» Fun & Games Solid Blog of Ise

DK2 On GOG.com

2011/08/26 — isecore

I have a GOG.com account. GOG stands for Good Old Games, and they serve an interesting niche – vintage games for download, ported for modern systems and without DRM, for a decent price. All-round it’s a great service and so far I’ve bought about 6-7 games from them, for about 4-5 bucks a piece.

Earlier today I got news that they’ve added one of my all-time favorite games, and it didn’t take long for me to shell out the five smackers it cost. One of the nice things about GOG is that they adapt/port games to work on modern systems, and this was something I really looked forward to since in the past DK2 has proven somewhat finicky to get going on anything except a 1999-era computer. Those old machines (Voodoo graphics!) are starting to get VERY difficult procuring these days.

So I bought it from GOG and gave it a spin.

Of course it’s the same old game, so here’s some plus and minus with the GOG-version:

+ Installs really smoothly using their own installer.
+ Quick download and you get some bonus materials with the game, in this case a manual, a reference guide and a level editor.
+ Instant gratification, game starts almost immediately on a modern system.
+ Runs fine under Windows 7, in my case a 64-bit install. Can probably get it going under Wine too, with some coaxing.

- Still kind of funky settings-wise. I couldn’t get hardware-accelerated graphics going.
- Game is quite unstable. Less unstable than vanilla DK2, but still crashes quite often and randomly.

Totally worth five dollars, despite the oddities.

Posted in Computers, Fun & Games, Retro. No Comments »

Blade Runner

2009/09/07 — isecore

I had myself a large dose of nostalgia today. One of my favorite pastimes is re-visiting and reminiscing about my computer past, and think about how far technology has come. You know, just generally taking a stroll down memory lane, so to speak.

One of my favorite games of all time is Blade Runner from 1997. It is loosely based on a similar concept to the favorite movie (which incidentally happens to be one of my all-time favorite movies) and follows a different member of the Blade Runner-unit, a man named McCoy. When released it was considered a landmark achievement and managed to mix atmospheric visuals and audio with a well-written plot. It also had up to thirteen (!) different endings, depending on the choices the player made. I managed to get eleven of them, that I know of.

Today I remembered the game for some reason. It’s been rattling around in one of the drawers in my desk for the last six or seven years, but today I dug it out. The game was a gift to me on my birthday from my then circle of friends, and I enjoyed it a lot.

The only sad part is that somehow, somewhen, the box has suffered some minor… uuh… cat-damage. So it has a somewhat pungent smell. But the contents were blissfully unharmed.

(Speaking of which, I miss these boxes. This was back in the day when games came in proper boxes, not just a keep-case. Actual cardboard boxes. I miss it.)

catdamage

The game comes on four CDs, something which was impressive at the time. I popped the first disc into my drive, and installed it using Wine. I wasn’t sure if it would run, but I had nothing to lose. Also, I had even bigger doubts about Vista (which I occasionally dual-boot for gaming) running it.

Wine installed it just fine, and when I tried running it, it worked perfectly. Absolutely beautiful, and was fully playable. Audio, video, all worked fine. I had a fun half-hour running around in the game.

startscroll
The introductory scroll of the game is an exact replica of that from the movie, complete with similar music. It sets the atmosphere for the rest of the game beautifully.

runciters

cd-case

Sure, it looks a little odd since you can’t change the resolution of the game, and it was released loooong before widescreen monitors were invented. But it’s completely playable, and I might just dig into it – for nostalgias sake.

Posted in Computers, Fun & Games, Linux/UNIX, Retro, Software. 4 Comments »

I Assure You, That’s Me

2009/03/19 — isecore

I bought a new webcam today. Spontaneously I bought a cheap Creative Webcam Vista or whatever the heck it was called. It was dirt-cheap, I just couldn’t stop myself despite my official loathing for most everything from that hell-spawned corporation named Creative.

On the bus home I figured I’d be very surprised if it worked in Ubuntu, since the whole freakin’ package was smeared with “Vista Compatible” everywhere.

Turns out if works just fine in 8.10. In fact, it was easier to install in Ubuntu than in Windows XP.

Here’s the steps required to make it work automagically in Ubuntu 8.10:

* Plug the damn thing in.
* Wait four seconds. Or something, I wasn’t exactly using a stopwatch.
* Done!

Here’s the steps required when I decided I wanted to use it in my virtualized Windows XP-machine:

* Plug the damn thing in.
* Nothing happens except for Windows popping up it’s usual “What the hell is this? Give me drivers!”-box.
* Remember that you most likely have to install drivers before plugging it in. Stupid! Stupid!
* Unplug the damn thing.
* Download drivers and additional software from the maze that acts as Creatives website.
* Install drivers and additional software.
* Reboot.
* Plug the damn thing in again.
* Done!

Previous to buying this camera I’d been using an ancient Logitech QuickCam Web, made some time in 2001 I think. Worked fine for most purposes, except after upgrading to 8.10 it had stopped working in a majority of applications – most likely due to Video4Linux going through some heavy changes. It had never worked in Skype under Linux, and had enjoyed spotty support in general. For example, Cheese had never recognized it previously despite my many attempts at tickling it into service. No go.

This new one however, despite being Vista-branded up the wazoo, worked fine in all these applications. Skype? No problem. Cheese? Like a charm. Amsn? You betcha.

So I played around a bit with Cheese. Owners of gilded cages know what Photobooth is. Cheese is an open-source kind of clone of Photobooth. Cheese works in a similar way. You see yourself in the webcam, you push a button, it takes a photo. You can also apply cheesy effects. The effects are built-in and perform various oddities such as making you green and purple like the Hulk, or flipping you upside down, or making wobbly effects. Fun for about five seconds – until I discovered that it was possible to layer multiple effects. So after playing around with various combinations I activated ALL the effects, and here’s the result: