Ancient DOS Games Pro 17 - Minimum Winning Score - Dangerous Dave is online!

So, I play through Dangerous Dave about once or twice a year just for the heck of it, but something I'd never thought to try until recently was to go for a "Minimum Winning Score" run, beating the game collecting as few points as possible, and funnily enough, this not only turned out to make the game MUCH harder, but it also revealed some important idiosyncrasies and a bug I didn't even know existed! :O

Ancient DOS Games Episode 279 - Zork Nemesis is online!

So... Zork Nemesis was not only the very first Zork game I ever played as a kid, but I only ever owned the demo version and I really enjoyed it, but never got around to acquiring or playing the full game. Heck, I never even looked into what the content of the full game was and went into it completely blind for this review...

...THAT WAS A MISTAKE. O_O

Nah, I'm just kidding, the game was still enjoyable and retained the quality of its presentation and content throughout, but this game absolutely trolled me in terms of the KIND of content, because it may start out as a fun, fantasy adventure steeped in alchemy, but about a quarter-way in things take a MASSIVE turn into the dark and disturbing, and I get the impression based on the box art and other things I've seen that the game trolling players was ABSOLUTELY INTENTIONAL. :P

Ancient DOS Games Mod 9 - Daggerfall Unity is online!

Yup, without a scrap of the original source code and LOTS of effort by tons of people, Daggerfall Unity has finally reached a feature-complete state! As such, this has absolutely become the best way to play Daggerfall, not just because of its features but for a whole slew of reasons!

Gemini000 wrote on 2021-02-06, 02:46:

As such, this has absolutely become the best way to play Daggerfall, not just because of its features but for a whole slew of reasons!

Yeah, especially hilarious that they directly use the heightmap data because it was almost entirely disregarded in the original FALL.EXE "due to bugs".

If you apply the "Distant Terrain" mod to DUF, the result reminds me of Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri.

Ancient DOS Games Episode 280: A-10 Tank Killer is online!

I started encountering issues with this game right from the get-go and was initially thinking this was going to be a fairly negative episode, but something struck me as odd when I was reading some of the readme details about how the original game would run too fast on modern systems and so I looked into how old the original game was and... yeah... suddenly things made a LOT more sense... :o

This game came out just as computer hardware was gearing to go from everyday speeds to MAGNITUDES FASTER, and as such, the devs were fairly limited in what they could pull off, plus they didn't have a lot to compare to; most combat flight sims weren't up to the same level of graphical fidelity or simulation accuracy they were aiming for. What we got was decent for when it came out, but aged very poorly, very quickly.

Ancient DOS Games Filler #86 - Cube World - 2021 Followup is online!

OK, as an indie dev myself, I had to speak up about this one. The hate thrown out against the Sep 2019 release of this game on Steam has been absolutely ludicrous and disgusting on so many levels for what is a perfectly playable game. No solo dev anywhere on the face of the planet who's been pouring their heart and soul into a game project in their spare time for over a decade deserves to go through this and so I've made a video which starts as just a simple and informative look at the changes which have occurred since the 2013 alpha version of the game, followed by a discussion of what happened on the social side of things over on Steam, while ending with some insights based on recent developments and a leaked screenshot.

woo hoo new eps

Ancient DOS Games Episode 281 - Hexen is online!
(Please note that this is a mature-rated video.)

So... time to answer the burning question some of you undoubtedly have: What the Hell happened to me this month?!

Very early in the month I slipped on some black ice and severely injured my right upper arm and shoulder in the resulting fall. While I didn't break any bones there was definitely some muscle and ligament damage, thus I spent the next 12 days straight in constant pain. This wouldn't stop most things I do in front of my computer, but when I'm in pain it absolutely comes through in my voice so there was no way I would be able to voice any videos. So, I had to put all videos on hold until the ambient pain was mostly gone...

...and then just as I was deciding it was time to get back to making videos, I got hit with an INTENSE bout of food poisoning which AGAIN left me in pain for several days, thought the worst of it thankfully only lasted a few hours. I decided despite that to attempt to continue making the ADG Pro video I had lined up, but due to noise issues I wasn't able to get any recording done when I intended to, delaying my progress by another day.

So, then in the middle of last Saturday I'm halfway through editing when I realize a number doesn't look right, and I check it with the reams of data I'd collected to make the video, spotted a very simple mistake... but said simple mistake basically changed the ENTIRE outcome of the video meaning every bit of editing I had done, every bit of voicework, and most of the overlays, were all suddenly WORTHLESS. D:

...yeah, this month has been ABYSMAL. I should point out too, the nature of my injury has made sleep extraordinarily difficult and even though the ambient pain is mostly gone, my shoulder STILL doesn't safely move into my normal sleeping position, thus I've not been sleeping right this entire time and probably won't be for weeks to come until the ligaments have a chance to heal and secure my shoulder joints into place again... presuming they're not torn, in which case, that would be REALLY bad, but I won't know that for several more weeks at least. >_<

In any case, FINALLY getting back into things and decided to just pick a game I knew would be safe to cover due to prior experience with the shareware version: Hexen. I actually expected a bit more depth out of this one than it turned out to provide, but it was still fun to play despite that and there's a couple interesting technical points I go into as well over the course of the video, such as how a Doom Engine game is producing moving walls and a particular trick to keep from getting stuck given how intertwined all the maps are. :B

It kind of split into two different but related series. And then they didn't go any further with them for some reason.

The series is the fight against the 3 Serpent Riders.
Heretic features D'Sparil. SotSR shows Corvus' banishment and Heretic 2 is his return after Hexen 2 takes place.
Hexen features Korax. Deathkings again continues the adventures of the heroes from Hexen.
Hexen 2 features Eidolon. Portal of Praevus revisits that world after Eidolon's defeat.
What more can they do with it?

Also Heretic II isn't on digital stores because of different rights claimed on it by both Bethesda and Activision.

Heretic II does not play nice with a lot of modern hardware because of the dated OpenGL renderer and the fact that the GL_EXTENSIONS string reader is still using a fixed-length buffer rather than something dynamically allocated on the fly, so it will buffer overflow immediately on anything newer than when the game came out.

While limiting the string length is very, very trivial to do on open source Linux drivers, it's virtually impossible to configure on proprietary drivers on Windows.

(just exporting a MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=1.2 MESA_EXTENSION_MAX_YEAR=1998 is all you need to work around the problem in Linux with open source drivers)

DracoNihil wrote on 2021-03-29, 16:21:

While limiting the string length is very, very trivial to do on open source Linux drivers, it's virtually impossible to configure on proprietary drivers on Windows.

I'm fairly certain DXWnd can do this, as I use that program for a bunch of old Win9x and even a couple WinXP games on my Windows 10 system. :B

Gemini000 wrote on 2021-03-30, 19:29:

I'm fairly certain DXWnd can do this, as I use that program for a bunch of old Win9x and even a couple WinXP games on my Windows 10 system. :B

Well yes, sure. But I'm specifically mentioning that driver setup programs don't even offer a ways to tune that. It's always having to deal with a third-party macguffin in Windows if you want anything to work right.

Hell, I think because of how hardcoded some of these "compatibility" options are in drivers and post Windows XP, you sometimes have to rename Heretic 2's EXE to "Quake2.exe" just to get anything to work.

It's not hardcoded, it's a database included with Windows.

Ancient DOS Games Episode 282 - Omega is online!

Sometimes I think people might get the wrong impression when I tell them I'm a programmer that because of that component of my skill set I must enjoy playing games which are focussed around programming. Well... no. To me, programming is WORK and I play games to have FUN. :P

Still, that doesn't mean there aren't people out there who enjoy writing code and Omega definitely feels like a game written specifically for such people, especially given how little pre-made content it provides the player with, requiring players to instead make almost everything themselves or to download tanks and battlefields from BBSes.

...also, to whoever's bright idea it was to make Home and End traverse to the start/end of the ENTIRE BLOCK OF CODE as opposed to just the start or end of the current line... WHHHHHHHHHHY?!?!?!?!?1 D:<

Ancient DOS Games Pro 18 - Damage Tables - Mega Man I & III is online!

Having solid info about your weapons when playing a game ALWAYS helps to determine the best way through, but the original two DOS Mega Man games didn't really suit themselves well for even wanting to use any of them. Still, maybe there would be some useful info to dig up regardless and it turns out... yes, there actually is a LOT of interesting info to be found here!

I also compiled the results of all the effort into a PDF file for everyone to download for their own purposes, the link to which can be found in the video description over on YouTube! :D

Ancient DOS Games Episode 283 - The Black Cauldron is online!

When you first learn that this is an AGI game WITHOUT the text parser, you kinda wonder just how easy it's going to be, but it turns out... no, it's not easy. Granted, it's not nearly as egregious as some Sierra AGI games, for instance, as far as I could tell there was no way to end up in a walking dead situation, but the lack of a text parser means you have to make liberal use of the interaction keys you DO have to investigate literally everything from every angle if you want any chance of getting through this thing for your first time. :P

Nice review as always.
Personally, I have fond memories of The Black Cauldron. I played through the game at the age of around 10 back in 1992 or so. As a non native speaker the missing text parser was a benefit for me back then. Playing with a model F keyboard also helped as the function keys are all neatly arranged on the left side of the keyboard. However, today I would also prefer a text parser.
I think Al Lowe et al. did a great job to create a game based on a film with a linear story while adding enough original ideas in form of alternative endings and puzzle solving. I would even go so far as to say this game has actually more replay value compared to the first King's Quest games. Imagine my delight as I finally got through the crocodiles in the moat 30 years later.
Actually, I played the game with my daughters a couple of months ago. We played through the game while listening to the audio drama adaptation of the film on cassette - that worked quite well and was a lot of fun.

Ancient DOS Games Pro 19 - System Shock Minigames is online!

You might think this would make for a short video, but you'd be wrong! Some of the seven minigames in System Shock actually have quite a bit more going on than at first glance! So, I decided to take some time to detail all the things I know about them and actually play through them as much as I could. Sure, a couple of them feel blatantly unfinished, but you can burn over half an hour trying to beat Wing 0!

I also make sure to point out where to find all of the games since you have to collect them first before you can play them. ;)

Gemini000 wrote on 2021-05-01, 04:19:

Some of the seven minigames in System Shock actually have quite a bit more going on than at first glance!

Oh my god that last part of Wing 0, even the radar can't keep up with that!