Steve's Finds

[Steve]

SUMMARY

MOMOR PRODUCTIONS has followed the business plan of a lot of game development companies - Switching from PC-centric games to casual mobile gaming. Their older PC games, though, seem to fit what could be placed here at the Legends site:

* Mazemania (3D puzzle)
* Froogz (3D shooter / multiplayer-only?)
* Pumpy (3D puzzle)
* Sentry (Remake of 'Sentinel')
* Turbo Lode (3D remake of 'Lode Runner')

The games all look to have been originally freeware and came out roughly in the years 2000 - 2003.

LINK

Momor Productions - Legacy site

[Steve]

SUMMARY

With the recent inclusion of decidedly real-time strategy titles such as Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge, perhaps some of the people here would be interested in this offering: OpenRA is a "libre" clone for some of the earliest real-time strategy titles (such as "Command & Conquer 1") with an emphasis on multiplayer.

LINK

OpenRA

[Steve]

SUMMARY

3D Realms, the company that gave us the first person shooter "Duke Nukem 3D" and "Shadow Warrior," has since been bought by Interceptor Entertainment. In that purchase, a lot of back-up hard drives and other media was acquired. Interceptor Entertainment is now in the process of evaluating what is on those back-up media and have been offering screenshots of what they have found. There are allusions that they may be offering some of the alphas and betas of some of the games that they have the rights to (such as "Duke Nukem 3d" and "Shadow Warrior") in the near future. Right now, it is doubtful that they will offer alpha or beta builds of other former 3d Realms games (such as "Prey" and "Blood") as those are now properties of other companies.

LINK

Forum thread of Interceptor offering peeks into the back-up media of 3D Realms

[Steve]

SUMMARY

NEW TERRAN COMMAND SITE is a forum / website dedicated to the real-time strategy title OUTPOST 2: DIVIDED DESTINY. From my understanding of the situation, a group of Outpost fans split with the previous "all-encompassing" Outpost website, THE OUTPOST UNIVERSE when TOU started getting a bit too cranky with newer members (Bonus points if you realize that this development sorta-kinda mirrors the plot of Outpost 2). Unlike TOU, though, NEW TERRAN COMMAND SITE is only about Outpost 2 and does not include Outpost 1. The website has downloads of Outpost 2, a forum and a section where a fan spiritual successor to Outpost 2 is being developed, called "Haven: The Last Outpost."

LINK

New Terran Command Site

[Steve]

SUMMARY

The System Shock 2 Community Patch (otherwise known as "SCP") has reached Beta mode ("Beta 1" as it is called) and is available for download. This is sort of like the Unofficial Oblivion Patch for the game "Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion" in that it doesn't necessarily provide additional gameplay content but it does fix an array of errors that were otherwise missed in the official patches. This patch has been a long time coming and is well-regarded within the SS2 community.

In order to use the patch, you must first patch SS2 with it's other "unofficial" v2.43 patch, install a program called "ModManager" (kind of like what OBMM is to Oblivion) and than the SCP. Also, neither of the previously mentioned patches provide for a lot of graphical eye candy which can be handled by other 3rd party mods.

The below link is to the source, not the patch itself. Enjoy.

Forum Thread Introducing the SCP - Beta 1 patch

[Steve]

SUMMARY

ACORD GAMES appears to be a one-person operation: Gary Acord, who notes himself as both a game designer and comic book enthusiast. He has written several first-person perspective action games in the Wolfenstein / Doom / Game Maker tech level. An interview of the creator states that many of the games originated in the 1990s but were modified much later on as later versions of various game engines became available.

LINKS

Acord Games
Interview w/ Gary Acord on Gamasutra (circa 2013)

[Scaryfun]

Yeah, I've added a couple of games from him but not sure if more are worth adding.

[Steve]

Attack of the 50ft Robot! (2009 FPS)

** DOWNLOADS

REMOVE -

http://www.attackofthe50ftrobot.com/downloads.php [NOTE: Redirects to an unrelated website]

ADD -

http://games.digipen.edu/downloads/Atta ... &proj=8728 [NOTE: Unknown if download here is the same as "v1.01" as listed on this site.]

[Steve]

SUMMARY

The first five Tomb Raider games were released over 15 years ago (The very first Tomb Raider was released in 1996). The source code for these engines have never been open sourced and, as a result, modifying the games to run on modern operating systems has become increasingly difficult. Even when the games do run, there are limitations to the engines that are no longer necessary because of increasing computing power and storage. An effort called OpenTomb (sort of like, but not affiliated with, OpenMW) desires to resolve this by creating a whole new engine from scratch that will allow gamers to run the first five Tomb Raider games on modern operating systems while also allowing for greater modding capabilities that can't be realized with the official game engines. OpenTomb is presently in an Alpha state (for instance, it presently doesn't have menus or a heads-up display) but people can load levels and play around inside of it. As with other open-source engine implementations, you'll need the original game data from the actual games in order to play it.

If you are already a classic Tomb Raider fan or would like to finally play the classic Tomb Raider games to see what all of the hype was about but don't want to wrestle playing an aging game on a modern system, keep an eye on OpenTomb.

LINK

OpenTomb homepage (Open Source engine for the classic Tomb Raider games, presently in alpha state)

[Steve]

SUMMARY

With OpenMW (An open-source engine used to play with Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind data) maturing into a fairly robust project that is already reasonably playable, some have wondered what sort of open-source treatment Morrowind's predecessor, Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall, should receive. It is not for a lack of trying: Despite a lot of progress, the XL Engine project has fallen mysteriously silent for the past year. Daggerwind never attempted to use actual Daggerfall data but was merely a Daggerfall-inspired project. What's an Elder Scrolls enthusiast to do with a game that isn't getting any younger (Released in 1996)?

OpenDF is a relatively new, not-urgent attempt by someone at OpenMW to make the same type of open-source engine for Daggerfall as is occurring with OpenMW. The engine is currently in pre-Alpha state (so don't go looking to download or find your physical copy of Daggerfall just yet). With two similar projects already stalled or on "indefinite hiatus," let's hope that third time's the charm.

LINKS

Github repository for OpenDF project
Unofficial OpenDF progress thread at OpenMW forum

[Steve]

This is an audit of the links in the Quake Mod section up through "Prydon Gate" (when my brain froze up and decided to call it quits).

Quake (1996 Mods) - Various Changes

DIRECTQ!

*** Download v1.9.0 432kb (uploaded by CodePlex)

REMOVE -

http://directq.codeplex.com/ - [NOTE: 404 page]

REPLACE WITH -

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fi ... 1073199944 - [NOTE: Not an 'official' replacement but it seems comprehensive enough]

======================

FANTASY QUAKE - RISE OF THE PHOENIX

*** Download @ Atomic Gamer 25 Mb

REMOVE -

http://www.atomicgamer.com/files/4613/fantasy-zip - [NOTE: Server not found; Atomicgamer supposedly shut down sometime circa July 2015]

REPLACE WITH -

https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/fantasy.html - [NOTE: Link to actual file on the page]

=======================

FQUAKE

[NOTE: It looks as though "fquake" has been depreciated and the new version is called "nquake." I'm not sure how this site would like to handle this.]

*** Official Site Retextures Remodels

REMOVE -

http://fquake.sourceforge.net - [NOTE: Re-direct to "http://nquake.com/"]

REPLACE WITH -

http://nquake.com/ - [NOTE: Modern version of "fquake"]

REMOVE -

http://facelift.quakedev.com/retexture/ - [NOTE: Website gone; redirects to http://ww2.quakedev.com which is an empty website]

REPLACE WITH -

NONE

REMOVE -

http://facelift.quakedev.com/retexture/ - [NOTE: Website gone; redirects to http://ww2.quakedev.com which is an empty website]

REPLACE WITH -

NONE

=============================

FUHQUAKE

[NOTE: It looks as though "Fuhquake" has been superceded by "ezQuake" and/or "FodQuake." "ezQuake" appears to be the more prominent of the two. "www.fuhquake.net" now appears to be some sort of Asian-language blog. For reference, "ezQuake" is "http://ezquake.sourceforge.net/".]

=============================

INSOMNIA

*** Reviews 1 - Download @ Quake Wiki ~5MB

REMOVE -

http://www.electricescape.com/etherealh ... somnia.php - [NOTE: 404 page]

REPLACE WITH -

http://www.electricescape.com/etherealh ... m/insomnia - [NOTE: Modern equivalent page]

=============================

Nehahra Project, The

*** Review/Screenshots - Nehahra Hq 50MB - Tides Of War Addon Episode ~8MB

REMOVE -

http://www.electricescape.com/etherealh ... ehahra.php - [NOTE: 404 page]

REPLACE WITH -

http://www.electricescape.com/etherealh ... em/nehahra - [NOTE: Modern equivalent page]

================================

Operation Urth Majik

*** Review - Screenshots/Download @ Quad Addicted ~10MB

REMOVE -

http://www.electricescape.com/etherealh ... 01/oum.php - [NOTE: 404 page]

REPLACE WITH -

http://www.electricescape.com/etherealh ... urth-magik - [NOTE: Modern equivalent page]

================================

Penumbra Of Domination

*** Review - Download @ Gamers.org ~5Mb

REMOVE -

http://planetquake.gamespy.com/View.php ... tail&id=55 - [NOTE: 404 page]

REPLACE WITH -

https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/mexx9.html - [Planetquake site still exists but very slow and I couldn't find an equivalent page there; Quaddicted has some short user reviews, though (plus download)

================================

Prydon Gate

NOTE: I'm not certain how to reform this entry. Here are the links that do not work:

http://www.quakeexpo.com/booth.php?id=8&page=162 - [NOTE: 404 page]

Here are links that 'work' (that you can get to but really don't do what they are intended to do):

http://www.insideqc.com/prydongate/download.html - [Both download links are 404'd]

Here are some substitute links:

http://www.insideqc.com/prydongate/ - [Gives access to prydonprogs.zip, whatever that is]
http://www.fileplanet.com/110471/110000 ... -v1.0-Demo
http://www.fileplanet.com/110472/downlo ... emo-Update
https://github.com/Nekrofage/QuakeModPi ... emo_13.zip
https://github.com/Nekrofage/QuakeModPi ... korweh.zip

===============================

[oldman]

Great posts Steve .
Always good to have interesting links and info about pc games .

[hgdagon]

A little bit help there:

DirectQ archive:

Code: Select all

https://www.quaddicted.com/files/engines/directq/

Quake Retexturing Project and Quake Remodeling Project have long since merged into Quake Revitalization Project hosted at:

Code: Select all

http://qrp.quakeone.com/

The are man Nehahra page archives, and I'm not sure if any of them has the fileplanet links replace, but, not to brag or anything, I'd recommend downloading my copy since I've collected everything, starting from obsolete/outdated engines to soundtrack to DarkPlaces compatibility.

Prydon Gate is hosted here:

Code: Select all

http://www.insideqc.com/prydongate/

also:

Code: Select all

https://github.com/Nekrofage/QuakeModPiPrydon/tree/master

http://www.insideqc.com/prydongate/ - [Gives access to prydonprogs.zip, whatever that is]

Progs are Quake's textures/models. And I don't see such a link there...

[Steve]

SUMMARY

Since I posted about the System Shock 2 Community Patch ("SCP") here first, I may as well post it's update on this thread as well. The fan community behind SS2 has continued to improve the patch over the past two years, culminating in a new release called "Beta 3". In brief, the patch is not about adjusting gameplay but more of a bugfix / modern OS type of patch. Users of the patch are expected to be somewhat computer-savvy as the patch is not an one-stop shopping deal but part of an overall overhaul process for the game so be prepared to tinker before you can play.

LINK

Forum Thread Introducing the SCP - Beta 3 patch

[Steve]

SUMMARY

Gaming historians know that "Rise of the Triad" started it's life as a sequel to "Wolfenstein 3D" before becoming it's own game. It's game engine, a souped-up variant of the Wolfenstein 3D engine, has not held up well over time, despite being open-sourced in 2002.

Coding habits & styles have changed since the halcyon days of 1994 when the game was released and, as a result, at least one intrepid developer has decided that what "Rise of the Triad" really needs is an entirely new engine rather than incremental changes, a la an "OpenMW"-type of project. The name of the project is called "Larva." Still in it's larv... early stages, there is not a releasable form of the engine quite yet and, as is the nature of these projects, there may never be one.

We live in an era of aging games that rely increasingly on programming tricks & emulator savvy to run on newer operating systems & graphics cards (if they can run at all). Without efforts such as "Larva," we run the risk of losing our gaming heritage. Let us hope that "Larva" is a success so that future generations can play a piece of gaming history as it was meant to be experienced instead of merely watching it from a YouTube video.

LINK

Larva - Re-make of "Rise of the Triad" engine