|
I would watch a whole documentary on feelies/physical copy protection.
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2019 18:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 10:35 |
|
|
drat, I love iIfocom. Sadly, Douglas Adams's games required the hint books unless you were Douglas Adams. I had a friend who worked there in the '80s. He held a fair bit of stock, but then the bigwigs at the company IIRC decided what they really needed to do was develop a database manager.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2019 19:11
|
|
|
Arsenic Lupin posted:drat, I love iIfocom. Sadly, Douglas Adams's games required the hint books unless you were Douglas Adams.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2019 19:17
|
|
|
Always got stuck trying to get the babel fish into my ear. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2019 19:32
|
|
|
Hirayuki posted:Hell, Infocom's HHGttG required the original book--at least for me, who had to be no older than ten at the time. It did help a little, but then I resorted to ordering the hint book. I'm glad I did--it was written with as much humor as the game itself. I was something of a latecomer to Infocom text adventures, so I usually had the later edition that had the hint book built right into the game. You'd type "hint" and it would take you into this menu system (text-based, of course) where you could browse the questions and reveal the answers one line at a time. Wishbringer was super easy even without the hints, and I got most of the way through Planetfall before I had to resort to looking some stuff up. I had to refer to the Zork I hints pretty regularly, and I never would have gotten anywhere in Hitchhiker's Guide without them.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2019 19:39
|
|
|
I played that game when I was a kid too... and thankfully got a version that had a built-in help system. It made me feel bad at the time about having to use it so much, but holy crap there was no way you could know to do that stuff. It had to be the worst of those types of games. Enjoying Vogon poetry... are you serious? drinking exactly three beers and eating a pack of peanuts... for real?
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2019 19:40
|
|
|
You should all be very glad you never tried to play Adams's BUREAUCRACY. It has a blood-pressure meter as a mechanic, and by all accounts it was appropriate. It was supposed to be frustrating, but the word of mouth I heard was that again it was impossible without the hint book.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2019 19:48
|
|
|
I never completed HHGTTG. I got the to the very end but couldn't get the Heart of Gold hatch open. At some point I'll try it again. The packaging was always fun on Infocom games: http://www.infocom-if.org/more/boxes/boxes.html I recently got Spellcasting 101, 201, and 301 from GoG. Those graphics + text games would have been Infocom's next progression if they didn't have idiots running the company. The Spellcasting games have held up alright, although it's not as titillating as it was when I was 15. They run in the original resolutions, which means they're really small on a modern monitor. I haven't figured out a way to make them larger yet. Arsenic Lupin posted:You should all be very glad you never tried to play Adams's BUREAUCRACY. It has a blood-pressure meter as a mechanic, and by all accounts it was appropriate. It was supposed to be frustrating, but the word of mouth I heard was that again it was impossible without the hint book. drat I hated the part where you spent 5 minutes ordering a burger. Krispy Wafer has a new favorite as of 21:14 on Aug 18, 2019 |
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2019 20:05
|
|
|
Unperson_47 posted:I would watch a whole documentary on feelies/physical copy protection. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFd60nCBygg Skip to 29 min if you like. The first part is mostly about silly UK anti-piracy ads from the 80s.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2019 20:35
|
|
|
Or don't, the whole thing is kind of interesting even if (or because) it happens to be about the weird parallel universe that was 1980s Britain.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2019 21:36
|
|
|
namlosh posted:I played that game when I was a kid too... and thankfully got a version that had a built-in help system. It made me feel bad at the time about having to use it so much, but holy crap there was no way you could know to do that stuff. It had to be the worst of those types of games. I thought it was deliberately made as a parody of that sort of game, hence the difficulty and incomprehensibility.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2019 22:25
|
|
|
Dick Trauma posted:Always got stuck trying to get the babel fish into my ear.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 00:36
|
|
|
BogDew posted:I think one of the Trek games needed you to know coordinates out of the manual, else dump you into a impossible battle. Space Quest V had that, the coordinates for the various locations were only in the manual. IIRC sometimes putting in random numbers sent you to an impossible fight and sometimes they just sent you to a place with nothing. Either way, you couldn't really progress. Unperson_47 posted:I would watch a whole documentary on feelies/physical copy protection. Does an LGR video count? Admittedly this one isn't just about feelies but copy protection in general https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjEbpMgiL7U
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 00:57
|
|
|
Zereth posted:I believe that puzzle was rigged so if you dispensed a fish, then solved the problem and dispensed another one, then solved that problem etc, it'd run out of fish one or two before you could actually get it. Goddamn, did that one word strike terror into my little nerd heart.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 01:05
|
|
|
BogDew posted:I think one of the Trek games needed you to know coordinates out of the manual, else dump you into a impossible battle. I played that game so often I liked trying to Kirk my way through some of those battles. Nothing like getting two of those Romulan fighters that take your shields out in 2 hits. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 01:37
|
|
|
Vavrek posted:I thought it was deliberately made as a parody of that sort of game, hence the difficulty and incomprehensibility. Lol, maybe... but that would have been certainly lost on 9 year old me. I can’t stand those types of games... clever puzzles are one thing. But making you essentially brute force the game because there is barely any logic is a whole other... Lol, three kinds of fluff, smdh
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 01:42
|
|
|
Vavrek posted:I thought it was deliberately made as a parody of that sort of game, hence the difficulty and incomprehensibility. Here's a wonderful excerpt of a walkthrough for a game that actually managed this pretty well! quote:Computer Area (LR, UD) Monty Python's The Meaning of Life... such a weird fuckin game.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 02:27
|
|
|
FilthyImp posted:I played that game so often I liked trying to Kirk my way through some of those battles. Nothing like getting two of those Romulan fighters that take your shields out in 2 hits. the real way to Kirk your way through the battles is to decompile the .exe and reconfigure the battle simulation Dewgy posted:Here's a wonderful excerpt of a walkthrough for a game that actually managed this pretty well! LOL gently caress, my local library had all three of the Monty Python CD-ROM games; I remember that puzzle and I remember never figuring it out anyone else remember that sweet time when CD-Rs got cheap and libraries still had PC games
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 02:32
|
|
|
Dewgy posted:Monty Python's The Meaning of Life... such a weird fuckin game. The best part of Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time was the answering machine greetings (in .wav format) that were included on the disc for your use. My favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZOHU9FMg5k
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 03:14
|
|
|
Suspended was the Infocom game that blew my mind. You absolutely needed that map that came in the box.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 08:09
|
|
|
Did no one else play Under a Killing Moon? My mate had a DX4/66 in 1996 which was juuust fast enough to play it smoothly. I think we spent most of a summer holiday playing it. The "auxiliary panel" that popped up when you clicked it blew my mind. I knew it was an effect but my mind refused to believe that it wasn't actually popping out of the screen.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 14:40
|
|
|
I had one of those Tex Murphy games and yeah, it was pretty mind blowing. Except for the photo they used every time you beat someone up.  That same stupid punch graphic. Over and over again. But the video phone was cool.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 15:54
|
|
|
Powered Descent posted:The best part of Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time was the answering machine greetings (in .wav format) that were included on the disc for your use. I was partial to the TSR that made each key press in Windows produce a different burp/fart/vomit/etc sound. There was one particularly evocative vomit sound that has been stuck in my head all these years.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 16:39
|
|
|
Access Software were pretty cutting edge. I recall being blown away by Under a Killing Moon for the fact it had freely explorable game areas compared to everything else that was click and move (Myst, 7th guest, Zork). The early games even used something called RealSound that attempted to convert low bit audio to be played through the PC speaker. Martin Memorandum was an early adopter of video clips. It stuffed 24mb of data into around 7mb. The later games kept up with tech novelties such as the ability to read from multiple CD rom drives or using DVD video with a software decoder. Apparently there's another game coming out this year.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 16:55
|
|
|
There was a text adventure called Demoniak that came out in 1991. I got very stuck when I played it at the time, and tried a few more times but could never get far due to the complexity of it (you could become almost any character in the game at any point, and I think you needed to do so in order to progress). As far as I can tell, no one has ever completed it. There are no complete walkthroughs, just a few partial ones and folk asking if anyone has managed to complete it. A game that actually has never been completed probably counts as failed, but also certainly obsolete in today's gaming world.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 18:55
|
|
|
Johnny Aztec posted:DID SOMEONE SAY "IDE"?! yo I'm BleachBitting like 8 of these loving things ranging from 10GB to 250GB right now and will send them to anyone free, minus like five bucks shipping, if they want. Please get them out of my house.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 23:13
|
|
|
Toupee Groupie posted:The Macintosh Quadra 700 that came out in 1991 supported 1600x1200 at 8 bit color and 24 bit color at 1024x768 out of the box if you maxed the video memory. The Quadra 700 is what was used to design and render the game Myst. I had a Quadra 700 back in the day. It was amazing. Apple called it 32 bit color. The extra 8 bits could hold an alpha channel. I remember getting Myst as soon as I could. I was so excited to play that I was pissing myself. I even had a copy of Strata Pro. The Cyan guys used Strata 3D. I miss that computer.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 00:53
|
|
|
Unperson_47 posted:I would watch a whole documentary on feelies/physical copy protection. It's not a whole documentary, but Get Lamp and the Infocom documentary are both worth a watch and touch on feelies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o15itQ_EhRo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXNLWy7rwH4
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 09:25
|
|
|
Rev. Bleech_ posted:yo I'm BleachBitting like 8 of these loving things ranging from 10GB to 250GB right now and will send them to anyone free, minus like five bucks shipping, if they want. Please get them out of my house. On a similar vein, I have a shitload of Raptor hard drives that are yours for the price of shipping.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 17:01
|
|
|
insta posted:On a similar vein, I have a shitload of Raptor hard drives that are yours for the price of shipping. It's like having a coffee maker in your computer.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 17:20
|
|
|
Rev. Bleech_ posted:yo I'm BleachBitting like 8 of these loving things ranging from 10GB to 250GB right now and will send them to anyone free, minus like five bucks shipping, if they want. Please get them out of my house. insta posted:On a similar vein, I have a shitload of Raptor hard drives that are yours for the price of shipping. How much would that be? You got a flat rate box you could cram them in?
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 18:08
|
|
|
I did not expect any traction on that. I will look tonight.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 18:29
|
|
|
poo poo, if I didn't already have a pile of old hardware ready for the scrap bin, I'd almost take that offer on the Raptors. Gotta stop my hoarding instincts...
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 18:45
|
|
|
rndmnmbr posted:poo poo, if I didn't already have a pile of old hardware ready for the scrap bin, I'd almost take that offer on the Raptors. Gotta stop my hoarding instincts... I'd take any ceramic CPU's off your hands. :P
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 19:27
|
|
|
PushingUpRoses has a good video about the Moon Logic of old adventure games https://youtu.be/zpiAFd9OkHY The worst was Discoworld. I was so drat stuck on that game for years. I have to admit the first time i ever played a game on CD with full voice, that blew me away.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 01:56
|
|
|
Who killed Adventure Games? I think it should be pretty clear at this point that Adventure Games committed suicide.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 02:21
|
|
|
Platystemon posted:Who killed Adventure Games? I think it should be pretty clear at this point that Adventure Games committed suicide. They didn't die, they just went to Germany.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 02:27
|
|
|
twistedmentat posted:PushingUpRoses has a good video about the Moon Logic of old adventure games I remember asking Al Lowe about this and back then beta testing was more "will this crash?" rather than testing to how logically it played. Testers were given a walkthrough and if the game played fine without breaking, it went out. He mentioned they didn't really sit down and think about game design's user experience until the late 90s. This lead to the infamous Larry 3 bug where the part in the game at the gym had your reps multiplied based on CPU speed. Many old games relied on CPU speed to time events resulting in faster processors multiplying variables. So on a 386 this was around 25 per machine. On a Pentium 233 this blew up to around 500+ reps per machine.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 03:24
|
|
|
twistedmentat posted:PushingUpRoses has a good video about the Moon Logic of old adventure games Probably the worst I ever got stuck in an adventure game was fairly early on in Space Quest I. You need to get past a gate made of laser beams and I just could not figure out how to do it. I finally broke down and ordered the drat hint book, which told me that you needed to pick up a shard of glass from your crashed escape pod, earlier in the game, and use that to reflect the beam. A shard of glass which wasn't visible on screen. And wasn't mentioned if you typed "look at escape pod". Unless you walked up to the proper side of the escape pod and THEN typed "look at escape pod". No other object in any other Sierra game, before or since, gave you different information for a "look" command depending on where you were standing. When they re-did the game with a newer graphics engine some years later, they made the shard visible, with an animated glint of light. Something tells me a LOT of people had unloaded on them for that particular turd of a puzzle.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 03:50
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 10:35 |
|
|
BogDew posted:I remember asking Al Lowe about this and back then beta testing was more "will this crash?" rather than testing to how logically it played. Danger - Octopus! posted:There was a text adventure called Demoniak that came out in 1991. I got very stuck when I played it at the time, and tried a few more times but could never get far due to the complexity of it (you could become almost any character in the game at any point, and I think you needed to do so in order to progress). Rooms can also become randomly unavailable due to movements of the minotaur (who causes earthquakes that can collapse passages) and you can be randomly and silently teleported. Also: it's a text adventure, but it updates in realtime. So while you're trying to map something can come into the room and kill you, steal items, alter the map, and so on. There are also magic spells but I'm not even going to attempt to summarise that poo poo. A lot of people cite Wizardry IV as one of the most obtuse games ever made (and read up on that poo poo if being horrified about terrible game mechanics is your jam) but Madness and the Minotaur definitely loving deserves consideration in that regard. Fake edit: From the wikipedia article on Wizardry IV: Wizardry IV posted:Another major example that seriously hinders unfamiliar players is the seemingly impossible task of exiting the very first room. The only way out is a hidden door which may be revealed by casting a "light" spell called "Milwa". The only way to do this is to recruit a group of Priests. This seemingly-simple task is made unintuitive due to the lack of any evidence that there is a door to begin with; the necessity of recruiting a group of Clerics, which are ineffective in combat and take the place of effective combat recruits; and the need to enter combat until the Clerics cast this spell. There is no suggestion in the context of the game as to what Milwa or any other Cleric spell name means; only players familiar with prior Wizardry games would understand its function. To a player unfamiliar with these earlier Wizardry titles, it would seem that the Clerics cast a useless spell. Furthermore, the Milwa/Light spell eventually expires, meaning that there is a limited time to find the door once the spell is cast. (Acknowledging the difficulty of this very first puzzle in the game, Sir-Tech included a sealed envelope in the game package containing its solution, to be opened if the player couldn't figure it out on their own.)
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 03:58
|
|
