|
Come to think of it, the only Ultimas I really liked weren't made by Origin at all. That was Warren Spector's company, Blue Sky (and later, Looking Glass). Same guy that went on to make System Shock, Deus Ex, Thief. It's been mentioned in this thread before, but I will recommend it again: the book/audiobook "Prophets of Doom" is a fantastic insight into early 90's videogame making and publishing. It's a story about John Carmack and John Romero teaming up to do idSoftware and a whole bunch of other stuff. The story inevitably touches on a lot of familiar names in the gaming industry. Romero had at one point worked as some cheap intern at Origin for Roberts. There are fantastic tales of 'creative publishing' at Apogee Software, proto-goon behavior, stealing hardware, and so on. It's a fantastic read/listen. The audiobook is narrated by Whil Wheaton. Fake edit: A few years back, I happened to chat with Jay Wilbur, another big name in early PC games and even up to now as one of the big names at Epic Games. He worked for Apogee, then went with Carmack and Romero to Michigan (?) to found idSoftware, and later parted ways with them for other companies before arriving at Epic. Anyways, the company I worked for was interested in using the Unreal Engine for simulation software. I contacted Epic and Jay emailed me back. Like a true goon, I started gushing all over him with tales of my teen years and his awesome games. We never did buy the Unreal licensing, either. Sorry Jay 
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2016 07:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 06:17 |
|
|
Non Serviam posted:I think after Columbine this was no longer seen as cool. At the very least you'd get a counselor talking to you. Not in the US so not a as big an issue (Australia, so school shootings were a very rare occurrence. Plus by 1996 the then Prime Minister introduced gun control laws. Yay us!) I don't think the mod ever got completed, and it was just kept as an in-joke From what I can remember there were a few sprites like two "friends" - one beating the other up - in the place of a stationary pedestal or such. It was funny because, due to the way these sprites worked, no matter where you walked they'd always turn to face you. There were also some monster sounds replaced with "catchphrases" by teachers and other people. I tried making a Red Dwarf mod, which featured such things as: - A half-arsed attempt at a Starbug map. - A selection of sound samples - A few sprites (rocket launcher = bazookoid, helmet = Lister's hat).
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2016 07:38
|
|
|
Masters of Doom is a fantastic book, however his other book, Jacked, about the creation of the GTA series isn't that great. It's not really his fault though, it's mostly that the guys behind GTA are a bunch of boring, pretentious, idiot, rich kids from Scotland. I'd rather hang out with Carmack during his peak-autism days than with those guys on their best day.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2016 10:48
|
|
|
TotalLossBrain posted:The platform jumping was bullshit and so were the stupid puddles you'd drown in (basically any surface of water, no matter how small, would insta-kill you if stepped on). The best thing was jumping, not landing perfectly where you're supposed to land which would cause the avatar to bounce around like a rubber ball over the entire area and then usually drop into some water&die. The world was quite creatively designed IIRC and I liked that but man the game was bullshit otherwise. Ultima 7/Serpent Isle was where it's at. Ultima 7 at it's time felt immersive with all the NPCs doing their business and so many items you could interact with even if it often was in a meaningless way.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2016 11:33
|
|
|
Snuffman posted:I remember there was one...was it Space Quest? If you loaded the boss key it, yeah, it looked like a spreadsheet but when you tried to get back to the game, the game would admonish you for playing a game when you should be working and kicked you to the DOS prompt. This is the Boss Key screen from the original Leisure Suit Larry The labels reference the scene where you're buying condoms at the Bodega 
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2016 11:35
|
|
|
steinrokkan posted:Warlords, a good game I've been looking for this game for a decade!! I kept thinking it was some old weird version of heroes of might and magic or something. I played it once as a little kid on my parents' friend's mac. I thought it was an awesome game, but I don't think it was on PC or at the very least I had no way to play it. I'm so glad to finally know what it was and it feels good to see the screenshots click!! Is there are a way to play in on a modern windows machine or do I need to set up a mac emulator?
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2016 12:18
|
|
|
Buttcoin purse posted:So my graphics cards went: Hercules -> Tseng ET4000 -> S3 Trio64 -> some PCI 3D card that I got out of the trash at work that worked well with Quake II -> GeForce4 MX440. I guess I missed out on the fun phase of early 3D cards I missed out on the entire Voodoo/S3/ATI Rage/Early GeForce era for lack of a computer, period.  And when I finally got a computer of my very own (circa 2003), it was a laptop with ATI Radeon onboard graphics.I finally built my own computer a couple of years ago. That means the R9 270X I started by build out with was the first bit of exposure I got with video cards.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2016 13:50
|
|
|
www posted:Interactive Encyclopedia!!!! Oh man I remember this. We tried to use it in like the fourth grade and it was really dumb and had a million CDs. But now I love Wikipedia hooray for technology.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2016 14:20
|
|
|
The family computers went: Commodore 128 (Purchased before I was born, went to my grandmothers house when it became obsolete, and she sold it to the local ripoff computer service place without asking anyone first. Then a kind goon gave me his a couple years ago in the thread about Jack Tramiel dying) Gateway 386 (Had some upgrades, don't remember what, kept until 1997) Dell Pentium II (Where most of my formative computer memories were made, upgraded with a Voodoo 3 so I could play Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, I still have it in a closet) Dell Pentium 4 (Purchased in 2001, upgraded with some Geforce card so I could play Star Wars: Battlefront, motherboard poo poo itself in 2006) The next two were considerably less memorable, and I was buying my own at that point.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2016 14:22
|
|
|
Just made it through all 57 pages of this thread, what a ride. Makes me wish I could have been around for really early computing because it seems really interesting. Most of my old computing was from my job at a computer store in the mid 2000s. People would bring in old computers to get them fixed or recycled. I learned about RAMBUS and how it has to be in pairs. Got to see all kinds of cool things. Someone even once brought in a really old keyboard synthesizer, was really cool. The only relic of my earlier internet days that I wish I could find absolutely anything on was a web comic called Badtech. It was a 3D graphics comic about a software company called Badtech. It was hilarious but the guy suddenly stopped making it and also stopped paying for his hosting so the entire thing disappeared from the internet. The only reference I can find about it is an O'Reilly book about PHP or some kind of web page crap about making a new page for a new Badtech strip as an example. And there's also some forum thread where people are talking about getting the comic syndicated on another website. i wish it had because then it might still exist. I don't know what it is about that comic that makes em want it back. It wasn't the funniest thing ever. I guess it's one rare case of something actually being removed from the internet.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2016 18:27
|
|
|
I forgot about RAMBUS, repressed that poo poo after a Windows 2000 build I had. It was the next big thing!!
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 04:32
|
|
|
Casimir Radon posted:I stay the hell away from it these days, of course I'm an adult with a job now, and it's more convenient than ever to buy something and start playing. Back when I did a lot of the more modern games wanted you to do some dubious stuff to make the cracks work. I don't know, these days it feels like you get punished for not pirating things, because you get stuck with DRM and licensing poo poo. The Kins posted:Oh, cool! I loved old 16-color icons when I was but a wee Win 3.1 user. Beautiful! Oh, the memories! I think I got some shareware for managing icons - I think it supported reading from and writing to .ICO, .EXE and .DLL files as you'd expect, but also .ICL - some kind of icon library format, I don't know what the benefit of it was. Then I had downloaded some huge collections of icons from BBSes, I think I had thousands of icons to choose from. I ended up with icons of The Simpsons everywhere, plus some .WAV files I'd recorded from the TV, e.g. Homer saying "doh", as the sounds for dialog boxes. And I was like "yes, I am using the multimedia features of Windows 3.1 to their fullest extent!" I guess I probably used Windows Sound Recorder to start with but then moved on to GoldWave, which might be a name that triggers some memories for people. Keith Atherton posted:Oh my god someone actually implemented that?!?! Yeah, and the site is right when it says "development tools" - I'm pretty sure this was all over Visual Studio 97 and 6. It sure sucks when you don't know what options are available to you and you have to scroll through them like that. It's much nicer in more modern versions of Visual Studio where for the options dialog at least you get a list or tree of categories. http://hallofshame.gp.co.at is pretty good:  lol
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 10:01
|
|
|
Buttcoin purse posted:I don't know, these days it feels like you get punished for not pirating things, because you get stuck with DRM and licensing poo poo. Goldwave is a name that triggers memories. I've used it to rip audio cassettes. Back then I had Opti 930 which was a good sound card. I wish I had an ISA slot on my current motherboard.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 11:22
|
|
|
Are mouse trails still an option in the latest versions of Windows? Also remember when it was common to customize hour cursor set and the ridiculous nature of desktop theming in general (we've talked a bit about it so far itt)
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 11:41
|
|
|
Vladimir Poutine posted:I think there was a thing where you could bounce things off of your desktop with a spring and have them splat like bags of flour and raw chickens Ah, desktop toys. http://www.mediafire.com/download/anfe8asmfaawahf/dtoys.exe This probably won't work on win7, so use VirtualBox or something. Try to get an ultra splat!
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 11:49
|
|
|
Doctor Bombadil posted:Back then I had Opti 930 which was a good sound card. I wish I had an ISA slot on my current motherboard. But then does you OS have drivers for it or would you need to run an older OS, and would that older OS handle the size of your hard disk and all the other newer things in your PC?  From a quick Google search, it looks like ISA to PCI adapters are a thing, not sure on the price though - anything that hardly anyone would want is bound to be expensive.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 11:50
|
|
|
Oh my god, I remember Goldwave. I also remember not knowing what audio clipping was, to the detriment of my earliest musical endeavors  I posted this in the Early FPS thread, but that icon selection screenshot reminds me of when my friend and I used to make fun of the names of files, and the 8.3 format created some gems. Our favourite was "pifmngr.dll". Good ol' Piffmigger Dill.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 12:08
|
|
|
I remember spending a lot of time with these programs on my Packard Bell. Audio Station was like a launcher to start the other sound utilities.  MIDI Orchestrator could open MIDI files and change instruments for individual tracks. I spend HOURS doing this. Changing SimCity 2000's music all around and made it sound awesome!  Finally WinDAT - used to edit WAV files. It slowed them down or sped them up. Much fun to be had with microphones.  After using WinDAT forever - I found GoldWave. GoldWave has continued to work on every version of windows to this day. I even registered!
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 12:36
|
|
|
simosimo posted:Any Delta force 1 / 2 players ? Novalogic were great back in the day. Fuckin Custom maps were so good. I see the town, and it's target rich.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 12:51
|
|
|
Doctor Bombadil posted:Goldwave is a name that triggers memories. I've used it to rip audio cassettes. Back then I had Opti 930 which was a good sound card. I wish I had an ISA slot on my current motherboard. Cool Edit (2000)?  Always the way with these small companies; gobbled up by the larger corporations. Syntrillium was bought out by Adobe. Cool Edit then became Adobe Audition, which, I think, was later incorporated into Premiere or some such. Speaking of desktop "toys", does anyone remember Tahni Deskmate?  (No? Just me, then.  )
Gonzo the Eggman has a new favorite as of 13:47 on Feb 8, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 13:25
|
|
|
laserghost posted:
Actually, there is a modern incarnation of this kind of thing called Construct 2. It used to be free & open source, and from what I can tell it appears to be free for personal use (but you have to pay if you make money from your creations). I've used it to re-create an old Apple 2 game remake that I'd tried remaking in klik-n-play, and later gamemaker (both pretty much failed attempts). Check it out if you're interested.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 14:35
|
|
|
Farking Bastage posted:That thing that got 19 year old me kicked out of my first college This got my suspended from school, too.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 14:40
|
|
|
quote:
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 14:57
|
|
|
Squish posted:Actually, there is a modern incarnation of this kind of thing called Construct 2. It used to be free & open source, and from what I can tell it appears to be free for personal use (but you have to pay if you make money from your creations). There was The Game Factory, which was the actual successor to Klik n' Play (from the same developer) that allowed you to do some pretty cool stuff like having large, scrollable/open-world maps (Klik n' Play only allowed single screen) and .ini files that if you were smart you could use as a rudimentary database, allowing you to keep high scores and saved-game states. When I was about 13 I spent weeks with a friend making a top-down maze-shooter type game, with AI bots, in a 'huge' maze (in reality it was probably only about 2500px square, but that was quite a lot when you're on a 386DX with a 640*480 monitor). It was the bots that took the longest, as we wanted them to be fairly smart but not unbeatable. Around the labyrinth were different, more powerful weapons, the locations of which the bots 'learned' at different rates depending on the difficulty level you'd chosen. We also did something that we thought was pretty smart, given the restrictions of the system, that implemented line of sight, so you couldn't see a bot if it was on the other side of the wall but you could hear gunfire if it was less than one wall away.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 15:04
|
|
|
Gonzo the Eggman posted:Cool Edit (2000)? There was a short-lived spinoff called Soundbooth which aimed to be a simplified audio editing program but was wildly reviled for not having things like reverse. It isn't as painful as Apple Soundtrack which despite having a handy feature of non destructive audio effects, it was limited by how much CPU grunt you could throw at it. So if it didn't crash it would start turning off assorted filters to cut down on processing power and drive you mad as you were sure that flange was on there a moment ago. BogDew has a new favorite as of 15:13 on Feb 8, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 15:11
|
|
|
WebDog posted:Audition still exists as a tag-a-long in the Creative Cloud suite which only has a saving grace of being somewhat less of a nightmare than having to bounce over to ProTools. Oh my god, Soundtrack Pro (and Soundtrack Pro 2) is the biggest piece of poo poo software I've ever come up against. I've done more than my share of audio work (used to be my day job, and I still do it on the side) and I absolutely cannot believe how archaic, backwards, jilted, slow, and sloppy Soundtrack Pro (and Soundtrack Pro 2) is. I love Logic Studio, it's my DAW of choice, so Apple DOES know what they're doing in terms of audio. SP (and SP2) just boggle my mind at how horrible they are. EDIT: For anyone reading this who wants really good, cross-platform multitrack audio editing, go for Reaper.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 15:15
|
|
|
Quote-Unquote posted:There was The Game Factory, which was the actual successor to Klik n' Play (from the same developer) that allowed you to do some pretty cool stuff like having large, scrollable/open-world maps (Klik n' Play only allowed single screen) and .ini files that if you were smart you could use as a rudimentary database, allowing you to keep high scores and saved-game states. TGF really looked like a serious tool compared to KNP. I had a ton of various games made with it downloaded, some of them were very impressive, like the Alien Breed clone with destroyable walls. Before KNP there was another program - Click & Create, for making presentations, kiosk interfaces etc., but I've seen some simple games made with it. Multimedia Fusion was major breakthrough in the amateur gamemaking. The very first game I saw made in MF was a very simpe, yet functional real-time strategy. I used to check religiously Home of the Underdogs, waiting for new titles from Fallen Angel Industries, Natomic, KonamiG and other game-making stars. I remember Construct being considered vaporware, because it was announced, like 2-3 years before being fully released. laserghost has a new favorite as of 15:23 on Feb 8, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 15:19
|
|
|
laserghost posted:TGF really looked like a serious tool compared to KNP. I had a ton of various games made with it downloaded, some of them were very impressive, like the Alien Breed clone with destroyable walls. Holy poo poo, it's still around, too - and has support for iOS and Android exporting.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 15:29
|
|
|
laserghost posted:Before KNP there was another program - Click & Create, for making presentations, kiosk interfaces etc., but I've seen some simple games made with it. EDIT: Quote-Unquote posted:Holy poo poo, it's still around, too - and has support for iOS and Android exporting. Before Klik 'n' Play, the guys who made that made AMOS BASIC for the Amiga. 
The Kins has a new favorite as of 15:34 on Feb 8, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 15:29
|
|
|
Gonzo the Eggman posted:Speaking of desktop "toys", does anyone remember Tahni Deskmate? I remember trying the demo version. She starts bouncing around on a ball like some kind of hamster with a toy. Deleting the program gives a pop up image of her crying while it asks, "Are you sure?"
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 15:46
|
|
|
SilvergunSuperman posted:My first graphics card was an ATI Rage Fury card back in the day, and holy poo poo was that thing aptly named. Mak0rz posted:Mine was an ATI Rage 128 and man let me tell you I raged a good 128 times before technically downgrading it to a Voodoo 3 that actually loving worked out-of-box. Up until 99/2000 or something https://www.ati.com was just a picture of poo(plastic fake dog poo poo) against a green background. Internet Archive seems to have purged the page though. And here's a relic that few, if anyone, will remember - the PD format:  It came out years before the CDRW but failed miserably because only a PD drive could read the PD cartridges(the disc couldn't be removed/swapped from the cartridge). Ein has a new favorite as of 16:47 on Feb 8, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 15:49
|
|
|
My dad had wedged a dime into the space between the turbo button and the computer case and taped it down. Also, trapping the webbing of my fingers in these: 
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 15:55
|
|
|
Mak0rz posted:Mine was an ATI Rage 128 and man let me tell you I raged a good 128 times before technically downgrading it to a Voodoo 3 that actually loving worked out-of-box. I recall buying FF7 and my video card, the ATI 128, was only 'somewhat' supported. It was my first experience with the game, so later on, when someone lent me their PS1 and I played it, I was kind of blown away by how smooth it's supposed to run. Thanks, ATI/Square!
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 16:00
|
|
|
Lathespin.gif posted:
Good Lord, I recognised this map immediately, even before I realised that I'd recognised it; the voice was saying "that's the Selenetic age rail map, isn't it?". I'm sure I have a scanned copy of my original map from back in ~1994 somewhere.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 16:07
|
|
|
The Kins posted:Before Klik 'n' Play, the guys who made that made AMOS BASIC for the Amiga. Wow, that's neat. AMOS was the basis of a lot of late Amiga releases, occasionaly even commercial ones, but mostly freeware/PD. Also apparently Click & Create was an expanded Klik n Play, with added scrolling function. Shame it wasn't avaiable as an upgrade for KNP.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 16:15
|
|
|
There was a killer screensaver right around when the matrix came out that dynamically built buildings on a flat landscape for up to 16 connections whenever a socket was opened. Printed on the side of each building was scrolling text of the contents of the packets (data minus headers) for that specific connection. Whenever a connection was closed, the building flattened to nothing.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 16:22
|
|
|
0toShifty posted:I remember spending a lot of time with these programs on my Packard Bell. Huh, that's a mild rebranding of the old SoundBlaster 16 software - I remember playing with those in Win 3.11.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 17:14
|
|
|
That explains why the screenshots looked familiar but not the Packard Bell logo.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 17:36
|
|
|
Syfe posted:Bannermania is the program I remember I had this and forgot about it for years also 
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 17:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 06:17 |
|
|
   
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2016 17:43
|
|