ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: VEIL OF DARKNESS

[Ross Scott]

Here's the main Halloween episode, though there's one coming up right behind it!  I still have a lot of editing left on that one, so no time to say more.  For now, enjoy!

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

 

[ScumCoder]

https://youtu.be/Z-tF0NKdh24?t=1063

It's part of the racket.

 

[ScumCoder]

Looks like I've found my avatar.

 

[Im_CIA]

is that robot hitler on the thumbnail? guess i'll have to watch the episode to find out

edit: oh god it's 50 minutes long, don't tear yourself apart by making these man, musta had a lot to say about this one though

 

Remember, he thinks we're his "boss".

No boss has ever said that to me

 

[Im_CIA]

i honestly had to pause it 30 minutes in, this one was kinda more on the boring side of things for me - i hate games with a lot of text, and RPGs in general are a snore fest, whenever i get to play them - i hated fallout new vegas (deserts, boring deserts for miles), undertale (it had some moments, but i didn't enjoy the game, i thought it was really below average overall) (the end message was too videogamey, the humour is just what your average internet user likes), bioshock (the setting is just really boring, gunplay is flat), that vampire masquerade game and a whole bunch which i can't really recall.

i don't know, something about these games just bores the hell out me, there's probably something wrong with me, but i'd much rather play through a call of duty campaign, instead of a fully fledged RPG game, but i don't know, sometimes i like my storylines to be dumb and easy to understand, RPGs are often so convoluted, to the point where, i just can't take them seriously, and it's often very difficult for me to keep track of everything at once

THE PROPHECY WAS PHROPHETIC

THE CHOSEN ONE IS PROBABLY YOU, YOU WERE THE CLOSEST ONE, SO YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE NOW

THE MAGIC CRYSTAL OF NO-CELATH IS GOING TO WIPE US OUT, THE GOD CLOROTH DEMANDS A SACRIFICE, AND THEN THE HOT DOGS ARE GONNA CONFISCATE YOUR DOGS, BUT FIRST YOU MUST BRING MY DAUGHTER TO CHTULU PROM, AND WHERE IS MY LEFT FOOT?? PLEASE BRING ME MY LEFT FOOT FROM MY BASEMENT, I HAD THAT FOOT FOR TWO CENTURIES

NOW LET ME TELL YOU THE STORY ABOUT MY TEN THOUSAND YEAR OLD GRAPES

IT STARTED OFF WITH...

man, call of duty is like, RUSSIANS BAD, NUKES BAD, KILL RUSSIANS, EAT NUKES, SAVE THE WORLD, SAVE THE DOGS

i think the information overload, and the bucket fulls of info dumps, are a huge problem for me, i just want to have fun when i play a game, and it feels like i'm in school all over again, where i have all this information that gets thrown at me, all at once, when most games could've said the same things in like two seconds tops, and they just tend to regurgitate the same piece of info, way too often, to death

i had a lot more fun with the trackmania 2 episode to be honest, i feel like the more abstract games get my immagination going, more than something ultra detailled or overly explained, i usually just feel really lost, or i feel overwhelmed, by the amount of information you need to take in at once

don't get me wrong, i don't mind the episode, but RPGs are just really boring to me, so this episode is a bit hard to watch, i need to pace this out with some breaks in between

maybe i just have a deep hatred for RPG games, but i don't know, i honestly skip like 99% of the dialogue, and i always find out, that i did in fact make the right choice by skipping all of it, and usually i can tell when i have to pay attention, i mean i got all the witcher 3's best endings, on my first try with no walkthrough, and i didn't even know that the game had bad endings, so there's some merit to my system

being lazy pays off sometimes, but if the game is expecting me to skip through the text though, and if it tries to pull a fast one on me, by sneaking in a key piece of info, which would normally be very important, in between random throwaway dialogue, then that's just the game's fault, i mean at that point, to me that's just admitting that the dialogue is too verbose, or just too boring to read in it's entirety, and besides, i hate games which do that, i mean you are just wasting my time at that point, it's just a lame trick, and it sure as hell won't increase my enjoyment of the game

sorry, i ended up ranting about rpg games in general, but i don't know, the dialogue in a lot of the fallout games is so fluffy for no real reason, i just get a headache trying to read all of it, it's just too much for me, and i would rather have more funny, throaway dialogue instead of some overly detailled filler bullshit

i also feel like dialogue in RPG games can get really obtuse, where the game almost acts and expects you to, pretty much know and understand the terms beforehand, but if the game presents itself poorly, or if it introduces it's core themes badly, very often a lot of the dialogue ends up making no sense to me

this reminds me of most the dialogue in mass effect, i always skip it, i try to listen to it but... it makes 0 sense to me, like what are the characters talking about 90% of the time anyway? yes saren's an asshole, reapers = bad, but man i feel like i'm just reading words, and it all flies over my head, it's a difficult feeling which i find hard to describe, i'm not sure how many people experience this, and i honestly want to like RPG games, but i just die of boredom, and i always get a headache when i force myself to play through a game, which i'm just not getting into at all

 

Try Blood or Doom. CoD will rot your brain. It's low quality Pentagon approved military porn that, theses days, borders on Orwellian 

 

[Swamp]

Great episode! I enjoyed it.

 

[Im_CIA]

i don't know, i hated doom personally (1, 2, and 4, i never played 3, it looks too scary for me), blood never grabbed me from the screenshots, and i had a good time with call of duty advanced warfare, and modern warfare 2, modern warfare 3, WW2 and infinite warfare was okay too

to me blood is a huge pass seeing as, i hate gory games, if that's the core focus anyway, and some of the screenshots kinda creep me out, so i'm not into even mildly scary stuff, i just don't like horror in much of anything, even in small quanties, i'll always take comedy over horror to be honest, 10 times out of 10 really

i don't understand what you are trying to say with those screenshots, i have no idea which game that's from, and i really don't care about the accuracy at all, i always skip the cutscenes once the loading is over, i just want to shoot the bad guys on snowmobiles, that's all, i'm a simple person really

this was cool as hell, i loved this



but man, i'm 0 on politics, i just don't care about that at all, it's hard for me to even be offended at... anything really, with how little i care about such topics - i'll take brain rot along some plain sci-fi fun to be honest

whatever point you were trying to make, honestly flew over my head so much, to the point where, my head might as well have been into another galaxy, sorry, i just don't understand what you are trying to say with that all, i'm that clueless

infinite warfare has the most gorgeous skies i've ever seen in a game

this is fucking awesome





but my tastes compared to the internet are pretty divisive, i think i'm pretty honest about the games i do honestly enjoy, like i'm not trying to just be a contrarian, and i just like the more modern era of games if i have to be honest - i don't think i've ever complained about a newer game, making older games dated for me - i mean that old game which i love, has been made even better? that's pretty awesome if you ask me - if it's not better, then it's cool, i still got the old game to satisfy me, until something better replaces it

i'm also into easy games, and i like it when a game respects my time, i've never been like most people, as far as difficulty goes, like i've never felt ashamed for picking the "easy" difficulty setting, i always believed in using any advantage you have access to (even external cheating if i have to, i mean it's a single player game, so i don't really care - it's just entertainment in the end, and you know, i just wanna be entertained, that's good enough for me)

considering how difficult it is for most people, to even pick up videogames as a whole, i really don't care what most people think about this choice, i've done it since i was a kid, and i really don't regret it at all, games just make me really happy in a lot of ways, when they allow themselves to be enjoyed

anyway i don't know, i think saying that the people who play the call of duty games, get brain rot, seems almost a bit too dismissive, and it's kinda mean towards the people, who just want to have some plain fun once in a while, i think some of the games totally have some really fun moments in them, and i'm generally not the type who allows himself to be influenced by much of anything, i almost feel like completely ignoring these games, just because of the topics they are involved in, is a bit too exagerated even for me

i think the only RPG which i had an okay time with was dungeon siege, or kenshi, but even those kinda bored me, and the outer worlds was such a mixed bag for me - i'm waiting for the sequel on that one, i finished it but, man i wish i had a, "ultra easy, all stats maxed out, enemies die in one shot" type of mode as an option, the level design in that game was so weak, you just walk around in the middle of nowhere most of the time

if it wasn't for cheat engine, i don't think i would've bothered with the outer worlds otherwise though, being able to have all my stats maxed out from the get go, made the game a bit more fun for me to go through, but it was still an overall slog to just finish, i ignored all the side quests, with how dry they were, i only did the stuff i knew i had to do, or whatever mission sounded more fun or interesting to me

oh and fetch quests in RPG games can go fuck themselves, i ignored all fetch quests in the outer worlds, i refused to do them out of spite, with how boring and common place they were, they were just filler anyway

 

There is no fun, there is only The Harvest. 

 

[Icebox]

is that robot hitler on the thumbnail? guess i'll have to watch the episode to find out

edit: oh god it's 50 minutes long, don't tear yourself apart by making these man, musta had a lot to say about this one though

 

To me the red eyed guy on the thumbnail reminds me of one of the MIB in Dues Ex.

 

[ScumCoder]

is the next episode party hard?

Ross's bar of "hardcore" and "intense" is really low (remember that he even separated the rather tame "Still Life" episode into an age-restricted two-parter), so I think the range of possible games is so huge that there's no point to even try guessing.

Spoiler

P.S. with all due respect to the new website coder(s), I just can't shake the feeling of how inferior it is compared to the old version. I sincerely want to move on, but I just keep stumbling on things that work plain worse than before, and I don't think I've sees a single thing that worked better. Even now, typing this post, I find myself thinking "just give me my f*cking BBcode back".

 

[Eshanas]

Try Blood or Doom. CoD will rot your brain. It's low quality Pentagon approved military porn that, theses days, borders on Orwellian 

View attachment 3474

Oh those poor Russians what ever will they do being painted as bad guys??????

 

[Im_CIA]

Oh those poor Russians what ever will they do being painted as bad guys??????

I grew up in a Russian speaking community in Ukraine. I never associated geopolitical rivals in terms of bad and good until I moved to America and got called a bad guy.  Probably because of dissentious crap like this.

 

[ScumCoder]

Oh those poor Russians what ever will they do being painted as bad guys??????

Not sure if trolling, or just stupid.

If the Goebbels-style lies on the posted screenshot - so audacious it borders on Chutzpah - does not disgust you and you still find it justifiable in any way, shape or form, then you are incurable.

 

[RED@KTOR]

The plane is probably a Douglas DC-3, so yeah, 1930s.

 

[ultrayoba]

Have some small things to answer:

1.Your sounds most probably don't work correctly because you need to setup card properly. Dosbox is emulatro of hardware in first place, and all PC expantion card had Port, DMA, HDMA etc. They should be same numbers in your dosbox and card you are emulating. In general, I recommend use doxbox game laucher - program that allow easely tweak your doxbox options in menus, not in .ini format. And keep one dosbox installation for multiple config files easely.

2.Adlib was cheapest and one of the first PC expation sound cards from 1987, SNES came out much later, already in 90s and had complicated circuit board by Sony that allow cutom PCM samples, size of this samples is small tho. Amiga computers had similar music system. By 90s Adlib was outdated, but newer Adlib Gold card was a falure, most common in early 90s was soundblasters. Quality of music also not most times connect to card but for what card developers aimed to and what they supported just because. For example I prefer in Ultima Underworld 1 Soundblaster over Roland sound.

3.This game is made by Dreamforge entertaiment (they had different name back then but that's them). Low framerate of intros is kind of their distinct style I don't know, maybe they was pre-recorded and it was only way they figured out how to present them properly. Most of their games published by SSI and have distinct 2d artstyle that you spot immideatly. Their responisble for such games as Dungeon Hack - ADnD2 dungeoncrawler in style and on engine of Eye of the beholder 3, Series of Ravenloft Strahd's possession/Menzoberranzan/Anvil of Dawn based on DnD also because SSI, yeah. They are first person party dungeoncrawlers but in real time, as it become in fashion after Ultima Underworld/System Shock and other Dooms and Wolfensteins. Plot of first game is around basic Ravenloft module about lord vamipre who own village and castle that trapped by evil powers with fog disconnected from rest of the world (sounds familiar, aren't it?) and Avil of Dawn. Their later games is tactic game about eldars Rites of War also by SSI, also Sanitarium you also might be interested in.

4.Inventory system like this was common for real time dungeoncrawlers and some CRPGs - Ultima 6, ultima underworld, Dungeon Master (in which kind of FPS games and real time first person RPG games and immersive sims have it's roots) etc.

Hope my post was not too annoying. Thanks for video!

 

[kerdios]

...

I tried playing menzoraban, and it's unplayable for me , the graphics are so bad they make my head hurt. I don't know what they did there but it was pretty bad (In comparison, I played bard's tale 3 and had no such problems, other than the lack of a mini map ).

Also played anvil of dawn half way, still need to finish it, but there aren't any good walkthroughs and I don't want to have to start all over because I missed or dropped some part in the middle. I reached the part with the half spiders half babies creatures and I'm thoroughly freaked out.

 

[ultrayoba]

the graphics are so bad they make my head hurt.

Graphics there is quite good in mine opinion, they basicly same 2d artistwork you get in all dreamforge games from this time. Not as good as westwood or even Raven in places I'd say, but still much better than anything what use just phototextures and raw 3d renders back than.
I think you might have problem with actual game render - I don't know what they used in their engine, some sort of Raycasting or other early 2,5d render, but of cource it has it's limitations and without proper "far shading" effect and lower render resolution it might look as pixelated mess at first time

If you played frist person games from this time a lot - like Thor's Hammer or The Elder Scrolls Arena or maybe original Rise of the Triad and Wolfenstein 3d you'll be perfectly fine with it lol. Well, this trilogy of 2 ravenloft and one forgotten realms free movment games is not something 10/10, but decent plot based SSI RPG as you might expect. But they'll really benefit from more advanced render and resolution. This why at the time 2d with 3d imitation games like Lands of Lore 1 still existed.

 

[kerdios]

this is what it looks like to me



And when I move the pixels also move in a very weird way

 

[ultrayoba]

Problem there is "draw distance" most probably for you - place where engine start "distort" cell and floor textures to not render all texture for all location. There nothing really you can do with it - it's way how engine threat "big" locations (in doom and tes arena you had dark or fog when you more far). Looking at your screenshots you may try play with acpect ratio correction and opengldb render, it might make it slightly better



However, you may turn off cell and floor texctures in options easely, if it'll help you to make it more "wolfenstein 3d style". With this view you can see easely see points where game change floor texture rendering



I can see that it may be bad for people but for me this graphics was fine, also in this games if I not crazy there no ranage-attack enemies and all combat is close one (exept occasional fireball from wall or some boss), so it'll not affecting gameplay much, espessialy in smaller dungeons and interiors where you spend most of the game. However yeah, if you want more modern experience with real time free-movment blobber Might and Magic 6-8 with GrayFace patches and hardware acceleration with widescreen patches probably be better start. I playing all this because fan of old CRPGs.

 

[kerdios]

btw this is what anvil of dawn looks like


A lot better don't you think?

I think the two main differences are 1. what you said about the fog in the distance and
2. the fact that ceilings aren't as low - in menzoraban the distance between the floor and the ceiling is so short (because of the hud)  it makes me feel as if I'm walking under a 1.8m ceiling.