Good Old Games

[Lysen]

Arcanum, Gabriel Knight and no Planescape: Torment. I'm disappointed.

[Oner]

Olkaa hyv

[Guest Slinky]

Iskiri poika, talo t

[Purkake]

Хвала!

 

How exactly does the GOG dosbox work? Can you use it to play other dos games too, or is it somehow merged into the game?

As others said the one from GOG is just a wrapper and integrated with the game.

 

If you want DOSBox itself you can download it from the official site and it is open source.

[Zoraptor]

Once again, PST, IWD, Baldur's Gate etc will not turn up at least until Hasbro and Atari stop fighting each other in court.

 

I think Doom and Quake are owned by id.

Yep. Well, Zenimax now technically, I guess. Activision only distributed them.

 

Same deal with all the Star Wars titles- they are LucasArts published and only distributed by 3rd parties (and will presumably turn up.. elsewhere.. at some point)

[Oner]

Iskiri poika, talo t

[Guest Slinky]

As others said the one from GOG is just a wrapper and integrated with the game.

 

If you want DOSBox itself you can download it from the official site and it is open source.

Yeah, I used DOSBox Game Launcher when I still had Win XP, but I can't get it to work with Windows 7. Whines about java not been installed even while it is installed and everything else that uses it works fine.

[Purkake]

You could try D-Fend Reloaded that's what I use, but I don't know if it works with Windows 7.

[Tigranes]

I had DOSBox installed already so just ran GK through that. Everything too fast, lots of errors and crashes. So just used their shortcut and it runs fine, though in full screen.

 

windows 7.

[Radek Smektala]

Arcanum, Gabriel Knight and no Planescape: Torment. I'm disappointed.

 

I'm pretty sure there's no chance for any D&D re-releases until Wizards of the Coast settles their differences with Atari.

 

EDIT:

 

So just used their shortcut and it runs fine, though in full screen.

 

Try pressing alt+enter.

Edited January 28, 2010 by Radek Smektala

[Purkake]

I had DOSBox installed already so just ran GK through that. Everything too fast, lots of errors and crashes. So just used their shortcut and it runs fine, though in full screen.

 

windows 7.

That's because they have a special launcher that sets the emulation setting correctly for the game. You can do that with DOSBox on your own as well, but it is a real pain.

[Tigranes]

Used the conf file to set it to windows, played a little bit. The game has class and I can already see it's gonna be a lot of fun, though a lot of pixel hunting too.

 

Can't download Arcanum yet due to bandwidth, but for anyone doing so, here is the super final latest version of Grog's Unofficial Arcanum Patch, an absolute must. I'm sure there's a decent hi-res mod out there too...

[jero cvmi]

Used the conf file to set it to windows, played a little bit. The game has class and I can already see it's gonna be a lot of fun, though a lot of pixel hunting too.

 

Can't download Arcanum yet due to bandwidth, but for anyone doing so, here is the super final latest version of Grog's Unofficial Arcanum Patch, an absolute must. I'm sure there's a decent hi-res mod out there too...

Thanks, are there any official patches i should apply or is this enough?

 

As for hi-res, i think i've read there is one somewhere but i'm not sure.

[Hurlshort]

The high res mod for Arcanum is awesome and really makes the game look very good.

[Humodour]

The high res mod for Arcanum is awesome and really makes the game look very good.

 

Link?

[Hurlshort]

http://www.terra-arcanum.com/ has everything you need.

[Tigranes]

Just finished Gabriel Knight, boy is it good. Highly recommended to anybody and everybody.

 

I did consult the walkthrough on a few bits, especially the puzzles near the end. The thing with these kind of games is that also, sometimes, you are given no reasonable clue as to where to find X, and have to look everywhere for a tiny hint (e.g.

last day, the snake rod in the confessional room, how are you meant to guess that??

) Still, good stuff. Hope they put on the other Gks on GOG.

[RPGmasterBoo]

You beat me to it, I'm still on day 7.

 

Notice how complex and realistic the characters are?

[Hurlshort]

Oh yeah, Gabriel Knight goes back to a time where games weren't only made for teenage boys who want to shoot stuff. 'Tis a shame.

[Humodour]

Oh yeah, Gabriel Knight goes back to a time where games weren't only made for teenage boys who want to shoot stuff. 'Tis a shame.

 

When I was a teenage boy who wanted to shoot stuff, I choose games like Fallout and Deus Ex. Don't stereotype, mister!

[Tigranes]

The voice acting is really good, that's what makes it come alive. You wonder why if we had such good VA (everything fully voiced, even "these two objects can't interact") back then, why we've got all these celeb voices now oand they sound worse.

 

I think the first half is nearly always better than the second half of these kind of games though, this fixation with cult / voodoo stuff means after some very fun detectiving and adventuring you're shunted off to random African caves or mystical places at the end.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Got Arcanum and installed the mods, thanks for the links guys.

[Hell Kitty]

The voice acting is really good, that's what makes it come alive. You wonder why if we had such good VA (everything fully voiced, even "these two objects can't interact") back then, why we've got all these celeb voices now oand they sound worse.

 

It's funny you should say that, as I remember Jane Jensen talking about what a big deal it was to have a celeb like Tim Curry in her game, and marketing for the game mentioning the star cast (Luke Skywalker! Worf!).

 

I don't think it's at all true that "we've got all these celeb voices now", as most of the voice actors working in games now are the same ones as back then, and the use of celebrity names to hype a game has been going on since games have been using voice actors. Every FMV adventure from the 90s had at least one known celeb.

[Tigranes]

Heh, really? My bad, I'm awful at recognising celeb voices (because I didn't know who Liam Neeson was, for instance). In any case, I don't know, maybe it was the smaller amount of lines that allowed tighter direction, but VA seems a lot more appropriately done in older games. It's not just this one - see Grim Fandango and other adventure games, or even PS:T / BG2.

[Humodour]

I think it's a valid point that having celebrities voice your game adds needless costs for absolutely no discernible quality gain.

 

Portal. Ellen McLain. Typical of the excellent quality level of unknown voice artists.