Jump to content

MrFlibble

Members
  • Content count

    294
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by MrFlibble

  1. MrFlibble

    The Ultimate Free-to-Play PC Games List

    I just wanted to point out that It Came from the Desert and other Cinemaware games are apparently no longer distributed for free - at least, the Cinemaware site no longer has the downloads, and they are sold in a bundle at Steam - and realised that your link does not point to the Cinemaware site but to the Gamefabrique, which is basically a pirate site that at least previously tried to pass of console ROMs of old games bundled with emulators as "remakes" of said games, and now appears to just simply distribute these ROMs + emulators having dropped the entire "remake" ruse. I'd very much recommend removing any and all links to that sorry pretence of a retro gaming website. (Just my opinion though.)
  2. MrFlibble

    The Ultimate Free-to-Play PC Games List

    That game sounds like some more or less serious social commentary than pornography. Also, the term itself requires definition. Both Wikipedia and the Cambridge Dictionary agree that pornography is intended for sexual arousal and not for aesthetic experience (as opposed to erotic art). How is this to be judged for games? E.g. there's plenty of nudity in Daggerfall and there are sexual themes and there's some explicit descriptions in some of the in-game books (Dwemer on Khajit anyone?). Do you consider this game pornographic? Is it going off your list?
  3. The three classic titles that had been released as freeware now being part of the Ultimate Collection, are they still legit to distribute as freeware? AFAIK EA took down all the official download pages for those over the recent years. I cannot find the original C&C95 freeware announcement but the Red Alert download page clearly states that mirroring the disc images by third parties is not permitted (a request that was apparently disregarded), and the release is presented as such that it could be construed a temporary promotional action to celebrate the 13th anniversary of C&C. The official game pages from 2011 (C&C, RA1) offer to buy The First Decade and mention no free downloads.
  4. MrFlibble

    Forged Battalion

    I guess they don't want to tell you everything right away. You can with certainty tell that in this title: there will be lots of action with various units (ground and air at least) in large numbers, and probably base building, and there's an overall futuristic theme there will be some kind of unit customisation and branching tech/upgrade trees there will be a soundtrack by Frank Klepacki That's quite enough information to give a very preliminary judgement if this may interest further or not IMO.
  5. That's a good point, although I think that there might be legal ways to revoke a freeware license. But have the titles in question been released with the appropriate license files to confirm this status? In the past there have been several temporary freeware releases of very popular commercial games, including Sierra's Red Baron and Caesar (some of them listed here). In many cases these were in connection of a new game in the series being released, and at the time they were not marked as temporary promotional actions. In fact, IIRC the download of Caesar included a readme which stated something along the lines of "no technical support is provided for this game but don't complain - it's free after all", which is a rather typical statement for freeware releases that occurred back in the day (when some companies thought they could not make any more profit with legacy DOS titles), yet the licenses for these games only extended to the downloads that were temporarily available from Sierra's website and were since revoked.
  6. I just found several previews/reviews of the game available via the Wayback Machine with good quality pre-release screenshots (some in the GIF format): Computer Games Online news (16-01-1998) Computer Games Online first look (12-02-1998) Computer Games Online screenshots (16-05-1998) Computer Games Online preview (23-06-1998) Strategy Gaming Online review (15-10-1998)
  7. Eador: Genesis is free for a limited time from GOG.com: https://www.gog.com/game/eador_genesis
  8. MrFlibble

    The Ultimate Free-to-Play PC Games List

    Here's a few more games you might want to add to your list: Amulets & Armor (RPG, open source, liberated) Annex: Conquer the World (RTS, open source) Catacomb Snatch (shooter, open source) Conquest of Elysium II (TBS, liberated) Paranoia 2: Savior (FPS, freeware) Priority: Survive (RTS, freeware) Wyrmsun (RTS/TBS, open source) I also noticed that some of the games in the list are not stand-alone but mods for commercial games (e.g. Barista 2 and Pathways Redux are mods for Doom 3). It would probably be nice to have these marked somehow.
  9. MrFlibble

    Blizzard Announces StarCraft: Remastered

    Hope you guys don't mind going a bit off-topic here. This is something I wanted to discuss for quite a while: do you think that when porting C&C to Mac (which was the first version to use hi-res graphics that later on became C&C Gold), Westwood should have gone the Blizzard way? Before C&C, Blizzard ported Warcraft: Orcs & Humans to Macintosh, and updated all the graphics for the SVGA 640x480 resolution: The graphics are not perfect (the artists did not have a lot of time to redraw everything in double the resolution plus correct aspect ratio) but the result is very similar to Warcraft II. Conversely, Westwood used the same graphics for everything except the GUI, resulting in an increased field of view but reduced size of everything in the game. Additionally no effort was made to correct the aspect ratio other than by the way of stretching the signal on a 4:3 screen, and an option exists to run C&C Gold and RA in 640x480 mode with only a 640x400 portion of the screen being used (and everything except the GUI having incorrect aspect ratio). Personally I think Westwood should've taken the Blizzard route and produced high-res graphics while maintaining the view of the DOS version. I suppose they still had the models from which in-game sprites were pre-rendered by the time RA and C&C Gold were developed to create accurate assets in high resolution. (On a side note, the interview by TeamLiquid suggests that the new StarCraft sprites were redrawn manually)
  10. MrFlibble

    Free alternatives to classic games

    A user in another forum notified me that some links were down/hacked so I replaced them with Wayback Machine links. Some more games were added to the list too.
  11. MrFlibble

    So there will be a Dune reboot after all

    David Lynch's Dune wasn't mediocre, or at least, de gustibus etc. I know some fans were disappointed by the ending and/or such and such details not corresponding to the book, but personally I've always regarded it as Lynch's own interpretation of the source material, to which he is perfectly entitled. Also don't forget that Frank Herbert had a consulting role in the movie's production. The miniseries doesn't follow the book's plot 100% either. I didn't like how they introduced the travelling Irulan subplot. I understand that it was for narrative purposes but that didn't make any sense to me. Also some of the cast were pretty off compared to their characters' descriptions in the book IMO. I liked the miniseries Dr. Kynes though (IIRC the actor's name is Karel Dobry), and did not Max von Sydow in Lynch's version. Ian McNeice did a very good Baron too. Either way, I'm not really excited about the new movie.
  12. MrFlibble

    Blizzard Announces StarCraft: Remastered

    So guys... the free version of StarCraft has been launched: https://starcraft.com/en-us/articles/20674424
  13. Shadow Warrior Classic Complete is free on GOG.com: https://www.gog.com/game/shadow_warrior_complete Not sure if this is permanent or a temporary giveaway though.
  14. For some time I used to think that total conversions of video games that eventually became separate, stand-alone titles are few and far between, as I knew only of a couple examples, like NAM and Gunman Chronicles. Eventually though I started to discover more and more of such games, and decided to make a list of them. Probably not very surprisingly, what I managed to find so far are mostly FPS games based on popular engines (id Tech, GoldSrc, and the more recent UDK), with but a few titles from other genres. No idea if this is because of the general level of popularity of the FPS genre or some other factors have played a role as well. The criteria for picking games were as follows: 1) initially there has been a requirement that another title, of which the game in question is a TC or mod, needed to be present in order to run the game, and 2) eventually said requirement was dropped, making the game in question stand-alone. In some cases below, however, a fully stand-alone game was preceded by a mod/TC with a similar theme or storyline. Command & Conquer: Renegade Red Alert: A Path Beyond (originally Renegade Alert) Tiberian Sun Reborn (originally C&C Reborn) Crysis WarsWreckage Doom Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl (a prequel to the Action Doom TC) Doom II HacX [requires an engine port] Doom IIIThe Dark Mod Duke Nukem 3D NAM (created after the Platoon TC) Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza (went over to GoldSrc and then to LithTech) FreeSpace 2Wings of Dawn Half-Life Counter-Strike Cry of Fear Day of Defeat Gunman Chronicles (initially a Quake TC that first moved over to Quake II and then to GoldSrc) Sven Co-op Team Fortress Classic (based on the Team Fortress TC for Quake) Half-Life 2 Black Mesa (started as two separate mod projects) Garry's Mod No More Room in Hell Nuclear Dawn The Stanley Parable Synergy Underhell Mount & Blade Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword (originally a commercial TC/add-on Mount & Blade. Ogniem i Mieczem) Mount & Blade: Warband Vikingr (does not require Warband to be installed but asks for a license key) Quake Alteria (originally Omen) [download] Battle Mech X-Men: The Ravages of Apocalypse [requires an engine port] Quake II CodeRED: Battle for Earth (originally CodeRed) DDay: Normandy Digital Paint: Paintball 2 LTKTBM (based on the Action Quake 2 TC) Quake III: Arena Bid for Power Dark Salvation Smokin' Guns Tremulous Urban Terror World of Padman Unreal TournamentTactical Ops: Assault on Terror Unreal Tournament 2004 Alien Swarm Damnation (evolved into an Unreal Engine 3 game) Killing Floor Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 Unreal Tournament 3 Angels Fall First: Planetstorm Antichamber (originally Hazard: The Journey of Life) Renegade X The Ball The Haunted: Hell's Reach (originally The Haunted) Warcraft III League of Legends (evolved from Defence of the Ancients)Now I also know that some Tiberian Sun mods/TCs have become stand-alone (like Twisted Insurrection), however it's often hard to find out if there had been non-standalone releases of them, or they were conceived as standalone games from the very start. I would very much appreciate information on Tiberian Sun TCs that fit into the criteria of the aobve list, as well as on other games that I probably missed as well.
  15. Actually I don't think that the game tries to look 8-bit. The original C&C has an 8-bit palette and it's not blocky or anything. I think 8-bit here is just used as a catchy moniker for "retro", possibly popularised by recent games like 8-bit Killer and the like. And "retro" itself is defined not as a copy of the mid-90s graphics but as some sort of unique style with blocky stuff.
  16. Looks very cute! Also what's the talk about "bad" graphics? It's certainly better than this whole "realistic" blandness that seems to be the thing lately.
  17. A while ago I read about a game called Wings of Dawn which runs on the FreeSpace 2 engine. It turns out that this game was originally a total conversion for FreeSpace 2 that was released in 2010, but last year the author started reworking it into a stand-alone game using the open source engine of FreeSpace 2, which is released in an episodic manner. However, as I am completely unfamiliar with the original FreeSpace 2, I cannot tell if this new stand-alone version uses anything from it apart from the engine. For some reason, the most comprehensive source of information about this game that I have found so far is TV Tropes.
  18. MrFlibble

    The Ultimate Free-to-Play PC Games List

    There has been some misunderstanding with Bio Menace, because GOG.com published it exactly 10 years after Apogee released this game as freeware. Some people thought that Bio Menace had not been available as freeware before the GOG.com release.
  19. MrFlibble

    Black Mesa (HL remake) full download links

    Does it require a Steam account and/or a separate installation of the Source engine, or is it completely stand-alone, no strings attached?
  20. A very neat looking game!
  21. MrFlibble

    Free alternatives to classic games

    Dark Konflict seemed like a very promising game, it's a pity the development was abandoned.
  22. MrFlibble

    Free alternatives to classic games

    Freedoom v0.10 is out, with lots of improvements. More monsters and almost all weapons have been replaced with higher quality art. Maps have been updated as well. Wyrmsun v1.8.0 adds the custom hero option and inventories for heroes and high-level units.
  23. Just found these articles with some nice analysis of mission design in Command & Conquer: http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/2013/09/07/real-time-strategy-level-design/ http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/2014/04/27/real-time-strategy-level-design-ii/
×