ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: FOLLOW-UP EPISODE #1

[danielsangeo]

Subtitles typed and sync'd and--God dammit, Ross! I came here to post that information and I saw that another Game Dungeon has been posted!

 

You're just too darned fast. I have to format subs for this follow up episode so that they're pretty, then I'll get on the next Game Dungeon ep. Followup subs should be tomorrow. Next Game Dungeon ep: TBD.

[Ross Scott]

Hey Ross, thanks for the video!

 

You said you wanted to know what people think about the idea of a video going into bad practices on the part of gaming companies - I know I would find it very interesting, if it was done well. It would have to be very carefully documented and avoid unfounded accusations and such like the plague. But done well and with care, I would pay for it, even I hadn't already decided to support your Patreon. I want to have fun when playing games and I don't want big companies fucking it up by making the production a hell for their workers.

No it wouldn't. I would say up front that everything I'm reporting is heresay and unverified (unless someone didn't want to be anonymous). So this wouldn't be verified fact, just testimonials that are very probable to be true.

 

So you dont think the mismanagement of multiple companies that were a division of Activision isnt evil?

EA has mismanaged a lot of companies too, I think it's a dead heat competition between them and Activision. I would argue this stuff is bad, but not evil because (for the most part), their INTENTION wasn't to screw everyone involved. It's just really gross incompetence.

 

If it's Abandonware, (the game is not being supported by the company that owns the rights to the game) it isn't piracy. (this also is in the law)

I'm calling bullshit man. In the eyes of the law, that IS still piracy and technically illegal (unless you have a source stating otherwise). However, that won't be ENFORCED by anyone except maybe some sort of copyright troll company.

 

So, game like Battlefield 2 (not being sold or supported anywhere sides amazon anymore, its still in steam but not sold) is abandonware in eyes of law?

In the eyes of the law (USA at least), "abandonware" doesn't exist. Piracy isn't acceptable under any scenario.

 

Re: soundtracks, this guy has recently released an updated version of his Strife soundtrack cover. IMO it's pretty good. He also did some other games such as DOOM.

Awesome, I wasn't familiar with him. I checked out his Youtube channel, some of his tracks nail the tone, others seem to be not so great, so it's definitely a mix. his Teen Agent Prison mix is great.

[danielsangeo]

Subs up!

[Steve the Pocket]

Die Höhlenwelt Saga does look intriguing. I happen to know someone who is German and likes point-and-click'-em-ups; she's played the Deponia series and recommended them to me (something I have yet to follow up on), and she does fairly regular live streams of video games, I believe. I could probably convince her to put together an English-language Let's Play of some sort. Probably the good old fashioned text-and-screenshots format would be ideal, since it means she wouldn't have to translate on the fly, but I dunno where one would put such a thing. There's no central archive for text-based Let's Plays that I know of besides the Something Awful one.

[Goggles2114]

Mostly because I wanted a wallpaper for my laptop I did a bit of copy/paste/crop/add black to the edges to make up size difference.

 

the strife image at 1280x800. Actual image resolution is like 1239x800 though.

[HLPrincess]

Subs up!

Thanks. Added.

[Quasar]

Hey. I'm one of the devs contracted by Night Dive to work on Strife: Veteran Edition, and also one of the two guys who did the reverse engineering work it's based on from Chocolate Strife. Wanted to say I loved Ross's original review of the game, which I found during SVE development and that it was an influence on several things we tweaked and added, like automap objective markers and making a way to get out of some of the dead end situations. Was happy to see the re-release get acknowledged in this latest video. Being huge fans of the game, we put our hearts into the remake and tried to give it things that would be a great incentive to grab it even if you had previously "acquired" the game, in whatever manner For a game that old, you know it's going to have entered that phase. Of course I cannot speak on sales or expected profits, as Night Dive Studios handles all that; I was just a contractor I think it has proven to be one of their most successful titles though.

[Goggles2114]

Hey Quasar. Look personal opinion is things could be better, but the feel I get from doomworld, the steam forums, and elsewhere is you ran out of money so NightDive moved on.

 

Am mildly disappointed at nobody making use of the source provided but eh. It exists. It is a Thing.

 

Most importantly you left the original wad files as is.

[Ross Scott]

Hey. I'm one of the devs contracted by Night Dive to work on Strife: Veteran Edition, and also one of the two guys who did the reverse engineering work it's based on from Chocolate Strife. Wanted to say I loved Ross's original review of the game, which I found during SVE development and that it was an influence on several things we tweaked and added, like automap objective markers and making a way to get out of some of the dead end situations. Was happy to see the re-release get acknowledged in this latest video. Being huge fans of the game, we put our hearts into the remake and tried to give it things that would be a great incentive to grab it even if you had previously "acquired" the game, in whatever manner For a game that old, you know it's going to have entered that phase. Of course I cannot speak on sales or expected profits, as Night Dive Studios handles all that; I was just a contractor I think it has proven to be one of their most successful titles though.

Wow, thanks for the comment! I hope I got the crediting right on reverse engineering it. I knew there was a lot of porting work done later on, but the Vavoom guy was the very first person I knew of who did it (I was desperately hoping for a Strife port many years back since I wanted mouse aiming) and shared his work afterwards.

 

Going back and playing it, I honestly can't put my finger on what exactly I like so much about it. I mean the voice acting is a definite part of it, and the plot is interesting, but something about that game really feels like its own world, compared to a lot of other games which feel more staged.

 

Also I actually had an original copy of the game, you don't get the video intro in the abandonware copy!

[Goggles2114]

For me it's the fact there's just enough story to have a world, but enough wiggle room. It's a real shame that there aren't things like intentionally unused assets, and the like for mod makers to sink into. Then again the loss of the source code on top of releasing between Quake and Duke Nukem 3d that buried it. There's a handful of fan missions, and most are actually pretty good, but nothing compared to doom.

 

What bugs me is sixish months after it came back there's been no new maps. We have tools (at least for windows) to take advantage of the new features. There is a multiplayer mode but... nothing really big.

 

It's Doom plus a lot of other stuff. I do wish the mauler's shotgun mode had more... oomph. Compare it's 'ooomewy' noise to the doom's shotgun or supershotgun. Shottty feels a LOT more satisfying.

[Monkey with OCD]

Ok, I found a download for Die Hohlenwelt-Saga, but I am not entirely comfortable with reuploading it on a easier to access server, so if anyone else wants to do that, feel free:

 

http://www.goodolddays.net/file/file%2C ... downloads/

 

So far what I have found out is that the game uses cd audio, so you have to mount it in DOSBox using this line:

 

imgmount [drive letter] [path to .cue] -t iso

 

Once the game is installed, there is a split archive (HW.001 - 015) with one file in it, HW with no extension. Unfortunately, I have never tried to hack my way into a game's inner workings before, so I personally am stuck when it comes to hopefully finding where the text dialogue is kept. Not that I am fluent in German, either, I was just going to use Google Translate, but it's better than nothing. The only other files are a .CFG, a .OVL, and a .WSA. This looks like it could be a cool game so if anyone else feels like trying to get into the inner workings so as to translate it, or at least helping me, that would be greatly appreciated.

[Reverend_UshankaCat_]

...if anyone else feels like trying to get into the inner workings so as to translate it, or at least helping me, that would be greatly appreciated.

 

Well I can't help you get the text files, but I'd love to help translate it! I have already translated a few subtitles from this site into German, so I guess I have some experience

[Epochpilot]

Hey Ross, I haven't been able to find the Strife artwork used in this video and would really like to use it as a Wallpaper. I searched the guy who made it and couldn't find anything conclusive. If maybe you could give me a link that would be very helpful.

[Bman]

Hey Ross, I haven't been able to find the Strife artwork used in this video and would really like to use it as a Wallpaper. I searched the guy who made it and couldn't find anything conclusive. If maybe you could give me a link that would be very helpful.

 

[Nex]

Apparently Die Wohlenwelt-Saga is a bad game? http://www.goodolddays.net/game/id%2C719/Die+H%C3%B6hlenwelt-Saga%3A+Der+leuchtende+Kristall.html

[Quasar]

Wow, thanks for the comment! I hope I got the crediting right on reverse engineering it. I knew there was a lot of porting work done later on, but the Vavoom guy was the very first person I knew of who did it (I was desperately hoping for a Strife port many years back since I wanted mouse aiming) and shared his work afterwards.

 

Going back and playing it, I honestly can't put my finger on what exactly I like so much about it. I mean the voice acting is a definite part of it, and the plot is interesting, but something about that game really feels like its own world, compared to a lot of other games which feel more staged.

 

Also I actually had an original copy of the game, you don't get the video intro in the abandonware copy!

Yeah Janis was the first to get the game functional in Vavoom, followed by Kaiser's svstrife and then ZDoom. Before all that, a guy called Gokuma did a lot of work figuring out all of the thing types and linedef actions, and made a version of DeHackEd for the game which was a big help to all of the above. For Chocolate Strife, though, we basically started from scratch and reversed every instruction in the program. We did reference earlier ports to see if they were in general agreement (though sometimes we found that in fact *they* were wrong or had missed a lot of details), so some credit is due regardless.

 

I have to agree; the cohesive world aspect is even stronger than what was in Hexen and really pulls you in. You're given reasons to invest in the characters that go beyond "some evil guy needs to die, see to it." The writing is really good and the actors all nailed it, like your original review pointed out.

 

And that's also true. I have many copies of the game from various sources just in interest of having every version that was released and only the legit ones have the video intact. Extracting the Strife portion of it for SVE was a lot of "fun" too by the way... those old AVI files are not standard by any stretch of the imagination. Every tool we tried threw some kind of fit, be it with the audio, or the frame rate.

[Schneider]

Concerning translating "Die Höhlenwelt-Saga": The text is stored in two files: hw.exe and hw.003

hw.003 stores the dialogue and hw.exe stores everything else.

The only thing I don't know how to change right now is the text in the death screens.

I'm not sure if it's stored as text or as part of an image.

 

Editing the text in the exe is very simple: Open it with a hex editor and search for the line you're looking to translate.

Each string is prefaced with a byte determining its length. Change that if necessary.

As far as I know, you can't make any of the strings longer, because that would overwrite other data.

 

The .003 file is a little different. You can also use a hex editor, but you have to use a custom translation table.

Tiny Hexer is an editor that allows you to do that. I attached my custom translation tables,

which aren't complete, but they contain most characters.

I Attached two because you need two: One for the player's dialogue and one for other characters' dialogue.

 

The information in the .003 file isn't nearly as tightly packed as in the exe, so you can actually make strings longer,

provided you change the byte which determines the string's length.

Some strings in hw.003 contain bytes which trigger events in the game. If you change the string, make sure to keep those bytes at the end.

 

 

I (native german speaker) plan to do a translation myself. Maybe someone wants to help?

I don't know how we would split the work though.

hw.zip