Game News Phantasie series and other SSI classics released on Steam and GOG

[Galdred]

Regarding emulation, how do the FPGA atari and amiga emulators compare?
I tried software emulation for atari ST, but it felt off for some reason, compared to running the same games on my old machine. Maybe the controls felt less responsive?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I really need to keep up with the best emulators.

Also, I was unaware of these other gamebase frontends https://www.bu22.com/?start=0

 

[Rincewind]

They could also do some single disk Amiga games - such as Demon's Winter ... but then in the interest of science I fired up Demon's Winter in an Amiga emulator. Ok, fires up fast, but have to create a character disk. Ok, nothing telling me what to do from the main screen - it's SSI so I suppose you have to use a disk copy of the main game disk OR hit a specific char on the keyboard at bootup to get to the disk utilities menu. Yes, this is beyond the skills of the average gamer.

Let me know when it's available. I spent about 5 minutes looking for the Demon's Winter manual/reference card to see exactly what was the endorsed method of playing/saving. Couldn't find it - I have physical copy of the game but I'm out of town for a long time - so I couldn't look it up.

Ok, I've just tried it. The manual says the game has no copy protection, so you're supposed to make a copy of the game disk first, then play using your copy (but it has manual-based protection after having created your party, by the way). The game then saves all progress to the game disk directly. So far so good. Looks like you're supposed to play it in "soft-ironman" mode with a single save slot.

But I found a better way. You can copy the whole disk's contents to the HDD and create a script containing the following to start it (call it DemonsWinter):

Assign FONTS: Fonts
Assign DEMON: ""
demon

Then start it with DemonsWinter after a clean boot from the CLI. I tried creating an icon for it and start it with IconX from the Workbench, but that didn't work out too well (some text was missing from the menus; that's bad). This appears to be one of those system-unfriendly games that really needs a clean boot as it wants to take over the whole system. Use Workbench 1.3 and an emulated A500 with Kickstart 1.3, of course.

Btw, looks like game was created by some Hungarians (just recognised the names in the title screen).

 

[Ladonna]

Regarding emulation, how do the FPGA atari and amiga emulators compare?
I tried software emulation for atari ST, but it felt off for some reason, compared to running the same games on my old machine. Maybe the controls felt less responsive?

I could never get fully into emulation of old computers I used (C64 and Amiga), except for dosbox/dosbox staging, perhaps because the keyboard is the same, controls, etc for the PC. The C64 has it's own quirks, noises of the drive, screen look and keyboard/controllers. Same with the Amiga, even though it is closer to a PC, has it's drive sounds, look and feel of controls and mouse. Apart from maybe hard drive noises and CD/DVD ROM sounds (lol) old PC's didn't really have a "thing" in the aural sense. Just the visual of a good CRT screen.

With that said, I haven't gotten used to Amiga disk corruption (the C64 disks are all perfectly fine though. Even disks that were heavily abused back in the day, don't have an error anywhere. Strange) where many disks have gone totally useless. I did rewrite a lot of Amiga games back to blank PC disks (after covering the HD hole on them). Not sure what it is, as my PC disk games are also all fine.

A lot of people can't stand the waiting time, disk swapping, etc, but the Amiga isn't too slow with loads (except for a few later games that came on 8+ disks and were clearly meant for an expensive hard drive), and the C64 load times have been massively improved after installing jiffydos, so this lets me enjoy the whole experience. I am also lucky enough to own good monitors for both of these systems (though not a CRT for PC....), and this is a big part of the experience as well for people that used and enjoyed these systems.

I guess the FPGA emulators are like using a silent "insert system". For myself, I can't see them ticking the boxes for what I want, but it depends on what you want out of emulation. If the FPGA could be hooked up to actual working drives, actual correct screens and operate in the exact same way, then they would be good from the standpoint of not worrying about having to do remedial work on old computer parts to keep them going (apart from the drives or screens anyway).

 

[Ladonna]

Btw, looks like game was created by some Hungarians (just recognised the names in the title screen).

They did the port, SSI farmed many of the ports over to eastern Euros. Some worked out, some didn't. Demons Winter was made by a couple of yanks on either an Apple or C64.

 

[Daemongar]

They could also do some single disk Amiga games - such as Demon's Winter ... but then in the interest of science I fired up Demon's Winter in an Amiga emulator. Ok, fires up fast, but have to create a character disk. Ok, nothing telling me what to do from the main screen - it's SSI so I suppose you have to use a disk copy of the main game disk OR hit a specific char on the keyboard at bootup to get to the disk utilities menu. Yes, this is beyond the skills of the average gamer.

Let me know when it's available. I spent about 5 minutes looking for the Demon's Winter manual/reference card to see exactly what was the endorsed method of playing/saving. Couldn't find it - I have physical copy of the game but I'm out of town for a long time - so I couldn't look it up.

Ok, I've just tried it. The manual says the game has no copy protection, so you're supposed to make a copy of the game disk first, then play using your copy (but it has manual-based protection after having created your party, by the way). The game then saves all progress to the game disk directly. So far so good. Looks like you're supposed to play it in "soft-ironman" mode with a single save slot.

Yah - that's how it was for Phantasie and why its so damn hard to find a Phantasie disk with the dungeons with the fog of war in place (to bring it full circle.) Thanks for looking.

But I found a better way. You can copy the whole disk's contents to the HDD and create a script containing the following to start it (call it DemonsWinter):

Assign FONTS: Fonts
Assign DEMON: ""
demon

Then start it with DemonsWinter after a clean boot from the CLI. I tried creating an icon for it and start it with IconX from the Workbench, but that didn't work out too well (some text was missing from the menus; that's bad). This appears to be one of those system-unfriendly games that really needs a clean boot as it wants to take over the whole system. Use Workbench 1.3 and an emulated A500 with Kickstart 1.3, of course.

Btw, looks like game was created by some Hungarians (just recognised the names in the title screen).

See, I'll bet if they had some Amiga pros on staff they could figure the way to get a user friendly method of launching the game without disk copying or fooling around. The problem is probably that the amount of effort doesn't match the profits to be made. A shame, I prefer Amiga graphics over the current crop - more "video game" like than ultra realism or the current "retro pixelated garbage" we are being forced to choke on.

 

[Rincewind]

Yah - that's how it was for Phantasie and why its so damn hard to find a Phantasie disk with the dungeons with the fog of war in place (to bring it full circle.)

The IPF disk images of the SPS / CAPS project has such a pristine dump. My collection will have it, at some point.

A shame, I prefer Amiga graphics over the current crop - more "video game" like than ultra realism or the current "retro pixelated garbage" we are being forced to choke on.

Yeah, ultra-realism seriously puts me off. Interestingly, I'm not too fond of "photographic" art either, I like expressionism better and usually I prefer the pencil/ink sketches to the finished paintings.

Can't stand retro-pixel art either, especially not when they *intentionally* make the pixels huge and blocky and don't understand the importance of palette limitations.

*This* is how pixel art is supposed to like. One of the "covers" of the prestigious Hungarian Guru diskmag from the early 90s. 320x256, Amiga OCS, 16 colours (out of 4096, so 12-bit RGB).

The music is top notch too:
https://amp.dascene.net/downmod.php?index=6960

 

[Rincewind]

I could never get fully into emulation of old computers I used (C64 and Amiga), except for dosbox/dosbox staging, perhaps because the keyboard is the same, controls, etc for the PC. The C64 has it's own quirks, noises of the drive, screen look and keyboard/controllers. Same with the Amiga, even though it is closer to a PC, has it's drive sounds, look and feel of controls and mouse.

Yeah, for the C64 I'd even consider getting a modern replica with an authentically recreated modern keyboard. Mapping the C64 keys to a PC keyboard always feels weird, and you get no PETSCII symbols!

I'm quite happy with the little built-in speaker for the drive sounds on my 1541 Ultimate cart, and of course I can't live without floppy sound emulation in WinUAE and VICE either.

My experience with the Amiga keyboard is similar, you can substitute it with a PC keyboard and not much is lost. And I have mixed feelings about the tank mouse.

I have an an old Pentium II HP Vectra that still has a period-correct mechanical hard drive in working order, and I have to say, the HDD seeking noise is a nostalgia trigger for me. In all my other PC rigs I use CF cards or SSDs, but I'm considering squeezing the Vectra in into my retro room so I can play a few titles on it with "authentic HDD sounds" (it has a built in Matrox G200, but that should be enough for quite a few 2D games that don't require shaders).

By the way, we're not alone:

HDD Clicker generates HDD clicking sounds, based on HDD Led activity. It allows the nostalgic harddisk sound, while using modern SSD, CF or SD cards.

https://www.serdashop.com/HDDClicker

Top-notch guy, I bought many retro sound devices from him over the past 2 years.