ROSS’S GAME DUNGEON: VEIL OF DARKNESS

This has become, probably, my favorite episode of the Game Dungeon. This is my favorite kind of game, my favorite kind of setting, and I love the level of depth and detail that the analysis/review goes into.

I grew up playing these kinds of odd PC adventure games, almost never making too much progress because my 11-year-old brain couldn't comprehend the required leaps of puzzle logic. I wonder what opinions are among this group of what it was that led to the Sierra or LucasArts style point-and-clicks continuing forward, while action/adventure/rpg/visual novel hybrids like this one died out. You definitely see a few games after the early 90s that are closer to Veil, but it certainly seems as if the SCUMM interface just sort of set a new standard for adventure games and developers never really looked back.

Thought some folk coming here may be in a video dedicated to the Roland MT-32

https://youtu.be/DfUOR9I2Fwc

Ended up rewatching this because YouTube recommended it and I've lost track of which of these generically-named games are which. And I noticed something this time: the opening cutscene, the map, and the prophecy scroll are all rendering at what looks like twice the vertical resolution as everything else. Which would be 320x400. How the...??? What kind of system even supported that, ever? It's not one of the standard 13 VGA modes, I can tell you that much. And in fact the screenshots ultrayoba posted above appear to be the same way. Did this studio figure out some kind of wizardry that the rest of the industry wasn't privy to? Might explain the awful framerate, at least. Updating all those extra pixels takes time.

On 4/25/2023 at 11:24 AM, Steve the Pocket said:

Ended up rewatching this because YouTube recommended it and I've lost track of which of these generically-named games are which. And I noticed something this time: the opening cutscene, the map, and the prophecy scroll are all rendering at what looks like twice the vertical resolution as everything else. Which would be 320x400. How the...??? What kind of system even supported that, ever? It's not one of the standard 13 VGA modes, I can tell you that much. And in fact the screenshots ultrayoba posted above appear to be the same way. Did this studio figure out some kind of wizardry that the rest of the industry wasn't privy to? Might explain the awful framerate, at least. Updating all those extra pixels takes time.

I thought ross modded all of his videos to not show the HUD, which would explain why the resolution doesn't make sense

That just raises further questions!

On 4/26/2023 at 8:02 AM, Steve the Pocket said:

That just raises further questions!

feel free to state them