The Coop

"Shut up Wesley!" came to mind when you say characters being important in TNG... Well, even TNG had back stories to the characters that were played upon as the series moved forward, and the histories of some of them were explored (like Data, Troi, Riker, and Picard). The problem with Voyager was that since they were all out there in bum fuck Egypt, doing this was made a lot harder... so all you were left with was the "here and now". And with not a lot going on, the "here and now" didn't give much in the way of growing room. So while the TNG characters started out pretty stiff, they grew and expanded a lot by the end of the show. That's what made them more interesting to me, and that's a big part of what I felt was missing in Voyager. And Dhsu, by all means defend it. No one with an ounce of intelligence is going to bash you personally for defending a show you like. If you disagree, feel free to state your opinion. That's what this is all about (or at least, what it's become all about ).

I disagree on a few of your points. I personally found it to be boring. Compared to the original series, TNG, and even DS9, Voyager's characters were shallow and cliché for the most part. 7 of 9 was the most interesting character on there, because of her former life as a Borg, and her having to try and adapt to life as a human again. The rest of the cast was just... uninspired and dull. Even by the end of the show, most of them still felt undeveloped... like little had been moved forward from the show's beginning. They just weren't very interesting to me. And for the few stories that it really pushed forward, it left a lot more to languish in mediocrity. For me, the cons outweighed the pros with that show. Characters are important to the success of a character driven show or universe. The original Star Trek used this, as did TNG and DS9. Voyager dropped the ball, and Enterprise never even tried to pick the ball up in my opinion.

Joy. Like they haven't already damaged the series enough with Voyager, Enterprise, and half the movies that've been made. I'm not even that big of a Star Trek fan, but this just seems like a bad idea.

So there I was, doing semi-decently on Ninja Gaiden Black. Big horseback riding samurai, tentacle demons, a triple shot of some kind of raptor-looking monsters... fun stuff to be sure. They took a few tries, but I managed to get past them after figuring out ways around their attacks. Well, things has changed... fast. I'm currently fighting a really, really big dinosaur fossil/bone dragon creature (this, after having to fight my way through the pain in the ass zombies... especially the archers). Besides being huge, this skeletal boss can spit bones, swipe his tail at you (sometimes twice in a row), and swipe at you with his claws. However, his most damaging attack has to be when he rears back, and lunges at you. If this catches you, you're basically bitten in a big way, and then thrown. Cooling looking to watch, but oh so costly to see. This thing is kicking my ass, and it's only what... stage 5 or 6? Now granted, I'm not the best at games like NGB, but this boss is like hitting a brick wall as far as progress goes. There's probably something simple I missed, but thus far, this boss seems more of an endurance boss than the ones before it (in other words, it's a long battle and dodging and leaping to finally hack him down). Sure, I'm having fun, and the game has one hell of a challenge, which is something I love in a game. But if this boss marks the end of only the first third of the game, what lies ahead has got to be vicious. Edit: Typos.

Greetings newbies. Welcome to OCR. Before you begin poking around and interacting with all the oddities- er, posters that hang out around here, be sure you skim through the various stickied threads in this sub-forum so you can get a feel for the basics in terms of what, and what not, to do. It'll make getting started here a bit easier, and lower your cholesterol by five full points.

Is that an actual port of a bio? It should say "Street Fighter 2" if it is.

Thanks to the newly released Capcom Classic Collection Vol. 2, I've been reminded of a new boss to bitch about. Way back when, I used to play a game in the arcades called The King of Dragons. A simple hack 'n slash, that was designed to eat up quarters in a heartbeat. However, there's one spot that eats quarters more than any other... the final boss. I honestly can't imagine getting to this boss on one credit. I can get pretty far into it, but reaching the end is still this way still looks like one hell of a daunting task. And beating the final boss like this? Oh hell no. Basically, it's a very big red dragon. The only parts that attack you, are the head and the claws. The head has several fire attacks, ranging from dropping fire balls, to a massive fire breath (this one hurts in a big way). Of course, he can also grab you with his claws. I haven't gotten to fight him in a while (I refuse to go continue happy to reach him on CCC2), so I can't be sure if he's able to chew on you, or if I'm confusing him with one of the D&D game Capcom made. Regardless, he has a number of attacks, and all of them do "Nasty" to "FUCKING OW!" levels of damage. Needless to say, this is a place where quarters would vanish at a steady rate. He's big, has a lot of hit points, and can deal out a lot of damage very quickly. I just don't see how he could be beaten without wearing him slowly down as you continue over and over and over.

Do you guys need me to do anything with the short and/or long versions of the ones I did?

While I believe it would be very popular project, I personally think FF VI (and Square games in general) get enough attention from remixers as it is. I'd rather see projects for games that get left behind a lot, than projects for games that've been covered more than the OJ trial and Michael Richards' flip out.

From time to time, people ask about how they can run older games like Wolfenstien 3-D, Wing Commander and various King's Quest games on their XP PCs. It's not fun to try an old favorite, only to have you PC either refuse to install it, or give you the finger when you click on its executable. So, in a effort to try and help out the old schooling folk on OCR, I thought I'd make a thread for those who want to learn a bit about DOSBox, running games in it, and seeking advice on how to get an individual game to run better in it. So, without anymore bullshitting... DOSBox Right there is a link to the DOSBox website. There, you'll find the latest version of this DOS emulator, as well as a forum (which I'll address later). Just hop on over, grab the emulator, and install it. Once you've done that, follow these simple steps to get it ready for just about any game you wanna throw at it... The Setup... 1) In your C: drive (or whatever the letter is for your main hard drive where you normally install things), make a folder called "DOSGames". Be sure to install all the older games you want to play into a folder of their own in this folder. This makes things a lot simpler as it keeps everything organized, and in one place. As an example, in my "DOSGames" folder, I have folders named "Wing", "Wing2", "Mech2", etc. 2) Go to the folder where DOSBox was installed, and locate the ".conf" file (which is found in the same area as the program's executable). This file is very important, as it contains all the options and aspects of DOSBox that can be tweaked and adjusted to help make it run better, or to help a particular game run better too. In this ".conf" file , go to the very bottom, and add these lines after "[autoexec]"... loadfix -64 mount f f:\ -t cdrom mount c c:\DOSGames -freesize 999 mount a a:\ -t floppy C: "loadfix -64" helps correct some start up and loading problems with various games. "mount f f:\ -t cdrom" let's DOSBox know which CD drive to use for games that require a CD for music or security checks (use whichever letter is for your CD drive... like if your CD drive was "G", you'd put "mount g g:\ -t cdrom"). "mount c c:\DOSGames -freesize 999" makes DOSBox think that the "DOSGames" folder is the C: drive (don't worry, this doesn't endanger any aspect of your PC) while telling DOSBox that there's 999MB available (this can be upped if needed), and "mount a a:\ -t floppy" let's DOSBox know which drive to use for floppy disks (again, use whichever letter your floppy drive has... assuming you have a floppy drive). "C:" automatically changes the "Z" to a "C" (it saves a little extra typing to do this). 3) Start DOSBox by double clicking on its executable, and once everything's done booting, type in "cd **the name of the folder where the executable is you want to run**", and hit "Enter". "cd" stands for "change directory", and this tells DOSBox to move from the root of the "C:" drive, to the folder I typed in. As an example, if I wanted to run Wing Commander on my PC, I'd type in "cd wing". 5) Finally, type in the name of the executable, hit "Enter", and you'll be stylin'. As a last example, to run Wing Commander, I'd simply type in "wing.exe". So altogether, the sequence I had to type into DOSBox was... cd wing wing.exe Keep in mind, that some older games don't put the executable right there inside the main game folder. Some put it in a folder of it's own, or have a folder within a folder. To give you an example, the game Silpheed is like this. The game is installed in a folder called "SIERRA". Inside this folder, is another folder called "SILPHEED", and it's within this "SILPHEED" folder that the game's executable rests. So to set things up for this game, I'd have to type the following sequence into DOSBox... cd sierra\silpheed silpheed.bat It's almost just like what I posted a paragraph up, but I had to add an extra folder to the "cd" command line, so that DOSBox would get to that folder within a folder. It may seem a bit odd at first, but it really does make sense when you look at it. Sound... Now, when it comes to sound, DOSBox can emulate just about all the major sound devices back in the day. SoundBlaster, midi, Gravis Ultrasound, MT-32 (Roland)... this little thing can even handle the digitized speech that came with some games. Usually when the game installs, it'll ask you to set up the sound. As it's setting up, it also chooses the default settings that were the norm for each device (which the DOSBox config file is already set up for). So after choosing "midi", "Soundblaster" or what have you for the music and/or sound effects, all you'll have to do is just keep tapping "Enter" until the sound settings are done. These settings are then saved by the game, and in turn, used by DOSBox when you run the game. So you'll get full sound most of the time (I say most, because some games are still a bit buggy when running in DOSBox). Adjustments... So now you've got your game up and running, but the speed seems a bit off. If the game's running too fast, hold "Ctrl" and tap "F11" to lower the number of cycles (this slows DOSBox down). If it's running too slow, hold "Ctrl" and tap "F12" to raise the cycles (this speeds DOSBox up). The number of cycles you're running will be along the top of the DOSBox window. These commands will help get the game you're running to a more normal speed. However, do note that DOSBox can't run every game at a super spiffy speed. Some like MechWarrior 2 or The Elder Scrolls: Arena will run slower than they would have on a good PC back in their day. This is because DOSBox is emulating an DOS environment, which takes processing power by your PC. As a result, the better PC you have, the more you'll be able to speed up the game you're playing. You can make tweaks to the text lines within the ".conf" file, but they'll only go so far. In time, DOSBox will improve and use less processing power, giving the user more of their PC's muscle to use. But as it is, it still does a very good job with a lot of games. There's also one last thing you can easily use to help a game speed up a bit, or to fix various other performance issues... frame skipping. What it does, is tell DOSBox to literally skip a part of the graphical rendering process within a set a ten frames. So if you set the frame skip to "1", it'll skip one frame in every ten frames being rendered (in both 2D and 3D games). This helps issues like stuttering or crackling sound effects and music, and it can also help the game run a bit quicker. To use this option, hold "Ctrl" and hit "F8" to raise the number of skipped frames, and "F7" to lower it. Do keep in mind, that if you go overboard, your game will get pretty choppy. So try and keep it to between 1 and 3. How far can you push it? So now that you know about adjusting what are called "cycles" in DOSBox, just how high can you crank it? Well, there's a very simple way to find out... First, hit "Alt", "Ctrl" and "Delete" at the same time. This brings up the Windows Task Manager. In this new window, click on the tab along the top that says "Performance". Here you'll see four windows... two long, and two short. Pay attention to the short window in the upper left under "CPU Usage". With this window open, start up DOSBox, and run the game you want to play that's chugging a bit. Get it to an actual gameplay area (like say, the first mission in MechWarrior 2, or the first dungeon in The Elder Scrolls: Arena) and see where the percentage is under the "CPU Usage" window. The thing to take heed of, is what type of processor you have. If you have a Hyper Threading Pentium 4, or a similar dual core(ish) processor, know that the highest you'll be able to push the percentage is 50% (50% for each core or "Thread"). If you have a different type of processor that doesn't use Hyper Threading or have a dual core, your number will go up to 100% (note- even if a Hyper Threading processor says 50%, you're still getting full capacity. It's just the way things are read. You're not getting gypped in performance). Now, once you know what percentage you'll be able to reach, hold down "Ctrl", and begin tapping "F12" to increase the amount of cycles. As you do this, you'll see your CPU Usage level climb. Try not to go above 40% for Hyper Threading/Dual Core systems, and 80% for single core systems. You want to make sure you leave enough room for your CPU to grab power if it's needed, and you don't want your CPU to be constantly running full bore. As an example, when I run MechWarrior 2 and The Elder Scrolls: Arena, I can crank the cycles up to 30,000 with my Pentium 4 3.00E GHz Hyper Threading CPU. This makes those two games run very smoothly, and it still leaves room for extra power if it's needed during an intense part of the action. Doom and Doom II also run fluidly at this number. If you're on an older PC, you probably won't be able to push this thing much higher than say 10,000 cycles. But for those with faster CPUs, this'll be a godsend. Installing from the CD drive... So you've got your game, and you want to install it, but XP and Vista are being a real prick about running that old "Install.exe" DOS file. Well, there's a pretty easy way to get around that... use DOSBox. If you've followed my guide up to this point, you already have a CD-Rom drive mounted, and ready to go. So here's what you do... First, right click on your CD-Rom, and choose "explore". What comes up, will be a browsing window that shows all the files on the disc. Some discs have them all right there to be viewed, but others put all or some of the game files into a folder on the disc. Neither one is problem, as both can be run very simply. So, take note of where the file "Install.exe" is... be it on the first browsing screen, or in a folder. Now, start up DOSBox. Once everything's up, type in the letter that's assigned to the CD-Rom drive you mounted, and hit "Enter". If the "Install.exe" file is right there, then simply type "install". As an example, here's what I would type to install Powerslave... F: install But, if the "Install.exe" file is in a folder on the disc, then you'll need to do the change directory command, followed by the install command. As an example, here's what I would need to type to install Prince of Persia off of Broderbund's Prince of Persia CD Collection... F: cd prince install Once you do that, the game should install without a problem. The "Setup" file... Once you've finished the main installation, now all that's left is to take care of that last bit of the process. After the "Install.exe" file's done, you'll either have to manually bring up the setup to program the sound configuration, or the game will take you directly to the setup screen once the installation's done. If you have to manually bring the setup on-screen, simply restart DOSBox, and type in the needed info regarding what folder the game was installed into. As an example, here's what I would have to type to start the setup file for Prince of Persia... C: cd prince setup Once you're on this configuration screen, you really don't have to do much. The sound setup will ask you for a type of digital audio, a type of music, or both. For sound effects, it's usually good to go with the Sound Blaster choice. Many, many games used Sound Blaster cards back in the day, so that should give you what you need (the really old DOS games used the PC Speaker... ugh). The setup chooses the default settings for the Sound Blaster card, so all you have to do is hit "Enter" a few times and you'll be done. For the music, it's much the same. Choose what you want the music to be played with (Sound Blaster and Midi are the norms), and just keep hitting "Enter" until it's done (again, the setup will choose the defaults for what musical source you pick). With that done, you may have more options... like configuring the control scheme. This is done much the same as an in-game setup, as it simply lets you choose which keys do what. Only this time, it's done outside the game's menu system. So, just select the option that has the word "Control" in it, and set up your keyboard keys and mouse buttons how you like them... or at least, as best as the configuration will allow you to (some games are pretty stingy with their control options). The game has default settings for all its used keys, but all you have to do to change them, is highlight the key you want to change (done usually by using the up and down arrows on your keyboard), hit "Enter" to select the key assignment you want to change, and then press the new key you want to assign that action to. So if "W" isn't to your liking for the "UP" command in a game, just select that line, and press the up directional arrow (or whatever you want to use for up). Do this to whatever other keys you want to change. And remember, the control and sound choices you make aren't final. If you wind up not liking the way you have them configured, all you have to do is run the "Setup.exe" file again, and change them. Once you have your sound, controls and what have you taken care of, simply select "Save configuration and Exit" (or whatever similar line is there), and your setup will be saved. Now you're ready to play. For more DOSBox setup goodies, go to my post right here...

You know, not long ago, I picked up the PC version of Taito Legends. For those not familiar with it, it's a compilation of old and oldish games from long time Japanese developer, Taito. Games like Space Invaders, Operation Wolf, Elevator Action and a host of others are on here. But this morning, I wanna talk about a boss from a particular game on this collection called Rastan. Basically, you play a barbarian that has to hack his way through the land to reach a big nasty final boss. Along the way, you have to beat mutant creatures, cross fire pits, swing from vines, and all sorts of assorted fun stuff. While you might think the final boss is the toughest, this isn't the case. Instead, it's the stage three boss that gets this honor. He has one attack, and one defense. His attack, is sending out a spread of large, blue fireballs. If these hit you four times, you're dead. However, to beat this guy, you have to hit him obviously... and that's where his defense comes in. If you swing at him, he begins basically blinking on and off. During this time, you can't hurt him, and he does this whenever you swing at him. He also starts doing this if you get too close half the time. It can be quite maddening after a while, especially after you've gotten to the point where you can get to stage three and only loose at most, one guy along the way. I've thrown many swear words at this boss. However, he can be beaten... if you hit him in a specific spot. It took me a long, long time to find out how to beat him, as the tactic just never occurred to me until I came jumping in at him with my character's sword a'swingin'. The little light bulb turned on, and much joy was attained as I finally watched him die. Much like the final boss in Quake, it's one of those things that seems impossible at first, only to have it revealed that in truth, it's pretty simple. Edit: Typos.

It's also pretty hard to see what it is. I have a feeling that as it is right now, it'd be passed on for being too blurry, and/or not being able to tell what it is without an explanation. Speaking of Larry, where'd he go?

Made some new ones that I don't think have been covered. The first nine are from an old Taito game called Chack 'n Pop, with the last seven being from the immortal Space Invaders. LT: Nah on the Bubble Bobbles. All the sprites are touching the borders while it has a background, which looks awful. I'd say forget 'em. The Space Invader ones...just too plain. Very simple sprite with the simplest background there is; just boring. I'd rethink 'em if they had cooler backgrounds, though I dunno how one would pull that off.

I redid them, take a look: LT: Still a bit too dark. Can you brighten them without causing them to turn whiter? If Nineko doesn't have a problem with it, I can try adjusting these. LT: Nike - Just do it. Gave it a whirl... LT: Bueno! I took all but the Bowser one. For Bowser, I used one of the images where the different colors of his eyebrows were visible, since yours is too bright.

I redid them, take a look: LT: Still a bit too dark. Can you brighten them without causing them to turn whiter? If Nineko doesn't have a problem with it, I can try adjusting these. LT: Nike - Just do it.

Why not ask a mod if you guys can put a notice in Gen Dis for a week? I've seen other projects have temp messages there, and more exposure might help in finding a replacement.

On the NeoGeo, there was a shmup released called Viewpoint. It's an isometric shmup, and it's hard a hell. A couple years later, the Genesis got a port of it, and though the music and graphics were toned down, the difficulty level was left fully intact. Now, there's really no easy part in this game. Partly because of bullets going everywhere, and partly because of the view. But on Stage 4 of this game, everything comes together to make for a big old fashion cluster fuck. See, at the end of the stage, there's a four faced rock... thing. Each face has a different attack. One face fires a bullet spread and charges at you, another fires bird-like things which fire at you, and another puts up a barricade of things that block your shots as they rotate around the rock creature. There's a fourth attack pattern, but in truth, it escapes me at the moment. Anyway, so here's a four phased pain in the ass, firing everywhere, moving around, and the only time you can hurt it is when it's mouth is open for a short time. So needless to say, this battle takes a while in terms of shmups battles. The viewing angle doesn't make dodging easy (watch your shadow), and being killed is like a slap in the face. Why? Because it sends you back into the stage by about a third of its length (check points anyone?). This make for a long, frustrating battle... over, and over, and over again. The game's not too bad up to this point, but this boss makes up for any ease you may have had in reaching it.

First they're not sharp enough, then they're too pixelly. So damned picky The problem with other head shots, is that there's not a lot of good production art. There's plenty of it, but the drawings are usually less than accurate to how they looked on the show. These head shots (gotten off of Cartoon Network's site for the show) are the best I've come across, as they're not making a stupid expression, and they're pretty accurate. Plus, with so many other sites using screengrab edits, I thought I'd use something that didn't seem to be common. Anyway, I know... blah blah blah. I tried to soften up the edges a bit, and made them a bit brighter. So, here's another attempt while I look for some head shots from various episodes... LT: Looking at the actual CN site, those source pictures aren't even a good enough quality to work with, IMO. Good try though, the originals were just low-quality to begin with.

Not sure, but here's the next version of the TT avatars... Better? Worse? WTF? LT: The images are too pixelated, i.e. they look like poo to begin with. Care to try with some other Teen Titan headshots?

I used to have several remixes from TF III on VGMix 1 and 2 before they went down. I remixed "Hunger Made Them Desparate" and "The Grubby Dark Blue", and I'm still tweaking a remix of "Present" (the Staff Roll tune). Edit: Got my ending theme names mixed up.

Fixed Actually, her thighs in the original SF2 concept art were quite the monstrocites. Also, nice sig variation there You should see them in Street Fighter III: Third Strike. Children have been known to run away from them crying.

Bump up the contrast a bit... like somewhere between +5 and +15, so that the green and black are separated more, making the face stand out better. Hopefully LT will swing by and let us know how this latest batch is.

I think we may need to get LT's attention. Someone make a judge hate comment. Updates... LT: Better to get images that aren't floating heads, and that are also sharp enough to look good.

I have the opportunity to play Armed Police Batrider not too long ago, and I ran across a boss who was maddeningly frustrating. This game is rather easy as you play through its first five stages. Not a lot around that can kill you by surprise. Seems like a breeze... until you reach Stage 6. It's here that this game gets a major hard on from making your ship go BOOM! After a rather tough stage, you reach a boss that pulls the single cheapest tactic known to man. It's a tactic that actually built into the NeoGeo's hardware, and this tactic, could also be called a "System limitation". See, the NeoGeo can only display so many sprites before things begin to happen... mean, vile things. When you reach the last part of this stage's boss, this tactic/limitation kicks in. After you reach a certain point, a small nozzle begins firing a large number of small mine-like objects that go up off the screen, and then float down as they fire a shot at you. Right as this nozzle is about to stop firing, guns along the side of the ship begin sending a massive amount of violet, pulsating shots that move away from you at first, but then come towards you as a good clip. And it's at this point, that the tactic/limitation becomes apparent. As the small mine-like shapes float down, and the pulsating shots come at you... THE SHOT BEGIN DISAPPEARING! Yes, these shots vanish. Why? Because there are too many sprites for the NeoGeo to handle. But the fun part is, the shots are still technically there, in that they can still collide with your ship and cause you to explode in what looks like an area free of shots. This is the only place this happens, and why the programmers felt the need to do this is a complete mystery. I mean, the level's hard enough, and the boss would be a good fight as it is. But getting blown up by literally invisible shots... well, that's just cruel.

I'm working on some Teen Titans avatars. They're still a WIP, but I'd like your thoughts on where to go with them LT. More sharpening? Make each background differently colored (I was thinking like the colors used behind each character from the shows opening... Robin = Red, Starfire = Orange, etc.)? Turn up the contrast a bit? LT: Disembodied heads? Pass. The res is pretty bad anyway.