra you speak; some mantras get you a significant increase in one skill, while others provides a small increase in several random (related) skills. I really like this system, as you typically find the latter early on in the game and the former later on... this means you get a broad range of minor increases early on, and then can specialize once you've settled on the type of character you want.

System Shock
CD version of course. Less an RPG than Underworld, and more a... story-driven complicated FPS. Great game with an awesome soundtrack; I don't have the cable I need to connect my Sound Canvas yet, but the AWE soundtrack sounds pretty interesting.

The automap is pretty much just as good as the one in Underworld, and slowly filling the map out is just as satisfying.

I really like the controls in this game, though it takes some time to get used to them. I know there's a mouselook patch, but I'm not a fan in this case; I feel like part of what makes SS so interesting is slowly getting better at controlling it.

Star Wars Episode 1 Racer on my Cyrix MII, SiS 6326 machine.

@newtmonkey - two of my favorites. The only part of System Shock I never liked was Cyberspace. The movement was difficult and it was too easy to get hopelessly disoriented. I consider SS a stealth, action RPG. It's a great melding of RPG and stealth shooter. The movement style and controls don't really lend themselves to running and gunning, so I've always taken a slow, stealthy approach when playing it. I'm a little hazy on UU1 because I played it several years ago and played UU2 afterward, which I liked even more. It's the better of the two Underworlds, but both are super immersive, and come to think of it, also lends itself to stealthy play style.

I just finished up Arnika (the first town) in Wizardry 8 and am going to take a quick side trip back to the monastery (the opening area of the game) because I found a key in Arnika that I think opens a door there. Then on to the town of Trynton, following the plot. There's a Trynnie there named Fuzzfas that I've been asked to say hello to by Anna at the Marina and Bait Shop. I suspect that will advance the plot. I also seem to remember a graveyard somewhere between Arnika and Trynton that has a tough battle, but good loot. Good thing a couple of my characters just learned the Holy Water spell at their last level up.

So far I've sunk 27 hours in 26 days of playing Wizardry 8. It's as good, if not better, than I remember it being when I played it in early 2002.

edit: Ha! I'd forgotten that if you have someone in your party with Alchemy skills, you can mix potions! My Ninja knows alchemy, so we've been buying light and moderate heal potions, mixing them into heavy heal potions, then selling them back for a profit. It's actually pretty lucrative, but after awhile, moderate heal potions become really hard to come by. There are other potions you can mix for similar results, but they require higher alchemy skill than she's at at the moment. Later in the game, I'll exploit those.

Is there a way to hack mouselook into Ultima Underworld 1/2? Impossible to replay for me with its archaic controls, but I so want to finish them some day..

appiah4 wrote on 2020-05-25, 16:44:

Is there a way to hack mouselook into Ultima Underworld 1/2? Impossible to replay for me with its archaic controls, but I so want to finish them some day..

https://github.com/hankmorgan/UnderworldExporter

From the readme file:

3 The following are the default controls […]
Show full quote

3 The following are the default controls

Movement - WASD
Jump - Space
Toggle mouselook* - E
Cast selected spell* - Q
Toggle fullscreen* - F (some ui elements are draggable in fullscreen mode)
Interaction modes* F1 to F6.
Fly Up* - R
Fly down* = V
Track* = T
Charge Attack - Hold down right mouse key
Release Attack - Release right mouse key.

In game a context sensitive overlay will tell you what a right or left click will do when hovering over an object.

*These controls can be edited by changing the values in the config.ini file. Other standard controls are managed by the Unity launcher. Mouse sensitivity and axis settings can be configured from the config.ini

Amazing, thank you clueless1!

Trying out this amazing new game tech demo for the Commodore Amiga. It currently is just a trench run, but is slowly evolving into a full game. The real show stopper here is that it is supposed to run fine on the first Amiga. If you had shown me these graphics back in 1986 when I got my first Amiga my mouth would have dropped to the floor.

http://retrobones.com/

https://youtu.be/Vu_bdxEVDh4

Wing Commander

Stuck on that early mission where you have to escort the tanker and then encounter Bhurak Starkiller. I tried 2-3 times and FINALLY got the tanker back home, but encountered a massive bug: Bhurak's ship turned completely invisible! It basically made the mission unwinnable, because my wingman is useless and Bhurak was free to destroy the tanker while I just flew around trying to shoot him down by radar (haha not gonna happen). I'm kind of disgusted with the game right now to be honest. This is something I've never encountered obviously, and I couldn't find anything on this bug, thanks mostly due to the fact that there is apparently an episode of the Wing Commander cartoon called "Invisible Enemy!"

[EDIT] Went back and finally beat this mission, and the bug didn't occur (thankfully). I know winning this mission is optional; if I recall correctly, losing puts you on the more difficult but still possible track through the game. However, I wanted to stay on the winning track.

Depite considering myself an RPG fan, and already owning most of the series, I've never actually played an Ultima game. Starting on The First Age of Darkness.

I played through Ultima 1 for the first time 15 years ago, and I was surprised by how enjoyable it was. It's a great game to play through over a lazy weekend! Have fun!

Ultima II, on the other hand...

Ultima I-II-III are absolutely skippable.

With my DOS machine configuration pretty much settled, I was able to put in some game time over this last week.

Lands of Lore
I'm currently exploring the swamp after getting through a mess of my own making; in RPGs that allow me to save anywhere and have multiple save slots, I keep just a single save file for each location so that there is still some sense of danger. Well, I saved in the swamp with a group of several of those annoying slime enemies just around the corner and could not defeat them no matter how many times I tried. The key was to switch to blunt weapons, which do a lot more damage to them... the game is such a simplified RPG that I didn't think it would implement this! Anyway, I got through it and explored the rest of the swamp. Fun game, but I never cared much for real-time party combat.

The Elder Scrolls: Arena
One thing I noticed straight away is that the game is way too fast even on a Pentium 133; movement is nice, but combat and animations are waaaay too fast. You don't have any time to react to enemies and even a rat can kill you in a few seconds. I wonder if this is why the starter dungeon has such a brutal reputation; having played it on the recommended hardware back when it was released (486/50), the game is NOT meant to be played so fast. Luckily, the latest patch includes a builtin slowdown tool (not moslo) you can use when launching the game, specifically for playing the game on a Pentium class PC. I found a delay of 3 or 4 is perfect for playing on a P133.

Anyway, there is a lot to like about Arena, even when compared with modern Elder Scrolls games.

This game has got to have some of the most satisfying loot of all time. If you fully explore the starter dungeon, you'll have gained a few levels and will likely have found some nice equipment—and even some magic equipment if you are lucky. As you explore, you are constantly finding little upgrades here and there.

The scope of the game is insane. Yeah, it's mostly procedurely-generated stuff, but in this case it works really well, because 90% of the game content is there just to make the game feel a massive world that exists outside of your personal quest. The game has a main quest chain to follow with plenty of hand-designed content, but you can ignore it if you want and play the game almost like a roguelike as you enjoy all the random content. A big part of the game is talking to NPCs and gathering information. You have to ask NPCs where individual stores are located, and they will typically just give you general directions. Follow those directions, and ask someone else, until you are close enough where the NPC will mark the location on the map for you. In effect, it's a quest compass but instead of just giving you the information, it turns it into something interactive. I really like it!

The music is absolutely amazing with a good General MIDI synthesizer. It sounds incredible on the Sound Canvas, but it probably sounds great on any General MIDI synth. I do miss the days when game music was less like a film score and instead had strong melody...

Lands of Lore is the EOB3 I wish we had had.. Such an amazing game..

I'm 39 hours into Wizardry 8 and have made it to Trynton (the 3rd town-like area, after The Monastery and Arnika). Currently exploring their tree-village and having a blast. Such a unique "city" that is entirely based in treetops, accessible via ladders and ropes. My main characters are progressing quite nicely, all at level 10. Here's a shot of where I'm at in Trynton at the moment:

So the Wizardry series prides itself on the class-changing feature, but this is one area I have not wanted to explore. My characters, rolled in Wiz6, are still the same classes. There's Arnellis, the Dwarf Lord who specializes in dual-wielding maces and divine magic; Khal, the Mook Samurai who's a dual-wielding sword master with the ability to land critical hits (instant kills) and cast some mage spells; Arya the Faerie Ninja with dual-wielding Nunchakas, stealth (sneak attacks), crits and alchemy; Jaana the Dwarf Valkyrie specializing in polearms and divine magic; Mihru the Felpurr Monk with martial arts (bare hands/feet), crits, stealth and Psionics; and Gwenno the Elf Bard. Back near the end of Wizardry 6 she acquired the Elven Bow (the best bow in the trilogy) which only Elven Rangers could use in Wiz6 and 7. I considered class-changing her to a Ranger, but decided against it. So I schlepped the bow with me through 6 and 7, knowing that in Wizardry 8 a change would be made to allow Elven Bards to also use this bow (the trade-off was that Bards no longer could cast magic spells). And she's making great use of it. It has the following stats: +20% damage, +5 to-hit, +6 initiative, 5% instant kill chance, +1 HP regeneration, and +15 Speed. This made it well-worth lugging it around for so long. Plus, she remains a Bard so makes great use of magical instruments such as Poet's Lute (sleep), Angel's Tongue (bless), Piercing Pipes (shrill sound), Viola D'Amore (charm), Snare of Delay (slow), Siren's Wail (insanity), and Cornu of Demonspawn (banish undead). On the plus side, the fact that Bards can no longer cast spells means that I can devote more of my level-up bonus points to Music, Bows and ranged-combat. Oh, I forgot to mention: she also has the Sword of Hearts carried over from Wiz6/7, which is the best sword in the game for Bards. And to top it all off, Bards have some natural thieving skills, so she's my chosen lock-picker. I have not practiced her pick-pocketing skill because that's not how I roll in RPGs.

The game is very flexible with weaponry, allowing Primary and Secondary weapons (dual-wielding) as well as Alternate Primary and Secondary weapons. Typically, close-combat weapons are in the Primary/Secondary slots while ranged weapons are in the Altnerate slots. Here you can see that Gwenno's primary weapon is the Sword of hearts, secondary weapon is a Main Gauche, and Alternate Primary is the Elven Bow. Alternate Secondary slot is where arrows go. So when she's in close combat range, she can choose between swords and bow, while in extended range she automatically uses the Elven Bow.

You can also see she's carrying her instruments on the left ("used" during combat). She has become one of the most powerful characters in my party. In Wiz6 and 7, she was strictly a complementary character used for buffing the party, so she's come a long way, baby.

Was playing a few bitmap brothers games during the lockdown, finished GODS and moving to Magic Pockets.

newtmonkey wrote on 2020-05-30, 08:30:

You have to ask NPCs where individual stores are located, and they will typically just give you general directions. Follow those directions, and ask someone else, until you are close enough where the NPC will mark the location on the map for you.

I rather prefer Daggerfall's method of just switching the use mode to "Look" and click on buildings until you find what it is you want. But, I guess that doesn't really exist in Arena.

@DracoNihil
I am pretty certain the systems are the same for both games, though I haven't played Daggerfall in years. You can click on the doors of buildings to identify them (add them to the automap) in Arena, but the towns are so massive it would be a waste of time imo. Better to ask directions, like in real life!

-----

Last night I played:
Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World

As a bit of a lead up to this, I had been a bit concerned about how to organize my maps and notes for RPGs. My previous system has been to buy a bunch of small notebooks, and just devote a single notebook to each game, with each page in the notebook devoted to a particular town or dungeon or whatever in that game. However, I also needed to use graph paper for mapping dungeons, so it was getting a bit messy (it's also annoying to correct mapping errors).

I decided to go digital with my notes, but didn't like the idea of using another computer or tablet to do this, as I wanted to just be able to write notes and draw maps freehand, like I would on actual paper (I do have a touch pen for my Windows tablet, but it is not accurate enough for freehand writing/drawing).

Therefore, after much research, I ended up getting a Mobiscribe device. This is an eInk device like the Kindle but has much faster response so that you can write/draw naturally on it—designed specifically for note-taking, actually. Mobiscribe luckily allows you to create custom templates/backgrounds for documents, so I scanned the blank grid map from the M&M2 manual and made a nice 16x16 grid background. Another nice feature is that you can assign individual tags to each page, which makes searching through pages very quick; for example, I set tags for each map including its coordinates on the overall map (A1, C2, etc.) and the type of map (Town, Surface, etc.). This works out really nicely! I also have a few pages at the end of the document for just general note-taking.

I spent a large portion of last night getting used to the device, converting the maps I had already made, and generally coming up with a mapping and note-taking format that would work well for M&M2. Once I settled on a format that worked, I started exploring a bit. I think I am gonna enjoy this game even more than I did M&M1 (which is in my top 10 games of all time). The EGA artwork is nice, but what I am really enjoying is the loot... it seems like you are getting some kind of equipment upgrade nearly every battle, and taking a tour of all the towns in the game showed me that I'll have plenty of stuff to spend gold on for some time. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same formula as M&M1: a massive open world filled to the brim with fun content and meaningful exploration.

newtmonkey wrote on 2020-05-30, 08:30:

With my DOS machine configuration pretty much settled, I was able to put in some game time over this last week. […]
Show full quote

With my DOS machine configuration pretty much settled, I was able to put in some game time over this last week.

Lands of Lore
I'm currently exploring the swamp after getting through a mess of my own making; in RPGs that allow me to save anywhere and have multiple save slots, I keep just a single save file for each location so that there is still some sense of danger. Well, I saved in the swamp with a group of several of those annoying slime enemies just around the corner and could not defeat them no matter how many times I tried. The key was to switch to blunt weapons, which do a lot more damage to them... the game is such a simplified RPG that I didn't think it would implement this! Anyway, I got through it and explored the rest of the swamp. Fun game, but I never cared much for real-time party combat.

The Elder Scrolls: Arena
One thing I noticed straight away is that the game is way too fast even on a Pentium 133; movement is nice, but combat and animations are waaaay too fast. You don't have any time to react to enemies and even a rat can kill you in a few seconds. I wonder if this is why the starter dungeon has such a brutal reputation; having played it on the recommended hardware back when it was released (486/50), the game is NOT meant to be played so fast. Luckily, the latest patch includes a builtin slowdown tool (not moslo) you can use when launching the game, specifically for playing the game on a Pentium class PC. I found a delay of 3 or 4 is perfect for playing on a P133.

Anyway, there is a lot to like about Arena, even when compared with modern Elder Scrolls games.

This game has got to have some of the most satisfying loot of all time. If you fully explore the starter dungeon, you'll have gained a few levels and will likely have found some nice equipment—and even some magic equipment if you are lucky. As you explore, you are constantly finding little upgrades here and there.

The scope of the game is insane. Yeah, it's mostly procedurely-generated stuff, but in this case it works really well, because 90% of the game content is there just to make the game feel a massive world that exists outside of your personal quest. The game has a main quest chain to follow with plenty of hand-designed content, but you can ignore it if you want and play the game almost like a roguelike as you enjoy all the random content. A big part of the game is talking to NPCs and gathering information. You have to ask NPCs where individual stores are located, and they will typically just give you general directions. Follow those directions, and ask someone else, until you are close enough where the NPC will mark the location on the map for you. In effect, it's a quest compass but instead of just giving you the information, it turns it into something interactive. I really like it!

The music is absolutely amazing with a good General MIDI synthesizer. It sounds incredible on the Sound Canvas, but it probably sounds great on any General MIDI synth. I do miss the days when game music was less like a film score and instead had strong melody...

Loved Arena as well -- feel like it's unappreciated. I played it for the first time around 2005 or so...and after I had played Morrowind already, but before Daggerfall. Had a blast. I did notice the issue with the speed... and it seemed very difficult (wasn't aware of the +/- speed at the time) to get any kind of reasonable balance between smooth movement and NPC animations that were the proper speed. Either standing in the middle of a populated town square and turning in circles would be a bit choppy but animations were correct or it would be smooth and they would be too fast. I'm glad they had patched in a slowdown tool but I wish many of these games had some sort of framerate cap for animations as well.