Also, don't forget you can add your own shortcuts into the Steam interface. This means any game you buy on GOG, you can link into Steam! ;)

HunterZ wrote:

The only advantage of Steam for me is that it automatically updates.

You can even set the schedule to make updates happen in certain hours (for large incompetently patched games like ROTT '13) and set a new 'immediately update high priority' setting for the games that require constant updates (for the online games).

I find automatic updating a neccessity and I wish I had that luxury with my game 🙁 The player base is so fragmented between the many 0.7.1, 0.7.7, 0.8.1, 0.8.6, 0.8.8 versions, all incompatible with each other due to checksum issues....

leileilol wrote:

HunterZ wrote:

The only advantage of Steam for me is that it automatically updates.

You can even set the schedule to make updates happen in certain hours (for large incompetently patched games like ROTT '13) and set a new 'immediately update high priority' setting for the games that require constant updates (for the online games).

I've never seen the point of the scheduling stuff, but I run my Internet and computers 24/7 in general.

What I really like that they recently added is an option to avoid pausing updates when launching a game, because it's silly to pause the update when I'm not playing a multiplayer game. Unfortunately it's a per-game setting (as in "don't pause downloads when I'm playing THIS game").

I find automatic updating a neccessity and I wish I had that luxury with my game 🙁 The player base is so fragmented between the many 0.7.1, 0.7.7, 0.8.1, 0.8.6, 0.8.8 versions, all incompatible with each other due to checksum issues....

If there's any online component to the game at all, you should have it check somewhere to determine whether the user's version is out of date and hassle the crap out of them about it. If there isn't, then just refuse to offer support for old versions, and it's their own fault if they don't update; it might be good to give them ways to easily tell that a new version has been released, though, like signing up for email notifications or posting to a twitter feed (eww, twitter).

Gemini000 wrote:

Also, don't forget you can add your own shortcuts into the Steam interface. This means any game you buy on GOG, you can link into Steam! 😉

too much work to do n 5 or machines + any time i reinstall the os. Technically i have 13 machines most of which care steam and modern game capable. Gog is the only exception to my steam or nothing rule. even then i'll re buy gog games on steam if they show up on steam. I have so many games now i can i loose track of some of them, specially if they aren't on steam.

http://mysteamgauge.com/account?username=cdoublejj

Ancient DOS Games Filler #35 - Words of Jesus is online!

...so... how many of you would believe this is one of my Top-10 most requested games? XD

Seriously, I got several eMails following the release of Episode 50 of ADG (and a few more once it went up on YouTube) asking me about it, so I figured now was probably the best time to take a look at it. :B

Oddly enough, while it's only an average game and not very substantial, I'd rather play it over 90% of the other Christian games I've played. The best one I've played is definitely Spiritual Warfare, though it gets a bad rep for being a blatant Zelda clone... at least at first. The further in you get the more interesting and varied the weapons and settings become. I've heard there's even a DOS version but I haven't figured out how to get a legit copy of it... :P

Also no, I'm not Christian myself, I've just been curious about Christian games as a whole, mostly thanks to James Rolfe's look at Christian games over the years. ;)

My brother and I traded our Turbografix-16 (aka PC Engine) for another kid's NES in the early 1990s (we'd been wanting a NES for years, but foolishly chose the mediocre TG16 instead when the opportunity arose; realizing our mistake, my brother fast-talked a friend into a trade - he even threw in some G.I. Joe action figures to sweeten the deal). ANYWAYS, the NES came with a copy of Spiritual Warfare and not much else (SMB1+Duck Hunt, and we had a Cobra Command cartridge laying around that someone had given us at one point).

I don't remember whether I actually beat SW, but I did spend a couple weeks playing quite a ways into the game. The gameplay was actually pretty decent, although it's fair to say that it was a Zelda clone (if a sufficiently creative one). Unfortunately it had no real plot, and you got constantly smacked with cheesy Bible quizzes; these factors turned it into a bit of a repetitive slog through various "environments" like a park, a downtown area (don't go in the bars! That's sinful!), an airport, etc.

The interesting thing is that the developer Wisdom Tree actually started out as a secular company named Color Dreams. They decided to enter the Christian games niche for some reason, converting some of their existing secular games into Christian ones. They did surprisingly well, and I remember seeing their games in Christian bookstores at malls when my mom dragged us through them (I noticed everything video game related when I was a kid, no matter where I was; video and computer games have been a life-long interest for me).

Gemini000 wrote:

Ancient DOS Games Filler #35 - Words of Jesus is online! […]
Show full quote

Ancient DOS Games Filler #35 - Words of Jesus is online!

...so... how many of you would believe this is one of my Top-10 most requested games? 🤣

Seriously, I got several eMails following the release of Episode 50 of ADG (and a few more once it went up on YouTube) asking me about it, so I figured now was probably the best time to take a look at it. :B

Oddly enough, while it's only an average game and not very substantial, I'd rather play it over 90% of the other Christian games I've played. The best one I've played is definitely Spiritual Warfare, though it gets a bad rep for being a blatant Zelda clone... at least at first. The further in you get the more interesting and varied the weapons and settings become. I've heard there's even a DOS version but I haven't figured out how to get a legit copy of it... 😜

Also no, I'm not Christian myself, I've just been curious about Christian games as a whole, mostly thanks to James Rolfe's look at Christian games over the years. 😉

Funny thing is, Wisdom Tree still sells their older DOS catalog on their official site. Probably the cheapest place to obtain a copy of Super Noah's Ark 3D oddly enough, and for good reason since it is still an entertaining game since it is pretty much Wolfenstein with a Christian coat of paint.

HunterZ wrote:

mediocre TG16

🤣

Gemini000 wrote:

Ancient DOS Games Filler #35 - Words of Jesus is online!

WRT your SBFMDRV issue, the legacy drivers on Creative's site are just the absolute bare bones you need to get their cards working. They're not the same as what you got shipped with the card.

The original and complete Sound Blaster 1.5 driver floppies are on VogonsDrivers as disk images, and they certainly do contain the driver you need.

SquallStrife wrote:

The original and complete Sound Blaster 1.5 driver floppies are on VogonsDrivers as disk images, and they certainly do contain the driver you need.

Good to know. Before I go through the effort of linking to the appropriate file pages though from my website, I assume the disk images available can be mounted in DOSBox using the IMGMOUNT command?

Sure can.

http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=48 contains two flat 720KB floppy images.

Alternatively, you could use something like WinImage to just grab the SBFMDRV.COM file directly from the image without going through the rigmarole of mounting it in DOSBox.

Alternatively, you can use the SOUND.COM from one of the Adlib disks. The name of the file is not important, its the services that it provides via a software interrupt which are. Words of Jesus is not the only game to require it, when I was testing games for my Game Blaster blog entry I found at least one game that required the software driver/TSR to be loaded to produce Adlib music.

Thanks for the info guys! I've got it included in the additional information section of the video page now! :)

Rad! 😀

Great Hierophant wrote:

Alternatively, you can use the SOUND.COM from one of the Adlib disks. The name of the file is not important, its the services that it provides via a software interrupt which are. Words of Jesus is not the only game to require it, when I was testing games for my Game Blaster blog entry I found at least one game that required the software driver/TSR to be loaded to produce Adlib music.

Yeah, I've run into a few games that require these drivers as well. One that I can still remember off the top of my head is Hoosier City by MVP Software.

Not to unduly complicate things, but FYI there is a specific version of SBFMDRV.COM that plays music in stereo. It's for the SBPro 2 and its PS/2 Micro Channel variant, but will also work on SB16 and AWE32. I think the driver simply divides instruments across channels, so the stereo effect is probably not intended by composers. Anyway, it's just another option, and you can get the driver here.

That would be similar to what some early module music playback software would do to MOD files specifically when said software had its own format to work with. Because I wear headphones, (and I'm certainly not the only person who does), I find it incredibly difficult to listen to music in stereo that wasn't ever intended to be played back in stereo. It just changes the whole dynamic of how it sounds, usually not for the better. :P

Gemini000 wrote:

That would be similar to what some early module music playback software would do to MOD files specifically when said software had its own format to work with. Because I wear headphones, (and I'm certainly not the only person who does), I find it incredibly difficult to listen to music in stereo that wasn't ever intended to be played back in stereo. It just changes the whole dynamic of how it sounds, usually not for the better. 😜

Most tracker players can play 4-channel MOD files in stereo by assigning a pair of channels to each stereo side. I usually like this effect, but only when the stereo separation is set to a low enough level. The part that screws it up for me, though, is that I've lost some high-frequency hearing in my right ear (due to working a drive-thru for a year after college, where people's squealing breaks would make me tear my headset off in pain because I had to run it at max volume to understand their orders); I've started to notice by turning my headphones around occasionally that I'm not hearing some of the subtle high-frequency stuff going on in some tracker music as a result. I've also recently developed tinnitus in my other ear, but fortunately it doesn't seem to have as drastically affected my ability to hear various frequencies (it just reminds me of growing up around electronics in the 80s, where audio tapes had high-frequency hiss and VCRs/TVs had high-pitched whines, etc.).

You're right though that stereo can totally change the feel. I actually encountered this in a tracker song that I wrote a number of years ago, which has a part where it alternates back and forth between a repeating note and a 4-note progression of increasing pitch; at some point I decided to also have it alternate which side of the stereo field the notes were being played on, and it completely changed the way my brain processes the music.

Oooooooookay, I've run into an interesting conundrum for this week's ADG episode which I'm surprised hasn't happened sooner: My script is way too long! :O

I just finished writing the script for the next episode and it's TEN pages. This would make for a half-hour-long episode. The trouble is that the game isn't interesting enough to hold anyone's attention that long, so I really need to shorten this thing down. The trouble though is that if I do shorten it down, I'd be cutting out some rather important points or not elaborating on points that don't come across properly being shorter.

So... I'm curious if anyone has any opinions about this, if I should keep the long script or cut out whole sections which are only moderately important as opposed to majorly important. (For example, only briefly mentioning each of the featured aircraft as opposed to giving a paragraph of info for each would probably cut the script length down by at least 1 1/2 pages.)

A half-hour isn't overly long if you really have something interesting to say.

I guess it comes down to what you think the focus and detail levels of ADG episodes should be.

Well, I managed to cut it down to 8 pages. Still makes for a script that's about 24 minutes long but should be more to the point as a result. :)