Screenshot thread

[PulsatingBrain]

The campaign fares well. We've taken at least half of all cities. Swadia has been relegated to a single castle. I managed to acquire Curaw fairly early, which is one of my favourite cities because it's so central and tends to maintain a strong economy. I accepted Suno just recently because it's handy as we're pressing the Rhodoks hard at the minute

 

[Gromlintroid]

Dark Souls 3

 

[Beggar]

Fast paced ninja super action. Terrible game

 

[Gromlintroid]

lol, it has the best combat of the series.

The world, level design and atmosphere of 1 is obviously the best, but the combat of 3 is pinnacle.

 

[Dux]

Everyone has that one special game that they cherish the most and this is mine.

Spoiler

 

[Fedora Master]

Oh Beep

 

[Beastro]

I find his dialogue even funnier from knowing beep for years as slang for anything homosexual on the http://www.mixedmartialarts.com forums.

 

[Cryomancer]

Dragon's Dogma

 

[Beowulf]

More purging.

Before the storm:

With bolter and plasma

EDIT: Space Hulk Deathwing

 

[octavius]

Found this very early in Diablo 2, so it looks like I'm going the Javelin/Spear path with my Amazon.
Except for Scrolls of ID and TP, I don't buy from the vendors. Seems pointless and needlessly time consuming when there's a hundred different items for sale each day. Diablo 1 did shops much better.

 

[Sigourn]

 

[The Red Knight]

I decided to check if there are any quests available for that PC adaptation of Milton Bradley's HeroQuest by Gerwin Broers (that's a dungeon crawler boardgame, not the Hero Wars/HeroQuest RPG) and apparently there's a lot of interesting ones, including this Heretic quest:

Spoiler

There's even 20-map Hexen quest for four characters:

While at it, I've also found a few Game Maker demos by some Ozzie guy:

LurchBrick's HeroQuest

The main menu comes with ear-raping loud music, so turn the volume down if you decide to try it out.

It seems more advanced than GB's HeroQuest, with more than one attack option, working spells and smarter AI (like enemies stepping back after attacking to make you waste the movement phase on catching them), but a very big con is not having a quest editor.

LB's Battle Masters

A quite fun adaptation of a battle game by the same name. Has one few-battles-long campaign and a scenario editor. The background map is hardcoded, but you can hand-place units and map objects, and it seems like you can define which scenario should come next for both winning and losing (so losing a battle wouldn't mean game over). The AI doesn't plan ahead and has problems with bottlenecks (once it engages a target it will just try to kill it, even if using a movement phase and then attacking would let one more unit attack the target) but in open space it doesn't matter that much.

Not sure how turn order works (sometimes whole enemy army can move a few turns in a row and then you only get to move one soldier), but reading on the board game it appears that players draw some cards defining which unit types can move that turn (which is not represented in-game) so it probably is working as intended.

LB's Space Crusade

Another board game adaptation, this time it's Warhammer. Instead of ear-raping music it has eye-burning UI. Choose up to three Space Marine Chapters per mission: each has four marines with different weapons and a commander with a choice of one of three weapon sets, plus own selection of equipment and tactics cards that affect them during missions. Fights tend to be quite lethal for both sides, which gives a big advantage to whomever spots their opponent first. In addition to fighting all sorts of Chaos opponents, there are event cards that you may draw at the start of your turn (ranging from minor inconveniences, through spawning special enemies, to making your rocket launcher marine run out of ammo and lose their weapon).

Comes with one campaign, some missions and a mission editor. The one feature the editor lacks is hand-placing units as opponent positions seem randomized (but you can affect enemy spawns and amount). The map can be put together from a few types of rotatable segments, each with a fixed arrangement of rooms (again, a wasted opportunity to make it more granular by letting you make maps from floor/wall tiles).

 

[Ivan]

Hello old friend: Hexcells Infinite

 

[Puukko]

Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei

I really can't decide if I like or dislike that filter you're using. I assume you messed around with a bunch of them?

 

[octavius]

Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei

I really can't decide if I like or dislike that filter you're using. I assume you messed around with a bunch of them?

They certainly are nostalgia inducing!

 

[Citizen]

EDIT: Space Hulk Deathwing

How does it compare to EYE?

 

[Beowulf]

EDIT: Space Hulk Deathwing

How does it compare to EYE?

Haven't played EYE in a long time, so take it with a grain of salt.
First - Space Hulk is the real WH40k, not the EYE's almost-Warhammer-but-not-quite
Second - since it's a licensed game, you have far fewer customisation options for your characters - a few perks and some weapon mods.

But the atmosphere is great - Streum On are good artists and it shows.
As with EYE - the game's replayability comes from MP, SP campaign is rather short and nothing to write home about.
Basically it's a decent horde shooter.

 

[Sigourn]

Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei

I really can't decide if I like or dislike that filter you're using. I assume you messed around with a bunch of them?

I've messed with a bunch but this is the only one I like. I could use less bloom, but overall it makes pixels less blocky without resorting to very artificial scanlines.

What's interesting is that if you downscale the image:

You get a very CRT-like image, with the artifacts completely obscured but the effect still remaining (softened image, look at how you aren't able to pinpoint pixels in "NEW MOON" for instance.

They certainly are nostalgia inducing!

It's a shame I can't run these filters on games outside of RetroArch. I would love to play Fallout or the Infinity Engine games like this. As it is, I had to play them in vanilla resolution, windowed mode, just to avoid ugly upscaling.

 

[Sigourn]

JarlFrank It's Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei for the Super Famicom, a remake of the first two Megami Tensei games for the Famicom. The game in the screenshots is Megami Tensei II.

 

[octavius]

It's funny that a young (17?) punk like Sigourn can be more nostalgic than a relic of past like me. Or is it the search for the pure and original experience?

 

[Sigourn]

It's funny that a young (17?) punk like Sigourn can be more nostalgic than a relic of past like me. Or is it the search for the pure and original experience?

I'm 26, 27 in a couple of months.
I like shaders because I have a CRT and know that what I see in emulators isn't what I used to see on my TV. Shaders may not be perfect, but it's better than having the bare pixels.

 

[Grauken]

It's funny that a young (17?) punk like Sigourn can be more nostalgic than a relic of past like me. Or is it the search for the pure and original experience?

I'm 26, 27 in a couple of months.
I like shaders because I have a CRT and know that what I see in emulators isn't what I used to see on my TV. Shaders may not be perfect, but it's better than having the bare pixels.

What filter are you using in retroarch?

 

[Sigourn]

What filter are you using in retroarch?

CRT-Royale

The most annoying thing about it is the bloom when it comes to white text. Other than that it's just a matter of getting used to it. I like it because it keeps the image sharp compared to other filters, and paradoxically CRTs have very sharp images in spite of "blurring out" pixels.

 

[CryptRat]

Hearkenwold (the screenshots are from the part in the Halls of Hamhock).

Few games feel as much as a true D&D campaign as this game, the world buliding and writing are top notch.

Spoiler

Brogue

This game is so great, every mechanism works perfectly, every type of enemy or item feels unique (expect for rare and powerful templates), consumables are useful and neither too sparse nor too abundant, a lot of situations can be tricky unlike games with trash mobs and boss fights and the learning curve is big from dying to goblin conjurers and ogres to manage to deal with krakens and liches.

Spoiler

Tangledeep

The game is pretty alright. The music is as good as the graphics. There is a decent amount of content (classes, skills, items and item properties, enemy types). I like the optional dungeons to upgrade items. Some side quests can be fun because of they can be failed. I'm not fan of the abundance and constant need of healing consumables, and item fever was never my favourite type of itemization, and if there are some different items and item properties I would not say it's remarkable either. I'm not particularly fan of monster template (a monster which summons pets is just like another monster which summons pet, its main type does not really matters anymore), that said you fight a lot of champions during the game and these fights are often fun, there are trash encounters but it could be worse. The game is easy, I don't think the game was ever intended to be replayed a lot, I would not say it's completely brain dead though', you need to use your abilities as well as the occasionnal scroll of teleportation to survive. There's a not very high level cap which makes grinding eventually useless (there are more small features discouraging grinding) which is cool. I think it's a no-brainer if you like rogue-likes and really care about production values, but even if you don't care I still think it's an OK game.

Spoiler

Metaphobia

Spoiler

You really should not look further if you intend to play the game, the screenshots reveal the full story. The game is worth giving a try if you like dark investigation stories and don't care that much that the game is very linear (one puzzle after another), it's free by the way.

Spoiler

 

[The Red Knight]

While I'm at board games, here's two more you haven't heard of:

Samurai Blades: On Deadly Ground

Spoiler

Cry Havoc: Test of Faith

Spoiler

(both can be windowed - toggled with F4 - if the stretching bothers you)

Spoiler

Two adaptations of Cry Havoc board game and its expansion Samurai Blades. You can play against AI or a human opponent, and CH also lets you play online (but I have no idea if this mode works nowadays).

Both share several battle maps (with SB also having big maps being combinations of three normal ones, and a Castle map with more complex walls/obstacles), but available units are different - SB has Japanese-themed units (samurais, ninjas, monks) and more of them than in case of CH's European medieval army. Overall, there's just enough variety in them not to get boring too fast.

You create scenarios by placing units on one of available maps (no limits as to where they can be placed but you can set point cost limits for both sides). Units come in several categories and each one has several level tiers that affect their stats and point cost. There's no HP, hit units instead either lose some movement points on dodging, get wounded (lowered stats), stunned (temporarily can't act) or just die. Ranged units can't shoot through forest hexes and walls, and mounted units can't cross some hex types. Most units can move quite far so flanking is possible (although AI seems to only use it accidentally and prefers closest targets).

SB has each player's turn split into shooting-movement-shooting-melee phases, in that order (which makes archers quite powerful). CH modifies boardgame's rules and there's one shooting phase, movement phase (crossbowmen can't shoot and move in the same turn), melee phase, and a cool addition of defensive shot phase where each ranged unit targets a hex and if opponent's unit moves into it during his turn, it will provoke a free shot from the ranged unit (the AI uses it too).

Quality-wise, CH's units and UI look better; SB is more zoomed out and unit sprites are smaller, which makes it harder to tell them apart from each other and from some backgrounds. I prefer persistent dead bodies of SB though (it's nice to see all the casualties after the battle ends), which the author removed in CH "to improve visibility". CH also has useful hotkey additions and the AI seems a bit smarter in it. There are some basic sounds (step sounds for each hex move can get annoying) and music-wise it's some medieval prayer for CH and FF6's overworld theme for SB (lol).

As a side note, CH's maps consist of .BMP and .MAP files (SB's are hardcoded), and the latter is a plain text file so if someone would bother deciphering what the numbers in it mean, new maps could be created for it.


To make them compatible with modern OSes you have to use the conversion utility linked at the end of this article:
https://help.yoyogames.com/hc/en-us/articles/216753218-Troubleshooting-Legacy-GameMaker