Sideline PC shmup

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Fudoh
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by Fudoh »

games are covered under audiovisual works. I will ask you again in a year or two when the guidelines have been translated into laws in the invidiual countries :)
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by dex »

I have checked out the CD-Action issue. It appears the company that probably released the game - Union Systems - used to be a player on the Amiga software/demo scene as Union. Maybe will help some people's google fu.

I know the guy who wrote the article on it. I'll write to him and see if he has any earthly idea about the developer or whatever. Don't hold your breath - it's been 15 years. But it's worth a try.

EDIT: The plot thickens. It would seem Union Systems was a codeveloper of the game, probably making the FMVs between levels. The game was released by a company called Mirage Software. It's now defunct, but it has been absorbed by a bigger company rather than outright bankrupted, so there should be some representatives of that bigger company (Cenega) out in the mix. I've also found a couple of nuggets of interesting info: the Union guys organized a scene party in 1994 and 1995, these were called Intel Outside. I might be able to contact people associated with the Polish demoscene at the time and ask them whether they could contact anyone from Union Systems. Worth a shot, I reckon.

Also, Mirage Software did a thing in 2003 where they turned a lot of their retro catalogue freeware. I'm gonna look into which games they did that with.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by Ghegs »

I creditfed through the game. The game is possible to finish as it is, but two game-crashing bugs have been brought to light. First, the Stage 1 boss. After he goes off the left side of the screen, DO NOT fire, change option formation or bomb, or otherwise the game will crash. Only after he has returned to the right side of the screen and starts attacking again, then it's safe to resume normal operation. Alternatively, just kill him before he ever goes off, it's pretty easy. Same with Stage 5 boss, when you hear the music change, refrain from attacking until after he has settled in and is doing his thing.

The game gets pretty crazy, let me tell you. The level design gets downright vicious and creative in the latter half of the game and the boss attacks are just mean. And after that the game loops, starting over with a harder difficulty with you carrying over the score and whatever powerups you had when beating the final stage. It is kind of a long game, as a full, one-loop playthrough takes around 45 minutes. But never does it feel boring, the pacing is excellent.

Also something that hasn't been mentioned yet...this game has two-player simultaneous co-op play AND apparently network support. That's pretty awesome.

SideLine is the DOS equivalent of Gradius and R-Type and there are some clear nods towards those series in the enemies, stages and boss designs. It's not just "good for its time" or "good for a DOS shmup", it is legitimately a great shmup that still deserves to be played today. For horzie-lovers like myself this is Top 25 material, honestly.

There's still a lot of mystery concerning this game and I hope we can eventually get to the bottom of this. Here's the credits roll from the end of the game:

Producer
Jiun-Ming Hwang (Jimmy)

Programming
Ru-Gi Lin (LRG)

Game Design
Ru-Gi Lin (LRG)
Chi-Wei Chen (BOSS)

Artwork
Chi-Wei Chen (BOSS)
Bighead
Tom

Map Editor
Chi-Wei Chen (BOSS)
Tse-Wen Chu (TWC)

Tools Programming
Ru-Gi Lin (LRG)

System Programming
Jiun-Ming Hwang (Jimmy)

IPX Interface
King

Music
Winchen Jeng (Winchen)

Sound Effects
Jiun-Ming Hwang (Jimmy)
Ru-Gi Lin (LRG)
Chi-Wei Chen (BOSS)

Placard
Ben-Su Hwang (Mickey)

Title
Ben-Su Hwang (Mickey)

Animated Graphic
Ben-Su Hwang (Mickey)

Testers
Chi-Shin Chang (HAMGI)
Po-Chou Lai (Crystal)
Jr-Song Wu (Wusong)
Paul May (MPH)
Winchen Jeng (Winchen)

Manual
Jiun-Ming Hwang (Jimmy)

Reviser
Ru-Gi Lin (LRG)
Tse-Wen Chu (TWC)
Chi-Wei Chen (BOSS)

Special Thanks
Siepiau Pang

Presented by
Electronic Music and Animated Graphics Co., Ltd.
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Op Intensify
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by Op Intensify »

Is there any chance we could approach some service like GOG to suggest giving it a rerelease? Or would the rights be impossible to get a hold of?
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by Ghegs »

dex, myself and some others are in the process of tracking down the people who know about the game's history, and might even know who has the rights to it at the moment. We've actually managed to locate a few people, and are waiting replies. Getting the game released on GOG would be utterly amazing, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. We have no idea who has the rights yet.

And of course whether GOG would accept the game is a whole another matter. On the plus side, both GOG and Union Systems are based in Poland, so that's a good start.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by Ed Oscuro »

insert "OMG" here

If this game is actually decent it makes things that much sweeter. It would probably be too much to hope for for the source to be preserved, which would help with fixing the crashes. Still, amazing work and very impressive how quickly you guys ran this to ground! This has been a good couple months for surprise retrogaming releases (Last Survivor on MAME, this, something else I can't remember, all pretty impressive though).
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by dex »

I've built a debug version of DOSBox to inspect the crashes. I need to get my x86 game back though.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by Zosite »

I think these crashes may be related with the DOSBox CONF file. See, when I changed "core=dynamic", which is my default setting (it works flawlessly on 90% of my DOS games), for "core=normal" the crash at first stage boss didn't happen anymore and although I haven't reached stage 5 boss yet it may be the same. Worth a try I'd say...

BTW, be sure to set it to "normal" and not "auto" because auto automatically changes to dynamic if it *thinks* it's safe which clearly isn't the case.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by CStarFlare »

Ghegs wrote:dex, myself and some others are in the process of tracking down the people who know about the game's history, and might even know who has the rights to it at the moment. We've actually managed to locate a few people, and are waiting replies. Getting the game released on GOG would be utterly amazing, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. We have no idea who has the rights yet.

And of course whether GOG would accept the game is a whole another matter. On the plus side, both GOG and Union Systems are based in Poland, so that's a good start.
Many thanks to you and everyone who tracked this down, and everyone who continues to work on finding more. Here's hoping there will soon be a way for interested parties (me :D) to give this game a shot!
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Ghegs
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by Ghegs »

Zosite wrote:I think these crashes may be related with the DOSBox CONF file. See, when I changed "core=dynamic", which is my default setting (it works flawlessly on 90% of my DOS games), for "core=normal" the crash at first stage boss didn't happen anymore and although I haven't reached stage 5 boss yet it may be the same. Worth a try I'd say...

BTW, be sure to set it to "normal" and not "auto" because auto automatically changes to dynamic if it *thinks* it's safe which clearly isn't the case.
This works great, thanks! I had mine set to auto, but setting it to normal has made the game crash-free for me. I played up to Stage 6 and it didn't crash on Stage 5 boss either.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by Ghegs »

Alright, I have some more info about the game's background. I managed to contact Peter Drapich from Union Systems, the company who published the game in the west, and he was kind enough to answer some of my questions.

To summarize:
  • In Europe Sideline was only released in Poland. An initial run of 1500 or 3000 copies was made. It sold poorly. Union Systems contacted a number of publishers in Europe regarding the game, but nobody was interested in releasing it on a bigger scale - it was the time of PS1 and 2D games were out of the scope for them in favor of 3D. The game was, however, also released in China, or possibly only Taiwan.
  • Union Systems did the localization of the game, installers, boxes, art & posters into English and Polish and fixed a few bugs. Mirage was the distributor and wholesale reseller.
  • EMAG produced at least three games in total: SideLine, Ad Cop and Bon Bon. The latter two were developed for use with A4Tech electronic guns. AD Cop also sold much better than SideLine.
Possibly only 1500 copies were ever made, and who knows how many of those actually ended up in consumer hands and how many were returned unsold, only to be dumped to the garbage heap later? How's that for the rarest commercially available shmup ever? To bring my offer forth again, if anybody can score me a legit copy of the game, even a loose one, there will be money thrown their way.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by PooshhMao »

Ed Oscuro wrote:insert "OMG" here

If this game is actually decent it makes things that much sweeter. It would probably be too much to hope for for the source to be preserved, which would help with fixing the crashes. Still, amazing work and very impressive how quickly you guys ran this to ground! This has been a good couple months for surprise retrogaming releases (Last Survivor on MAME, this, something else I can't remember, all pretty impressive though).
7 years.

Absolutely amazing that the full version is out there and has been tracked down. Only, I can't find it - spent the afternoon Googling, no dice. I usually am perfectly capable of finding my own stuff and too proud to beg - but c'mon, this game is just so incredibly obscure that posting a link is justified in this case. I'll never ask for anything else, ever :cry:

The people on the HG101 forums would do it.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by DocHauser »

Just been playing the demo. Good stuff. Definitely a big Irem-influence in the graphics and gameplay. Apart from R-Type it reminds me of Last Resort and Armed Police Unit Gallop in places too.

Also googling around for the full version, no luck yet. I did find a forum where someone had posted mediafire links, only to learn that his account had been suspended. Doh.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by Gespenst »

If it doesn't break the rule, might try searching at some other abandonware sites? Perhaps one of them has it.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by Ghegs »

Do you guys still remember this game? I certainly do, still having it in my daily eBay searches over a year later. And I was lucky enough to be contacted by someone who saw my videos of the game, things lead to another, the original producer was found...and we now have permission to distribute the game's original release, on the condition that no profit is made from it.

I give you SideLine, resurrected.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by BPzeBanshee »

:D Mystery solved! Well done Ghegs!
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by Aisha »

Wonderful. Thank you for arranging this for everyone. :)
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by emphatic »

Wow, amazing!
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by CStarFlare »

Damn, that's awesome. Looks like I need to set up DOSBox and shmup this up. Or maybe I'll need to pull out my old XP laptop. I'll play it somehow, this is very exciting.

Thanks Ghegs, and the guys who gave this the thumbs up.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by BulletMagnet »

Good stuff Ghegs - now to see if I can actually follow your instructions to get the thing running, heh.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by Ed Oscuro »

Oh yeaaaaahhhhh

time to boot up the old wintel box

this needs a torrent though. 519MB direct hosted? Saintly.

Screenshots look amazing, at least from a distance. Nice high resolution look and pretty decent artistic sensibilities, nothing Strykerish here. Press Start - :lol:
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by Ghegs »

Ed Oscuro wrote:this needs a torrent though.
I did consider it, but since this is a very niche thing mostly of interest to people like us and some other retro gaming communities, I was afraid a torrent would soon fall to having just one or two seeders, if even that. After the word has spread and most of the interested people have the game, I expect the file will be downloaded only a couple of times a month.
BulletMagnet wrote:now to see if I can actually follow your instructions to get the thing running, heh.
Lemme know if there's something in the instructions that needs clarification. If one has never used DOSBox before, I imagine it can be a bit of a struggle at first.

So, has anybody gotten around to playing the game yet? I'd be interested in hearing opinions.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by Ghegs »

There was some weird stuff going on in the pre-made .conf file which has now hopefully been resolved. So if you had problems with that, try again now. Props to BPzeBanshee for catching that.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by Ed Oscuro »

If we downloaded the file earlier, what needs to be changed? Don't want to download the entire file again, of course.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by CStarFlare »

I tried following the instructions but get a large number of illegal read/write errors when I try to run the sound config or the game. The dos setup (where you change difficulty and controls) works fine though.

Looks like this is a job for my XP box.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

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Ed Oscuro wrote:If we downloaded the file earlier, what needs to be changed? Don't want to download the entire file again, of course.
No changes were made to the image file, only the pre-made DOSBox .conf file was updated. Feel free to download that one again. ;)
CStarFlare wrote:I tried following the instructions but get a large number of illegal read/write errors when I try to run the sound config or the game. The dos setup (where you change difficulty and controls) works fine though.
Did you try using the .conf file? There's probably some crucial DOSBox command there and the lack of it is messing things up. I need to test it out and update the instructions when I figure out which one it is.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Looks awesome! Downloading now. I imagine the networked multiplayer might also be doable via null modem cable (which I think DOSbox can emulate over the internet? dunno)? That was pretty common for DOS network play for FPSes...
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by CStarFlare »

Ghegs wrote:
CStarFlare wrote:I tried following the instructions but get a large number of illegal read/write errors when I try to run the sound config or the game. The dos setup (where you change difficulty and controls) works fine though.
Did you try using the .conf file? There's probably some crucial DOSBox command there and the lack of it is messing things up. I need to test it out and update the instructions when I figure out which one it is.
I don't think I ever figured out how to load it; I tried to compensate by editing what I figured was the default config file.
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Is it possible the game is expecting to be installed in a specific directory? Some games were anal retentive about what directory they were in (Privateer for instance, you needed to manually edit the path in the config file if you installed it in a different directory).
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Re: Sideline PC shmup

Post by Ghegs »

I have updated the instructions and the pre-made .conf file again. Hopefully this is the last time...sorry about the hassle, folks.

1) I hadn't realized Jemmex requires the xms/ems/umb settings to be set to false.
2) Turns out DOSBox has its own image mounting system, so no need to play around with Daemon Tools or the like at all.

The instructions have been updated accordingly. Should be smooth sailing from here on out.

Also! My contact who got in touch with the game's producer has now finished up the site's Chinese version. If you want to take a look, just click the lil' country icon on the right side.
BareknuckleRoo wrote:Is it possible the game is expecting to be installed in a specific directory? Some games were anal retentive about what directory they were in (Privateer for instance, you needed to manually edit the path in the config file if you installed it in a different directory).
The game itself no, but the instructions and the pre-made .conf file assume the game files are at D:\Games\SideLine. Change the location folder accordingly where needed.
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