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Reply 2240 of 5847, by newtmonkey

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I just couldn't get into Pillars as a real-time w/pause system. I feel that it works a lot better with the turn-based combat mode of Pillars 2. However, I hate skipping games so I'll likely just reinstall Pillars 1 and force my way through it at some point.

Reply 2241 of 5847, by Shagittarius

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newtmonkey wrote on 2020-09-25, 16:57:

I just couldn't get into Pillars as a real-time w/pause system. I feel that it works a lot better with the turn-based combat mode of Pillars 2. However, I hate skipping games so I'll likely just reinstall Pillars 1 and force my way through it at some point.

My advice to get through pillars is to spend some time setting up the auto pause settings so that it mimics turn based, for example you can set it to pause automatically every time someone is able to take an action. I know that I eventually achieved a setup with auto pause that was somewhat acceptable to me, maybe you can find more enjoyment that way too...

Reply 2242 of 5847, by clueless1

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Shagittarius wrote on 2020-09-25, 17:24:
newtmonkey wrote on 2020-09-25, 16:57:

I just couldn't get into Pillars as a real-time w/pause system. I feel that it works a lot better with the turn-based combat mode of Pillars 2. However, I hate skipping games so I'll likely just reinstall Pillars 1 and force my way through it at some point.

My advice to get through pillars is to spend some time setting up the auto pause settings so that it mimics turn based, for example you can set it to pause automatically every time someone is able to take an action. I know that I eventually achieved a setup with auto pause that was somewhat acceptable to me, maybe you can find more enjoyment that way too...

Yeah, I ended up doing something like that and it helped quite a bit.

I'm 20 hours into Bioshock Remastered and just reloaded about an hour back to replay a section I messed up: when Sander Cohen appears after I placed the final photo in his masterpiece, I realized I shouldn't have killed him.

So far, after some initial annoyance, I'm really digging this game. It still bugs me a bit how similar this is to System Shock 2, and I guess those who didn't play SS2 wouldn't care and just love the game, but for me it's a little TOO similar, so feels like the developers took the easy way out with reusing so much of what made SS2 great. It's basically SS2 in a different environment, with updated graphics.

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
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Reply 2243 of 5847, by Shagittarius

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clueless1 wrote on 2020-09-25, 22:56:
Yeah, I ended up doing something like that and it helped quite a bit. […]
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Shagittarius wrote on 2020-09-25, 17:24:
newtmonkey wrote on 2020-09-25, 16:57:

I just couldn't get into Pillars as a real-time w/pause system. I feel that it works a lot better with the turn-based combat mode of Pillars 2. However, I hate skipping games so I'll likely just reinstall Pillars 1 and force my way through it at some point.

My advice to get through pillars is to spend some time setting up the auto pause settings so that it mimics turn based, for example you can set it to pause automatically every time someone is able to take an action. I know that I eventually achieved a setup with auto pause that was somewhat acceptable to me, maybe you can find more enjoyment that way too...

Yeah, I ended up doing something like that and it helped quite a bit.

I'm 20 hours into Bioshock Remastered and just reloaded about an hour back to replay a section I messed up: when Sander Cohen appears after I placed the final photo in his masterpiece, I realized I shouldn't have killed him.

So far, after some initial annoyance, I'm really digging this game. It still bugs me a bit how similar this is to System Shock 2, and I guess those who didn't play SS2 wouldn't care and just love the game, but for me it's a little TOO similar, so feels like the developers took the easy way out with reusing so much of what made SS2 great. It's basically SS2 in a different environment, with updated graphics.

It's system shock 3, improved everywhere including streamlined gameplay mechanics.

Reply 2244 of 5847, by newtmonkey

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Shagittarius wrote on 2020-09-25, 17:24:

My advice to get through pillars is to spend some time setting up the auto pause settings so that it mimics turn based, for example you can set it to pause automatically every time someone is able to take an action. I know that I eventually achieved a setup with auto pause that was somewhat acceptable to me, maybe you can find more enjoyment that way too...

Thanks, I'll try doing this. I'll just enable it all and then scale it back as I get either annoyed or used to it haha.

Reply 2245 of 5847, by Tiger433

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Today I playing Far Cry on my Pentium E6500/Radeon HD3650 AGP. In my opinion that game is a little annoing and frustrating sometimes but look very good. I also playing Stardew Valley and I love that game.

W7 "retro" PC: ASUS P8H77-V, Intel i3 3240, 8 GB DDR3 1333, HD6850, 2 x 500 GB HDD
Retro 98SE PC: MSI MS-6511, AMD Athlon XP 2000+, 512 MB RAM, ATI Rage 128, 80GB HDD
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Reply 2246 of 5847, by Joseph_Joestar

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Finished my playthrough of Diablo 2 + expansion today. Had some really nice gear in the end, was almost tempted to do another run on Nightmare difficulty but I'll leave that for another time.

Moving on to the Gothic series, starting with the first game. Kinda wondering if I should play it on my Win98 or my WinXP rig.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 2247 of 5847, by kolderman

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-09-27, 18:10:

Finished my playthrough of Diablo 2 + expansion today. Had some really nice gear in the end, was almost tempted to do another run on Nightmare difficulty but I'll leave that for another time.

Moving on to the Gothic series, starting with the first game. Kinda wondering if I should play it on my Win98 or my WinXP rig.

The first Gothic is a win98 game, you can progress to winxp for the rest of the series.

Reply 2248 of 5847, by Joseph_Joestar

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kolderman wrote on 2020-09-27, 18:26:

The first Gothic is a win98 game, you can progress to winxp for the rest of the series.

Sound good.

I also vaguely remember having a bug with invisible inventory icons on a newer GPU at one point. Not sure if that's still a thing, but there's no need to risk it when my Win9x rig is powerful enough to run the game.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 2249 of 5847, by clueless1

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Tiger433 wrote on 2020-09-27, 17:55:

Today I playing Far Cry on my Pentium E6500/Radeon HD3650 AGP. In my opinion that game is a little annoing and frustrating sometimes but look very good. I also playing Stardew Valley and I love that game.

I just fired up Far Cry this morning on a retro PC I built several years ago. It had been in storage so I thought I'd fire it up and see if it works. Athlon XP 2200+/Radeon 9800 Pro. So this would be a fairly high end system in 2003, about a year before Far Cry came out. In 1024x768 I'm getting 20-40 fps with the details set to Very High. The in-game auto-detect puts it at Medium, which still only gets 25-50 fps. As I recall, this is the game that basically passed the performance baton from the 9800 Pro to the 6800GT. Even the 6600GT was faster than it.

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 2250 of 5847, by badmojo

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-09-27, 18:10:

Moving on to the Gothic series, starting with the first game. Kinda wondering if I should play it on my Win98 or my WinXP rig.

The Gothics are awesome, number 2 in particular. Playing on original hardware is fun but these games are surprisingly demanding, and there are great modern patches / texture updates / DX11 renderer out these days so I can't go back to the original versions. Below are my notes for G1 and G2 - a little bit of effort makes a big difference to the play-ability of these games.

G1:

-- gothic_patch_108k.exe

-- gothic1_playerkit-1.08k.exe

-- Gothic1_PlayerKit-2.8.exe

-- G1Classic-SystemPack-1.7.exe

-- copy Carnage_Graphics_patch.VDF to ..\Gothic\Data\

-- extract Texture Pack By Artemiano Gothic I.7z to ..\Gothic\Data\

-- extract GD3D11_PreviewReleaseG2.zip and GD3D11_PreviewReleaseG1.zip to ..\Gothic\System (in that order, overwrite if asked)

-- unpack G1_NP_UPDATE.rar and copy folder (GD3D11) to Gothic\System

-- G1Classic-SystemPack-1.7.exe

-- once in game, hit F11 and turn all the draw distance / quality sliders up to max
- shadow quality = 3
- dynamic shadows OFF (black screen, strange sun flipping around thing when on)
- brightness 1.5
- contrast 1

-- copy Gothic.ini into the /system folder to save time with key mappings

-- rename C:\Games\Gothic\_work\DATA\video\logo1.bik

-- use "C:\Games\Gothic\system\GothicStarter.exe -start" to run the game

G2:

-- install the GOG version **with** NoTR 
-- Rename gothic.exe to gothic2.exe in /system
-- install gothic2_fix-2.6.0.0-rev2.exe
-- install Gothic2_PlayerKit-2.8.exe
-- install G2NoTR-SystemPack-1.7.exe

**DX11:
-- extract Gothic2-GD3D11-17.7-dev11-fix2.zip into the /system folder
-- copy UserSettings.ini into the \system\GD3D11 dir (these are the DX11 settings)

-- extract replacements_dds.7z (base game normalmaps) to system\GD3D11
-- copy \Data\SplashGothic2.vdf to \Data in the game dir
-- install widescreens_patch_GII_NOTR.exe and select 1080P

** to play the vanilla version of the game:
-- install G2_Classic-1.1.exe
-- change the icon to run this:
"C:\Games\Gothic 2 Gold\system\GothicStarter.exe" -game:G2_Classic -start
-- or for NoTR:
"C:\Games\Gothic 2 Gold\system\GothicStarter.exe" -game:GothicGame -start

--edit Gothic.ini in the game dir to correct the mouse speed

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 2251 of 5847, by Joseph_Joestar

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badmojo wrote on 2020-09-28, 03:04:

The Gothics are awesome, number 2 in particular. Playing on original hardware is fun but these games are surprisingly demanding, and there are great modern patches / texture updates / DX11 renderer out these days so I can't go back to the original versions. Below are my notes for G1 and G2 - a little bit of effort makes a big difference to the play-ability of these games.

Cheers, I've copied your notes for later reference. I'll try running the games stock first, to see how they handle. Already confirmed that my WinXP machine has the "invisible inventory" bug in G1, so trying it on Win98 next. If performance proves to be unacceptable, I'll start looking into those patches.

I kinda distrust fan mods, as they often change gameplay aspects which some random dude thought should be "fixed" without anything being objectively broken. This is me speaking in general, based on my past experiences with other games. I haven't used any of the Gothic community patches yet, but from the looks of things, they seem mostly aimed at graphical improvements which is good.

EDIT - just tried it on my AthlonXP rig under Win98 but it had some stuttering while moving around. Figured it needed more RAM, so I added another 512 MB (for a total of 1 GB) swapped out the SBLive for an Audigy2 ZS and switched over to Windows 2000 + SP4. Works just fine there. Fraps says I'm getting 25-30 FPS at 800x600 which is good enough for me. No stuttering and no invisible inventory bug either.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 2252 of 5847, by newtmonkey

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Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday (DOS)
I'm currently taking a break from Pool of Radiance as I've hit a spot where several of my characters have reached their max level for the game (it's set VERY low in this game considering how much combat there is) so combat has become a bit of a drag. However, I really enjoy the Gold Box engine and wanted to play something a little different... and realized I'd never even tried this one! I took a quick glance at the manual and liked the changes I was seeing, so spent some time making a party and finishing the introduction mission.

As one of the latter Gold Box games, playing BR:CtD is quite a shock compared with PoR! It supports VGA graphics and Adlib music but only PC speaker sound effects. The interface is a lot more comfortable to use, and the game actually resolves two of the biggest headaches of the Gold Box games... by eliminating them completely 🤣. No spells to memorize, and healing is done automatically after combat by your medics (though healing is random based on the character's skill). Speaking of which, the game includes a skill system with each individual class specializing in certain skills.

Combat, at least at first, is mostly done at range. You also get access to grenades which do various things, such as blinding enemies, blocking explosions, etc.; these basically replace certain spells from the D&D-based games.

The introductory mission is short and linear, and has nearly constant random encounters. The mission takes place during a surprise attack and I suspect that you are meant to rush toward your objective, with the constant random encounters basically punishing you for ignoring your objective. Still, I went and mapped the area (there's nothing in it) but was able to get some good upgrades from the enemies I defeated and by the end of the mission had enough experience to level each character up.

From there, you get taken to a friendly base that acts as a "town" of sorts with access to a bar (information), shops, healing, etc. Your second mission involves you flying out to examine a SPOOKY derelict ship, so I stopped there for the day.

I'm really enjoying this so far, but am somewhat impatiently waiting for the game to open up. I know the game allows you to explore space and even fight ship-to-ship battles, and I've heard that it becomes somewhat nonlinear a few missions in (as with PoR), even with a bit of Sid Meier's Pirates! throw in as you fly around shooting down enemy ships and earning salvage.

Reply 2253 of 5847, by liqmat

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Just finished Doom 3 BFG. The core game and the official expansion was a replay for me, but of course with the better HD graphics. The Lost Mission I had never played and I was surprised how lengthy it was. A very nice addition imo. I realized as I was playing I really don't care for the hell levels. They are fairly boring tbh. I really like the Mars base levels with all the machinery and and fantastic lighting. That's what made this game so fantastic in its day. The spectacular lighting effects. Also, one thing that gets overlooked many times is the sound design. Doom 3 has some of the best sound design I've experienced in a game. Anyway, I don't think I'll ever pick up Doom 3 anything again as I am totally burned out on the game. If I had one complaint it would be not enough enemy variety.

Reply 2254 of 5847, by Shagittarius

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newtmonkey wrote on 2020-09-28, 14:58:
Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday (DOS) I'm currently taking a break from Pool of Radiance as I've hit a spot where several of […]
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Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday (DOS)
I'm currently taking a break from Pool of Radiance as I've hit a spot where several of my characters have reached their max level for the game (it's set VERY low in this game considering how much combat there is) so combat has become a bit of a drag. However, I really enjoy the Gold Box engine and wanted to play something a little different... and realized I'd never even tried this one! I took a quick glance at the manual and liked the changes I was seeing, so spent some time making a party and finishing the introduction mission.

As one of the latter Gold Box games, playing BR:CtD is quite a shock compared with PoR! It supports VGA graphics and Adlib music but only PC speaker sound effects. The interface is a lot more comfortable to use, and the game actually resolves two of the biggest headaches of the Gold Box games... by eliminating them completely 🤣. No spells to memorize, and healing is done automatically after combat by your medics (though healing is random based on the character's skill). Speaking of which, the game includes a skill system with each individual class specializing in certain skills.

Combat, at least at first, is mostly done at range. You also get access to grenades which do various things, such as blinding enemies, blocking explosions, etc.; these basically replace certain spells from the D&D-based games.

The introductory mission is short and linear, and has nearly constant random encounters. The mission takes place during a surprise attack and I suspect that you are meant to rush toward your objective, with the constant random encounters basically punishing you for ignoring your objective. Still, I went and mapped the area (there's nothing in it) but was able to get some good upgrades from the enemies I defeated and by the end of the mission had enough experience to level each character up.

From there, you get taken to a friendly base that acts as a "town" of sorts with access to a bar (information), shops, healing, etc. Your second mission involves you flying out to examine a SPOOKY derelict ship, so I stopped there for the day.

I'm really enjoying this so far, but am somewhat impatiently waiting for the game to open up. I know the game allows you to explore space and even fight ship-to-ship battles, and I've heard that it becomes somewhat nonlinear a few missions in (as with PoR), even with a bit of Sid Meier's Pirates! throw in as you fly around shooting down enemy ships and earning salvage.

I played both the Buck Rodgers games and I remember being shocked at how short they were, especially the 2nd one. They were fun to play though.

Reply 2255 of 5847, by Bruninho

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Just played a bit of NBA Live 97 (Pistons vs Bulls). Game works great. And spent a few hours creating tactics for Football Manager 2020.

"Design isn't just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
JOBS, Steve.
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Reply 2256 of 5847, by newtmonkey

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clueless1 wrote on 2020-09-17, 09:58:

I definitely don't mind! Thanks! It sounds like you've played a lot more RPGs than I have. Any others (either old or modern) stand out to you?

Oh! Another modern game I just recalled that you would probably enjoy: Wizards & Warriors (2000, Win95+).

This game was made by the same guy that made Wizardry V/VI/VII (D.W. Bradley) and is basically a spiritual sequel to Wizardry VII. You can get it on GOG and I've confirmed that it runs fine even on Windows 10 64-bit.

Reply 2257 of 5847, by clueless1

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newtmonkey wrote on 2020-09-29, 04:58:

Oh! Another modern game I just recalled that you would probably enjoy: Wizards & Warriors (2000, Win95+).

This game was made by the same guy that made Wizardry V/VI/VII (D.W. Bradley) and is basically a spiritual sequel to Wizardry VII. You can get it on GOG and I've confirmed that it runs fine even on Windows 10 64-bit.

Yep, I've been aware of this one since it was released! One that I've looked at a lot but never bought. I will eventually get it when my current playlist dwindles down more or it goes on a massive sale. 😀 Thanks!

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 2259 of 5847, by appiah4

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More Pillars of Eternity. To be honest, going into the auto-pause and setting some things to my taste really helped with the flow of combat. As I progress through Act I, I am finding myself more and more immersed in the story, setting and characters. If you skipped this game due to mechanic gripes, you are missing out.

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