Re:You can find it googling, but here it is anyway
on
Is DOS Gaming Dead?
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· Score: 1
Well, DosBox isn't quite to that point yet-- 386 emulation is still pretty preliminary. Give it six months to a year and it's likely it'll be ready to run Archon Ultra and the like. It does already run a number of games from that era, but support is hit-or-miss.
Well, thinking from my own position as a sysadmin with a situation where I end up doing a little of everything on occasion, including debugging systems I didn't develop.. well, having access to books even outside my normal ken would be handy. Why spend $30 on a book I'll use three times? If I end up doing the research through the library enough, I'm more than breaking even.
Well, it's nice to have physical books, but sometimes space is a concern. In comparison, a virtual library is MUCH smaller to store. Also compare the costs of all of those books to the price for the subscription and it comes out cheaper in the long run. Still, preference would go a long way towards if you'd even consider it in the first place.
That's why you have it blackhole the IP for a period of time if the sequence is incorrect after.. oh.. three tries. If you're not dead on, you'll still get another shot at it, but active attacks would be ignored.
You don't webbrowse from a server, and management typically mandates Windows for desktop machines in most places I've seen, so why SHOULDN'T Windows/IE show up so frequently? I mean, I use Windows AND Linux at home, but from work I'm always going to show up to Slashdot as a Mozilla/Windows user.
I still run quite a large selection of PSX discs in my PS2 and I'm sure I'm not alone. Games like Symphony of the Night don't exactly degrade even when compared to more modern titles.
Why do you think that a system has to be "crippled" to have backwards compatibility? Removing the PSX backwards compatibility would have NO effect on the PS2, and the Panasonic Q demonstrates that DVD playback could be added to a next-gen Cube without sacrificing backwards compatibility.
It's Ridge Racer, and you could save those extra cars (along with the super-secret black car) to memory card. Being a firstgen PSX title, though, they hadn't yet come up with an autosave function.
The funny thing about the Galaxians game was that it just BARELY gave you enough time to kill the group before they escaped. More than once I've seen someone reset the PSX to give it another shot rather than just start with the default cars, which is probably the most amusing perversion of loadtime I've ever seen.
The difficulty of background loading is probably why you so rarely see it in games.
Alright, so the disc format is propreitary. Still, it's not too tough to get images of the discs, with Suprnova and the like. You'll just need to dedicate a good week to the downloading.
Well, most of the people who'd use this kind of preliminary emulator would have at least a partial clue about computers in general and thus about some of the more specialized tools out there. I'd expect them to just devote some giggage to disc images and use Daemon Tools with it; go down, rent a game, image it, and emulate the disc with DT. Simple as they get.
I reached a question with no possible answer that would fit my situation. It wanted to know how much code I would steal from someone else's code without permission, and the answer is NONE. I'd reuse small chunks of my own code, but never anyone else's without clear permission.
Well, looks like there's no need to bother checking out the results once they're done since they're going to be seriously skewed.
They locked down the theme system for XP to prevent people from using non-standard themes in the first place. The only reason there are third-party themes out there is due to the fact s a unauthorized theme.DLL patch was created.
Well, I'd have to say that Twin Snakes ALMOST got it right. It's good enough to be a worthy successor, but it definitely has a few oddities. The complete lack of VR missions was completely incomprehensible, for one thing, and the seemingly random framerate stutters are irritating, but the _massive_ AI improvement, graphical touchups, and ability to use MGS2 moves really does add to the game.
Now, if only they'd redo the first two Metal Gear games in that style.. it'd be nice to see a real US release of MG2: Solid Snake.
Another example of how to do it right would be the Mario All-Stars SNES title, with the graphics and audio completely reworked but the underlying game engines left alone.
One that really DIDN'T quite stand up as well is the Rockman Complete Works. The first three games in the set didn't really add ANYTHING worthwhile at all. The latter three at least have remixed music as an option, but the games really could have used a graphic overhaul. Since a compressed, parial ROM image has been discovered on the discs in question, it's pretty obvious they chose to go with a partial emulation with the audio as XA streams.
Titles that absolutely borked it? Final Fantasy 4-6. Bad mode-7 emulation, hideous loading times, and tinny audio. FF5 even got a hideous translation out of it.
He said 'cumulative'-- adding that one at the very beginning into any amount will always make it odd since it's the only odd number you'll ever get in the set.
Adding to the other reply, the PSX re-release is "Castlevania Chronicles"-- it's a halfstep between Castlevania 1 and Castlevania 4 in that it's yet another reworking of the original story and it has SOME of the CV4 features (graphics quality, audio quality, ability to whip downwards from a jump).
It's also incredibly difficult in the later stages. It's definitely worth picking up if you're a fan of the series. Oh, and as a purist, I can say it's an accurate representation of the original if you're in Original mode.
I'd be inclined to call it LookOut, as in "LookOut below! Here comes another virus" but that's just me. It's funny, here at work there are three people who use Outlook. Two of them have been infected multiple times, the third has a clue and hasn't been hit even ONCE...
If anything, Doom3's bathroom scene showed more grit than anything I've seen in ages. Personally, though, I'm hoping they won't resort to Silent Hill's grainy filtering for such effects-- that just gives me a headache.
I didn't find Twin Snakes to be all that bad graphically; there's not a whole lot of dirt to get around because the ground is most likely all hardpack. If anything, Twin Snakes is a huge improvement because of the vast resolution upgrade it got over the original. There were times you weren't quite sure what you were looking at on the old PSX version.
Quake 2 DID feel considerably like Quake 1 (with a completely different weapon balance and an actual mission structure), but I can't see Q3 as being anything like the first two. In my estimation, it was a bit more like Doom with the faster pacing and plasma rifle.
Quake 4.. well, we don't know anything about how the game itself will shape up. I can't really say that Quake's dead considering there're still a whole lot of people playing Q3 online. As late as last summer, I decided to hop onto QuakeWorld and see what was going on-- there were still a number of diehards playing Quake 1 on there.
If Q4 takes the best parts of Q2 and Q3, it might actually be pretty good, but I'd expect any announcement on the game to be a huge milestone-- Raven software, I believe, is doing Q4. They're using the Doom 3 engine for it, this much is definitely known. As a result, they're probably going to wait on showing anything until the Doom 3 engine has settled into a reasonably final form. Q4 being unveiled should coincide with settling in the background for D3 as a result.
Well.. answering this may make me sound like a troll or like I'm trying to pick a fight, but..
There's one big difference between the two. The dualshock's sticks are towards the center of the controller, and the dpad on the GC controller is on the far lower left. The difference comes down to the fact that my hands have to contort to hit the dpad and STILL don't quite get it comfortably on the GC, but only have a slight yet comfortable shift for the PS2 controller. I have similar issues with the x-box controllers, but from everything I hear most people do.
Before I begin, I have to note that I use Windows XP AND Linux at home.
Media Player does NOT handle XVID/Divx well unless you pre-install the codec. It doesn't even know how to get the codecs for those formats. Since AVI is still the standard for video formats on Windows, you then run into the joys of trying to ID nonstandard codecs since Windows has no easy way to do so without external applications (I received grabbed a video where I couldn't figure out what audio codec I needed until I ran an external analysis tool on the file)
It's a hell of a lot easier than setting up MPlayer on Linux for such things as Matroska, though Matroska isn't so easy on Windows either, with an entire host of extra filters and support files that have to be installed-- Matroska is still a bit hairy across the board as it were.
Haven't tried on Apple, personally, but video playback is probably a bad issue to compare OSes on because nobody really has it "right" just yet. They're close in many areas, but there's still work to do.
I really don't like the GC controller. The d-pad is way too small and out of place, making the games that DO use it a lot more of a pain than they need to be. (Megaman Network Transmission, for example) Then you've got the arrangement of the buttons themselves. A and B aren't too bad, though I find myself wishing they had standardized on a button size for them. X and Y, on the other hand, I find to be nearly impossible to use at the same time as A and B. Using the same game as an example, I have to completely shift my right hand grip to be over A and X to use chips in MMNT, making B impossible to hit for that duration. On a PS2 controller, that'd be a whole lot easier based on the uniformity of the button arrangement.
The biggest complaint I have with the idea of L and R being analog isn't on the GC itself, but rather the DC-- the buttons have a very large range of motion, and the deadspace for most games before they detect L and R (when used as digital buttons) absolutely wrecks those types of games-- especially fighting games, which were already broken badly by the DC's horrendous d-pad. This is a software issue, though, and thankfully it's not one that really appears on the GC.
The most comfortable controller I've ever used is the SNES one. Buttons are well-placed (though L and R could have used equivelents on the front as well, IMHO.) The PSX is a little less confortable due to the d-pad center break and required adjustment of how one holds the controller due to the rounded grips. The Dual Shock was too heavy, though the DS2 fixes it.
All in all, despite how much I find the GC controller irritating, I think there are worse designs-- see Jaguar, Dreamcast, and X-Box for example. (the latter being just too bulky for my hands to hold it comfortably, and the buttons feel wrong to me)
Use DVD Decrypter to rip to ISOs, removing Macrovision as you do so. Then get Daemon Tools to mount the images. There are a number of good third-party automounting tools with menus, and if you're a programmer you can get the API from the DT developers to make your own. You will, of course, need to install a DVD player app if you don't already have one.
It'll be time-consuming to set this all up, as just the DVD ISOing itself will be a bit long.
Sorry to say it, but I experienced EXACTLY identical situations working at a major phone company as tech support/sales. The whole story was a disturbing and somewhat depressing case of Deja Vu.
I've had terrible luck with WD drives starting around 2000. Three friends had WD drives die, then I lost one a month later. Lost another one about a year and a half later, and another one six months ago. They seem to frequently die around the one-year mark in my experiences.
I've stopped buying WD as a result and now buy Maxtor when possible.
That kind of problem seems to be HIGHLY dependant on the hardware you get. A number of manufacturers seem to have somewhat flaky hardware in terms of Tablet PCs, at least if you listen to the complaints on the various forums out there. Of course, a malfunctioning tablet can be returned, so it's the sort of hardware you'd need to buy locally.
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Well, DosBox isn't quite to that point yet-- 386 emulation is still pretty preliminary. Give it six months to a year and it's likely it'll be ready to run Archon Ultra and the like. It does already run a number of games from that era, but support is hit-or-miss.
Well, thinking from my own position as a sysadmin with a situation where I end up doing a little of everything on occasion, including debugging systems I didn't develop.. well, having access to books even outside my normal ken would be handy. Why spend $30 on a book I'll use three times? If I end up doing the research through the library enough, I'm more than breaking even.
Well, it's nice to have physical books, but sometimes space is a concern. In comparison, a virtual library is MUCH smaller to store. Also compare the costs of all of those books to the price for the subscription and it comes out cheaper in the long run. Still, preference would go a long way towards if you'd even consider it in the first place.
That's why you have it blackhole the IP for a period of time if the sequence is incorrect after.. oh.. three tries. If you're not dead on, you'll still get another shot at it, but active attacks would be ignored.
Well, here's how I see it..
You don't webbrowse from a server, and management typically mandates Windows for desktop machines in most places I've seen, so why SHOULDN'T Windows/IE show up so frequently? I mean, I use Windows AND Linux at home, but from work I'm always going to show up to Slashdot as a Mozilla/Windows user.
I still run quite a large selection of PSX discs in my PS2 and I'm sure I'm not alone. Games like Symphony of the Night don't exactly degrade even when compared to more modern titles.
Why do you think that a system has to be "crippled" to have backwards compatibility? Removing the PSX backwards compatibility would have NO effect on the PS2, and the Panasonic Q demonstrates that DVD playback could be added to a next-gen Cube without sacrificing backwards compatibility.
It's Ridge Racer, and you could save those extra cars (along with the super-secret black car) to memory card. Being a firstgen PSX title, though, they hadn't yet come up with an autosave function.
The funny thing about the Galaxians game was that it just BARELY gave you enough time to kill the group before they escaped. More than once I've seen someone reset the PSX to give it another shot rather than just start with the default cars, which is probably the most amusing perversion of loadtime I've ever seen.
The difficulty of background loading is probably why you so rarely see it in games.
Alright, so the disc format is propreitary. Still, it's not too tough to get images of the discs, with Suprnova and the like. You'll just need to dedicate a good week to the downloading.
Well, most of the people who'd use this kind of preliminary emulator would have at least a partial clue about computers in general and thus about some of the more specialized tools out there. I'd expect them to just devote some giggage to disc images and use Daemon Tools with it; go down, rent a game, image it, and emulate the disc with DT. Simple as they get.
I reached a question with no possible answer that would fit my situation. It wanted to know how much code I would steal from someone else's code without permission, and the answer is NONE. I'd reuse small chunks of my own code, but never anyone else's without clear permission.
Well, looks like there's no need to bother checking out the results once they're done since they're going to be seriously skewed.
They locked down the theme system for XP to prevent people from using non-standard themes in the first place. The only reason there are third-party themes out there is due to the fact s a unauthorized theme .DLL patch was created.
Well, I'd have to say that Twin Snakes ALMOST got it right. It's good enough to be a worthy successor, but it definitely has a few oddities. The complete lack of VR missions was completely incomprehensible, for one thing, and the seemingly random framerate stutters are irritating, but the _massive_ AI improvement, graphical touchups, and ability to use MGS2 moves really does add to the game.
Now, if only they'd redo the first two Metal Gear games in that style.. it'd be nice to see a real US release of MG2: Solid Snake.
Another example of how to do it right would be the Mario All-Stars SNES title, with the graphics and audio completely reworked but the underlying game engines left alone.
One that really DIDN'T quite stand up as well is the Rockman Complete Works. The first three games in the set didn't really add ANYTHING worthwhile at all. The latter three at least have remixed music as an option, but the games really could have used a graphic overhaul. Since a compressed, parial ROM image has been discovered on the discs in question, it's pretty obvious they chose to go with a partial emulation with the audio as XA streams.
Titles that absolutely borked it? Final Fantasy 4-6. Bad mode-7 emulation, hideous loading times, and tinny audio. FF5 even got a hideous translation out of it.
He said 'cumulative'-- adding that one at the very beginning into any amount will always make it odd since it's the only odd number you'll ever get in the set.
Adding to the other reply, the PSX re-release is "Castlevania Chronicles"-- it's a halfstep between Castlevania 1 and Castlevania 4 in that it's yet another reworking of the original story and it has SOME of the CV4 features (graphics quality, audio quality, ability to whip downwards from a jump).
It's also incredibly difficult in the later stages. It's definitely worth picking up if you're a fan of the series. Oh, and as a purist, I can say it's an accurate representation of the original if you're in Original mode.
I'd be inclined to call it LookOut, as in "LookOut below! Here comes another virus" but that's just me. It's funny, here at work there are three people who use Outlook. Two of them have been infected multiple times, the third has a clue and hasn't been hit even ONCE...
If anything, Doom3's bathroom scene showed more grit than anything I've seen in ages. Personally, though, I'm hoping they won't resort to Silent Hill's grainy filtering for such effects-- that just gives me a headache.
I didn't find Twin Snakes to be all that bad graphically; there's not a whole lot of dirt to get around because the ground is most likely all hardpack. If anything, Twin Snakes is a huge improvement because of the vast resolution upgrade it got over the original. There were times you weren't quite sure what you were looking at on the old PSX version.
Probably in his stomach-- it'd explain why the stakes are so high!
Eh, what the hell.. I'll bite on this one.
Quake 2 DID feel considerably like Quake 1 (with a completely different weapon balance and an actual mission structure), but I can't see Q3 as being anything like the first two. In my estimation, it was a bit more like Doom with the faster pacing and plasma rifle.
Quake 4.. well, we don't know anything about how the game itself will shape up. I can't really say that Quake's dead considering there're still a whole lot of people playing Q3 online. As late as last summer, I decided to hop onto QuakeWorld and see what was going on-- there were still a number of diehards playing Quake 1 on there.
If Q4 takes the best parts of Q2 and Q3, it might actually be pretty good, but I'd expect any announcement on the game to be a huge milestone-- Raven software, I believe, is doing Q4. They're using the Doom 3 engine for it, this much is definitely known. As a result, they're probably going to wait on showing anything until the Doom 3 engine has settled into a reasonably final form. Q4 being unveiled should coincide with settling in the background for D3 as a result.
Well.. answering this may make me sound like a troll or like I'm trying to pick a fight, but..
There's one big difference between the two. The dualshock's sticks are towards the center of the controller, and the dpad on the GC controller is on the far lower left. The difference comes down to the fact that my hands have to contort to hit the dpad and STILL don't quite get it comfortably on the GC, but only have a slight yet comfortable shift for the PS2 controller. I have similar issues with the x-box controllers, but from everything I hear most people do.
Before I begin, I have to note that I use Windows XP AND Linux at home.
Media Player does NOT handle XVID/Divx well unless you pre-install the codec. It doesn't even know how to get the codecs for those formats. Since AVI is still the standard for video formats on Windows, you then run into the joys of trying to ID nonstandard codecs since Windows has no easy way to do so without external applications (I received grabbed a video where I couldn't figure out what audio codec I needed until I ran an external analysis tool on the file)
It's a hell of a lot easier than setting up MPlayer on Linux for such things as Matroska, though Matroska isn't so easy on Windows either, with an entire host of extra filters and support files that have to be installed-- Matroska is still a bit hairy across the board as it were.
Haven't tried on Apple, personally, but video playback is probably a bad issue to compare OSes on because nobody really has it "right" just yet. They're close in many areas, but there's still work to do.
I really don't like the GC controller. The d-pad is way too small and out of place, making the games that DO use it a lot more of a pain than they need to be. (Megaman Network Transmission, for example) Then you've got the arrangement of the buttons themselves. A and B aren't too bad, though I find myself wishing they had standardized on a button size for them. X and Y, on the other hand, I find to be nearly impossible to use at the same time as A and B. Using the same game as an example, I have to completely shift my right hand grip to be over A and X to use chips in MMNT, making B impossible to hit for that duration. On a PS2 controller, that'd be a whole lot easier based on the uniformity of the button arrangement.
The biggest complaint I have with the idea of L and R being analog isn't on the GC itself, but rather the DC-- the buttons have a very large range of motion, and the deadspace for most games before they detect L and R (when used as digital buttons) absolutely wrecks those types of games-- especially fighting games, which were already broken badly by the DC's horrendous d-pad. This is a software issue, though, and thankfully it's not one that really appears on the GC.
The most comfortable controller I've ever used is the SNES one. Buttons are well-placed (though L and R could have used equivelents on the front as well, IMHO.) The PSX is a little less confortable due to the d-pad center break and required adjustment of how one holds the controller due to the rounded grips. The Dual Shock was too heavy, though the DS2 fixes it.
All in all, despite how much I find the GC controller irritating, I think there are worse designs-- see Jaguar, Dreamcast, and X-Box for example. (the latter being just too bulky for my hands to hold it comfortably, and the buttons feel wrong to me)
Use DVD Decrypter to rip to ISOs, removing Macrovision as you do so. Then get Daemon Tools to mount the images. There are a number of good third-party automounting tools with menus, and if you're a programmer you can get the API from the DT developers to make your own. You will, of course, need to install a DVD player app if you don't already have one.
It'll be time-consuming to set this all up, as just the DVD ISOing itself will be a bit long.
Sorry to say it, but I experienced EXACTLY identical situations working at a major phone company as tech support/sales. The whole story was a disturbing and somewhat depressing case of Deja Vu.
I've had terrible luck with WD drives starting around 2000. Three friends had WD drives die, then I lost one a month later. Lost another one about a year and a half later, and another one six months ago. They seem to frequently die around the one-year mark in my experiences.
I've stopped buying WD as a result and now buy Maxtor when possible.
That kind of problem seems to be HIGHLY dependant on the hardware you get. A number of manufacturers seem to have somewhat flaky hardware in terms of Tablet PCs, at least if you listen to the complaints on the various forums out there. Of course, a malfunctioning tablet can be returned, so it's the sort of hardware you'd need to buy locally.