Anything games

[Taton Qek]

I'd heard he died. Literally, I mean.

I had suspected this possibility, but never heard anything. Some googling found this 2018 topic by Klasodeth, a friend of Lucius.

https://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=940

Lucius has been doing well. Life has been busy for him over the last few years, though it's settled down a bit these days. He's still expressed interest in continuing work on the XL Engine, but I get the distinct impression he's recovering from the years of having incredible demands on his time. There's no telling when he'll finally decide to return to XL Engine development, but when he does he'll be focusing on the decompiler, which should help result in more accurate gameplay reproduction even for other people's existing projects. But of course, that's at some indeterminate point in the future, and I can't blame anyone for concluding that it may never happen.

This is long after he discontinued work of the project, so I don't think death contributed to the lack of updates.

[Reid]

I watched "Escape From New York" a few days back. It's a good movie IMO, pretty untypical for an 80's action movie, but that adds to its charm as it's a unique experience.

It's stunning how much Hideo Kojima ripped off from this movie when making the Metal Gear Solid series. There's the obvious stuff like the main character being Snake Plissken (MGS2 has a character named Pliskin, and the obvious Snake). Then you have the eye patch which would be used by Big Boss. That stuff was obvious.

But so much more is stolen by him too. The idea of a solo operative sneaking in and calling back to base on radio. The intro glider scene mirrors Snake's deployment in MGS1 and MGS2. Then you have character design. Escape From New York has a black guy as the big baddie, who calls himself the Duke and wears a civil war general's jacket. Which honestly sounds like it could be from a Metal Gear game.

[Wookie06]

If I remember correctly Escape From New York also is a member of the 1997 films. These are films that I've noticed over the years all had something bad set in 1997 (not counting the Special Editions ). Anyway, Predator 2 was set in 1997, Judgement Day was supposed to happen in 1997, Robocop was set in 1997, and Escape is set in 1997. I'm sure I'm forgetting some. Oh, and I read this after I saw the post in the music thread.

[Baconfish]

Turbo Kid's set in the post apocolyptic near-future. 1997.

Turbo Kid came out in 2015.

[Spook]

Turbo Kid was a ****ing fun movie

[ECHOMAN]

Remember Google Stadia?

[Impi]

Remember Google Stadia?

The X-Box cloud thingy is supposed to be free for a short while (didn't bother to read how long). I tried to sign up but it wouldn't let me.
I got enough free games from Ubisoft end Epic anyways.

[Brian]

I've been playing Ori and the Blind Forest. I chose the "easy" setting and it's still too hard I just finished this area where you had to climb the inside of a giant tree, put a blue glowing thing in a certain spot, and then escape (upwards further) while the tree is violently filling with water. It was probably one of the most frustrating game experiences I've played in a decade. If I run into another area like this I will probably quit

[Obi_Kwiet]

My wife has been doing that game, and she really struggled with that part as well. She didn't find the rest of the game too bad, especially after she started doing the side areas to get all the extra life points.

[Brian]

Thanks, I'll try to stick with it.

[Wookie06]

I think it was this thread that someone had posted some of their big box PC games earlier. I had an interesting find, the other day. The poster below I'm pretty sure I got with the game and the strategy guide in a Costco in Anchorage, Alaska sometime around '96. I have no idea how long it has been since I'd seen it but we are doing all the floors in the house and the other day when I was emptying out the guest closet I found a tube with this and a couple other old posters of mine. Anyway, so I decided to drag out the game boxes I still have. Well, most of them. I have a few more.



Most of the Star Wars stuff that I have displayed is on this small shelf and you'll notice the Dark Forces box in the background.

[Nikumubeki]

Very cool! I still wish I hadn't been forced to throw my big boxes away back in the day, but alas.

[Wookie06]

It is what it is. I slightly regret some of the things that I've parted with like that over the years but I still wouldn't want to have to store it. Though there are a few odds and ends I haven't seen for a long time that I'm not sure what happened to. For example, I can't find my Nintendo 64 Resident Evil 2 cartridge but I still have the box. Oddly, I have two cartridges each for Super Mario All Stars and Donkey Kong Country for the SNES. I think the duplicates were found in our previous residence. I'm not sure where a few old PS1 games went but it's possible I donated them to a thrift store. And my Batman figure is missing his Naginta.

[Wookie06]

ICYMI from the Showcase Forum:

Is there a DF mod that allows full mouselook yet?

Why my boy are you in luck. There was a hacky method that used software designed for wiimote emulation that was just awful.

However, In the last month, a crazy Russian hacker dude implemented mouse look (among other features). The program is called Dark Force DeHacker, and you can get it from DF-21.net (Long may it Live!). Note: If mouselook is to sluggish for you, you can enable the 4X multiplier option for faster mouse movement.

http://df-21.net/downloads/uploads/1...5/dforcedh.zip

If anyone care about Dark Forces (DF-21 Rules! Massassi Temple Drools!), DF-21 is being regularly updated, and we even have a twitter account.

https://twitter.com/DF21net

Russian Hacker Website (In Russian)

http://ctpax-cheater.losthost.org/ht...trouble.htm#df

[Wookie06]

Just messed around with it to see how it works. Basically, dump the zip in your DF folder. You now run dforcedh.exe instead of setup. Select the hacks option. Enable 4x for the mouse and select either standard or inverted mouse behavior. Default is the standard DF mouse. When I ran DF I had to turn off the joystick in the in-game configuration. It worked. The DPI on my mouse is set way too high right now and the Logitech software has not been launching so I haven't been able to adjust it. I'll mess around with that later.

[Wookie06]

Okay, sorry for the third post on this but, I swear, this is what we've always wanted. It is amazing.

It took me only a few minutes of experimenting to get it to function right. My recommendations are the following options:

Speed Mode Always Run does not feel good to me at all so I left it unchecked.



I had to disable the joystick ingame until I selected the option below. The game does not behave well unless you disable this. Then again, I do have a gamepad plugged in right now and I did not try disconnecting that so maybe that's the issue.



If you want to use WASD you need to set it up here first. I prefer nudge on the spacebar. I use the right mouse button for jump.



That's where I selected jump. Basically you just want to get these screens right or as close to right for you before you run the game to minimize your trips back here.

[Wookie06]

Cool. Here's something we talked about a year or so back but he's released a video recently.

[Nikumubeki]

Pretty solid work... yet it reminds me maybe a bit too much of the first level of JO. Still - better be released!

[Baconfish]

I'm enjoying the FFVII remake so far, but I'm not sure how much I like the attempt to marry the elements of the original with the additional stuff from the sequel/prequel things.

[Wookie06]

Pretty solid work... yet it reminds me maybe a bit too much of the first level of JO. Still - better be released!

You know, I never really have any sense of exactly what the environment is in the original DF level.The outside areas never really feel outside to me except perhaps on the roof at the end. So I appreciate the attempt to modernize it and give it more depth and perhaps context but then I'm also wondering about how an introductory level translates to going in alone against an armada. Of course, in a stand alone level like this it doesn't have to be constrained to serving as an introduction. I will also say that while the Mos Eisley level was bad enough in it's sense of lifelessness, this level is somewhat worse with the frozen imperials. I know that they should just be serving as stand ins until the level is complete but still...

[Nikumubeki]

Oh yeah, modernizing the original archi is pretty good in that one (though at the moment, mainly due to being an actual playable thing, Rebel Agent remains my #1 favorite DF (level 1) remake ever). There are just some minor elements (which I can't even properly list down apart from the sky texture) when put together, reminds me more of the JO one rather than DF in that UE4 level.

[Wookie06]

Oh, that looks interesting, but it says I might need a new 3D card! Anyway, I haven't been paying attention to the JK upscale mods lately. Do they play well with custom levels?

[Wookie06]

Hell, I don't even remember how to load custom levels! Not that I can't figure it out I just haven't loaded any custom levels for anything in forever. I meant to ask you, do modern games support custom levels much at all anymore? When I was playing Terminator Resistance I thought it would be really cool if you could use the assets in that game to create custom terminator levels but I don't even think/know if that's possible.

[Nikumubeki]

Do they play well with custom levels?

Depends on how many standard JK/MotS textures they use, since all textures have to be run through the upscaler and then injected into the game. Sadly, the DF upscaled texture mod doesn't help a lot with those JK/MotS mods that do have DF MATs in them due to the MATs used in those levels being slightly different in resolution/colormap/etc. and/or having different file names.

(And yes, Massassi has loads and LOADS of JK/MotS mods using DF assets OR JK mods having materials from MotS (to name two examples of resource harvesting), so don't you get your finger waggling, CoolMatty!)

[ECHOMAN]

Since SM64 was mentioned earlier, somebody made a PC port of the game that I tried out (using xbox360 controller).


Works pretty well so far, no hiccups, although I didn't play much. The early to mid section of the game itself is kinda painful when the nostalgia googles come off.

[Wookie06]

I'm just interested in what functions you assigned to what buttons. So the filled in PDF is enough for me.

So this was in another thread but here's what I've come up with so far. I haven't really played with this setup yet but it seems logical. Unfortunately X-Wing doesn't really support an analog throttle so I mapped the throttle to the rudder control.

[Darkjedibob]

TIE didn't either, I think the splits were 25/33/50/66/75/100%. I had x52, so the energy settings I had on the toggle switches, which freed up the second hat for wingmate commands but otherwise you're pretty close to how I flew.

[Wookie06]

Yep, I could definitely add some things to the other hat type switches and I may later. I had to physically change my setup because the keyboard tray was too uncomfortable so I spent sometime today revisiting an old project. It's more comfortable but now they're a bit low but I can fix that later. Time to get some more stick time...

[Wookie06]

So I decided that I was going to mission for mission try to play the original Collectors' CD-ROM version with the 98 Windows version. Oddly, the 98 version seems to make the awkward DOSBox interface for remapping joystick buttons look like a dream! Maybe I'll try the disc itself and see what happens (I was just trying the gog version).

Yeah, it didn't even recognize the disc lol.

[Impi]

I think I'd swap out 2/3 throttle with match speed with target. That was on return if I recall correctly.

[Wookie06]

Yeah, I thought about that except that must be a TIE Fighter thing because it doesn't exist. At least not in the card that came with the game. Which makes sense because there were lots of small improvements like that in TIE Fighter.

So when I fired up the updated Windows version it definitely has better graphics and the throttle works correctly but the joystick remapping options kept hanging up so I didn't do much more than fly through a few gates in the pilot proving grounds. The game did "feel" better though. I'll try messing with it some more.

[Taton Qek]

Today is a good day for Dark Forces. Been ready to burst waiting to share ever since I found the Github.

Lucius is back and working on a Dark Forces port! The Force Engine is coming! (Don't tell Mattias Welander, he might invoke his Force Builder copyright.)

https://theforceengine.github.io/

[Nikumubeki]

Hot damn! Just in time for me to receive the "new" copy of DF that I ordered a while back

[ECHOMAN]

I know I've belabored this point, but I'm gonna make it again. Compare the PS2 and PS4 physical game SKUs. Once you get rid of all of the duplicates (deluxe editions, etc.) you're left with literally an 87% drop in product variety over the last decade. Even if digital distribution were illegal, GameStop wouldn't be able to carry any product that Walmart and Target couldn't. It's not like 2009 when GameStop was the only place to get your weeb Atlus game; in 2009 they published 18 games, but in 2019 they published zero. Walmart even carries NIS games now, lol. And why wouldn't they? Even Walmart can't be that picky anymore.

Well, GameStop became relevant again. And nothing to do with games.