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I figured I'd put some tips here to get Descent 3 running and looking about as good as it can in case anyone else is interested in playing. D1 and 2 are much easier because they have sourceports, but no one seems to give a poo poo about D3, which is a genuinely awesome sequel. Video: Open the "setup" menu when launching the game, refresh your video rendering device and then select OpenGL. While 3DFX worked and looked a bit better back in the day, with OpenGL we can take advantage of using your video card's profile options to sharpen the game up by adding AA and AF. Sound: In the sound tab of the same setup menu as above, just select "DirectSound". It seems to be the most compatible among all the options. If you here "crackling" or static in your game, then in the Descent 3 main menu, put sound on "low quality" and it should get rid of that problem. You can't do this if you're "in game" so save and back out to the main menu. Speed: Here I just use whatever the highest option is, or "custom" and you can customize detail/rendering level in-game. Season to taste. Misc: Here is our special sauce, the command line options than can do anything from change resolution to removing intro screens. Below are the options I'm using: -nointro -nooutragelogo -height 1024 -width 1280 -z32bit -framecap 150 -bumped -nointro and -nooutragelogo are what they say on the tin: no opening movie or splash screen. If this is your first time playing D3, then I'd ignore using the -nointro switch until you've seen the intro. It's not a great movie, but it sets up the game. -height 1024 -width 1280 are the switches used to run custom resolutions. In this case I use these settings because it's the highest you can go without issue still using the game's original 4:3 aspect ratio. You cannot select this resolution in game, and if you use this resolution along with adding 8X AA and 16X AF from your Nvidia (or AMD?) control panel, the game will look very sharp -z32bit is the switch used to force the game to use 32 bit rendering. -framecap 150 is the switch I use to give myself a framelimit of 150 fps. If you're using vsync, you likely don't need this, but I have vsync also enabled in my Nvidia control panel along with Triple Buffering -bumped is a switch that enables bump mapping on supported hardware. I have no idea if OpenGL is "supported hardware" so I just never removed it. These settings should get you into the game with minimal difficulty. One in-game setting i'd absolutely change, if you want to use mouselook like I do, is change the mouse behavior from "mouselook" to "flight sim". Neither option feels as good as it should, but using "flight sim" mode with a X/Y sensitivity of .20 gives the most smooth feel you can get. There may be some things I'm missing, but let me know if you have any questions and I can address them individually. Two things I've noticed with these settings: the game is always a touch darker than I'd like, so once you load your save game, you'll need to reset your in-game gamma and it'll "fix" itself. Everytime you go back to the main menu or automap, you'll have to do this again. This is likely a relic of the game switching to 640x480 when using the main menus. The other thing is that while you can set your in-game bit rate to 32, it may jump back to 16 when switching menus. As far as I can tell nothing actually changes since we're using the -z32bit switch at the command line, but this can always be changed if it bugs you. It bugs me.
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Aug 3, 2020 14:28
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I tried D3 when that patch came out but the Mac version had some pretty odd and annoying issues, especially a tendency to successfully launch only once unless I threw out the supporting files. Is there a specific reason it never got a public source release? I know the entire franchise is trapped in rights hell now, guessing that has a lot to do with it.
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Aug 3, 2020 14:35
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C.M. Kruger posted:Just ran across this, Japanese guy making a very "80s cyberpunk anime" FPS. From what I played of the demo it feels okay, a bit on the simple/Wolf side, but the boss for the demo episode turns into a (fairly basic) bullet hell thing and you get a time slow unlock halfway through, so maybe the later episodes will be more evolved. That name reminded me of that other fps game that was also called Citadel released for the Amiga line of computers in the 90's https://youtu.be/MHjY1vfJ_JM
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Aug 3, 2020 14:52
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chaosapiant posted:Around that time, PC had gently caress all for Yeah this is a big part of why some very strange PC games got buzzed about in the '90s. A lot of the really popular stuff was console exclusive, and because you could only assume people had keyboard + mouse, there was also naturally a bigger focus on simulators, strategy games, and FPSes (which was also kind of a big shift, where everyone else had to play catch-up for once). Heck, I even remember that one of the reasons I was excited about Tomb Raider was because it seemed like the closest I could get to Mario 64.
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Aug 3, 2020 14:57
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Croc was released on PC, I would say that's closer to Mario 64 than Tomb Raider. Edit: Scratch that, I see here that Tomb Raider was released in 1996 while Croc was released in 1997 Kamrat fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Aug 3, 2020 |
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Aug 3, 2020 15:00
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caleb posted:Frog blast the vent core
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Aug 3, 2020 16:20
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Kamrat posted:Croc was released on PC, I would say that's closer to Mario 64 than Tomb Raider. I should preface this by saying that my Nintendo Nowledge stops after the SNES, but Mario 64 recently came up as a topic of discussion in the Video Game Hoaxes thread, and (if I recall correctly) the DNA shared between Croc and Mario 64 is really similar, to the point that there was some controversy between the two games and claims that Mario 64 stole (or significantly borrowed) significant ideas from Croc, which might have started as a 3D Yoshi game? “According to Jez San (thanks, Eurogamer), Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto approached him at a show after the release of Super Mario 64 and apologized for what happened between the two studios, and how Super Mario 64 was similar to the concepts they had shown for the Yoshi prototype. San also says Nintendo used "much of [Argonaut's] code in Star Fox 64 without paying us a penny".
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Aug 3, 2020 17:02
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Argonaut did pitch Nintendo's first 3D game as a Yoshi game which they turned down. As for Star Fox 2, the line is blurrier. Some programmers from Argonaut moved to Japan under Nintendo to work directly on the game but still representing their company. Given this was the Yamauchi era of Nintendo, the same time period where Nintendo said gently caress off to Sony wanting manufacturing rights to Nintendo Play Station and partnered with Phillips without telling anyone involved, I absolutely believe that if not maliciously then through language barrier/legal technicalities Nintendo claimed ownership to Argonaut's work for Star Fox without attributing anything to them. Miyamoto has said plainly that Star Fox 64 was a remake of Star Fox 1 with all the ideas developed for Star Fox 2. I'm imagining that alternate history where Nintendo teams up with id and they would probably invite Carmack/Romero to Japan and then just swallow the team or start their own PC publishing platform without it.
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Aug 3, 2020 17:14
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Cream-of-Plenty posted:I should preface this by saying that my Nintendo Nowledge stops after the SNES, but Mario 64 recently came up as a topic of discussion in the Video Game Hoaxes thread, and (if I recall correctly) the DNA shared between Croc and Mario 64 is really similar, to the point that there was some controversy between the two games and claims that Mario 64 stole (or significantly borrowed) significant ideas from Croc, which might have started as a 3D Yoshi game? I heard something similar, it was for sure meant to be a Yoshi-game from the beginning and they had approached Nintendo with the idea and probably let them see the code that they had been working on, the fact that they helped Nintendo with creating the StarFox series might have made them more willing to show stuff off to Nintendo. Nintendo is not the wholesome company that many people think they are.
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Aug 3, 2020 17:20
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Meh, I’m skeptical of that story. It’s not like they came up with the idea of a 3D platformer and Croc turned out to be a complete piece of poo poo unlike Mario 64. They don’t play similar at all.
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Aug 3, 2020 17:23
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Argonaut really was the id of their time but instead of having a breakout hit to their name they kind of got hosed over and turned into a shovelware company. Starglider 2, in 1988, was the prototype for Star Fox 2: a first person space combat game with procgen planets in a simulated solar system where the enemy acts in real time. You can go from the surface of a planet to space and then fast travel without loading times, it's No Man's Sky 30 years before NMS.
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Aug 3, 2020 17:24
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SeANMcBAY posted:Meh, I’m skeptical of that story. It’s not like they came up with the idea of a 3D platformer and Croc turned out to be a complete piece of poo poo unlike Mario 64. They don’t play similar at all. Sounds to me that they suffered from having good tech but poor designers
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Aug 3, 2020 17:29
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Has anyone out there played/beaten the Descent 3 Mercenary expansion? I'm on the fourth level now and have some mixed feelings regarding these levels. They are loving huge and the guidebot gets lost a lot. Still, level 3 was kind of fun, but again very huge.
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Aug 3, 2020 17:38
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SeANMcBAY posted:Meh, I’m skeptical of that story. It’s not like they came up with the idea of a 3D platformer and Croc turned out to be a complete piece of poo poo unlike Mario 64. They don’t play similar at all. It's an established fact that Super Mario 64 was conceived for the SNES while Argonaut engineers were tied with its development at Nintendo working on the Super FX 2. Things get blurry from there, probably wrapped in endless NDAs, but Argonaut pitched a working prototype of a 3D Yoshi game and then Nintendo ended their relationship with Star Fox 2 canceled which was wholly rolled into Star Fox 64. It's doubtful Nintendo just wholly lifted what Argonaut had as both games were developed in parallel, but the foundation was built on Argonaut's architecture in the same way Half-Life's foundation is Quake. Kamrat posted:Sounds to me that they suffered from having good tech but poor designers Also the Playstation didn't ship with analog controls which inherently inhibited what they could do in a 3D platformer. It's the reason Tomb Raider is on a grid and Naughty Dog was smart enough to make Crash Bandicoot basically a 2D game where you're either moving like a normal platformer or you're in a narrow tube. al-azad fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Aug 3, 2020 |
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Aug 3, 2020 17:41
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Groovelord Neato posted:That's how a poo poo ton of games looked in the 90s. Mostly of the edutainment variety. The mid-90s Sierra aesthetic was real - nicely illustrated but visually simple backgrounds, characters with minimal shading, and few frames of animation with lots of expressiveness in what made it in. Aesthetic issues aside, it hurts my brain to think the Streets of Rage and Street Fighter series were available to learn from when this was released.
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Aug 3, 2020 18:15
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Hasturtium posted:The mid-90s Sierra aesthetic was real - nicely illustrated but visually simple backgrounds, characters with minimal shading, and few frames of animation with lots of expressiveness in what made it in. Aesthetic issues aside, it hurts my brain to think the Streets of Rage and Street Fighter series were available to learn from when this was released. Those adventure games also had like maybe 3 sprites on screen at a time and didn't need to run at 60fps. Consoles always had the edge over PCs until dedicated GPUs. Virgin published Street Fighter Alpha 2 on Windows in 1998 and the drat thing runs like a slideshow, it's absolutely worse than even the PS1 versions of Street Fighter.
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Aug 3, 2020 18:33
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Maybe I played too much Lode Runner back in the day but I can't see that company name without reading it like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvEN_DUDf2c
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Aug 3, 2020 18:35
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An 80s or 90s console was a basically a device focused on converting bitmaps to video signals, with a CPU stuck on to change their positions and other properties each display cycle.
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Aug 3, 2020 18:40
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Smh
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Aug 3, 2020 19:34
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caleb posted:Smh
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Aug 3, 2020 20:17
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https://www.redbubble.com/i/throw-blanket/FIREBLU-by-tastyspleentv/45494522.16D0B
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Aug 3, 2020 20:19
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90s Cringe Rock posted:Is there somewhere you can buy doom texture fabric My mother quilts almost industriously and I have often wondered what she could do with Doom textures as fabrics. I don't know of any though. I guess it would have to be negotiated with Bethesda due to them owning the original textures now.
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Aug 3, 2020 20:20
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Seriously thinking about learning crocheting just so I could recreate the opening view of e1m1.
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Aug 3, 2020 20:24
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drat that photo is huge sorry I was phone posting. How do you make Aleph One not have poo poo mouse controls? I do not understand why anyone would ever want different horizontal and vertical sens in any game ever. I guess I could use the numpad like it's 1996 but I really don't want to.
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Aug 3, 2020 20:33
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caleb posted:drat that photo is huge sorry I was phone posting. How do you make Aleph One not have poo poo mouse controls? Prayer Also make sure mouse accel is turned off
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Aug 3, 2020 20:38
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Doom facemask but it's the cacodemon butthole
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Aug 3, 2020 21:30
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Face mask but it's a pain elemental shooting lost soul because people who don't wear masks in public deserve the worst Doom monsters.
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Aug 3, 2020 21:34
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Too bad there's no high res version of 
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Aug 3, 2020 21:37
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al-azad posted:Those adventure games also had like maybe 3 sprites on screen at a time and didn't need to run at 60fps. Consoles always had the edge over PCs until dedicated GPUs. Virgin published Street Fighter Alpha 2 on Windows in 1998 and the drat thing runs like a slideshow, it's absolutely worse than even the PS1 versions of Street Fighter. Oh, I never said the aesthetic was a good idea given the limits of early Pentium-era hardware and the framerate and responsiveness requirements for a fighting game. I'm pretty sure a Streets of Rage-alike would have been doable on a Pentium 90 with a decent VGA card and 8 MB RAM, but this... eurgh. There's a reason most games end up going down a memory hole.
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Aug 3, 2020 21:51
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al-azad posted:Seriously thinking about learning crocheting just so I could recreate the opening view of e1m1. Imagine being crazy rich and not making the foyer of your house a replica of Hangar with a motion sensor that plays At Doom's Gate the entire time someone is hanging up their coat. I really don't understand what wealthy people do with their money.
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Aug 3, 2020 23:16
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caleb posted:drat that photo is huge sorry I was phone posting. How do you make Aleph One not have poo poo mouse controls? I do not understand why anyone would ever want different horizontal and vertical sens in any game ever. I guess I could use the numpad like it's 1996 but I really don't want to. Turn off mouse acceleration and turn the sensitivity on both axes waaaaaay down, like at least half their default. Worked for me but you may have to tweak it as you go, which is kinda frustrating as you can't change settings ingame afaik. I don't know why but aleph one has some really weird default settings that just aren't pleasant at all if you're used to other FPSes, I also turned autorun off for the same reason, running that fast all the time is too uncontrollable.
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Aug 3, 2020 23:24
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site posted:Doom facemask but it's the cacodemon butthole we're not allowed to talk about that hole
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Aug 3, 2020 23:40
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What about the 64 Imp’s butthole?
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Aug 3, 2020 23:45
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im gonna gently caress the buttholes
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Aug 3, 2020 23:49
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Disproportionation posted:I also turned autorun off for the same reason, running that fast all the time is too uncontrollable. What no. the crazy high running speed is probably the single best thing about marathon. Imo only walk if you need to stay on a narrow ledge or do very precise footwork to avoid shots (acme station  ). Else just charge around like a mad man, get air over twenty fighters, launch yourself off poo poo, plunge face first into slime pools and die
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Aug 4, 2020 00:00
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90s Cringe Rock posted:https://www.redbubble.com/i/throw-blanket/FIREBLU-by-tastyspleentv/45494522.16D0B Oh hell yeah.
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Aug 4, 2020 00:02
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caleb posted:drat that photo is huge sorry I was phone posting. How do you make Aleph One not have poo poo mouse controls? I do not understand why anyone would ever want different horizontal and vertical sens in any game ever. I guess I could use the numpad like it's 1996 but I really don't want to. Possibly good news or possibly frustrating news is that I think there has been a lot of "mouse improvement" work on Aleph One since the 2015 release (version 1.2.1) that is linked from alephone.lhowon.org. If you go to their github releases page you could grab last year's 1.3b3 release and try that perhaps. I think there has even been mouse work since then as well though (raw input option), so the ultimate power move would be to try to compile their current master branch. I think there used to be nightly builds available but at a glance I don't see that now.
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Aug 4, 2020 00:56
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Since I'm on a mega-Descent kick, figured I'd go ahead and post this commercial from 1995. I was 15 years old and channel surfing and I saw this commercial, and I was already enamored. When I realized by 486SX/33 PC could actually play this, I bought this game. That is my story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS7PrfijLto
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Aug 4, 2020 01:40
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C.M. Kruger posted:Just ran across this, Japanese guy making a very "80s cyberpunk anime" FPS. From what I played of the demo it feels okay, a bit on the simple/Wolf side, but the boss for the demo episode turns into a (fairly basic) bullet hell thing and you get a time slow unlock halfway through, so maybe the later episodes will be more evolved. this is rough as poo poo but its pretty fun??? feels like EYE meets marathon. wish there was more than one environment texture though
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Aug 4, 2020 02:00
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Installed Quake 1 via Quakespasm and I’m playing it for the first time. It owns. The graphics still have a charm to them imo.
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Aug 4, 2020 02:03
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