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#1 selling screensaver!?
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Jun 12, 2016 05:03
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I remember stocking boxed copies of Netscape for $60
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Jun 12, 2016 05:13
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I just saw a nearly 10 year old PCI video card at a store today with a clearance price of nearly $60.
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Jun 12, 2016 05:21
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Black Pants posted:#1 selling screensaver!?
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Jun 12, 2016 05:25
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I'm pretty sure I posted this earlier in the thread, but After Dark was on like Good Morning America and even local news for being such a thing its really hard to describe how hyped people were about that screen saver
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Jun 12, 2016 05:27
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Remember when screens had to be saved????
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Jun 12, 2016 05:40
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Data Graham posted:Remember when screens had to be saved???? Still do, actually. I have a fairly new phone with an OLED screen and it is starting to show signs of burn-in to the point that I can see a ghostly image of my on-screen keyboard on the bottom half of the screen.
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Jun 12, 2016 05:45
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A lot of newer TVs have a function where they slowly shift the image around to prevent burn-in. Of course, this would be annoying as hell on a computer.
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Jun 12, 2016 05:47
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I use a Samsung SyncMaster LCD from 2006 or so as a secondary monitor. It's had the Chrome menu button and various other extension icons burnt into it for a year now. I tried running full white screens or those stuck pixel fixing programs for hours on end in case it was just image persistence, but they're still burnt in.
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Jun 12, 2016 06:20
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Hillary Clintons Thong posted:I'm pretty sure I posted this earlier in the thread, but After Dark was on like Good Morning America and even local news for being such a thing I genuinely hope that GOG will someday release a complete After Dark collection as their first not-exactly-a-game product. I'd buy the hell out of it. Boris the cat has been absent from my screen for too long.
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Jun 12, 2016 07:28
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They need to re-release a high-res version of CATZ and/or DOGZ. Just have virtual animals passively goofing around on your desktop.
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Jun 12, 2016 07:32
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Hillary Clintons Thong posted:I'm pretty sure I posted this earlier in the thread, but After Dark was on like Good Morning America and even local news for being such a thing I don't see why you'd want a screensaver with animated toasters, when PointCast could give you the latest news and weather.
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Jun 12, 2016 07:52
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Tyson Tomko posted:So I'm in the process of going through all of my drives (probably around 30) I've had laying around for years. I'm organizing all of my stuff plus low level formatting it all for good measure. For a while, WD would RMA 36G raptors with 80G raptors. A friend of mine gave me his dead raptors and I RMA'd them for the 80s. I also have a 36G raptor. They are super loud but they were so cool. I replaced them with an SSD and I think I still have ubuntu on the 36G as a just in case save my computer load.
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Jun 12, 2016 08:04
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Powered Descent posted:I genuinely hope that GOG will someday release a complete After Dark collection as their first not-exactly-a-game product. I'd buy the hell out of it. Boris the cat has been absent from my screen for too long. If all you want is Boris, Japan has you covered: http://en.infinisys.co.jp/product/flyingtoasters/index.shtml It's not the original code and it feels a bit off compared to the originals, though  After Dark is the only reason I have a couple retro macs around the house, I like to fire up Lunatic Fringe, You bet your head, totally twisted and the simpsons savers from time to time.
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Jun 12, 2016 09:00
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Data Graham posted:Remember when screens had to be saved???? If I remember right, the Atari 800XL had a kind of built in screen saver: when the picture hadn't changed in a few minutes, the colors would start to cycle.
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Jun 12, 2016 09:09
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Powered Descent posted:I genuinely hope that GOG will someday release a complete After Dark collection as their first not-exactly-a-game product. I'd buy the hell out of it. Boris the cat has been absent from my screen for too long. Someone would have to go through the source code for it and get it to actually work properly with modern versions of Windows, or at least write a whole new platform to run the screensaver modules. Probably won't happen, but at least After Dark creator Berkeley Systems brought us You Don't Know Jack, which is still around to this day.
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Jun 12, 2016 10:15
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The problem with After Dark is that it ran off 16bit. Windows 32 bit is the best option you have and there's a user hack to get version 3.0 running by jimmying in .dlls from newer versions of the program. After Dark 4.0 can work on Windows 10 with a bit of compatibility wrangling but that has the modern modules The cool thing is that when it does work it actually tiles the screensavers so they work perfectly on 16:9 screens.
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Jun 12, 2016 10:48
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WebDog posted:The problem with After Dark is that it ran off 16bit. Windows 32 bit is the best option you have and there's a user hack to get version 3.0 running by jimmying in .dlls from newer versions of the program. After Dark 4.0 can work on Windows 10 with a bit of compatibility wrangling but that has the modern modules I don't see why Sierra/Activision can't just release the source and let the community do something with it. It's abandonware. It's not like they're pulling any revenue off AD, and there isn't really a market for selling screensavers anymore. It wouldn't hurt their bottom line in the least to let the community have it.
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Jun 12, 2016 10:58
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This has been my screen saver since 1999 on almost every computer I've ever owned because I am unoriginal.
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Jun 12, 2016 11:37
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Berkeley Systems got sold off to Vivendi within the trainwreck that was the CUC International accounting scandal that pretty much killed off Sierra. Vivendi then folded the company into iwin.com and somewhere after that After Dark got sold off to a Japanese company who sells an OSX only version of After Dark. You Don't Know Jack was owned by Jackbox Games so it survived. IP wrangling can get pretty complex, a notable case is No One Lives Forever which has been earmarked for an HD re-release for ages but got stymied at the last minute as no one knows who owns what part as it's split between Activsion, 20th Century and WB. Skoll posted:This has been my screen saver since 1999 on almost every computer I've ever owned because I am unoriginal.
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Jun 12, 2016 11:56
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When you wanted to download MP3s, videos, software, etc, Scour's (scour was an old search engine) own Scour Exchange. Basically the first KaZaA. And after downloading all those MP3s, how about all you rebels who wanted to listen to them in something other than Winamp with bad-rear end skins and custom controls and displays? Sonique, bitches! (lol lycos) 
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Jun 12, 2016 12:17
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Not really a computer relic, but if you want a nice screensaver for a modern computer take a look at http://www.ubernes.com/nesscreensaver.html I can run four NES games tiled on my 2010 macbook without causing the fans to spin up and you can take control in the middle of a recorded movie if you need to waste a couple minutes playing old nintendo games https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg3_4rty8CI
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Jun 12, 2016 12:40
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WebDog posted:
The NOLF thing is so bizarre. Some studio wants to remake the game, and when starting to make some inquiries, they just got a response like "uhh, yeah, maybe we own the copyright? Well, you better not make the game or we'll sue you, well, if we do actually own it!" I remember hearing a suggestion that they should just plan to make the game and see who does actually sue them with the right evidence, at least then they'll know who to seriously negotiate with.
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Jun 12, 2016 13:42
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Yeah, the NOLF thing seriously sucks - those two games were among my all-time favorites, I loved the '60's aesthetic and bright colors. Nice break from the endless brown shooters of the time. Even the music was kickin' rad. Contract J.A.C.K. was a steaming pile, though.
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Jun 12, 2016 15:11
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JnnyThndrs posted:endless brown shooters of the time. Isn't this a myth though? If you thought all shooters you played at the time were brown it just means you played brown games and disregarded all the others. Kind of like people complaining about WW2 games when the vast majority of shooters have always been non-WW2.
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Jun 12, 2016 15:16
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Well, I didn't play -all- the shooters at the time, but I played a ton of them, and let's just say the color palette was usually rather blah. Serious Sam was the big exception, it was colorful and full of contrasts. As for the WWII thing, I remember when that got really big, it wasn't always the juggernaut it became later.
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Jun 12, 2016 15:33
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JediTalentAgent posted:I just saw a nearly 10 year old PCI video card at a store today with a clearance price of nearly $60. This Consumerist page is fantastic for these things. https://consumerist.com/tag/raiders-of-the-lost-walmart/ 1GB no name MP3 player for $55!
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Jun 12, 2016 15:33
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A FUCKIN CANARY!! posted:The is the last desktop screenshot I took before I finally upgraded from Windows 98SE to XP... in loving 2006. There were 98SE slipstream ISO's that would overwrite 98SE programs/files with the latest ME programs/files
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Jun 12, 2016 17:14
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Another side-effect of "just release the source" is often there's licensed bits and pieces that still retain the copyright of the owners. A case in point is the code for Jedi Outcast where it had parts required for the Bink video player which caused the code to get pulled.Jerry Cotton posted:Isn't this a myth though? Until pixel shaders really came into play (around 2000) lighting was mostly dark or light areas. Coloured lighting stood out really obviously and didn't blend well with it's surrounds or have much control beyond luminance. And 32bit textures only added to heighten a somewhat garish effect so keeping the texture pallet muted was an old trick for a while. However as lighting rendering got more sophisticated you begin notice things that are missing, such as indirect lighting and radiosity - light bouncing off surfaces - not really appearing when your brain expects it to.  The lighting on the top picture might be accurate but it looks fake but if you desaturate it it begins to hide the fact we don't see bits of the red and blue wall refracting onto the teapot. So it's partially why games around 2008 were mostly brown as it hid this limit. Another trick was to use lots of normal mapping and light things with dynamic lights to give a sense light was playing off the world onto the character.
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Jun 12, 2016 17:27
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WebDog posted:Another side-effect of "just release the source" is often there's licensed bits and pieces that still retain the copyright of the owners. A case in point is the code for Jedi Outcast where it had parts required for the Bink video player which caused the code to get pulled. Coders are fools: just don't put a teapot on the floor!
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Jun 12, 2016 17:49
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Weren't the "brown" complaints more of a mid-2000s thing though? While Quake was indeed very brown, from what I recall this mostly referred to slightly later games where everyone suddenly wanted to make them real and gritty by applying a ton of film grain and usually brown filters.
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Jun 12, 2016 18:19
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Did anyone else use Proxomitron for their 'safe' browsing needs before things like Adblock and Noscript happened?
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Jun 12, 2016 18:30
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"Brown" was definitely a mid 2000s thing with call of duty, gears of war and whatever unreal game came out then. Everyone was going for a grungy look.
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Jun 12, 2016 18:41
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I liked Duke3D also more than I ever liked Quake. Of course Quake was amazing for what it did (especially on a Pentium, that intel FPU inside really got to shine and raised it beyond it's competition with that particular game) but Duke3D was just the better game IMHO. Guns to Level design to everything. I replayed Quake recently (haven't played it for many, many years) and was kinda surprised how frantic it was. I just sorta forgot all about that, either that or I got used to other things through newer games. (even though I don't really play shooters anymore) Regarding 3D games, a game I stumbled over many, many years later (didn't have a PC at the time) was "The Terminator" from '90 ~'91 (?). Made by Bethesda of all people. It had this huge and kind of accurate area of LA where you'd either play Reese or the Terminator and it was in 3D. You could go into shops, buy or steal stuff, rob banks and drive cars around and when you played as Reese Sarah would follow you around and you could give her orders. If you got a rocket launcher/grenades you could even blow cars and buildings up and set up chain reactions of explosions. (which I got a master at in System Shock 1, you could have a lot of fun with that) It also had an ingame Map and you could even do fast-traveling. It's basically an open world, GTA, FPS kind of game which came out even before Wolfenstein 3D, and back then I never heard a single word of it even existing which really surprises me seeing how many firsts it claims for itself. Admittedly it's not a great game, not as good as Hunter for example which came out around the same time. Did people just automatically consider it a lazy movie tie-in and never bothered? Because even if it isn't a very good game there obviously went lots and lots of effort into it and it's incredibly ahead of it's time as a result and it's kinda funny to me that I never either heard about it or know anyone who knew it back then. Anyone here did? Also, this game would be incredibly fun if remade with modern technology, although who am I kidding, they'd gently caress it up. Also while we are at Shooters and Terminator, Future Shock&Skynet were a lot of fun also. (Also Bethesda)
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Jun 13, 2016 02:07
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I'm sure there's an awesome modern-day Terminator Mod for GTAV I'll never play that pits you against an almost unstoppable killing machines hiding among the population that track you down no matter where you go and won't stop until you're dead.
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Jun 13, 2016 02:47
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No there isn't. I even looked! Yeah, when you think a little about it, it would take a bit more than that to make it interesting. Maybe it's not really something that works well as a game after all. I'd just like to see something good coming out of the Terminator franchise again in my lifetime, goddammit.
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Jun 13, 2016 03:16
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Yeah quake wasnt a very fun game. I enjoyed poo poo like hexen and heretic and duke when i was a kid cause they were interesting. Quake 2 was good though. Probably the only id game ive ever really liked that much
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Jun 13, 2016 03:25
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Police Automaton posted:I liked Duke3D also more than I ever liked Quake. Of course Quake was amazing for what it did (especially on a Pentium, that intel FPU inside really got to shine and raised it beyond it's competition with that particular game) but Duke3D was just the better game IMHO. Guns to Level design to everything. I replayed Quake recently (haven't played it for many, many years) and was kinda surprised how frantic it was. I just sorta forgot all about that, either that or I got used to other things through newer games. (even though I don't really play shooters anymore) I thought duke 3D was poo poo. They took all the fun and comical elements out of it. It was made to be a scroller and just doesn't translate to fps. Like a poo poo version of doom II.
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Jun 13, 2016 03:32
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I had no idea there were people that hated Duke Nukem 3D. I loved it when it was new, and I still love it today.
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Jun 13, 2016 04:10
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Tears In A Vial posted:I had no idea there were people that hated Duke Nukem 3D. I loved it when it was new, and I still love it today. The Quake games were always the ones you wanted for Serious Gaming, but at a LAN party, Duke3D was always riotous fun. It helped that there were so many great maps that people made -- I remember one that looked like Sesame Street, and another one that was a gigantic kitchen, with all the characters about the size of mice. A little later, Carmageddon filled the same hilarious multiplayer niche.
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Jun 13, 2016 04:40
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