The Coop

Up to 41 on the second quiz (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 48, 49, and 50), tying my score on the first one. Numbers 1, 35, 43, and 47 are getting to me (especially 35 and 43).

Works fine in FireFox for me. Do you have No Script or anything running?

I'm up to 39 right now, with 2, 19, 22, 35, and 43 bugging me.

#39 needs to be more specific. It's answer right now is too general.

17 of 18. I missed one because I've never played a game in that franchise, so the sound effect was unknown to me.

No, they can post as often as they like. It's all about opinions, and sharing thoughts on bosses that have given you ridiculous amounts of trouble. Take for example, the final boss of the DOS version of Silpheed. It shares a slight resemblance to it's Sega CD sibling, but it's about five times harder. Lasers firing in seemingly random patterns, bullets being steadily fired that home in on where you are, and shit just going crazy on you. There's one weapon that gives you a chance to win, but it's also the narrowest weapon in the game... meaning that that have to be in spot-on alignment with the boss' weak spot, while to zig zag all over the place. Tack on a forcefield that you have to get rid of so you can actually hurt the boss while dodging all of this, and it's a hell of a fight for an old DOS game. The Sega CD version of the final boss has definite patterns that, once learned, make it quite easy to kill. The original DOS version of the final boss? Not so much.

Did some game get released yesterday?

Just for the sake of throwing something in... Also, hopefully these things are being designed at 300pdi, since that's the general choice for images meant to be printed.

All these ideas don't amount to squat without a spiffy holographic sticker

"Cause you knooooow this has haaaaaappened befooooore! And you knoooooow that this mooooment is tiiiiime is for reeeeaal, And you knoooooow when you feeeeeeeel deja vu!"

Getting four mixes on OCR from 2002-2003, and getting my Lunar remix hosted on Lunar-net in 2003. That's about it. No fan mail or videos for me to pimp.

Alcohol 52% Free Edition That's just how it sounds. I'm sure a lot of people here are familiar with Alcohol 120%, and all the things you can do with that. Well, Alcohol 52% is a virtual drive application made by the same company. However, this is the free version. It allows you to make 6 virtual drives, has no trial period, and it also lets you make copies of your CDs and DVDs to be used in the virtual CD/DVD drives it creates. Needless to say, this is quite handy, as Alcohol has a reputation for being a good CD copier. Sure, some folks use Alcohol 120% to pirate their stuff, but for those of us who like to back up our hard to find/replace discs so the originals don't get scuffed and scratched, this program is good to have around. And with this free version, it's finally able to be gotten for those of us who are regularly broke. Lemmings Remember this old game? Well, there's been a remake of it... more specifically, the Amiga version. Programmed in Blitz, this game features all the original 100 levels, plus the additional Oh no! More Lemmings! levels. A few people have reported loading screen hangs, or memory access violations, but for the most part, it runs fine. It's currently 99% done, with some bug fixing left to do. So if you like Lemmings, and like 'em free, here ya go.

If you know when your PC was made (or at least bought), you can get a good idea of which driver to grab from Nvidia's driver archive. Just find the one that was actually out at the time your PC was made/bought, and go about 1-3 drivers further back (depending on how rapidly the drivers were released at the time).

Have you tried going back to the drivers you were using before?

GUS Installation So, how about that Soundblaster music? Like your General Midi? Want something else to listen to for the games that support it? Well, here's how you can get Gravis Ultrasound working with your DOSBox setup. First, go and download this file (if you don't have a program to unzip “7z” files, go here and grab 7zip, which is a very good free compression/extraction program). It contains the GUS410 and GUS411 folders, which have all the needed files to install the Gravis Ultrasound drivers and instruments. Once you have the zip file, extract it, copy both the 410 and 411 folders, and paste them into your “DOSGames” folder. Now, start up DOSBox, and rev the cycles up to about 10,000 to help speed up this process by hitting “Ctrl” + “F12” repeatedly. Once done, type... cd GUS410 install This will take you to the first folder, and the main setup. The first menu that comes up, gives you a few choices for what to do. The obvious one, is “Install Ultrasound Software”, and that's the one to go with. Hit “Enter”, and then select the “C: a local fixed drive” line in the menu that follows. Let the program install to the default drive location (which is “C:\ULTRASND”), and hit “Enter”. Once the installation is done, the program will start detecting various games that you have in your “DOSGames” folder. Before long, a message will come up with a beep sound, saying the program can't find the Windows folder. All you have to do, is type... C:\ultrasnd\windows ... and hit “Enter”. Within a couple seconds, the program will finish, and you'll be asked to press any key. Once you do, you'll be taken to another menu, filled with four options on big gray buttons. The one you want is the last one, labeled “Exit Setup”. Now that you're back to the DOS window, simply type in... cd C:\ ... which will reset your location in DOSBox to just “C:\” (which is a handy shortcut to use later when you want to change games without having to restart DOSBox). Now, type in... cd gus411 installation This will get the upgrade started. Just do exactly as you did with the previous 410 program. Every step will be identical, right down to choosing “Exit Setup” at that final menu. Now it's time for the final part in getting this all ready. Press "Alt" + "Enter" to take DOSBox from full screen to Windowed mode (another handy shortcut to use regularly as well). Open up your config file in the DOSBox folder, and make sure that section under “[gus]” looks like this... gus=true gusrate=22050 gusbase=240 irq1=5 irq2=5 dma1=3 dma2=3 ultradir=C:\ULTRASND This is what gets GUS working in DOSBox, and it also tells DOSBox where to look for the GUS patches (aka instruments). Once everything looks right, save your config file. Time to listen to what those Gravis cards sounded like. Unless you accidentally closed DOSBox, it should still be sitting on a DOS screen with “C:\ultrasnd” there. Type in... mididemo ... and you'll go to a new screen listing 14 songs. Just hit “Enter”, and you can start cycling through them. They range from classical music, to more Electronica-centric. There's even a few titles there you'll likely recognize. If you ever want to come back to this at a later time, just type in... cd ultrasnd mididemo ... when you're at “C:\” in DOSBox, and you can hear the tunes again. Now, to set up any game that uses the Gravis Ultrasound card, just go to a game's folder within the "DOSGames" folder, and start its "Setup.exe" file in DOSBox (or "Install.exe" for some games, as the sound/music option is occasionally in the installation process, and not accessible on its own via a separate executable). Once there, if the game supports the GUS sound card, you'll be able to choose “Ultrasound” for the music and/or sound effects in the menus. Like before, the game will choose the default settings automatically, so just hit "Enter" the needed number of times until it's done. Then, all that's left is to save and exit, and you'll be good to go. Simply delete the “GUS410” and “GUS411” folders from your “DOSGames” folder, and you're all done. I should note that there are patches available for GUS called “Pro Patches Lite”. These come in 1.50, 1.60, and 1.61 versions, which must be installed in order. However, while they sound better for the most part, they also have a nasty glitch in them that I've yet to read how to fix. The snare drum goes absolutely nuts at times, hitting over and over like it's stuck in a loop while the music keeps playing. Sometimes it lasts for only a few seconds, other times it won't stop until you quit the game. Either way, it's rather annoying, so I'm providing the GUS setup files without those patches. I've yet to run into any musical glitches with the finished 4.11 setup, so that's where I stopped. If enough people want to hear those new patches, I'll add more to this GUS guide. Special Note: If the program can't recognize the card type for the GUS install, it's likely because of a strange glitch that came about with DOSBox .73 and .74. Just go into the options, and turn the SoundBlaster type to "none". There's a weird conflict going on with that setting, and it prevents the GUS install from starting. But once you get the GUS stuff installed and working, you can go back and re-enable the SoundBlaster settings by putting it back to "sb16". MT-32 Installation So... how many remember their MT-32 sound cards from back in the day? I'd imagine not many, though it was a popular sound card then. However, you can have that sound again (or for the first time), and I'm going to walk you through just how to go about it. First, you need to grab a few files. Get the MT-32 A & B files here, pick up the PCM file here, and get Winhex here. Once you have them, extract all three zip files. Start Winhex, and go under "Tools", "File Tools", "Unify", and "bytewise". In the new window that opens, go to the "mt32AB" folder, and choose "MT32A.BIN" as the first source file. Hit "OK", and then choose "MT32B.BIN" as the second source file, and hit "OK". In the "Select Destination File" window, type "MT32_Control.ROM" in the file name box, and hit "Save". Okay. Now you should have the Control and PCM files you need. Go and grab the Munt file set from here, and extract it. Put the Control file you just made, and PCM file you downloaded, into the Munt folder. Then for simplicity's sake, rename the Munt folder to "mt32", and put it in your "DOSGames" folder (which you should already have by now if you've been following my guide). From here, you can follow the simple steps provided in the "readme" file that came with the Munt download. But, for the sake of this guide, I'm going to post those directions here with any additional comments... 1) Open Control Panel. 2) Double-click on "Add Hardware". 3) Click "Next" until you come to a message asking you whether you have already installed the hardware. 4) Select the "Yes" option and click "Next". 5) A list of installed hardware will appear. Scroll to the bottom of the list and select the last entry, which should be something like "New Hardware". Click "Next". 6) Select "Choose hardware manually from a list" and click "Next". 7) Select "Sound, Video and Game Controllers" and click "Next". Click "Have Disk...". 9) In the window that pops up, click "Browse..." and choose the directory to which you unpacked the oemsetup.inf and mt32emu.dll files. Click "OK". (this will be the "mt32" folder you put in your "DOSGames" folder) 10) If a window pops up complaining about the lack of Windows Logo testing, click "Install Anyway" or similar. 11) "MT-32 Synth Emulator" should have appeared selected in a list. Click "Next" twice. 12) The driver *still* isn't Windows Logo tested, so click "Install Anyway" if necessary. 13) The driver should now have been installed; click "Finish". 14) A dialog box will recommend that you reboot. Go ahead if you enjoy that sort of thing, but it shouldn't be necessary for a fresh installation. To begin playing back MIDI through the emulator, perform the following: 15) Open "Sounds and Audio Devices" from the Control Panel. 16) In the "Audio" tab, select "MT-32 Synth Emulator" in the drop-down list for the MIDI playback device. And with that, you'll be able to use the Roland MT32 sound card option in the games that offer it. The music provided by this card sounds quite different from the General MIDI we're all used to hearing, and it does sound quite nice. Keep in mind though, that the emulation isn't perfect. The project died off a while back, but it does work well in many games (like Silpheed and The Immortal). Just remember to put the "Sounds and Audio Devices" back to "Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth" when you want to use General MIDI again for other games. It's a bit of a pain to go back and forth between the two MIDI options, but it's nice to have when you're in the mood. Oh, and no, General MIDI and MT-32 don't mix. If you choose MT-32 in a game without setting your "Sounds and Audio Devices" to "MT-32 Synth Emulator", your music will sound weird and busted. The same goes for the other way around. Sites of interest... The Patches Scrolls- Basically, this site is a massive collection of patches for old and new games. Just about every patch that was released for old DOS games seems to be there, so it's a good spot to check after you've installed those old DOS games. Well, you now have all you'll likely need to run a given game. Some require a bit of tweaking in the .conf file, but the DOSBox site has a forum where tweaks for individual games can be found. These forums, are right here. Just type in the name of your game into the search bar at the top, and you'll probably find a thread talking about issues with that game, and how to try and fix them. You can also check on the status of games and how well they run, by clicking the "Games" link at the top of DOSBox's homepage, and finding it in the alphabetical list that comes up. If all else fails, you can ask here, and someone with DOS or DOSBox knowledge can try and help you out. Just keep in mind, that you may not get to run the game, as there's a chance it's simply not runable in DOSBox yet. So, here's the end of my beginner's guide to DOSBox and getting you're favorite old spare time killers running in it. As a final note, you don't have to type in the names of the files and folders in all caps. If you type in all lower case, they'll still run. DOSBox can be pretty picky, but it's generally not case sensitive. So all lower case will work fine. Hopefully this helps at least a few people. I know some expect a perfect framerate, but that's not always going to happen. You'll have to be happy with just getting to play these old games again, even if the one you want happens to play a bit slowly. Edit: All links updated and verified.

http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=10835 Just giving you a heads up, Godah. When this introduction thread gets spotted by a mod, it'll either go to the link above in a merging, or it'll be deleted. Regardless, greetings program.

The girl on the left looks like she's doing something inappropriate with her Wiimote. Anyway...

Straight up, dawg.

Check page one again, duder