At some point, the machinations of the universe have directed you here. This is the web presence of some guy called goose. Here you’ll find the various doodads he’s designed, created, or mangled.
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When it comes to those of us who absolutely love video games, each of us has that one genre that we absolutely love. It may have been due to the genre being the first you played, or it’s just the mechanics just scratch an itch that no other genre can provide. Hell, it might just be because you’ve just mastered the underlying theory and mechanics. For me, this genre has always been the racing genre.
but first, a bit of personal context
My earliest batch of games on the family 486 were comprised of Day of the Tentacle, Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, and Stunts. (Stunts was also known as 4D Sports Driving, mainly for marketing and branding – which is strange that nowadays I’d wager no one actually remembers the 4D branding.) From there I managed to get my hands on various racing games for MS-DOS: Crazy Cars 3, Grand Prix Unlimited, Super Off Road are ones that come to mind. I also remember having Newman-Haas Indycar for the SNES, and that’s definitely something I’m going to have to look at in the future. In 1998 I was the proud recipient of a brand new PlayStation, complete with the game that would set the benchmark for what I would come to expect from the racing genre. Gran Turismo.
10,000 credits and a dream
To say that I was obsessed with Gran Turismo is an understatement. It was the game that really cemented my love of the racing genre. The biggest paradigm shift for me was the fact that there was no difficulty setting in Gran Turismo mode. The difficulty was set by how well you could upgrade and tune a car, and that I could essentially supplement my utter lack of skill with a stronger car was amazing to me. What I didn’t realise at the time was how the structure of the Gran Turismo mode allowed me to really dig into the mechanics at my own pace. When you first enter GT mode, you have 10,000 credits and a map screen which serves as the gateway to the different car manufacturers. What isn’t explained is that 10,000 credits isn’t really enough to buy a new car – well at least a new car that’s actually worth racing. I’m reminded of the time when Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May went to Vietnam for a Top Gear special, and are handed boxes with around fifteen million Vietnamese dong in them. The elation was soon drained as they found out that all they could afford was some used motorcycles, much to the chagrin of Clarkson. To actually have a chance to compete you have to hunt around the used car lots, whose inventory will change on a regular basis. What will soon become apparent is that you will have a choice when it comes to used cars: Do you spend all of your budget on a powerful car that can compete straight away, or do you get a cheaper, less powerful car, and save some of your budget for aftermarket tuning parts? The way that Gran Turismo just lets you just off the leash and allows you to actually make mistakes was mindblowing to my twelve year old self. as i said, I never realised how unique the idea was until a long time later, when searching for something that would scratch the same itch over twenty years later.
a lesson in frustration
Last year, I picked up the Xbox Game Pass for around 5 dollars, mainly so I could play The Outer Worlds without having to humour Epic Games and their anti-consumer wankery. Despite having a terrible interface on PC, and being nigh impossible to actually find where the friends list is, the amount of content offered as part of XGP is quite substantial. There’s been games I’d have never played if not for the pass and after various offers, I’ve managed to end up with around six months of XGP for about five dollars. However, as part of the XGP, I now had access to a game series that I had completely missed, a game series that was apparently carrying on the legacy of simcade racing and was now available on PC. I was finally able to play a Forza game. I had never played any of the Forza series, mainly because I’ve never owned any XBox console. I had always found that anything that I wanted to play on the XBox was available on PC, and the things that weren’t available on PC, I had equivalents that fulfilled the same niche. I also didn’t play certain genres on console, so I would always default to PC first. However, the PC platform has always lagged behind the consoles when it came to my pet genre of the racing game. Sure we had things like the Need For Speed games, as well as a lot of really dry simulator games, but the PC never really had anything that held a candle to Gran Turismo’s simcade style. To say I was very interested in trying a Forza game to satiate my desire for hurtling snarling mechanical monsters around a ribbon of asphalt was a bit of an understatement. To say I was mildly frustrated at the new user experience is also an understatement.
There’s a wonderful interview with Hugo Martin from id Software where he talks about the design of DOOM 2016. In that interview he mentions that the first fifteen minutes of a film, or any piece of media, is key in setting up the experience. He essentially says that a game should be good from the moment you hit the new game option, not waiting until the third hour to actually become good. I wish the team from Turn 10 Studios subscribed to the same idea. I also wish that Turn 10 Studios also subscribed to the idea of show, don’t tell, or the game equivalent; let the player do things, rather than showing them.
First time launching the game, you’re not given any menus or anything, you’re shoved straight into an unskippable cutscene that is far more interested in telling you how great the in-game Horizon event is, and is nothing more than a thinly veiled self-congratulatory masturbation session that’s smugly crowing about how awesome they are. What’s more, is that this cutscene drags on and on, as it edges it’s way through showing that the game has seasons, and essentially just flops it’s dong on the table with the same charm and grace as a drunken Collingwood player. What’s worse is that the game feels like it has no trust in the player’s intelligence, as it carefully over explains every small detail in case a five year old is left behind.
Horizon then indulges in another tired and infuriating trope, the unskippable tutorial race with an endgame car. Even here, when you’re able to actually control parts of the game, the developers are so terrified of people getting lost in a racing game that they coat everything in padding and actually make the initial experience even worse. Firstly, You still can’t change any options. Don’t like the default controls? Too bad, can’t change them yet. Want to tweak difficulty and assists? Not during the tutorial you can’t. This second point is something that really drove me to insanity, as the default assists that are enabled are so intrusive, that actually trying to take an optimal line through corners led to the assists hitting the brakes and slowing me down and countersteering away from the apex. What’s worse is that the entire race has AI that rubberbands to such a degree that you will only ever overtake the leader just before the finish line for a “thrilling” finish. The entire sequence is nothing but a gaming version of one of those cinematic thrill rides found in an amusement park. You watch a series of videos that patronisingly tell the audience about what’s happening, you get in a facsimile of a batmobile, there’s a whole heap of bright lights and rocking of the car, but nothing actually changes, and you’re just left mildly nauseous afterwards. This was where my first of many rage-quits happened.
You would think that the game would then open up a little, allow the player to actually express themselves a little in their vehicle choice, right? Oh no, we’re going to restrict the player to a handful of cars that all pretty much handle the same. Even then, after selecting an avatar, (by the way, you can’t customise your avatar until you unlock individual items through another god damned unlock system) you would think that the game would let you actually play the game, right? You would be wrong. You only have a very restricted amount of races to choose from, all of them having an unskippable cutscene parading another interchangeable smug twenty-something douchebag around in a vain attempt to appear hip and relevant.
what lies underneath
The thing that infuriates me so much is the fact that the underlying gameplay of Forza Horizon 4; the driving model, the physics, the whole package underneath the thick layer of masturbatory smugness is incredible. It took me about half an hour in the overworld to get an understanding of how it behaves, but after removing a lot of the assists and tweaking some sensitivity settings, it’s one of the best driving models I’ve used. Combined with the astounding visuals and rather well optimised engine that the game runs on, the core of Forza Horizon 4 is really solid, and it’s a blast when you finally get into a race.
The car customisation options are also insane, albeit a little to indepth for my liking, (There’s no default option to just add a simple dual racing stripe.) and the fact that the developers put this powerful of a tool in the game shows that they are willing to give a lot of customisation over to players, but only in the designated areas.
The final straw for me came after I finished the last race of the Autumn qualifiers. The game took complete control over the map screen and proceeded to smugly explain all the new events one by one, for about a minute straight. At the end of this, the girl painfully overexplaining everything had the gall to ask the question: “All these new events are unlocked, What are you waiting for?”, only then for the game to keep going and smugly unlock more shit. I tell you what I’m waiting for Forza. I’m waiting for you to shut the fuck up and let me play the fucking game.
That was the final straw for me. I had given the game multiple chances, and every time I ended up angry that the game kept taking control away from me. I’d get into flow state during a race, but the races are too short, and the downtime in between just ruins any enjoyment I could have with the game. For every three minutes of racing, there was another three minutes of pointless menus, open world menu selection, and some smug fuck crowing about how great the game is, and how awesome I am for playing it.
There’s a core issue with Forza Horizon 4, and it’s not just limited to the Forza series. Gran Turismo 6 did the same thing when it forced you to buy one car. Hell, even the first GRiD was guilty of this with it’s unskippable tutorial videos and intro race. As games have become more mainstream, and developers feel the need to add tutorials to everything, developers have forgotten the fact that they need to let go of the player’s hand at some point. It’s one of the reasons why DOOM 2016 was such a breath of fresh air, it was awesome from the get go, and actually introduced it’s mechanics in an organic, unobtrusive way rather than cramming everything down the player’s throat.
The greatest flaw with Forza, and with a lot of other modern games is that they’re too busy telling the player that they’re going to be awesome, rather than letting the player actually be awesome.
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Three years.
There’s been a lot that’s happened since the last time I posted over three years ago, and most of it isn’t things that should be shared outside of a therapist’s office. I’d be a bit of a tease if I didn’t at least mention some highlights, so here’s some dot point events:
- Joined and became a captain of a small amateur Overwatch esports team.
- Managed to finally get clean; quit drinking, quit smoking, quit most of my more destructive vices.
- Bought a new guitar.
- Built a fuzz pedal that sounds absolutely filthy.
- Got a 144hz monitor, then acquired a 2060 RTX to actually be able to run things at 144hz.
- Started a diploma course.
There’s other things that have happened, but I won’t go into too much detail. I have a written journal for that embarrassing crap.
As for the plans I have for this site, I’m going to be updating it over the course of my studies. Having part of my course deal with web design means I can hopefully make things all sleek and professional.
As for things to look forward to, I’ve been looking into video production and hopefully I’ll have some content to post here.
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It’s been a while. I’m planning on returning to this shebang as I’m back at school studying for a diploma of IT. This is an article I wrote in 2016, and it’s a shame I never actually published it. Here’s to new beginnings, and I’m planning to try and stick to my original routine of one article per week.
I tend not to stay focused on one thing for a long period of time, so I haven’t had much time to actually do some work with the 486 in the past couple of weeks, and I blame Dragon Age: Inquisition for this situation.
Dragon Age: Worldbuilder
I’ve been a huge fan of the Dragon Age series ever since picking up Origins about five years ago. The first game was a streamlining of the complex web of classes, skills and mythologies from Bioware’s previous Neverwinter Nights series, which makes sense considering it was based on 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons (NWN2 was based on 3.5ed, but that won’t mean much to those who have no idea) and was set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Forgotten Realms setting. Hell, if someone says ‘fantasy RPG’, I’m going to compare it to Forgotten Realms, and D&D rather than anything from Tolkien or Feist. That being said, it’s a god damned mess when it comes to introducing new people and players to the universe. The sheer amount of backstory and complexity in the setting that comes from both the lore and the mechanics of D&D is what has driven a lot of people I know away from such games. I still love it, but that’s because I’ve sunk over 300 hours into both Neverwinter Nights games.
So along comes Dragon Age, fresh off the heels of Mass Effect, and takes the skeletal framework of D&D and says, “You know what? Wizards, Sorcerers and Druids? To hell with that, they’re all just magic users, let’s just call them mages. Barbarians, Clerics and Fighters? Warriors. Rogues, Bards and Rangers? Roll them all into one Rogue class. Three classes instead of 9. Simplicity. I loved the game, although I’ve only ever done one full, 100% playthrough. I’ve finished the main quest multiple times, but I’ve never done the whole thing again. Origins is kinda like Deus Ex to me, where I’ll start it up and be all geared up for some epic fantasy adventure, brimming with excitement as I spend more time on the character creation screen rather than just diving in. I really do enjoy character creation screens a little too much – there’s a reason why I adore the Saint’s Row series.
I’d estimate about a fifth of my time is spent on this screen. But then I’ll get out of Lothering, and look at the five different plot modules and think to myself: “Well shit, I forgot how god damned tedious this game is. Do I really have to grind my way through the notoriously awful Fade section in the Circle Tower? Or how about the ridiculous quests required to even get the Dwarves to talk to you in Orzammar? Do I really have to wade through all this archaic and clunky combat again? Sure, I’ve played through all the origin stories, and played through all the possibilities, but I have no desire to go back and start again. Hell, I started to last month as part of wanting to play through the whole series. Once again, I got to Lothering with my poncy, fop haired mamma’s boy of a Human Noble, brimming with a juvenile lust for vengeance, and sat in front of the screen thinking “I really can not be arsed to do any of this.” Strangely enough, I feel exactly the same way about the first Mass Effect. So in a similar fashion to Mass Effect, I opted to use a premade save state for Dragon Age II. (Gibbed has a brilliant one here)
Seriously. Look at this ponce, thinking he’s all that in some sweet scale armour. The strange thing is that I never felt that way before. As I said before, I’ve finished the main quest with nearly every origin, but it was only after I finally got around to playing Dragon Age II did I see what I was missing.
I’m also about to say something really damn controversial: A personal opinion.
Dragon Age II: Idiot Savant
I never played Dragon Age II on release, after seeing a lot of backlash against the game from some of my favoured reviewers and the community backlash against how this was just a sub-par cash grab, I just never took interest in the game. I was far to busy with other games – mainly Mass Effect 2 – so I just shelved it in the back of my mind as something to play ‘when I get around to it’. When I finally did get around to actually getting Dragon Age II, I was getting bored of Skyrim, but I was still in a mood for some swords, magic and a good fantasy world to get lost in. I was tempted to start a new run of Origins, but instead decided to check out Dragon Age II. It was on sale at the time, and I had the cash to spare. Besides, I really wanted to see if Dragon Age II was going to murder any goodwill I had for the franchise like all the hardcore fans said it would. Now here’s where I get real controversial.
In my eyes, Dragon Age II Is better than Dragon Age: Origins.
I’m kinda lucky that I don’t expect anyone to actually read this, otherwise I’d be inviting a hate mob into my life. I’d also like to clarify that I don’t think that Dragon Age II is a perfect game. Far from it, it’s got some incredibly bad design elements, and there’s things that if they were in any other game I’d quite rightly skewer the game for doing something so inane. It’s a broken mess at times, and the rushed development cycle really shows in some glaring places, but I want to explain why I find Dragon Age II more engaging than Origins.
The Rise Of The Hawke, Champion of Snark
When I first started up Dragon Age II, I had no expectations. I knew it wasn’t going to play like Origins, which was also helped by the fact I didn’t play through Origins to prepare for Dragon Age II. It had been almost a year since I had last played Origins, and I hadn’t really thought of the world of Thedas since then. Dragon Age II doesn’t mind, it’s going to tell it’s own story in the world that Origins created. Straight away, Dragon Age II is doing something with sequel that I’ve wanted for years, which is to take the universe of the initial title and tell another story from another perspective, rather than just following the same characters, (or worse, character archetypes) through essentially the same plot. Mass Effect 2 almost fell into this trap, but it’s story structure is what saved it in the end.
Just from the opening sequence, I was hooked. I knew the world, but I didn’t know what to expect, especially being introduced to the next brilliant feature of Dragon Age II that’s been used to great effect in other games since, albeit with less chest hair. The whole narrative, everything that happens within the game is framed through the interrogation of the smooth-talking dwarf, Varric Tethras. I admit, I’m a sucker for a loveable snark, especially those with a heart of gold. Everything in Dragon Age II, from the character design to the story structure is all tied to how Varric tells the story. Hell, there’s moments of brilliance where his interrogator calls him out on his stories, most memorably during his loyalty mission which starts out as a thinly veiled homage to Scarface, which leads to the entire game having this amazing sense of character behind everything.
This also extends to the player character, Hawke. Whereas in Origins, the Warden had no voiced lines, so that the player could fill the tone in for themselves, Hawke is fully voiced, and uses a dialogue wheel which is incredibly familiar to anyone who has played Mass Effect. The biggest difference, and something that I haven’t seen implemented as well since is the third choice on the wheel. Traditionally in RPG games, and especially in Mass Effect, there’s a binary system for morality. You’re either a good, selfless paragon of justice who saves kittens and braves lava floes for some little girl’s homework that was stolen by crows, or you’re some selfish ponce who is so dedicated to being an arsehole, that they’ll throw the kittens into the lava, along with the little girl’s homework, before mugging the little girl of all her pocket money finally throwing her into the lava as well, and if they’re really evil, they may throw the pocket money in as well because, evil. If there is a third option, it’s so inoffensively neutral I normally wonder if my character has been replaced by either a beige lamp, one of the neutral people from Futurama, or a chartered accountant.
Dragon Age II gave me something I never realised I wanted in this department – a third option that was actually entertaining to use. Instead of a flat monotone, “Neutral” Hawke is a god damned comedian, and combined with being fully voiced, gives rise to a character that is genuinely engaging within the world they inhabit. A lot of people complained about how they didn’t feel as they were being immersed in the world, but like Mass Effect before it, Dragon Age II was less about the player being a direct actor in the world, but more of a guiding conscience for a character who was their own person. The fact that I could have a Hawke that reacted in ways that I relate to – laughing at how ridiculous things can get, but always with others in mind was something I haven’t seen since, and something I noticed was missing from the next game.
Lastly, I loved the entire plot arc. Some people hated the fact that there was no overarching plot, that there’s no world ending calamity until the final act, but that’s something that’s refreshing to me. I’ve been a big god damned hero so many times in so many worlds in so many games, that being able to play someone who just has to deal with messes of others and try to just do their best with what they have was astounding to me. Having the game take place over the course of 10 years, as Hawke rises from nothing to finally becoming the Champion is a ride that I was so happy to be a part of. It was so nice to be able to simply live in the world of Thedas. I saved the world of Thedas in the last game, it was nice to be able to actually see what I was actually saving.
In comparison to Origins, I always found Origins to be far too dry for my tastes. It’s a very straight faced, “serious” fantasy game that forgot to have fun with the material. Sure, your companions are a riot, but the same can be said of Dragon Age II. I guess the first instalment suffers from the same problem that any first instalment of a sci-fi or fantasy series suffers from: You’re not only having to introduce the player to your characters and mechanics, you’re also having to introduce the world, with it’s various cultures, species and politics, and it gets damn overwhelming at times. I guess because I’m so familiar with the world, that having to go through and be reintroduced to everything on replays has lost all it’s charm.
Dragon Age II get a lot of stick for some really bad design decisions, especially in the combat system, and rightfully so. The wave based combat that always spawns in one more wave when you think you’re done is as dumb as a bag of hammers. The repeated environments are another near unforgivable sin, traipsing through the same warehouse and cave maps over and over again is a god damn chore. I’ll also point out how god damn buggy the game is, I actually can not run the game in Direct X 10 (Despite having a DX10 card) because the 1.04 update broke DX10/11 functionality on my system. I’ve actually looked into a fix for this, and the only response is to just run the game in DX9 mode. That’s not really a fix, but it could be worse.
So there it is. A rambling article on why I can overlook some really dumb design choices in a game that shot for the moon and faceplanted in a nearby mountain range.
–Goose
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Recently I’ve been recording some of my gameplay when playing Overwatch in an effort to see if there’s any obvious places where I’m screwing up, when I noticed something odd when reviewing the recordings. Whilst all the audio for the game as well as the audio from Discord would be coming through both channels in stereo, my voice was only being played back through the right channel. Since I’m not producing videos for public consumption, it really shouldn’t be too much of an issue, but it’s enough to annoy me enough to find out what on earth is going on.
So a quick look into my setup to see what on earth is going on here.
My microphone setup is rather convoluted as compared to the usual USB condenser setups, for the sole reason that I didn’t want to add another USB sound card into my system. I’m currently running a Presonus AudioBox 22VSL, which is a very nice USB 2.0 audio interface which has an MXL 550 condenser mic as my main microphone. In terms of bang for buck at the time, it’s serving me well. The AudioBox software also allows you to change the panning on the fly, which in most software is good enough to get a centred output.
The problem seems to have come up with Shadowplay, nVidia’s inbuilt streaming and recording software. For streaming, Shadowplay is far below par, with OBS knocking it right out of the park in terms of stability and customisation. However for recording game sessions, Shadowplay is actually the better option from my experimentation. The only problem is that Shadowplay uses a direct input from the communication devices to gather the local mic inputs – which the AudioBox software can’t directly utilise.
I did find a solution, and it is a bit of a hack, but it seems to work.
First and foremost, the mic you want to use must be plugged into the no. 1 input jack. I’ll explain why in a moment why this is important, but you can mirror any settings you wish on the hardware and it will be exactly the same.
Second you’ll want to go into your Recording Devices tab of the Sound properties in the Windows Control Panel. Easiest way to do this is to right click on the little speaker in the system tray and select it from there. You’ll get a window like this:
Now there’ll be a couple of devices here, but you’ll want to right click on whatever device is going to be your input device, in my case it’s the AudioBox 22VSL Audio. This will bring up the line properties.
Lastly, select the Advanced tab and you’ll see this screen:
The Default Format section is what’s of interest here, and the setting that’s found here is what needs to be set in order to force applications like Shadowplay to recognise the left channel mic as a single mono input. Here’s the reason why plugging the mic into input 1 was so important. With this option Windows will take only the first input and use it as a mono input. If you have anything on inputs 2 and above, Windows will just ignore them.
Apply all the changes and hey presto. You’ve got a single mono input that isn’t stuck on one channel. While this something that I’ve found that works with the Presonus AudioBox, I can’t guarantee that it will work with other USB ASIO interfaces. I’ll also recommend that you set things back to the previous settings if you want to use multiple inputs at once through ASIO. I haven’t run into issues, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
The ideal solution would to have nVidia implement a Force Mono within the Shadowplay software, but until then, this workaround seems to work. I’ll also point out that I’m running Windows 7, so there may be some differences between this and Windows 8 or Windows 10, so again, your mileage may vary.
–J
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Just a quick bit of info about a little issue I ran into recently in regards to XCOM2, and it’s a very niche occurrence but here’s the gist of what happened.
I recently switched from using an LG TV as a primary display back to using my old dedicated computer monitor instead. In essence, I’ve traded resolution and screen size for refresh rate. For reference my TV is a standard 1920×1080 @ 60Hz and this monitor is 1440×900 @ 75Hz. The difference between the two is night and day when playing games like Overwatch. With that change in resolution has brought back an old little problem that isn’t seen much nowadays – how games handle a change in resolution. Going from a lower resolution to a higher resolution is normally easy, if the display can support it, but going down is a nightmare at times.
I’m going to cut to the chase and explain what happened to me and how I fixed it.
I run most games in Borderless Window if I can, so I can easily switch over to discord and engage in some jolly banter at will. The issue popped up after I switched back to the smaller monitor, as XCOM2 kept the same resolution but in borderless window mode. Essentially I had the bottom right section of my screen missing. This normally could be dealt with in other games, but all the actual menu buttons are at the bottom of the screen.
This can happen in a lot of games, so having to change config files is a handy skill to pick up. What I’m describing here applies to the majority of Unreal Engine games, both old and new, although there is going to be changes between the config files according to what Unreal version is being used.
Depending on the game, the config files can be found in two different places most of the time. The earlier Unreal Engine games kept their config files in their install directory, for example Unreal Tournament 1999 the config file is found at *game path*\System\unrealtournament.ini . Unreal Engine 3 and beyond has changed this, with the config files being found in the user’s documents folder instead, in this example XCOM2’s config files are found under *user*\My Documents\My Games\XCOM2\XComGame\Config. There’s also a lot more config files as compared to earlier Unreal games, but they all perform the same function.
When it comes to editing graphical settings, the config file you’re going to want to look at is the Engine.ini file. The actual name of the file will change depending on what game you’re looking at, but it’s function stays the same, and it’s where you can tweak a lot of options that aren’t found in the game’s options menu, mainly because some developers can be lazy at times.
There’s a lot of technical stuff in here, and a lot isn’t that useful to tweak for the general user, but there is one section that I’ll focus on. After opening up the relevant engine.ini file in a text editor for [SystemSettings] will get you to the section where you can tweak and potentially correct errors. Some of these you may recognise, but there’s a lot in here.
In my case, fixing the mismatched resolution had two solutions. The first, and arguably the most direct way was to find the ResX and ResY entries and simply set them to the desired resolution. This is another way to set custom resolutions, although that is to be done at your own risk and doesn’t always work properly. Strangely, that wasn’t the solution I used – mainly because in XCOM2’s case the ResX/Y option is at the bottom of SystemSettings and sometimes there’s another solution earlier in the config.
My second solution was switch the game from borderless window back to dedicated fullscreen. This will force the game to look at what display is being used and realise that it can’t render to the old resolution and reset it to a default value that can be displayed. (XCOM2 defaulted to 1280×720 which seems to be a common trend) From there you can use the in-game menus to correct the resolution settings. There’s always going to be times where simply setting the resolution via the config files results in weirdness, so using the game’s option menus can help in getting back to a stable configuration.
The other options in the SystemSettings section can be tweaked to squeeze out more performance on lower end systems, especially if you know what settings hit your system’s performance the hardest. It’s also a handy way to disable motion blur, even if the developers think that their game absolutely has to have it.
Just remember to back up your config files before going on an edit spree, although that’s solid advice when editing anything.
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After being in the internet backwater for what felt like eons, I’ve finally been set up with some pretty decent internet – mainly a proper NBN connection. Whilst the plan that I’ve started on isn’t the beefiest, and is essentially the top tier of what ADSL2 can deliver – the fact is that there was no way that ADSL2 was capable of actually hitting those speeds.
The other big issue was uploads, mainly due to the way that ADSL handles uploads. I’ll have to do a write up on that at some point, but this is all essentially fluff.
I’ve got enough upload speed to be able to stream properly.
You can find me over at https://www.twitch.tv/foureightsixdx
I’m going to try to play a lot of older games, not just old DOS games, but a lot of older windows titles that always get overlooked. I know that I’m planning on getting some mates together an play some Unreal Tournament ’99 very soon.
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Yeah, it’s been a while, but between classes, assignments, and the never-ending quest for enlightenment through alcohol, I haven’t had much chance to actually just sit down and actually play something new. So, with the semester break coming up, I figured I’d get a head start and look into some of the newer releases, and by look into new releases, I mean go through the listings provided by the various podcasts I occasionally listen to.
Top of the list was The Turing Test, which when I first heard the title & description I let out a near audible groan. “Oh great,” I thought, “A game where we solve puzzles whilst an AI monologues at us in a subterranean science lab. Boy, I can’t wait for the jaunty song afterwards that recaps everything.” Whilst the game draws heavily from Portal, and I really should reign in my cynicism more often, the sheer surprise at the quality on offer here was a very pleasant surprise.
Set on a research outpost under the ice of Jupiter’s moon Europa, the plot follows Ava, resident icy pole on an orbital satellite that hangs above the other satellite. Sure, nearly everything’s a satellite if you think about it hard enough, but that’s besides the point. Freshly defrosted, Ava is put right to work by her friendly AI pal, TOM. Apparently, there’s a communications problem, and the scientists on the surface haven’t been heard from for over a couple of weeks, so TOM thinks it’s probably best for everyone that Ava go check things out and make sure it’s all hunky dory. Sure, the opening is cliche as hell, but it serves the pace of the game very well to not waste time and get on with the show.
The plot unfolds in rather predictable ways at first, to an almost suspicious degree, and I spent the first half of the game trying to predict exactly what the twist would be. Let’s say that I was close, but way off at the same time. I’m not going to spoil, but the second half of the game introduces a whole new suite of mechanics that add even more context to some of the brain bending things that I ran into in the first half.
From a visual standpoint, the game is pretty damn good looking, although it’s budget origins are visible in some places – the textures on coffee mugs look like they’re from the Unreal Tournament era, rather than running on Unreal 4. Overall, whilst the visuals don’t push the limit of fidelity, the overall aesthetic suits the tone and does the job well. What I will say is that performance wise, the game runs flawlessly on my rig, keeping a steady 60+ at 1080p. I did find it kinda funny that the game defaults to the highest resolution, which in my case is 4k, but that’s through DSP rather than having an actual 4k monitor.
A puzzle game is only as good as it’s puzzles, and this is where the Portal comparisons are going to come thick and fast, and it’s really tempting to just say that The Turing Test isn’t as good as Portal and call it a day. That would be really freaking shitty to do though, so let’s get into detail. The central mechanic here isn’t a gun that shoots blue and orange portals, instead you’ve got a gun that can pickup and move various flavours of energy balls. If you remember how Portal used the energy balls from Half-Life 2, The Turing Test refines them even further. Instead of floating around freely however, they’re either locked in a socket or in the business end of Ava’s gun thingy. different combinations have different effects, and their combinations have various uses. The funny thing is that The Turing Test isn’t reminiscent of Portal to me, it’s got a closer resemblance to something I haven’t thought of in years: Final Fantasy X.
It sounds bonkers to compare the two, but hear me out. Remember the Cloister of Trials in all the temples dotted around Spira, where you had to use various coloured spheres to pick your way to the exit? Now imagine that you pick up those spheres with a gun reminiscent of the Antichamber gun, drape it in a covering of hard sci-fi and some rather interesting questions about the needs of the many, and you’re in the ball park of The Turing Test.
That being said, whilst the puzzles are at times inventive, they do lack a sense that there’s only one solution, and more often than not I found myself second-guessing a solution and wondering if I’m cheesing the solution through carefully lining up jumps rather than perfecting platforms. It also needs to be said that I didn’t find the puzzles to be a major challenge, although that may just be a personal bias – I’m one of the few people who actually enjoyed hand-coding assembly language in TIS-100. What I will say is that the optional puzzles are a real treat, with the hardest one involving logic gates that had me making a couple of hand-written notes. I miss having to do that at times, and the rewards at the end of the optional puzzles is amazing at times, with a lot of them giving some extra exposition, or just simply there to mess with your head.
In the end, The Turing Test isn’t Portal. It’s got it’s own flavour, and it’s definitely worth your time. Some have argued it’s a little short, but similar to Portal, it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, and the final sequence had me actually reverse my decision on who the actual antagonist of the story is. The hardest part of recommending this game isn’t that there isn’t anything to recommend, it’s that if I were to talk about the things I love about it, I’d ruin it for everyone, and going in blind is definitely worth it.
The Turing Test is available on Steam for 19.99USD, and for the price of two pints, I’d say it’s worth it.
–J
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It really has been far too long. I’ve had a couple of people send me some really kind messages, and I don’t want to disappoint y’all. There’s been a lot of, shall we say, interesting things happening in my life at the moment, and a lot of it got in the way of me being able to produce articles and content in a timely manner.
The biggest hurdle was the fact that my faithful main rig finally decided to give up the ghost and return to the PC gaming gods about two months ago. While I’d love to update purely from the 486, the march of web technology rendered that all but impossible. It would have been hilarious and the novelty factor alone was tempting, but it would have been as productive as posting from my mobile phone. I also considered that option, but phone keyboards are annoying enough for text messages, let along long form articles like I enjoy writing.
As for what went wrong, the best way I can describe it is a cascading failure of all parts after someone thought it was a good idea to try and push the creaking old girl far beyond what was ever meant to be achieved with such hardware. That someone was me. I’m not going to go into details, but in an attempt to get some decent performance when running Dragon Age: Inquisition, I disrupted the fragile balance the system had been precariously stuck in for the past two years. Remember that gag from The Simpsons where Mr. Burns is told he has every single disease, all at the same time? It was basically the same as that. I had spent a fair bit of time cleaning out all the physical components, but the years had taken their toll. The power supply was already near death, and the subtle tweaks to the BIOS I made did the opposite to what was helpful. Years of precarious patching and mayguyvering all fell apart ending with a bricked video card. Here’s where it got a bit depressing.
I was running an nVidia GTX 260 with a factory overclock from Gigabyte. 896meg video RAM, and uses a PCI Express 2.0 slot. Motherboard only had a PCIE 2.0 video card slot, however PCIE 3.0 is backwards compatible with PCIE 2.0, so I counted my coins and went and purchased a new nVidia GTX 960 with a factory overclock, this card manufactured by Asus this time. With 4Gb of VRAM I thought I could run that until I had the cash to upgrade the rest of the rig. If there’s anything to take away from this experience is that I am not a smart man at times. With a GTX960 running in a PCIE 2.0 slot, the excess information being sent from the graphics card to the CPU managed to bottleneck the entire system – to the point where the system was unusable in anything other than basic windows usage. It was a battle that was not going to be won without a major CPU upgrade, and considering the fact that I was running an ancient motherboard that only supported DDR2 RAM and PCIE 2.0, it was best to start again from the ground up.
Only problem is that I really don’t have that much money, so I had to spend a month and a bit completely without a modern computer. I had laptops that I could borrow from family, but in terms of a gaming, I was back to the 486 and my PS3/Vita. I sorta lost a lot of momentum and motivation, and let this little project wither for far too long. However, I did manage to save up enough to get the rest of the parts for a brand new rig, and I’ve managed to finally be able to play a lot of games that I was really looking forward to playing, as well as getting others running at respectable framerates whilst looking freaking amazing.
In other news, I’m going to be starting school again, doing a course in IT so I can’t guarantee updates, but if I put together any little projects, they’ll be put up here as well. Instead of being a pure retro gaming blog, I’ll be expanding it to cover anything that I find interesting, or things that I find neat that my mates are probably tired of hearing me bang on about.
–J
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Earlier this week, I was banging on about how bloody rad it was to have all my nostalgia bones tickled by all those awesome graphics, digitized sound and FM music coming from the faithful little beige box. I also mentioned that there was some petty issues that were no big deal.
The petty annoyances are just that: petty, and having that little bit of extra work make the times where I get everything working like magic so much sweeter.
I’d like to point out that I’ve been eating my words for the past two days.
Curiousity Is Cruel Mistress
For the week or two after picking up the machine, I was having a blast. I spent most of my time trying to figure out what games I actually wanted to play, more than getting into any system or OS drudgery. I managed to get a few old favourites working, and even started writing up a review of One Must Fall as the next article. It was all going so well.
So what on earth happened?
I ran out of space on the hard drive. That’s it, the singular proverbial cause of two days of frustration. When I picked up the machine, I was told that there was a 2GB hard drive installed in the machine. Yet, when I checked available space in both Windows and via the dir command in DOS, the total space amounted to 504MB. This is due to the BIOS not recognising any drive over the 504MB limit as a main drive. There’s a couple of workarounds that I came across, but the easiest way I found was through using what’s called a Dynamic Drive Overlay, or DDO.
A DDO is a classic example of bootstrapping, where a small program is used to enhance the capabilities of the initial hardware. In this case, a DDO will override the motherboard’s BIOS’s hard drive controller, allowing the system to access areas of the drive past the 504MB limit. There’s a few options when it comes to DDO’s that work in this situation, but a lot of them are proprietary, and only work with certain brands of hard disk. I eventually settled on using a DDO called EZ-Drive, as it looked to have the best compatibility with the drive I was using. Normally, I’d go into detail about how to get all this running, but Phil over at philscomputerlab.com has a wonderful install guide right here. Go check out his site and his YouTube channel, some interesting stuff over there.
The Big Mistake
All this EZ-Drive and DDO stuff is neat, but in order to access the full drive, I was going to need to format the C: drive. I’ve got a full set of DOS6.22 disks, Windows 3.11 disks, and I made copies of all the drivers that were stored on the hard drive. I knew the models of the sound card, as well as the CD drive. I made sure I had all the software I needed to get everything running, and it would be a fresh install. Everything was set, and I formatted the drive and got EZ-Drive up and running. So far so awesome. Here’s where I screwed up, and it comes as a warning to anyone else working on unfamiliar hardware. I’m going to put this in bold so you know I’ve got my serious face on.
Remember to back up your driver configuration as well as the drivers.
This came back to bite me in the arse something shocking when it came time to install the sound card and CD-ROM drivers.
And Now, A History Lesson
Before I get into what the exact problem was here, a quick look back to the introduction of the CD-ROM drive. Just like any new technology, the CD-ROM was an amazing leap forward, allowing for massive amounts of data to be stored on a single disc, as compared to other removable media like the then ubiquitous floppy disk. So you can get an idea, my first computer had a 420MB hard drive. The smallest CD format can hold 650MB. You can fit more on a CD than most hard drives of the era could hold. Granted, CD burners of the time were expensive and rather unreliable, so most people couldn’t use them to write to, but it’s really damn impressive.
However, when the CD drive was introduced, there was no standard when it came to connecting a drive to the system. Eventually most drives used the IDE standard, but before that was adopted, there was a lot of different ways of connecting drives, and a lot of manufacturers used proprietary ISA controller cards with their own connectors and cables. A similar situation can be seen at the dawn of 3D acceleration, where different chipset manufacturers had vastly different APIs until 3DFX came along with the Glide API and gave a glimpse into the future. A future that 3DFX wasn’t going to see, but others took the idea of a common API for maximum compatibility and ran with it.
Transitional Hardware
Here’s where the root of all my issues came from. The CD drive in my 486 is a Sony CDU33A-01. It’s a 2 speed CD-ROM drive, and is one of Sony’s first CD drives. This specific model was designed to work with either one of their proprietary ISA cards, or with a compatible Sound Blaster card – The Sound Blaster 16 CT2260 MCD. There’s other compatible cards, but this exact Sound Blaster card is installed in my machine, and acts as a controller card for the CDU33A-01. It took a while, but I managed to track down drivers that would work with the card, as well as drivers for the CD drive. Yet even after running the sound card setup and the CD drive setup, the system still refused to recognise the CD drive.
After trawling through every readme file, and attempting to find documentation on some of the most obscure corners of the internet, it turns out the solution was a classic PEBKAC error.
PEBKAC: Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair
On the setup disk for the sound card, there was two setup files: SETUP.EXE and SETUPSB.EXE. I think you can guess what the SB stands for on the last file. That’s right, Sound Blaster. Old computers suffer no fools, and a lot of the time it’s due to something tiny like this that brings everything down.
For those interested, here’s the line in the CONFIG.SYS file that works for this drive/sound card configuration:
DEVICE=\DEV\SLCD.SYS /D:MSCD001 /B:230 /M:P /K /C
and for the AUTOEXEC.BAT:
\DEV\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001
\DEV\ is the default install address, and can be changed when you install the drivers.
Finally,
So that’s the story of the first major hurdle I’ve faced. Now I can get back to writing that One Must Fall article.
–J
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There’s a strange indecision when starting up something a new site, or any project for that matter. At times like this, I always find it’s best to start at the beginning.
Intel released the first 486 (also known as the i486 or the 80486) back in 1989 as the successor to the venerable 386 processor, and was in production as late as 2007, which came as surprise to me, but after thinking about it for a while, there would have been a lot of industrial or commercial uses for the chip outside of the home markets. Still, that’s an impressive lifespan, especially when you take into account the massive improvements in processor speeds that were made throughout the start of the new millennium.
I could spend a lot of time rabbiting on about specs and miscellaneous trivia, but there’s a lot of people out there that could do it far better than I. If you’re interested, check out the wikipedia page. (I do like the fact that the 486 was the first x86 chip with more than a million transistors. That’s kinda neat.)
Instead, I’m going to go through some of the reasons why I’m starting out with the 486, some of the downsides, as well as how I went about getting my hands on one.
Games, Games, Games
I’d be lying if I said I wanted to get a 486 for anything other than games. The period of time between 1990 and 1995 is a golden period for the x86 PC’s, rivaled only by arcades when it came to gaming horsepower. With the advent of VGA and SVGA graphics, digitised sound via the SoundBlaster or Gravis UltraSound cards and having the extended storage space provided by the emerging CD drives, there is a massive amount of awesome games that were developed for the PC platform during this time. This was during the infamous console wars, where the majority of school kids would argue vehemently for their platform of choice, almost leading to fist-fights in certain circles. That ended as soon as Doom hit. You had a computer that could run Doom? You had some clout, boy. It wasn’t until the PlayStation and the Nintendo64 came out that fellow students began to migrate back to consoles, and take up arms against each other to fight for their platform of choice.
It was games like Doom, Wolfenstein3D, Duke Nukem 3D, Wing Commander, Day of the Tentacle and The Need For Speed that were the talking points, and the SNES and Mega Drive seemed quaint by comparison.
Sheer Bloody Nostalgia
My first PC was a 486. I remember when my dad brought it home, and we set it up on the kitchen table, all huddled around this majestic beige box as it sprang to life for the first time. The only computers I had used were old Apple IIe’s and Macintosh’s at my school. There was Granny’s Garden and Clockwise, and that was it. I remember seeing Day of the Tentacle for the first time, the bright and vibrant artwork and jaunty music leapt out of the screen. Shareware helped as well, being able to go down to the local newsagent and buy a pack of ten floppy disks each with a couple of games on each was amazing. Thinking back, the majority of games I had back in the day were shareware. I never played the full versions until I was older, fondly thinking back on wishing for the full versions of those games, and wanting to fulfill those unrequited boyish desires for completionism.
The Search Begins
I’ve been toying with the idea of buying another 486 for a fair while, especially after the original machine that we had kicked the bucket. I’d always been keeping an eye out on eBay, but the majority of machines were from the US, and whilst the machines would have been cheap, paying for the shipping made it just out of the range of affordability. I’m not sure what changed, but the realisation that computers from the 486 era were not going to be getting any cheaper, I decided to take the plunge and look in earnest for the nostalgia machine of my dreams.
Where’d the 486 go at?
I was a bit deluded when I started looking. I figured that there would be old 486’s coming out of the woodwork, just sitting in someone’s shed, or down in a storage centre. I’ve also mentioned that I can be a bit daft at times, right? First step I took was to check on gumtree. (Australia/UK’s Craigslist) Best I found was an old rusted case that didn’t boot, had no hard drive, was fitted with a Trident graphics card, and had no keyboard, mouse or monitor. For 70AUD. It was the only one available for sale in my city on gumtree or eBay. I did contact the guy and offered 50AUD, but he had just put it up on eBay. (It sold for 36AUD)
So both eBay and Gumtree were full of duds.
The best advice I can give, and what I ended up doing to get my hands on a decent, working system, is to post to social media. Have a look on Facebook for local computer clubs, or even better, find your local city on reddit. I’ve found the majority of major cities around the world have their own subreddit – just type in /r/yourcity at the end of the url and you should find something close. I managed to find a complete system for 100AUD thanks to a redditor. It was at the top range of the budget, but there’s times where paying a little extra for peace of mind is worth it.
It’s always the little things
Even though I bought a complete running system that had been set up properly, there’s two major issues you’re going to run into. Firstly, getting any software onto the damn thing is going to be a nightmare if you haven’t got the right equipment, and even finding the software itself is a hassle. I recommend getting a machine with a CD drive, just for the fact it’s far easier to transfer a lot of data, and for the great CD games, but even more than that, invest in a 3.5″ floppy drive and some blank disks. eBay is your friend here, although I picked up a USB floppy drive from an office supply place for about 15AUD.
If you get a machine with a network card, transferring via a LAN is doable, but getting a 486 with Windows 3.11 talking to anything past Windows 98 is an exercise in frustration and failure. There’s workarounds, I personally set up a temporary FTP server on my main machine and used WS_FTP on the 486 to transfer some things, but it’s not ideal. (This is definitely a story for the next update)
The other main hurdle is going to be troubleshooting. Google is your friend, but it’s a pretty flaky friend at times, especially when it comes to looking up some obscure setup files. There’s also the jokers who’ll just laugh at you for not emulating. It’s far easier and less stressful to just ignore these people.
Thoughts after the first fortnight
Working with such an old machine is kinda humbling, and puts into perspective how far computers have come, especially when it comes to configuring systems. I never realised how much modern computers rely on things like USB, or how god damn easy it is to network modern Windows machines. The lustre of the rose tint has fallen a bit, but the core enjoyment I had when I was a kid is still there. The petty annoyances are just that: petty, and having that little bit of extra work make the times where I get everything working like magic so much sweeter.
–J
FUTURE UPDATES:
I’m going to be looking at the DOS 6.22 startup files soon, as well as memory management, drivers, as well as the FTP solution for the lack of network shares.
I’ll also start looking at some of the games I’ve been playing.
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Welcome to foureightsix, the rambling journal of one man’s blind fumbling through the world of vintage computing, as well as other miscellany I come across in my adventures.
So expect a lot of detailed accounts of my idiocy as I fumble my way through re-learning how to run and maintain old computers, and hopefully we’ll all be able to learn from my experiences. I’ll also be taking a look at the games that I remember so fondly from my youth, and whether or not they live up to the hazy memories I have. I’ve also began using this site as a place for posting solutions to problems I’ve devised that I haven’t been able to find solutions to elsewhere. I may also post thoughts about modern games.
It’s shaping up to be a whole lot of fun, so I hope you’ll join me on this carnival ride, even if we have to stop every now and then and figure out why it’s inexplicably crashed.
–Goose.
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foureightsix.net 