:coolsmiley:
KIckin' it old school and I'm curious to hear if anyone out there is still rocking that good ol' DOS gaming goodness on DOSBOX.
I'm still playing weekly, to this day, and probably will so until I die, Silent Hunter: Commander's Edition and Aces of the Deep.
If anyone has some good wargame suggestions from that era, I'm all ears! I recall playing a demo of a really cool WW2 RTS/FPS hybrid in the late 90s called "Muzzle Velocity" (which blew my mind at the time haha), but can't seem to find it anywhere now.
Man those were the days, they don't make them like they used to huh!
Makes me also miss the Close Combat and Combat Mission: BO/BB series as well. All great games.
My all-time favorite DOSBOX game is X-Com: UFO Defense (or, if I'm going for the hipster points, UFO: Enemy Unknown). It's pretty broken in a lot of ways, but still an incredibly fun squad-tactics game. I do wish that any of the modern successors would hold a candle to it. I played a little bit of Xenonauts but wasn't wholly impressed.
Also, those old Close Combat and Combat Mission games are available at GOG.com now without the need for DOSBOX. O:-)
I'm such a graphics-whore that it's painful to play the oldies. I still have my disks from the early CC days. In the past I've loaded them up but I don't get much farther than that. The small pixelated graphics on the smaller graphics modes burn my eyes :2funny:. It's the same when I "think" I want to play Everquest again and download it and see the archaic graphics. I wonder what the heck was I thinking. Well it was the good times with friends that I am reminiscing about. I miss those times, not the graphics. And really, back then, those graphics (what like 1999) were the cutting edge - LOL. Nowadays some games I can't tell whether it's real or CGI. Amazing stuff.
Sometimes, you just can't go back. As many fond memories I have of playing those early DOS games, w/similar memories of tweaking autoexec.bat files and trying to free up those last bytes of RAM so I could play a game, well the graphics from then, just don't cut it now-a-days. I've still got many of my old DOS games (big boxes, floppy disks, keyboard cutouts and actual manuals!). So many memories...Silent Hunter, Red Baron, Civilization I, etc. Even though I'd still enjoy the gameplay, and yes I know DOSBOX, not sure I'd be able to handle graphics.
I really like Task Force 1942
For Napoelonic Warfare, there's Fields of Glory.
Hell yes! Check out this thread...the Great Grogheads Hot Tub Time Machine!
http://www.grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=24544.0 (http://www.grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=24544.0)
Quote from: al_infierno on January 27, 2021, 05:17:19 PM
My all-time favorite DOSBOX game is X-Com: UFO Defense (or, if I'm going for the hipster points, UFO: Enemy Unknown). It's pretty broken in a lot of ways, but still an incredibly fun squad-tactics game. I do wish that any of the modern successors would hold a candle to it. I played a little bit of Xenonauts but wasn't wholly impressed.
Also, those old Close Combat and Combat Mission games are available at GOG.com now without the need for DOSBOX. O:-)
You might retry Xenonauts. I felt the same way - but I restarted it back in 2019. It was very good - though challenging.
Quote from: SlagDog on January 27, 2021, 05:36:26 PM
I'm such a graphics-whore that it's painful to play the oldies. I still have my disks from the early CC days. In the past I've loaded them up but I don't get much farther than that. The small pixelated graphics on the smaller graphics modes burn my eyes :2funny:. It's the same when I "think" I want to play Everquest again and download it and see the archaic graphics. I wonder what the heck was I thinking. Well it was the good times with friends that I am reminiscing about. I miss those times, not the graphics. And really, back then, those graphics (what like 1999) were the cutting edge - LOL. Nowadays some games I can't tell whether it's real or CGI. Amazing stuff.
I won't lie, it really is tough sometimes but I kind of liken it to reading a book - I'm asking a lot out of my imagination to fill in the gaps and complete the pictures for me ;D
If someone could wave a magic-wand and, while keeping the gameplay EXACTLY THE SAME without adding ANYTHING extra to these games, but update the graphics to modern-standards and bring them to the PC, I'd sell my left arm to buy them all and play them.
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on January 27, 2021, 05:59:12 PM
Hell yes! Check out this thread...the Great Grogheads Hot Tub Time Machine!
http://www.grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=24544.msg670073#msg670073 (http://www.grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=24544.msg670073#msg670073)
NICE. Thanks JH, I'll jump over to that thread. Gonna also check out 1942 and Field of Glory that Anguille mentioned... so many games to explore from that era yet.
Some of my favourites, which I still play occasionally:
Carriers at War (1 & 2)
Tanks
Age of rifles
World at War series (Crusader, Stalingrad) - the first game I can recall playing that gave complex & realistic tactical options
Last but not least - Red Storm Rising
The appeal for me of these early games is the ease of gameplay without sacrificing depth, a narrow track that early games seemed to tread better before the crutch of whizz bang graphics came along, plus the inclusion of multiple scenarios & long term out of the box playability, sacrificed nowadays to the money machine of DLC.
I'd agree with an earlier poster that graphically updated versions of these would be great.
Machievelli the Prince (originally called Merchant Prince) was one I played with DosBox in last few years. Needs a major graphics update.
I replayed Walls of Rome not too long ago.
I remembered it being such an impressive game, but I just have to conclude that it didn't age very well at all.
Most games from the early days are like that. Nostalgia, but no way I'd play them much anymore.
Quote from: rustyshackleford on January 27, 2021, 05:06:25 PM
:coolsmiley:
If anyone has some good wargame suggestions from that era, I'm all ears! I recall playing a demo of a really cool WW2 RTS/FPS hybrid in the late 90s called "Muzzle Velocity" (which blew my mind at the time haha), but can't seem to find it anywhere now.
I think I still have a copy of Muzzle Velocity around somewhere. Really wish someone would remake it.
Quote from: bobarossa on January 28, 2021, 03:17:00 PM
Machievelli the Prince (originally called Merchant Prince) was one I played with DosBox in last few years. Needs a major graphics update.
That was a good one.
If memory serves me right I think my first 'wargame' was The Ancient Art of War at Sea on my old Apple IIC on a monochrome screen. I played the guts out of that game. Oh yeah and Red Baron, now there was an amazing game. Good times!
I had mentioned in that other thread that I was spending a lot of time playing a game called Carrier Strike. It's a Grigsby game, and you really see the base of his future carrier games like Uncommon Valor and WitP in it. Something about it really struck a cord with me in a way that Carriers at War doesn't.
I can't remember where I got it now, myabandonware or some such site.
I tried to download M1A2 Tank Platoon but I never could get it to download or run properly.
I feel at least 80% sure that GoG does use DosBox under the hood for appropriate games, just transparently or blink-and-miss-it.
The genius of Electronic Arts' adaptation of Space Hulk from back in the days of the original Doom, can hardly be understated. (Not available at GoG, alas.) I use a slightly older version of DosBox to play it on occasion (it didn't work with newer versions for some reason, last time I played).
Taking a rigid RNG-death-fest turnbased boardgame and converting it to a first-person shooter, simpler on the face of it than Doom at the time, sounds on paper like sheer bleeping hubris. But it worked amazingly (and still does I think) thanks to several design factors converging together.
1.) the underlying basis of SH rules at the time is still running under the hood.
2.) the game provides a limited-time in-game pause for planning your moves in classic SH style. Then when unpaused -- or agh, when time runs out! -- you watch your plan unfold. And possibly fall to catastrophic pieces (perhaps barely salvaged for a win at the last minute), but practically never because of the meshing of the FPS/paused design. It falls to pieces because of the classic turn based boardgame design running under the game, which is recognizable if you know what to look for. (e.g. getting flanked or reared by a Genestealer back in that day was instant death, but the basic power fist used for melee by most Space Marines still only gives you 1/3rd of a chance at survival in frontal fights.)
3.) the gameplay layout leans even more heavily into the boardgame's Aliens inspiration than the boardgame does! Unlike the boardgame where you're hovering over your pieces and the enemy and can see the whole map all the time, the PC game encourages you to play like the Lieutenant overseeing his squad back in the APC, only able to see shoulder cam footage, and each Marine's motion tracker -- which is very much portrayed as in the movie (translated over to the map-squares of Space Hulk). Sure, you can go to a map overview to play that in real time if you want, much as you do in pause to plan out orders for your marines, but then you won't be able to...
4.) ...make special use of the FPS trappings to shoot the aliens yourself by taking command of a Marine's suit. While it isn't strictly necessary (the marines will always shoot dead center down the hallway on their own, unless you order them to hold so as not to blow open a door you could seal off), doing so can give you slight but noticable bonuses to hit. It also allows you to exploit the blocky 3D engine to tag the very edge of GS sprites lurking around a far corner, allowing you to snuff a few and aggravate the others into charging down a hallway with odds in your favor. Doing this however keeps you in the limited visual focus of the marines and their camera screens. In some missions there's a second Marine team which you can shift back and forth between during the mission, which amps the tension even more because you can only see the five screens of one team at a time! -- so then you're REALLY trusting to your assigned plan when you can't spare the time to hop over and see how they're doing.
But you can hear how things are going. For better and/or for worse.
5.) The sound design is so good that it easily adds 50% to the overall tension factor! I used to demo the game at college for friends to try out on my system, and watching them play the tutorial missions was hilarious, for reasons I won't spoil for people who haven't played the game.
6.) A very generous selection of classic missions, including the original six Sin of Damnation campaign missions (though not called that), two or three dozen...
7.) ...plus an original campaign written for the game, which so far as I know hasn't been replicated anywhere else. Half of it doesn't even technically take place on a Hulk, and yet plays just as well on the mission design. (It's set in tunnels found underneath a city.)
Reading the rulebook and mission book is a fine callback to a day when Space Hulk and Rogue Trader were the primary lore of Warhammer 40K, for comparison to see where all the modern complexities have come from.
No kidding, I have the game instructions and mission book lying literally within reach of my left arm whenever I'm at the computer, including while typing this! Not because I play the game that often -- every few years I'll boot it up again -- but JUST BECAUSE! :D
From this you may extrapolate my disappointment to discover that Deathwing was not in fact the long awaited remake sequel to this version of the game I have always wanted to see... :'(
(The real sequel, Vengeance of the Blood Angels, is difficult to find. I think I threw its discs away long ago due to the game being shipped with some serious bugs, programming not Genestealers ;) , and patching being difficult back in that day. I did find the PS1 version of the sequel, but it strains too hard at the PS1's control scheme to be very playable. The game design suffers a little from allowing full 360 degree rotation of the marines, too, which is not really as handy as it sounds, but on the other hand the graphics look three or four times better with only a year or two advancement!)
I'd say that 1830 from the mid '90s and the even older Civil War Strategy Game still occupy about a quarter of my computer gaming time.
And on my Android tablet, Magic Dosbox will let me play old DOS games, letting me map keyboard actions to screen gestures.
I noticed with some interest last year, that GoG has already set up a page for 1830, even though they aren't selling it yet (last I checked).
One of my favorite games in the 80s was Gettysburg by SSI on my Apple IIe. It could take up to 30 minutes for the AI to do its turn. I am sure the UI is awful now, but it would be a great game to play...very board game-ish.
Quote from: solops on February 07, 2021, 02:54:25 PM
One of my favorite games in the 80s was Gettysburg by SSI on my Apple IIe.
Was that the SSI series that included Antietam? I played that one a lot as well as a Napoleonic
version that used the same system. Although I was playing off of a C-64.
I still play Civ I once in a blue moon. I had a terrible
addiction for it and after a day long session playing,
would dream about playing it in my sleep too!
Sometimes when I was getting genocided by the AI, I would
tell my people to hop on a ship and sail to some godforsaken
arctic region to live off of seal blubber while the AI
was building the spaceship. I just wanted to survive until
the end.
Other times, I would fall behind with no chance of winning
so I would try to subvert whichever Civ had caused me the
most grief in the hope of allowing a friendlier AI to win.
Then there were those games I thought I was doing great,
had conquered all of Europe and Asia with cannon and musketeers,
then a huge Aztec invasion fleet suddenly appears and begins unloading tanks
and mech infantry...Kinda like the ending in the movie Apocolypto, only in reverse.
Renegade: Legion Interceptor plays JUST LIKE the FASA board game of the same name! The scenarios make it fun for a while, although eventually it starts to get repetitive. The fact that scenario missions don't ramp up in difficulty also makes the campaign game less satisfying.
But dang! What a game system!!