Redneck Rampage Family Reunion ISO questions

[Rekrul]

I downloaded this and it works fine, but I discovered something interesting;

If you just use the normal BAT files, the intro movies don't play. However if you delete the "-nogui" parameter from the BAT files, then the movies play.

Just for the hell of it, I tried pointing the BAT files to my normal copy of DOSBox 0.74 and while the game played, it flickered a lot. The weapons flickered, the save/load screen flickered, etc.

I notice that the included version of DOSBox, 0.72, is a custom copy rather than the official version. Is this how this version was officially released, or is this a modified copy? I'm just wondering because Redneck Rampage doesn't use any 3D acceleration, which is the main thing that the custom copy of DOSBox adds, and the normal version is supposed to run the game with no problems.

[Scaryfun]

It was a fan-made version so whatever modifications were made to DOSBox to get the game to run, they are not "official". As it was made in 2007, newer systems and o/s might not run it as well now. If you find other settings that are better, then feel free to post them here for others.

[Rekrul]

It was a fan-made version so whatever modifications were made to DOSBox to get the game to run, they are not "official".

OK. I thought maybe it was a copy of the version that GOG (Good Old Games) is selling. I've heard that their DOS games usually come configured with DOSBox. I find it amusing that they list the minimum requirements as XP or Vista and a 1Ghz processor. Last I checked, DOSBox still worked on Win98, and my old 1.8Ghz system chugged when I tried to play Build Engine games in DOSBox.

As it was made in 2007, newer systems and o/s might not run it as well now.

My system seems to run it perfectly as long as I use the 0.72 version included with the games. Using a newer version, either of the official DOSBox, or one made by the same guy, causes a lot of flickering.

If you find other settings that are better, then feel free to post them here for others.

I'm not exactly an expert, I just messed around with it a little.

I discovered a few more things that may help some people;

You can lower the music volume by adding the following line to the end of the DOSBox CONF files, right under the imgmount line;

Mixer CDAudio 25:25

That lowers the volume to 25%. Replace the numbers with the percentage you want. Alternately, you can turn off the music completely by just commenting out the imgmount line, which will cause it to think that you don't have the CD. If you do this, you can then delete the ISO files to save a little room.

When you use the BAT file to run the Route 66 expansion, it will make permanent changes to the Intrplay\Redneck directory, such that you can no longer play the original game unless you re-copy all of the files in the Redneck directory back to your drive. However, you CAN have both available at the same time. Here's how;

Start with a fresh copy of the whole thing. If you have save files, make sure to back them up first. Run the Redneck Rampage setup using the BAT file and configure your options. This will save your settings to Redneck.cfg in the Intrplay\Redneck directory. Make a copy of this directory. Name it Redneck2. So you have;

Redneck
Redneck2
Rides

Edit the dosbox.conf.route66 file, skip to the end and change cd redneck to cd redneck2 and save it. Now when you use the Route 66 BAT file, it will make the changes to the Redneck2 directory and leave the original Redneck directory unchanged. Both games will work. The only downside is that if you want to change he options, you need to run the normal setup, then copy the Redneck.cfg file from the Redneck directory to Redneck2.

If you want to be able to configure Route 66 separately, do the following;

Make copies of the dosbox.conf.redneck.setup & Setup Redneck Rampage.bat files. Name them dosbox.conf.route66.setup & Setup Route 66.bat respectively. Edit the BAT file to say;

dosbox -nogui -conf dosbox.conf.route66.setup

Then edit the CONF file, skip to the end and change the cd redneck to cd redneck2.

If you want to play without the CussPack, just go into the appropriate directory and delete all the VOC files. Or you can move them to another directory temporarily. Not that I have a problem with bad language, but there are times you might not want a video game dropping loads of F-bombs. Also, it seems that the CussPack samples override some specific bits of speech with generic lines. For example, at the beginning of Rides again, he makes a comment that is more appropriate than the generic line he says with the Cusspack installed. They also tend to get quite repetitive.

I hope this information is useful to some people.

[Scaryfun]

For sure, thanks for the infos!

[Rekrul]

One other bit of info;

The mouselook in Build Engine games is kind of clunky. It's filtered so that only one axis of the mouse registers at any given time. To fix this, one person wrote a better mouse driver, called BMouse, which you can get here;

http://swisscm.duke4.net/mine.html

It won't give the games true mouselook, but it is an improvement over the internal mouse driver. Vertical aiming isn't too important in these games as they were written back in the days before games truly became 3D, however it's still handy to be able to easily look up and down. It works with Redneck Rampage, Blood, Shadow Warrior and Duke Nukem 3D. Naturally, since it's meant to fix a shortcoming in the original executables, you don't need it if you're using a source port, like eDuke or JFDuke.

The instructions in the archive say that there are two ways to launch BMouse, however the second method only works if you've also done the first.

Unpack the BMouse.exe to the game's directory.

Run the setup for the game you want to use it with, go to Controller Setup, select Choose Controller Type and choose Keyboard and External, then go to Setup External and change it to say BMOUSE.EXE. Finally, you'll want to go to Setup Advanced Control Options, then Advanced Mouse Setup and adjust the Mouse X Axis Scale as the default provides insanely fast turning. I'm using a setting of .20 (20%). The Mouse Y Axis Scale defaults to 1.0, which seems fine to me. Save the settings.

Then find the BAT file used to run the game. For Redneck Rampage, it's RAMPAGE.BAT. Edit that and change the line that runs the program to BMouse.exe Launch [Game Name].exe. In this case you would change;

rr.exe

to;

bmouse.exe launch rr.exe

During the startup, it should mention finding an external controller on vector 60 or something similar and mouselook in the game should be nicer.

[Rekrul]

It appears that I might have posted some incorrect information...

When I was testing the games, after I ran Route 66, every time I tried to play the original game, it kept coming up with the Route 66 levels and no demo. I compared all the files to a fresh copy and some of them had been altered, which lead me to believe that you couldn't have both the original and Route 66 active at the same time. However, I've been playing with it a bit more and I can't seem to make that happen again. No matter how many times I do it, both games co-exist just fine. I have no idea why it happened the first time.

Also, so far I haven't had any luck getting BMouse to work with Route 66.

[Scaryfun]

This pack probably uses this frontend - http://proasm.com/redneck/rrsetup.html
I also ran into another one here - http://buildgamedosboxlaunchers.weebly. ... ncher.html
And they discuss problems with it here - http://forums.duke4.net/topic/3814-redn ... ge__st__30
So maybe they can help with the mouse problem.