PhilsComputerLab wrote:

There is a little TSR tool for Doom to turn off vertical mouse. I think it's called novert.

Worked great, thank! Got to E2M4.

So regarding World of Xeen, I guess I'm maybe 35-40% through it? Half of my characters are level 12, the other half at level 11. Here's some impressions of it so far:
Positive:
-the world is broken up into 15x15 grids, making it OCD-satisfying to clear out areas
-the pacing is perfect. It almost never gets frustratingly difficult, and if it ever does, you always can take another route, do some grinding, and come back when you're a level higher.
-A couple of quick transport methods (Lloyd's Beacon spell and the mirrors) cut down the tediousness of long distance travel.
-the game is entirely turn-based. So you can walk away without having to pause or exit to a menu, and when you get back, time has not passed (hitting the space bar passes one unit of time).
-character development is awesomely satisfying.
-the combination of all these makes for a very addicting game (I just want to clear one more section...)
-the game is very easily played entirely by keyboard. The mouse can be used as well, or not. Up to you. Makes for very efficient gaming. 😉
-the FM music is high quality and very catchy. I find myself playing the game soundtrack as background music at work.
-the game doesn't take itself too seriously. Lots of cheap laughs throughout the game.
-despite the simple "lite" gameplay, you definitely sense all the statistical complexity going on underneath.
-graphics are very pleasant with lots of bright, rich colors and nice artwork.
-[edit]the game world has a banking system. each town has a bank, and you are encouraged to deposit gold and gems, which in turn earn 1% interest for each gaming week. money deposited in one town is available for withdrawal from any other town. apparently this is very useful, as items and training become so expensive toward the end of the game that it's hard to have enough gold without earning interest on it.
Negatives:
-the game is a bit speed sensitive. The game itself doesn't get too fast, but the mouse cursor blinks faster the faster the system, until it becomes invisible. The sweet spot is about 33-40Mhz on a 486. Slower than that and you can feel the game slow down (arrows fly toward enemies slower, etc).
-[edit]audio balance is not good. In my soundcard settings I had to max FM and drop Wave volume almost all the way in order to hear the music at a similar volume as the digitized sounds. No in-game sound mixer.
-the character screen sections are a bit tedious to wade through. For example, Items are 3 levels deep from the game screen.
-speaking of character items, too many items, and no good way of determining item value. Either trial and error or pay to identify (write it down, because if you forget, you'll have to pay to have it identified again!). There are multiple types of weapons, armor, accessories, and miscellaneous items, each in their own inventory section. So imagine among six characters, you've got a bunch of inventory of boots, gauntlets, helms, armor, shields, capes, rings, belts, pendants, etc. Pay to identify them to decide which to keep and which to sell. Forget, then pay to identify again. 😀 You end up spending a ton of time organizing inventory items, deciding what to keep and sell, etc. That part is a bit of a drag. In fact, that's about the only part of the game I can complain about. The rest is brilliant.

Cool, sounds like a great game. With the speed sensitivity, well the game is in the right hands 😀

You mentioned the FM music, does it support any MIDI devices?

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

You mentioned the FM music, does it support any MIDI devices?

Yes, but none work well on a GM daughterboard. It supports Roland GS, LAPC-I / MT-32, and Wave Blaster. The only one that works with my DreamBlaster is the Wave Blaster setting, and it does not sound very good. FM is better.

I forgot one more cool feature of this game: you can deposit your gold and gems into the bank and earn interest. 😀 From what I understand, this is almost a requirement, as near the end of the game gold becomes extremely hard to come by in order to pay for training to level up.

I just finished Mass Effect Andromeda (on PS4). Quality wise it was somewhere between Mass Effect 2 and 3 (with the 2 being the better one in my opinion). About 51 hours it took. There are still a few quests I did not do, but the main story is done.

clueless1 wrote:

...

So regarding World of Xeen, I guess I'm maybe 35-40% through it? Half of my characters are level 12, the other half at level 11. Here's some impressions of it so far:
...

Thanks for the detailed review! Since I remember completing Clouds of Xeen before installing Dark Side, I was wondering about the progression in World of Xeen - are you able to travel from one world to the other at will, or only to complete special quests?

clueless1 wrote:

I'm still playing Might and Magic: World of Xeen. It's going great, still enjoying it, etc. But, sometimes I just have a few minutes, or I want a little break, and Doom is just a couple of directories away...

I completed Doom 1 and 2 only quite recently - I played it in the '90s but never made much progress beyond the first levels at the time, I guess I found it a bit daunting as a teenager.
In the last couple of years I played both games with DosBox on my modern rig, and had great fun completing them. The graphics still look great to me and the midi sountrack is timeless. I played with just the keyboard - in fact I didn't even know using the mouse was a possibility - somehow I thought it was Quake that started the whole mouse look thing 😳

MMaximus wrote:

Thanks for the detailed review! Since I remember completing Clouds of Xeen before installing Dark Side, I was wondering about the progression in World of Xeen - are you able to travel from one world to the other at will, or only to complete special quests?

Yes, you can travel back and forth at will. There are these pyramids scattered around that if you use, will take you to "the other side". 😉 I've gone to Darkside a couple of times to just look around, and I did clear the first town there as well. I got lots of XP and gold too, which is helping me out on Cloudside.

MMaximus wrote:

I completed Doom 1 and 2 only quite recently - I played it in the '90s but never made much progress beyond the first levels at the time, I guess I found it a bit daunting as a teenager.
In the last couple of years I played both games with DosBox on my modern rig, and had great fun completing them. The graphics still look great to me and the midi sountrack is timeless. I played with just the keyboard - in fact I didn't even know using the mouse was a possibility - somehow I thought it was Quake that started the whole mouse look thing 😳

I'm just using the mouse to steer left and right and to fire. But I might have to try keyboard only. My ball mouse struggles with rapid turns...

I've been playing UT99 online with several well known mods, too bad most of them don't work properly online which I can only attribute to UT99's abysmal networking code.

Unreal 1 mods work online so much easier than UT99, what the hell's the deal there?

The recent 2.5D thread prompted me to begin Ultimate Doom and Duke3D. I've finished E1M1 and L.A. Meltdown last night.

I really need to find that novert thing for Doom though.

Mouselook in Duke3D looks really strange without perspective correction, looking up and down makes me dizzy 😵

Been messing around with Generals ZH. Was some fiddling around to get it to work online again and finally managed to play a few games with a friend, playing Zero Hour Reborn v4.0 (which was still installed from some years ago).
Been trying to figure out what my favorite general would be and perhaps create a few generals of my own.

I did have some problems trying to get the default camera height to increase. It's like the camera is being held up by someone with a fishing pole 🤣
I guess I've gotten used to the zoon function modern RTS games have.

And the thing is, there is actually a "cameraheight" thingy located in one of the ini files (buried inside one of the .BIG files) but modifying this .ini or the .BIG file directly seem to have no effect, as if it isn't being read atall 😵
I'm guess I'm probably overlooking something here.

Still struggling with Cannon Fodder.

Playing through Shogo: MAD via Wine, but the graphics are pretty messed up because of a lack of dithering and other weird problems.

I wish there was a way to fix all this.

DracoNihil wrote:

Playing through Shogo: MAD via Wine, but the graphics are pretty messed up because of a lack of dithering and other weird problems.

I wish there was a way to fix all this.

Is that WINE problem or GPU problem? IIRC modern GPUs don't support dithering anymoe.

Still going on Might and Magic: World of Xeen. Such a charming game, from the graphics, to the sound, to the sense of humor. My characters are now level 14-15. I feel like I'm about 2/3 through the Clouds of Xeen storyline. Once I beat Clouds, I may park the game for another before doing the Darkside, because this is a LONG game.

I got to the point where I purchased a plot of land and am slowly building up my own castle. 😎 I've now got my own Healing Temple, Weapons shop, Bank, and Inn. Great to have a base of operations like that. It's amazing how much juicy content they could fit into a 30MB game!

I'm kind of addicted to playing Re-Volt.. I was in college when it was released and it looked like the kind of game I felt proud to heave grown out of; the stuff I have missed! I wonder if there are any modern games like this..

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Is that WINE problem or GPU problem? IIRC modern GPUs don't support dithering anymoe.

I get no dithering even on a Mobility Radeon laptop (really REALLY old laptop too) so it's probably a GPU issue but there's more to it than that, stuff that's supposed to be translucent doesn't show up as translucent if certain models are being drawn... It's really really weird.

If there's a way to force this game to render at 32-bit colour rather than 16-bit I wouldn't have to worry about dithering, but I don't know how to fix the alpha blending screwing up all the time.

So no, you cannot save, but it's fun.

I got been heavy into Marvel Future Fight with this weeks release of the x-men epic quest. Its sad that mobile games are the best for comic oriented games, 🤣.

I just got the Sword of Xeen in Might & Magic: World of Xeen. I think I could try to beat the game now, but don't know if I stand a chance with level 18 characters. Might need to buff up at a bunch of fountains and maybe gain another level or two with some grinding.

Finally getting into Prince of Persia 2008, I've played around with it a few times in the past but never had my own copy. It has some flaws but the visuals, atmosphere, exploration & platforming elements are top notch and that's what I'm there for. Yeah the quick time events are annoying and it doesn't fit the Sands of Time continuity (which was already a reboot, seriously) but it's quite playable and interesting.

ONCE AGAIN my socket 478 P4HT/3.0+HD3850 AGP combo is punching WAY above its weight, despite not even meeting the base CPU requirement on the box the game runs great at 1440x900 with all the detail options on except anti-aliasing. Seems like I'm getting 25~30 FPS on average with some areas hitting 40-45 and *occasional* slowdowns to 15ish, mostly during area loads (i.e. not fights or critical action sequences.) Fully playable.

^^ I don't really see what we've accomplished with "next gen" games hardware lately, it seems like we "solved" graphics a decade ago. This looks stunning to me.

xjas wrote:

y see what we've accomplished with "next gen" games hardware lately, it seems like we "solved" graphics a decade ago. This looks stunning to me.

Yeah I tend to agree with you; the only visual enhancement I've seen in recent years that knocked my socks off was the NPC faces in Witcher 3, but I suspect that had more to do with the skill of the designers than GPU power.