Can't help but wonder if a patched dll like the DirectX Vulkan Injector (DXVI) could improve their performance in a good number of older games, to help with the evolution of their legacy drivers for what will likely be a long road until they are competitive in older games. DXVI is like magic in so many older games even with NVidia cards. Just clears so much stuff up and definitely worth a try for folks finding stuttery/inconsistent performance in old favorites. Recently I modded the Steam release of Crazy Taxi, which was ported from Dreamcast and had some really wild stuttering issues because of the older DirectX it was using. DXVI made it locked 60 throughout and makes playing on PC with wheel/pedals a great experience with even some force feedback from the arcade original. Also re-added all the changed/removed branded stuff like KFC's and whatnot, and made my own soundtrack to the game that has significantly less OffSpring

I was a day-1 backer of this (#7003) and have been nothing but disappointed by how its been run since then. My main hope was to have some single player content within 5 years while they worked out the massively multiplayer crap, and 10 years in now there is nothing to show on that front, and a shell of a game that serves to sell virtual items instead of actually hitting any meaningful goals for the single player campaign that they promised for years.

Haven't tried any of the builds since 2020, after deciding to just wait until at least the single player was released. Who knows if that will ever happen now? Seems Derek Smart was right about this from the start. I'm just glad I didn't put in more than $35 on it, but still feel scammed for that.

Sepharo wrote on Sep 20, 2022, 17:02:
edit: Btw, if you want to play a Gilbert point-and-click Adventure with the art style y'all seem so fond of, Thimbleweed Park is what you're looking for.

This is an odd assertion. Nobody said they wanted the Maniac Mansion art style for Monkey Island and it is a very different presentation than classic Monkey Island, which also changed quite a bit between 1 & 2 but were both very well made- from Mark Ferarri's amazing EGA work that also had elements reminiscent of Loom, much of which was brought forward to the VGA version. And MI2's hand drawn backgrounds changed that up considerably but still had fantastic style, albeit a bit blurrier than MI1 when digitized from the original artwork. None of that was especially like Thimbleweed Park or the game it took inspiration from in it's art. Curse of Monkey Island was pretty great in most aspects also. All 3D efforts have been a significant downgrade from those, IMO.

It's a decently designed game with some witty dialogue, but I agree the art style is very lackluster when compared to the roots of the series, especially considering that it wants to be a direct sequel to MI2. It's like someone saw Space Quest Historian's youtube avatar and said "let's make an entire game that looks like THAT!"
Just not my cup of tea, with the lifelessly programmatic swaying of assets back and forth like a flash game. I've enjoyed it so far, otherwise.

Tom wrote on Sep 19, 2022, 18:38:
Oh wow, that's amazing. The MiSTer FPGA. The mt32-pi. And the surprisingly good voice acting. Thanks for sharing!

You're welcome!
It was a humbling experience playing this way for me, knowing that the entire chain is community efforts to revitalize and enhance old favorites:
The Ultimate Talkie Edition patches were described by Ron Gilbert himself as being the coolest mod project ever- and damn what work that must have taken!
mt32-pi is a labor of love by Dale Whinham to provide bare-metal emulation for a variety of MIDI devices and continues to get better over time..
and MiSTer itself is a monumental open source undertaking to accurately reproduce these systems in FPGA with minimal lag and no operating system overhead. Just amazing stuff seeing this all work in tandem in modern times.

How appropriate, you fight like a cow!


I recently recorded the first two VGA games with MT-32 music along with the Ultimate Talkie Edition patches, running on an FPGA 486- in case anyone is interested in seeing a new modern way to experience the classics:

MI1: https://youtu.be/iigEOKdjHSQ

MI2: https://youtu.be/TvULhLvfQIQ

looks like a shitty flash game. for a game that did so well graphically with its pixel art roots, it's a shame.

This comment was edited on Aug 30, 2022, 09:43.

It's going to take them a long time to catch up if they ever do. Even if the hardware is on par, you have to consider the decades of (often game/engine-specific) driver optimizations done by AMD/Nvidia to make their offerings as fast as possible. That's a pretty monumental task for a new player in the field, even if it is a giant like Intel.

You can go quite beyond what the original C64 offered while retaining accuracy to the original system (including the SID chips) on MiSTer FPGA. I've been loving the Commodore 64 core on there. Here are a few examples I put in a playlist on YouTube for those interested (games and demoscene):
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ1YLXjDEi6ZuKDP3Mi8bG2hBR0F7LjCc

That Cuphead DLC was the hypest of the bunch for me. Love that game. Shame they got slowed down on a proper full follow-up by getting mixed up in that Netflix nonsense. I just hope that they keep at it with follow-ups. They obviously know their stuff, from a artwork and gameplay perspective. Pure bliss with an arcade stick.

Yes it will take a larger FPGA in the future to do more advanced PC stuff, but its still pretty amazing for the price I'd say. The packs you mentioned are converted from ExoDOS and work pretty well. I'm just happy to be able to play Ultima 7 and the Hero's Quest/Quest For Glory series to their fullest, with MT-32 sound via the awesome mt32-pi.

I share a lot of experiences from MiSTer on a specific YouTube channel I made for the project here: https://www.youtube.com/c/MiSTerWalrusFPGA

Need to get more DOS videos up, but there's so much cool shit on there its hard to cover everything. Did Wolf3D and Doom w/ Sound Canvas already though ^-^

Want proper preservation today? Just put together a MiSTer FPGA. It's the retro device I always hoped for since the early days of emulation, now finally a reality.

Quote from Tim Sweeney less than 20 days ago on Twitter:

"We aren't touching NFTs as the whole field is currently tangled up with an intractable mix of scams, interesting decentralized tech foundations, and scams."

Not more than 3 weeks later, and just because Steam has taken a stance on this, they find another opportunity to differentiate their platform- in the worst way possible. It's no secret that blockchain usage in games is mainly centered around NFT "ownership" thus far, and he has openly acknowledged that these are a scam proposition. I think this is super-shady.

And holy shit I've never considered a ad blocker on mobile before commenting on this site from my phone. What an awful experience.. screen moving around constantly blocking what I'm typing as the keyboard and comment box fight for space with these ads attacking from both top and bottom at the same time. Complete shit.

I remember coming here for my daily quake news soon after the switch was made, I think linked from some quake fan page that listed a variety of news sources. This one always stood out to me as clean and easy to digest, plus I enjoyed the bits of humor sprinkled in here and there.

Flash forward all these years later and it's still the first thing that pops into mind when I want to check out general gaming news.

Thanks Blue and everyone who's helped along the way for the many years of information and entertainment. Hard to look at similar sites without yearning for the simplicity here, and the awesome blue/black theme ^-^

Looking forward to seeing a list of the music they chopped from the trilogy and the inevitable fan patch that restores them.

Good to see Taito with releases on Steam again. I hope they bring the Darius collections that released on switch and PS4 as well.

Bubble Bobble was one of my favorite games in the 80's. I remember the first time I saw an arcade cabinet for it, on the boardwalk of Daytona Beach. Great game. Even if this is just limited to local co-op, I'll take it!

Sandy Peterson "Quake Fun Facts"

https://youtu.be/QfwoTuoJln8

Sandy tells some good stories here- Topics range from American McGee getting slipped PCP when iD went out to dinner with Trent Reznor (and suspicions of Pantera involvement, LOL), tunnel vision in game design and accepting outside influence, to the Jaguar Doom 2 port.

Valve could really have a hit on their hands here if the streaming portion is done well (since it has such limited internal/fast storage), and also possibly eGPU capability. With the included displayport spec being able to handle 4k/120fps or 8k60, eGPU would make a lot of sense if they can pull it off.

Could also be an emulation powerhouse likely able to even do switch games better than the switch itself. Also doesn't look like its built like a toy, as the switch is.
Very intriguing.

Valve just announced the handheld Steam Deck:

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamdeck

https://www.steamdeck.com/en/

One of these days I'd like to put together or acquire one of those multi-game arcade boxes. I can promise you that the ability to play Donkey Kong will be one of the first criteria for this project.

Try out MiSTer FPGA. Since I left pretty much all of modern gaming about 3 years ago, this has been the main gaming platform in my house. Next-level stuff, even has a 486 core that can run Doom including Roland Sound Canvas support for best quality music on the classic. I moderate the main discord for MiSTer now and do testing on pretty much all cores on the platform. Donkey kong and its sequels are all there in their original arcade glory as well, with Capcom's CPS1/2 recently making it to MiSTer also.

Github link: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki

My YT channel, specifically made to share MiSTer gameplay experiences: https://www.youtube.com/c/MiSTerWalrusFPGA
(Organized by system)

In this day and age, don't get some cheap chinese emulation box. The original console/computer/arcade quality (including original latency) is all achievable with a device that costs $180, and it's *well* worth it. Best deal in gaming I've ever encountered, and completely open source. Yes, it's really that good.