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Captain Rufus
Sep 16, 2005

CAPTAIN WORD SALAD

OFF MY MEDS AGAIN PLEASE DON'T USE BIG WORDS

UNNECESSARY LINE BREAK

Moogle posted:

This is a beautiful thread, thanks for taking the time to put it together.

Seriously, it's a goldmine. There are some slightly more borderline things in there (newer stuff) so please let me know if I ought to remove the link. I'm including it because it's even got everything that came out for, say, the TRS-80 (a cute little machine that could, that my best friend attempted to convince me was better than my C64 - pshaw).

Ill give the site you mentioned a check tonight and see if its a resource and not just a place for GOKULORD420 to get free games. (Said lord being a generic freeloader. Knowing the size of SA someone might actually have that username.)

But don't diss the Trash 80 man.

It has DANCIN DEMON. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CCJFQ_bP0E
(Edit to fix some spelling. Also there are emulator or higher quality videos of the program covering more of it, but somehow I like this video the best..)

I don't know what it is but that thing makes me happy for some reason. Not enough to buy a machine or even mess with an emulator but still. Happy. :neckbeard:

And Archimedes mentioner feel free to give me a writeup up of it. Same with any one else who wants to tribute a machine I didn't cover (or cover properly IYHO).

Old computers for gaming, like naughty girls, need love too.

Captain Rufus fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Nov 14, 2013

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h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Snakedance posted:

You haven't listed any notable games, but I'd argue that there were quite a few. Firstly, the Roland series - Roland In Time, Roland In Space, etc. - were certainly significant platform games. Roland In Space, in particular, did full side-scrolling platform adventuring a full year before Super Mario Brothers, and in Roland, Amstrad had one of computer gaming's first mascots (after Miner Willy, naturally).

As far as I can tell, Roland in Space came out in 1985, the same year as Super Mario Bros.

The first full-blown side scrolling platform adventure game I can think of was the Atari 800 version of Spelunker which was released in 1983. Pretty ahead of its time, and although it's had some enduring influence (like Spelunky, and apparently an HD remake for the PS3), sadly the Atari version is pretty obscure compared to the later NES and arcade ports, which comparatively weren't very good (controls/movement don't feel right).

I love learning about old UK/Euro machines since they were so foreign and exotic back in the day. Might see if I can track down an Amstrad emu, those Roland games look kind of cool.

Pierzak
Oct 30, 2010
http://youtu.be/pxZj9sn6FKk?t=1m

Nothing special, except:
- we'll be loading these from tapes.
- WTF man, they're like 2 sides long, that won't work!
- It hardly worked when it was new, and these are 20 years old, so let's cheat a bit *pulls out an audio->tape adapter* We'll be loading them from a phone!
:haw:

I totally forgot these even existed and didn't realize it'd be possible. Very impractical in the age of emulators and flash card adapters, but still.

Pierzak fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Nov 14, 2013

Null of Undefined
Aug 4, 2010

I have used 41 of 300 characters allowed.
I have a question regarding an old Japanese computer that no one likes.

Where can I buy an x86000? I've been on a crusade to get every single castlevania game, and beat them. One of the Japanese only releases is for the x86000, but I can't seem to find where to buy one. EBay, amazon, and rakuten have yielded nothing. So does anyone know where I can find one? Or does Anyone have one with which they would be willing to part?

Copper Vein
Mar 14, 2007

...and we liked it that way.

Peenmaster posted:

Where can I buy an x86000? I've been on a crusade to get every single castlevania game
You are aware that the X86000 Castlevania was re-released on the Playstation?

I have seen X86's on ebay. You might want to set up a saved search with alerts. As a reference, I saw an FM Towns with monitor go for $700 this year so an X86 will be insanely expensive unless you get lucky.

Null of Undefined
Aug 4, 2010

I have used 41 of 300 characters allowed.

Copper Vein posted:

You are aware that the X86000 Castlevania was re-released on the Playstation?

I have seen X86's on ebay. You might want to set up a saved search with alerts. As a reference, I saw an FM Towns with monitor go for $700 this year so an X86 will be insanely expensive unless you get lucky.

Of course I know it was re-realeased. I intend to get that too, but I'm a total sperg about playing things on their original hardware.

Thanks, I'll set up that alert.

Silhouette
Nov 16, 2002

SONIC BOOM!!!

You probably haven't found one because it's not the Sharp X86K, it's actually the Sharp X68K.

Captain Rufus
Sep 16, 2005

CAPTAIN WORD SALAD

OFF MY MEDS AGAIN PLEASE DON'T USE BIG WORDS

UNNECESSARY LINE BREAK

Silhouette posted:

You probably haven't found one because it's not the Sharp X86K, it's actually the Sharp X68K.

As in it uses the same Motorola 68000 Cpu as the Amiga, ST, Mac, and Genesis.

Also unlike the Amiga its CV is good, at least on the PSX collection. (Mostly the remake version that doesn't hate you for living.)

Seriously. I love computers but in general Castlevania on home pcs has rarely turned out well.

The Sharp is really rare. It was barely a blip even in Japan. Gorgeous looking machine though.

If anyone wants to do a write up of it I will add it to the 1st page megaposts with credit.

Its just such a minor system I didn't feel the need to cover it outside of acknowledging it exists.

Bing the Noize
Dec 21, 2008

by The Finn
Whenever you buy your X68000 which uses the world's best CPU (not that Intel trash god how could you get it wrong ugh god) please make sure it either has a lot of RAM or you have a lead on some more to put on it because IIRC it's pretty hard to come by!

Also definitely get a floppy emulator for that thang, will make playing all of its superior ports of games a lot better.

Null of Undefined
Aug 4, 2010

I have used 41 of 300 characters allowed.

Silhouette posted:

You probably haven't found one because it's not the Sharp X86K, it's actually the Sharp X68K.

86 was a typo because I'm super dumb.

I've been searching for 68, and there aren't any on ebay right now that I can find :(

mod sassinator
Dec 13, 2006
I came here to Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum,
and I'm All out of Ass
Very cool thread that brings back a ton of memories. Does anyone know if Mechwarrior 2 and its expansions (Ghost Bear Legacy) are available to purchase on any legitimate site like gog.com, etc? That's one game I absolutely adored as a kid and haven't been able to play since it first came out. Also kind of curious if the original Command and Conquer or C&C Red Alert are available too.

kirbysuperstar
Nov 11, 2012

Let the fools who stand before us be destroyed by the power you and I possess.

mod sassinator posted:

Does anyone know if Mechwarrior 2 and its expansions (Ghost Bear Legacy) are available to purchase on any legitimate site like gog.com, etc? That's one game I absolutely adored as a kid and haven't been able to play since it first came out. Also kind of curious if the original Command and Conquer or C&C Red Alert are available too.

MW2 isn't, no. But it's cheap and plentiful on eBay, and MechVM can get you going easy enough. C&C1, Red Alert 1 and Tiberian Sun have been released for free by EA.

Captain Rufus
Sep 16, 2005

CAPTAIN WORD SALAD

OFF MY MEDS AGAIN PLEASE DON'T USE BIG WORDS

UNNECESSARY LINE BREAK
I would like to be showing off some cool poo poo Acid was gonna hook me up with at Ellis Con but Acid is unable to manipulate cell phones and thus also missed out on free liquor and admission to said con. I had Ogre, Tsuro, and Blokus.

Since no retro meganerd to chill with I left early and went to work like a senisible adult.
(Which means sooner to my Ipad Air I guess.)

But I will be doing one of two funnish retro puter posts once I wake up from my run of 5 1/2 hours of sleep and then going 1130 am to 630am the next day including work.

And y'all get to choose which one!

Ultima 2 on the Atari 8 bit? (Plus extra A 8 shenanigans. You'll see why.)

Or the Gravis Gamepad Pro for Dos (if dled DOS drivers work. And I then spend my one day off before a few more work days not just playing Commander Keen.).

So choose which retro thing y'all want me to waste an hour or two covering tonight. I'm not putting my alarm on so I will get up whenever I get up.

The other one will probably be posted Thursday or something.

quantumfoam
Dec 25, 2003

mod sassinator posted:

Does anyone know if Mechwarrior 2 and its expansions (Ghost Bear Legacy) are available to purchase on any legitimate site like gog.com, etc?

what kirbysuperstar said basically. ebay & amazon to get the games, mechvm to run them.
Just be aware that some of the released versions of mechwarrior 2 series are demo/aol copies, or have hardcoded graphic card requirements for the game to run. DOSBOX should be able to run the mechwarrior games with a little work.

Captain Rufus posted:

So choose which retro thing y'all want me to waste an hour or two covering tonight. I'm not putting my alarm on so I will get up whenever I get up.
Rufus, any chance of you covering autoduel in the future?
autoduel was one of those great games I always saw other folks playing, never managed to play it myself.

Also, are you ok if I go off-topic in thread, and post about how to properly image mechwarrior 2 cd's so the music tracks are properly captured?
Mechwarrior 2 isn't the same without the music.

mod sassinator
Dec 13, 2006
I came here to Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum,
and I'm All out of Ass

kirbysuperstar posted:

MW2 isn't, no. But it's cheap and plentiful on eBay, and MechVM can get you going easy enough. C&C1, Red Alert 1 and Tiberian Sun have been released for free by EA.

Wow, thanks! Had no idea EA released those for free. I almost want to like EA for doing that, but can't bring myself to that.

I know it's a longshot but is there anything that helps play dosbox games on modern LCD monitors? Something like shaders that emulate the distoration, glow, etc. of CRT monitors would be awesome.

edit: Oh yeah, also any suggestions for modern USB joysticks that aren't poo poo? Nothing too fancy or simulation quality--just something with a hat, trigger, and a few buttons to play Descent. I remember using a Logitech Wingman Extreme back in the day and other than the hat breaking frequently it was great.

mod sassinator fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Nov 17, 2013

Bing the Noize
Dec 21, 2008

by The Finn

tuluk posted:

Rufus, any chance of you covering autoduel in the future?
autoduel was one of those great games I always saw other folks playing, never managed to play it myself.

Rufus and I were gonna nerd out about Autoduel if I made it there but I didn't. Autoduel C64 is a good game.

One day we will see an extensive effortpost about B&W Mac games from Rufus but I need to get him a B&W Mac first oops

kirbysuperstar
Nov 11, 2012

Let the fools who stand before us be destroyed by the power you and I possess.

mod sassinator posted:

I know it's a longshot but is there anything that helps play dosbox games on modern LCD monitors? Something like shaders that emulate the distoration, glow, etc. of CRT monitors would be awesome.

RetroArch has amazing filter support and a DosBox core. It's kind of a dick to set up, though as half of Arch's hotkeys are.. well, regular keystrokes. Still, with some work you should be able to get close to what you want. Here's Doom (using the prBoom core, not DosBox, but hey) running with a CRT filter:

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

ACID POLICE posted:

Rufus and I were gonna nerd out about Autoduel if I made it there but I didn't. Autoduel C64 is a good game.

One day we will see an extensive effortpost about B&W Mac games from Rufus but I need to get him a B&W Mac first oops

If you're doing B&W Mac games you have to do Alter Ego. It's emulated on the web somewhere, I think.

mod sassinator
Dec 13, 2006
I came here to Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum,
and I'm All out of Ass

kirbysuperstar posted:

RetroArch has amazing filter support and a DosBox core. It's kind of a dick to set up, though as half of Arch's hotkeys are.. well, regular keystrokes. Still, with some work you should be able to get close to what you want. Here's Doom (using the prBoom core, not DosBox, but hey) running with a CRT filter:



Awesome! Yeah I played with libretro and retroarch earlier in the year and tried to setup a similar shader. It was quite fiddly and difficult to make work with everything--I'm going to have to check it out again and see how things have improved. That shader looks great and I love the TV border image. Do you have a link to that shader/filter handy?

edit: Wow there's a ton more activity around shaders in the retroarch forums since I last looked. Looks like there's a lot of great stuff now.

mod sassinator fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Nov 18, 2013

kirbysuperstar
Nov 11, 2012

Let the fools who stand before us be destroyed by the power you and I possess.

mod sassinator posted:

Awesome! Yeah I played with libretro and retroarch earlier in the year and tried to setup a similar shader. It was quite fiddly and difficult to make work with everything--I'm going to have to check it out again and see how things have improved. That shader looks great and I love the TV border image. Do you have a link to that shader/filter handy?

edit: Wow there's a ton more activity around shaders in the retroarch forums since I last looked. Looks like there's a lot of great stuff now.

Yeah, there's some good stuff going on. This is the one in particular: http://libretro.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=658

Captain Rufus
Sep 16, 2005

CAPTAIN WORD SALAD

OFF MY MEDS AGAIN PLEASE DON'T USE BIG WORDS

UNNECESSARY LINE BREAK
I would love to cover Autoduel. I mean I am kind of a Car Wars fan:

http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2013/11/operation-game-collection-car-warsgurps.html

Sadly my A8 bit version of Autoduel has a buggered player disk and I cannot actually PLAY it.

But for DOSbox I am one of those weird people fine with everything being sharp and modern on modern screens.

http://www.piratehearts.com/blog/games/you-have-to-win-the-game/ However this is a great feeware modern game simulating CGA graphics on a proper monitor of the time. He even has a mod someplace on his site to make it EGA instead. (I have the EGA tileset installed on my copy but I mostly completed it on CGA.) Its a great game showing homage to the classic era.

http://www.locomalito.com/abbaye_des_morts.php People have made Spectrum like games too.

VVV No. I only have my XE era disk drive. One of them. Which doesn't help when the master disk seems to be buggered. A mucked up copy of a mucked up master is still going to be mucked up.

If I cover Ultima 2 A 8 bit this week it has similar issues. Origin games just have issues with me I guess.

(Unless SSI games which I just endlessly get outbid on. Outside of Gemstone Warrior which is buggy as poo poo. This weekend I have lost bids on Phantasie, Shattered Alliance, and Questron. To be fair my bids are somewhat low but unlike most collectors I tend to be sane. Ish. Hey, I have gotten games at less than a third of their usual rate this way.)

Captain Rufus fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Nov 18, 2013

Bing the Noize
Dec 21, 2008

by The Finn
Don't you have a way to write to 5 1/4" disks?

E: I'm talking about writing disk images from the internets to a 5 1/4". Apple II's can do it with ADTPro but I lost my fuckin cable

Bing the Noize fucked around with this message at 10:36 on Nov 18, 2013

Captain Rufus
Sep 16, 2005

CAPTAIN WORD SALAD

OFF MY MEDS AGAIN PLEASE DON'T USE BIG WORDS

UNNECESSARY LINE BREAK
In case you did not see above no. Unless writing from an Atari 5 1/4 to another 5 1/4 on the same computer and the same drive counts.

But anyhow, here is the tale of the tape...err disk drive.





























I am eventually gonna do an entire series on individual Atari 8 bit games plus Ultima titles in general. But this is just a recent thing that happened I wanted to cover and talk about. Plus maybe get some help with my disk issues.

Captain Rufus fucked around with this message at 10:46 on Nov 18, 2013

peter gabriel
Nov 8, 2011

Hello Commandos
I found myself working in a PC repair shop in the late 90s and before then I'd never had a windows PC, or PC of any kind.
I just got on well with the owner and one day he gave me a screw driver and told me to put a CD ROM drive in a PC and to 'shout when you get stuck' - I remember taking the plastic cover off the front of the PC and seeing the metal blanking plate inside, that was when I shouted for him ha ha...

Anyway, to 'get me up to speed' the guy built me a PC over the space of a week or so and it wasn't until years later I realised what he built me was a proper gaming machine, I still remember the specs.

Riva TNT AGP
TWO Voodoo 2's in SLI
2.1 GB hard drive
Soundblaster
AMD K6-2 CPU @ 550mhz
194MB of RAM

This was probably 1998!

I worked there for 4 years or so and remember it all so well, from Rightous 3D cards to PC Chips motherboards to 72 PIN RAM, it was just a blast. We never seemed to make any money but people would just chill there, tinkering with stuff.

Good times.

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

If anyone's interested, the Kickstarter for the Hewson Consultants biography is funded and has 36 hours to go.

mod sassinator
Dec 13, 2006
I came here to Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum,
and I'm All out of Ass

peter gabriel posted:

I found myself working in a PC repair shop in the late 90s and before then I'd never had a windows PC, or PC of any kind.
I just got on well with the owner and one day he gave me a screw driver and told me to put a CD ROM drive in a PC and to 'shout when you get stuck' - I remember taking the plastic cover off the front of the PC and seeing the metal blanking plate inside, that was when I shouted for him ha ha...

Anyway, to 'get me up to speed' the guy built me a PC over the space of a week or so and it wasn't until years later I realised what he built me was a proper gaming machine, I still remember the specs.

Riva TNT AGP
TWO Voodoo 2's in SLI
2.1 GB hard drive
Soundblaster
AMD K6-2 CPU @ 550mhz
194MB of RAM

This was probably 1998!

I worked there for 4 years or so and remember it all so well, from Rightous 3D cards to PC Chips motherboards to 72 PIN RAM, it was just a blast. We never seemed to make any money but people would just chill there, tinkering with stuff.

Good times.

Oh drat--I remember ID software programmers blogging (or updating their .plan files rather) about how they could run GL quake 640x480 at a perfect 60fps with SLI voodoo cards. I was insanely jealous.

peter gabriel
Nov 8, 2011

Hello Commandos

mod sassinator posted:

Oh drat--I remember ID software programmers blogging (or updating their .plan files rather) about how they could run GL quake 640x480 at a perfect 60fps with SLI voodoo cards. I was insanely jealous.

Yeah, like I said, I totally didn't get it at all at the time, but I was running Quake 2 at 800 x 600, smooth as you like, then not much later the original Unreal, no problem - it made the PS1 look like a joke, but I sort of initially took it for granted that that was just how things were.

Then after a while of fixing peoples 233 Cyrix machines with SPARKLE GRAPHICS CARDS and S3 VIRGES - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S3_ViRGE the penny dropped a bit!

The Open GL thing made me remember a couple of things...
The Riva TNT was for DX games and the Voodoos were for OpenGL. I remember so so well trying different games using different cards and 100% of the time if it worked on either you'd get 'better colours with DX and better FPS with Glide'

Getting Detenator Drivers for the TNT was somehow cool as hell back then, oh and Glidewrapper which never really worked ha ha.

peter gabriel fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Nov 18, 2013

ChaiCalico
May 23, 2008

vogons.org is a pretty nice dos/windows focused forum that helped a lot when I was setting up my older boxes.

quantumfoam
Dec 25, 2003

agreed. vogons is the precursor website for retrogaming/getting old games running on old HW.

Captain Rufus
Sep 16, 2005

CAPTAIN WORD SALAD

OFF MY MEDS AGAIN PLEASE DON'T USE BIG WORDS

UNNECESSARY LINE BREAK
I failed to put VOGONS in the resources? This is shameful of me. I shall have to correct this Wednesday. Plus check out some of this other stuff to see if it cannot be added. I have spread the word about the thread here and there so maybe we can grow this into the ultimate resource for new and fun ways to waste time and money playing old computer games.

As an aside I shared the latest Atari post with Atari Age. One dude said he couldn't get the game to run on his SD card device.

Maybe the game is just buggered or requires an actual 400/800 machine?

On the upside an ebay seller is trying to just sell the reference card and manual for 50, no game or box or map. This is just :psyduck:

quantumfoam
Dec 25, 2003

Captain Rufus's issue with his damaged original disc for autoduel brings up a good point.
Sometimes the best way to play older games is via emulation/archival imaging of the original media to digital formats to preserve the original game media.

Linux has a lot of "baked into the framework" commands that are able handle imaging of cd discs & floppy disks relatively easily. I don't have any 3.5 or 5.25 drives to run tests on, but this link should have some decent info for people interested in testing 3.5 or 5.25 disk imaging
http://untitledfinale.wordpress.com/2007/10/09/create-mount-and-copy-floppy-disks-images-under-linux/

I DO, however, have a great deal of experience creating Mixed Mode cd images under linux using the "cdrdao"command to create usable .bin/cue image files that DOSBOX can read & use.
Mixed Mode discs are essentially discs with Music tracks & 1 or 2 data tracks. Think mid-1990's games like Mechwarrior 2 series w/their unique soundtracks, the retail version of Quake(trent reznor soundtrack), etc... or the multimedia albums David Bowie released in the late 1980s/1990s. Mixed Mode discs are relatively rare today(their primary function circa 2002 - today seems to be DVD picture slideshows w/ background soundtrack).

Mixed mode discs cannot be completely imaged as .ISO files. ISO file creation of a mixed mode disc will capture the data tracks, but ignores the music tracks on the disc. Certain old-school games like the mechwarrior 2 series can be glitchy if music tracks are not present. There is a few shareware windows disc imaging programs that can capture mixed mode discs like ISObuster/MagicISO/UltraISO, however all my testing with them failed. (root cause of failures being disc imaging programs running in a Win7 VM instance w/ external USB CDROM drive=90%).

Here is the CDRDAO command string to capture a mixed mode CD to .bin image file on local HD, with optional --with-cddb variable.
--with-cddb string checks with online CD databases to see if the disc being imaged has a entry present, which can save a ton of typing if you have OCD regarding track labels/artist info/cd date being correct.
pre:
 cdrdao read-cd --device /dev/cdrom --driver generic-mmc --datafile /PTH/IMAGE.BIN --with-cddb /PTH/IMAGE.TOC 
--device field is the HW id of your CDROM device in linux. my external usb cd drive maps to /dev/sr0. Your device mapping will be different --driver is the driver CDRDAO will use to access the disc --datafile field is the custom name of the *.BIN image file being created. /PTH/IMAGENAME.TOC is the "table of contents" file that specifies which parts of the *.BIN image cdrdao creates are music tracks and which parts are data tracks.

After all that: you should have a IMAGENAME.BIN file & a IMAGENAME.TOC file. Last step is to create a .cue using the toc2cue command. example: "toc2cue image.toc image.cue" gets you a .cue file named "image.cue".

Here is the CDRDAO command string I used to image my Mechwarrior 2:Ghost Bear Legacy CD. Note the --driver generic-mmc:0x20000 ,its to set proper byte order in music tracks as per http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Cuesheet
pre:
cdrdao read-cd --device /dev/sr0 --driver generic-mmc:0x20000 --device /dev/cdrom MW2_GBL.toc
> toc2cue MW2_GBL.toc MW2_GBL.cue
PM me or ping me at #retrochat if you have any questions/want to know more.

tldr version: Look at these links and really think about archival imaging for your original retrogame media.
http://untitledfinale.wordpress.com/2007/10/09/create-mount-and-copy-floppy-disks-images-under-linux/
http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Cuesheet

quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Nov 21, 2013

Captain Rufus
Sep 16, 2005

CAPTAIN WORD SALAD

OFF MY MEDS AGAIN PLEASE DON'T USE BIG WORDS

UNNECESSARY LINE BREAK
Your post was quite amazing tuluk.

Sadly I am not a Linux user so I cannot try to make it work myself. I will probably just link your post here in that section on the 1st page of the thread I have reserved for stuff.

I also have a couple more podcasts to throw in the resources and a couple links like VOGONS to add. I get a tad busy during the holidays. I should probably stay out of IRC tomorrow just so I can get a few more things done. (Or at least get a bit further in Wasteland. I have made it to Needles and now almost everyone has a new weapon. Only Beef and Eric don't. Eric doesn't have any other weapon skills and Beef is doing pretty good just beating things with a crowbar.)

My next effort post probably won't be until Sunday. I was putzing around with the Gravis Gamepad Pro. Which works. But the CD I burned with files and stuff on it the CD drive on my DOS rig refused to accept. And I haven't had time to check out why or do a couple other solutions I might have for Ultima 2 on the Atari.

But until then Spoony has started putting up his interviews with Dick British himself: http://spoonyexperiment.com/2013/11/21/britannia-burns-richard-garriott-interview-part-1/

I haven't watched it yet but it might be interesting. Provided he manages to make eye contact with Mr Spacemanchild.

I also have an old Ultima project I might be getting back to soon as well.

But yall feel free to make some effort posts and stuff too. With GOG's sale last week I am sure some folks here have plenty of new old rear end computer games to play. I passed up Thunderscape, Lands of Lore 1-2 pack, and Realms of Arkania 1-2 pack less because of money and more because I have enough games and poo poo right now. (Which doesn't explain the old computer games I just won off ebay but..)

quantumfoam
Dec 25, 2003

Captain Rufus,

linux is pretty easy to use, and can be run in VM instances on your modern day-gaming machine. Try out linuxmint, it's a user-friendly ubuntu linux variant. http://www.linuxmint.com/
CDRDAO is baked into linuxmint, along with a bunch of other tools that can be easily downloaded(WINE). To install/run VM instances on your modern day-gaming machine, I recommend using VMware VM player. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_Player
VMplayer handles installing & running non-Windows OS's very well and is FREE.

Currently I have 2 machines: a sager laptop (w/3 VM instances: ubuntu linux, Win7ultimate, freebsd), and a 1ghz openpandora.
The openpandora is pretty fantastic and super tiny. Once I finish moving cross-country I plan on reclaiming my trs-80 mk1 & tandy 1000 from family members. That why I can't test 3.5 & 5.25 disk imaging right now.

Your "CD drive on DOS rig not reading CD" issue:
might be caused by newer blank CD-r media not being properly seen on older PC HW, or the burning method you used to "close" your CD.

My advice is:
1- Try using semi-ancient 512mb USB flash drives to transfer the files over to your Win95 rig, then burn a CD from the Win95 rig for the DOS rig.
2- Plug the DOS rig Hard drive into Win95 machine or modern day machine and copy over files. DOS rig HD should be detected perfectly by Win95 machine, modern day machine might need ATA connector adapters. Regardless, this step should work if you don't mind opening up PC cases and messing with hard drive cables.
3- If networking works on your old DOS rig, consider transfering the files over via NET SHARE / NET USE commands or via null cable connection. Consider this the ADVANCED NETWORKING mode option.

quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Nov 21, 2013

h_double
Jul 27, 2001
Captain Rufus, I was a little sad to see you being so uncharitable towards Ultima 2. It hasn't aged very well and it's hard for me to recommend it by modern standards, but that game will always hold a special place for me -- it was so big and weird and creative. As you pointed out, the world map is roughly based on earth (which was a nice change from the recurring Brittania of the other games), the warp gates also take you back and forth between several time periods, from Pangaea up through a post-apocalyptic future. Eventually you find a spaceship and can fly around to the different planets of the solar system. There's a bunch of weirdness like one of the planets has a town that's entirely full of jesters that swarm you. (Ultima 1 also has a space segment, including a little first person action minigame where you literally shoot at TIE fighters.)

I'm also a little surprised you had so much glitchiness but who knows. I played that game for a zillion hours as a kid and the only glitch I remember was actually pretty neat. For some reason there was a bug where when you captured a pirate ship and moved, it would spawn another pirate ship in the square you just exited. You could capture THAT ship and repeat the process indefinitely. I eventually made massive intercontinental bridges made of ships.

Also you criticized the Atari 8bit version of the game for how it uses composite artifacting for the color graphics, but that was really the only way the hardware was capable of rendering a high enough resolution to freely mix text and graphics -- if you wanted more colors, you were limited to like 192 pixels horizontally.

Besides I still think the Atari 800/Apple 2 versions were the best looking adaptations of the game at the time (or at least the easiest on the eyes). The Commodore 64 version is a bit more colorful but I think it looks pretty hideous:




EDIT: Also, the reason those games require you to hold down OPTION when you boot is because it's an XL/XE machine. The original (beige case) 400/800 didn't have the BASIC language built into ROM, it came on a cartridge you had to plug in. The 1200XL introduced built-in BASIC, but if you wanted to use an assembly language program, you had to hold down the option key to bypass booting into BASIC.


Also good choice on Jumpman, that is still a legit good platformer.

h_double fucked around with this message at 09:04 on Nov 22, 2013

Bigsteve
Dec 15, 2000

Cock It!

Jedit posted:

If anyone's interested, the Kickstarter for the Hewson Consultants biography is funded and has 36 hours to go.

Will be good if he can get stuff from Andy Braybrooke.

They also have cover art from ZZap64 on sale which is nice. I remember getting Oliver Frey to sign my posters at some PC world show in the late 80's.
Does gay fantasy art with Crash co founder Roger Kean who is also his partner. :eek:

Captain Rufus
Sep 16, 2005

CAPTAIN WORD SALAD

OFF MY MEDS AGAIN PLEASE DON'T USE BIG WORDS

UNNECESSARY LINE BREAK

h_double posted:

Captain Rufus, I was a little sad to see you being so uncharitable towards Ultima 2. It hasn't aged very well and it's hard for me to recommend it by modern standards, but that game will always hold a special place for me -- it was so big and weird and creative. As you pointed out, the world map is roughly based on earth (which was a nice change from the recurring Brittania of the other games), the warp gates also take you back and forth between several time periods, from Pangaea up through a post-apocalyptic future. Eventually you find a spaceship and can fly around to the different planets of the solar system. There's a bunch of weirdness like one of the planets has a town that's entirely full of jesters that swarm you. (Ultima 1 also has a space segment, including a little first person action minigame where you literally shoot at TIE fighters.)

I'm also a little surprised you had so much glitchiness but who knows. I played that game for a zillion hours as a kid and the only glitch I remember was actually pretty neat. For some reason there was a bug where when you captured a pirate ship and moved, it would spawn another pirate ship in the square you just exited. You could capture THAT ship and repeat the process indefinitely. I eventually made massive intercontinental bridges made of ships.

Also you criticized the Atari 8bit version of the game for how it uses composite artifacting for the color graphics, but that was really the only way the hardware was capable of rendering a high enough resolution to freely mix text and graphics -- if you wanted more colors, you were limited to like 192 pixels horizontally.

Besides I still think the Atari 800/Apple 2 versions were the best looking adaptations of the game at the time (or at least the easiest on the eyes). The Commodore 64 version is a bit more colorful but I think it looks pretty hideous:




EDIT: Also, the reason those games require you to hold down OPTION when you boot is because it's an XL/XE machine. The original (beige case) 400/800 didn't have the BASIC language built into ROM, it came on a cartridge you had to plug in. The 1200XL introduced built-in BASIC, but if you wanted to use an assembly language program, you had to hold down the option key to bypass booting into BASIC.


Also good choice on Jumpman, that is still a legit good platformer.

I have mentioned some of this stuff before. So some things I just don't repeat in later postings. But yes, you do have to hold down said Option key. Which makes like 2/3rds of all inoperable 4/800 designed software work on the XL/XE. I never actually played Jumpman as a kid. So my first experience with it was Jumpman Jr on the C64 DTV Joystick.

Honestly though if anything hurt the Ataris (well besides Ray Kassar and then Jack Tramiel..) it was programmers mostly sticking to the barebones weakest machines.

You never really saw Apple 2 or Amiga or PC games do this but on the Ataris and Commodore 8 bits they basically made everything work on the stock system, never requiring any real upgrades from the end user or really taking advantage of newer hardware. Most A8 games only need 16 or 48K to run, ignoring the 800xl/65xe/XEGS' 64 or the 130xe's 128 and their better internals.

I also think this is sort of why a lot of games did the artifacting thing. It required less effort in general. Less out of the machines of the time, and easier to convert from the Apple 2 (probably the Plus at this point).

And given some CGA DOS games used it as well just made it kind of a no brainer.

But compare a game like Crownland which needs a 128k PAL Atari to run correctly (and honestly it still has sprite flicker due to the desire to make it as Mario/Sonic like as they could) to what ran on a stock 400.

You can see the same on the C64 with Rocky Horror Picture Show. The C64 is really simple looking (better than the Speccie and Amstrad of course), and then you look at the 128 version and while it runs a bit slower it is ridiculously good looking. If only the 128 wasn't hamstrung by trying to put a Z80 CPU in it to slowly run CP/M. IN 1985!

And another Ultima 2 thing... apparently the Ultima Trilogy version for the Apple II actually has a rewritten Ultima 2 on it. Only place it was. If anyone wants to show it off and compare to the original Apple 2 this would be quite rad.

I won't even ASK about the IIGS Ultima 1 remake. Its super rare but very little is known or shown about it. I even mentioned it to one of the people who worked on it and she mentioned you could get it from her still but then nothing else. ("Burger" Becky H.)

As a big RPG fan it is really annoying when the best versions of a game are either nigh impossible to find/play, or are only in Japanese. (Ultima has a LOT of this. Hell, Japan has their own SEQUELS to Phantasie and Dungeon Master we never got! And this is besides the definitive versions of Ultima Underworld, Wiz 1-3, 5, and 6!)

But when I get around to my Ultima retrospective I will talk more about Ultima 2 and what issues I have with it. I have completed it but I am not quite sure I ENJOYED it after a point. And that was with a walkthrough. (Which for a lot of 8 bit RPGs really does turn already grindy games into grindathons. If you know what to do in Ultima 1-3 it could be completed in under an hour. Except for grinding. Which adds like 8 odd hours to Ultima 1 and 2, and like 20 or so to 3.)

Gromit
Aug 15, 2000

I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

Bigsteve posted:

Will be good if he can get stuff from Andy Braybrooke.


Are you me? When I read the site and saw a list of book contributors, I said to myself that he'd get a sale off me if Andrew was in the list, and he wasn't. :(

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Captain Rufus posted:

I have mentioned some of this stuff before. So some things I just don't repeat in later postings. But yes, you do have to hold down said Option key. Which makes like 2/3rds of all inoperable 4/800 designed software work on the XL/XE.

The Translator boot disk that you showed (which lets you boot with the older machines' BIOS image) did a really good job with compatibility -- I can only remember a tiny handful of programs (maybe half a dozen games out of hundreds) that wouldn't run on the later machines. It should be a double sided disk, with different boot images for different revisions of the BIOS, some games would only work with one or the other.


Captain Rufus posted:

You never really saw Apple 2 or Amiga or PC games do this but on the Ataris and Commodore 8 bits they basically made everything work on the stock system, never requiring any real upgrades from the end user or really taking advantage of newer hardware. Most A8 games only need 16 or 48K to run, ignoring the 800xl/65xe/XEGS' 64 or the 130xe's 128 and their better internals.

The XL/XE machines really didn't add anything except the extra memory. They had an improved peripheral bus (ECI, Enhanced Cartridge Interface) that I think was supposed to let you hook up things like a SCSI adapter, but nothing that affected games or the typical home user.

Also, the extra memory is weird because the 6502 CPU only has a 64k memory address space, and 16k of that is reserved for OS/hardware pointers, so there is only 48k user addressable space. Using the added memory of the XL/XE meant bank switching chunks of RAM, typically 16k at a time, in and out of that main address space (which also reduced the amount of main RAM available without such trickery).

This was as big a pain as you'd expect. The only way you could use the extra RAM in BASIC was with a RAM disk utility, like on the 130XE it would create four extra virtual partitions (drive letters) of 16k each. As you can imagine, that's not very useful. A couple of games used the extra RAM to speed load times, and there was one paint program (DEGAS I think, "Design Entertainment Graphics Art System") which made pretty good use of it, but for the most part, the extra memory was hard to use and entailed some amount of overhead to juggle the bank switching. This was the exact same situation on the Apple IIe. The Commodore 128 had a different CPU (8502) so it was capable of better bank switching, with 2 x 64k banks I think.

Captain Rufus posted:

I also think this is sort of why a lot of games did the artifacting thing. It required less effort in general. Less out of the machines of the time, and easier to convert from the Apple 2 (probably the Plus at this point).

Yeah, Atari 800 and Apple ][+ both came out in 1979, within a few months of one another.

And I still maintain that Mode 8 stuff (with the composite artifacting) looked good for certain kinds of games, it was the only way to get that kind of fine detail, like mixing sprites and text on the same horizontal lines.

And remember Ultima 2 came out in 1982 (and was programmed by one person), while Crownland came out in (I think) 2007.

h_double fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Nov 23, 2013

flyboi
Oct 13, 2005

agg stop posting
College Slice

Captain Rufus posted:

Your post was quite amazing tuluk.

Sadly I am not a Linux user so I cannot try to make it work myself. I will probably just link your post here in that section on the 1st page of the thread I have reserved for stuff.

I also have a couple more podcasts to throw in the resources and a couple links like VOGONS to add. I get a tad busy during the holidays. I should probably stay out of IRC tomorrow just so I can get a few more things done. (Or at least get a bit further in Wasteland. I have made it to Needles and now almost everyone has a new weapon. Only Beef and Eric don't. Eric doesn't have any other weapon skills and Beef is doing pretty good just beating things with a crowbar.)

My next effort post probably won't be until Sunday. I was putzing around with the Gravis Gamepad Pro. Which works. But the CD I burned with files and stuff on it the CD drive on my DOS rig refused to accept. And I haven't had time to check out why or do a couple other solutions I might have for Ultima 2 on the Atari.

But until then Spoony has started putting up his interviews with Dick British himself: http://spoonyexperiment.com/2013/11/21/britannia-burns-richard-garriott-interview-part-1/

I haven't watched it yet but it might be interesting. Provided he manages to make eye contact with Mr Spacemanchild.

I also have an old Ultima project I might be getting back to soon as well.

But yall feel free to make some effort posts and stuff too. With GOG's sale last week I am sure some folks here have plenty of new old rear end computer games to play. I passed up Thunderscape, Lands of Lore 1-2 pack, and Realms of Arkania 1-2 pack less because of money and more because I have enough games and poo poo right now. (Which doesn't explain the old computer games I just won off ebay but..)

There are alternatives on all systems that can do the same capabilities of cdrdao. On Windows your best bet is either imgburn, Nero, CDRWIN or Disc Juggler. On OSX the best is Roxio Toast.

All of these apps support mix-mode cds natively.

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Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
drat, this thread has made me nostalgic. My Ye Olde computers went 16K Spectrum > TI99/4a > 48K Spectrum > C64 > 520ST > 1040STFM (from there it's been Macs ever since), and over the years I've rebuilt most of my software collection for the Spectrum and C64 via emulators. Which does make you realise just how rose-tinted things can sometimes be, but a few things like Suicide Express, The Hobbit, Elite, Manic Miner/Jet Set Willy, Skool Daze, Impossible Mission and the ZX version of Cobra were still fun for a quick blast.

I actually applied for (and was offered) a job on Zzap! 64 in 1987 or thereabouts, which I ended up turning down in favour of staying at university. Ironically, I ended up working with a bunch of ex-Newsfield people at Paragon about five years later, so I'm not sure if my life would have turned out that differently if I'd taken it. :(

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