Continue reading » No related posts.]]> I recently discovered Frets on Fire, an open source game very similar to the Guitar Hero games. Guitar Hero is one of those games I’ve never owned, but always looked longingly at — I’m just not ready to commit to a gaming console. But oooh, I want to play!

Frets on Fire appears to solve that problem. I think.

I’ve played for about 15 minutes (even did the tutorial). Need more songs! I downloaded a few from one of the forums but exactly none of them worked (I must be doing something seriously dumb). I then realized that it could import from the Guitar Hero games, so I decided to import songs from the PS2 Guitar Hero 2 DVD that was laying around. (don’t ask)

That led me to realize today was the day to finally install the DVD-ROM drive I’ve had sitting on my desk for over a month.

That helped me discover that I’m out of power leads in my case.

That caused me to rethink drives and fans since I couldn’t find a 5V splitter (I blush).

So, 2 hours later… the drive is in, the import of GH2 songs has begun. Some back of the napkin calculations tell me that this will take over 24 hours! Man, someday I really need to upgrade my computer. This is a bit silly…

I want the songs though, so I’m just going to let it trundle along and work from other computers for a bit. I did take the precaution of aiming some extra desk fans at the case as I’m a bit nervous of over 24 hours of 100% CPU heat.

Any tips on where to get songs or perhaps what I was doing wrong initially?

I’ll conclude with a features list from the About page:

• Unique inverted keyboard gameplay style
• Support for guitar controllers and generic joysticks
• Includes a song editor for making your own tunes
• Compete with others on the World Charts
• Hundreds of songs composed by the community
• Supports importing Guitar Hero™ I and Guitar Hero™ II songs
• Multiplatform; runs on Windows™, Linux®, Mac OS X™ and FreeBSD®
• Open source, full Python source code available

No related posts.

Continue reading » No related posts.]]> I was in the Vanguard SOH beta earlier this year. Wrote about it a few times too. And what’s funny is I started an article with this phrase:

No big spoilers, screen shots or surprises. I haven’t actually read the T&C of the beta yet… so not going to push my luck.

And then quickly lost sight of that as I blathered on about details and performance thoughts. I uninstalled the beta around June of this year and wrote another article grousing about performance. To be fair, more from the angle that my machine is old. But still…

Not that bright, am I? (that’s foreshadowing.)

On a whim, I thought I’d reinstall last weekend and see how things were coming along. Whim or nudge from Rich — one of those. Anyways, I thought maybe my meager machine would do better 3-4 months later with newer code. Found my original beta invite mail and re-downloaded the old setup package. Installed it and quickly guessed thatI probably had the wrong version. Couldn’t log in, couldn’t patch. I naively surmised that maybe the move from Microsoft to SOE had changed things. (cue timpani roll; start quiet, gradually build up tempo and volume)

Ok, no problem, I sent them an email and explained I was trying to come back and asked how to get rolling again.

(Cymbal crash! Stop timpani)

Whoops! Turns out somewhere along the line I was removed from the beta program for violating the NDA terms. (cue toilet flush) Through a bit of investigation (non-admissible in court but excellent deductive work) they determined who I was and let me know that I’d been removed from the beta program when responding to my email. Politely though — even said they look forward to seeing me in the release.

Turns out they didn’t figure me out until after I posted about uninstalling. And since I had uninstalled, they didn’t contact me. (We’ve traded some emails since I found out I was booted). I’ve never been kicked out of something by more pleasant people, for what that’s worth. *sigh*

Lesson learned: Read the terms before writing about anything covered by NDA.

Darn it.

No related posts.

Continue reading » No related posts.]]> While reading an article titled “PC and Mac applications that every gamer should have” (much of which I didn’t necessarily agree with) I learned about DOSBox.

DOSBox is a DOS-emulator that uses the SDL-library which makes DOSBox very easy to port to different platforms. DOSBox has already been ported to many different platforms, such as Windows, BeOS, Linux, MacOS X…

DOSBox also emulates CPU:286/386 realmode/protected mode, Directory FileSystem/XMS/EMS, Tandy/Hercules/CGA/EGA/VGA/VESA graphics, a SoundBlaster/Gravis Ultra Sound card for excellent sound compatibility with older games…

You can “re-live” the good old days with the help of DOSBox, it can run plenty of the old classics that don’t run on your new computer!

DOSBox is totally free of charge and OpenSource.

How cool is this?!?

Good news is I can now finally play my old copy of EightBall Deluxe pinball! Very cool.

Got some old old dos games laying around that just don’t work in XP or you can’t run from your OS of choice? Give this thing a shot. Me? I’m off to play some Supaplex. Maybe later I’ll bust out the Leisure Suit Larry stuff.

No related posts.