Strife and DOSbox

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 3:56 pm

giving this game a go, and i must say i am very impressed. its interesting to see the doom engine put towards a game that is not about "shooting at movement."

wondering about performance in DOSbox. i have to pump the cycles past 12000 to get it playable. i know it is a (relatively) modern game, and that it is quite resource demanding (using dosbox). what kind of a setup would i need to get it to run well, without maxing the cycles.

edit: i've just heard tell that it should run under windows xp. i'll give it a go, i think i just assumed that dos was the only way to go

Neo Rasa · Post by **Neo Rasa** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 4:16 pm

Well keep in mind that as a Doom engine game, you should be able to set it up to run through one of the several Doom/Doom II/Heretic/Hexen frontends they make for XP today like jDoom and so on. Just want to take the Strife files and dump them into a directory within jDoom and you should be all set.

The game is very awesome. A must play for fans of Strahd's Possession and Deus Ex.

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 4:41 pm

yeah, i'll also be shooting it through zDoom as i hear that solves the single save file nonsense. thanks.

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 4:51 pm

and one question, why the fuck doesn't xp include dos?

dos is fun.

Neo Rasa · Post by **Neo Rasa** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 4:53 pm

DOS is fun, but there's no DOS per se that XP is running from to be included in the traditional sense. You can bring up a "command prompt" which imitates the DOS environment very nicely, but it's not going to help you with playing games unless you're manually typing in options for MAME at the command line.

Andi · Post by **Andi** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:19 pm

Strife was an interesting game for the time and it has aged relatively well too. I would've loved to see more complicated RPG style statistics (for instance: Deus Ex). The futuristic Doom-style atmosphere didn't seem all that well realized either - Heretic and Hexen should have had a game play structure like Strife and some RPG elements.

Neo Rasa · Post by **Neo Rasa** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:25 pm

Hexen II added in some RPG-like elements, I always wished there was a third Hexen or Heretic as all four of those games kick ass.

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:31 pm

Andi wrote:Strife was an interesting game for the time and it has aged relatively well too. I would've loved to see more complicated RPG style statistics (for instance: Deus Ex).

the one thing i am missing is an actual stealth kill. sneak up on someone from behind, well placed blow with the fist-knife-thing, pow!!! no punching for "mr. average citizen" or shooting "ooooh, check out my gun" guard.

Andi · Post by **Andi** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:40 pm

captain ahar wrote:
Andi wrote:Strife was an interesting game for the time and it has aged relatively well too. I would've loved to see more complicated RPG style statistics (for instance: Deus Ex).
the one thing i am missing is an actual stealth kill. sneak up on someone from behind, well placed blow with the fist-knife-thing, pow!!! no punching for "mr. average citizen" or shooting "ooooh, check out my gun" guard.

While I didn't miss stealth at the time - now that you mention it, the game needs a stealth skill like nothing else.

FRO · Post by **FRO** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 10:32 pm

captain ahar wrote:and one question, why the fuck doesn't xp include dos?

dos is fun.

I agree, DOS is fun. The real reason XP doesn't include DOS is because it's a true operating system. The command prompt allows you to do many things that can be done in DOS, but since DOS (read: Disk Operating System) is an OS, & XP is an OS, it doesn't make much sense to run the 2 together.

Windows 95 was an Operating Environment, which ran on a DOS backbone. The same was true for Windows 3.11 & all flavors before it, but Windows 95 was much less dependent on DOS than it's predecessors. Windows 98 was the first true Microsoft OS, though it's dependence on DOS was still hefty. With Windows ME & Windows 2000, Microsoft shook the DOS tie & those OS' became truly autonomous. XP is just an evolution of that & further limits what you can do in a DOS environment. It emulates DOS functionality to an extent, but doesn't rely on it & need it.

Sorry for the lesson, but I thought I should flesh that out a bit.

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Fri Jan 20, 2006 1:19 am

Man, this topic brings back memories. Strife used to be my fave FPS back in the day (before Duke Nukem 3D and Quake had come out). That, and Rise of the Triad. Its depth of story was of course quite exaggerated but the cutscenes and interaction were really unique in an immersive FPS environment (as opposed to, say, System Shock, where the story overwhelmed the gameplay).

Andi · Post by **Andi** » Fri Jan 20, 2006 7:05 pm

Ganelon wrote:Man, this topic brings back memories. Strife used to be my fave FPS back in the day (before Duke Nukem 3D and Quake had come out). That, and Rise of the Triad. Its depth of story was of course quite exaggerated but the cutscenes and interaction were really unique in an immersive FPS environment (as opposed to, say, System Shock, where the story overwhelmed the gameplay).

Rise of the Triad was the coolest shit on the entire planet. I'd love to see a slick modern sequel to it.

FRO · Post by **FRO** » Fri Jan 20, 2006 9:49 pm

Andi wrote:Rise of the Triad was the coolest shit on the entire planet. I'd love to see a slick modern sequel to it.

Seconded. I played the shareware demo of that endlessly. The only PC shareware game I spent more time w/ was Tyrian (until I got the full version!).

Neo Rasa · Post by **Neo Rasa** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 3:54 am

Oh man Rise of the Triad KICKED ASS.

That game had branching level progression, all kinds of deathmatch options (including capture the flag) way before quake, real time voice chatting during multiplayer, all those weapons. That game was years ahead of its time.

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 6:31 pm

question about z-doom.

copied the .wad to the directory, and the game runs perfectly, however, there is no jumping. as jumping was added by rogue, specifically for strife (as far as i can tell anyway), is there any way i can get z-doom to support it?
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also, i have the trial of Ultima Underworld, and am now looking to buy it. performance on the trial within DOSbox is pretty nice, will i get the same (similar) from the full version of the game? i tried using the Ultima Adventures program but there seem to be too many problems to deal with (not least of which include enemies being unresponsive, doors appearing as small sprites with no collision present, and me being unable to interact with objects on the ground). i would just ask at the homepage, but it hasn't been updated for more than a year, so i am thinking the program is now unsupported.

also, can anyone speak on the versions available? the only ones i could potentially support are cd-rom and 3.5" disk. does the cd-rom release include the cool maps and shit?
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anyway,. thanks for all the help. i know this thread is now turning more into a "lets hear austin talk about the all the non-shmups hes playing" kind of thing.

Post by **Shatterhand** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 8:27 pm

Hey mate, are you in a "abandonware mood" lately?

The single file save in Strife was really annoying... I remember I played the game up until I fired an alarm or something in a certain place, and then saved the game.

I had low ammo and like hundreds of guards behind me. I got frustrated and just gave up.

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 8:37 pm

Shatterhand wrote:Hey mate, are you in a "abandonware mood" lately?

The single file save in Strife was really annoying... I remember I played the game up until I fired an alarm or something in a certain place, and then saved the game.

I had low ammo and like hundreds of guards behind me. I got frustrated and just gave up.

just found out that rogue themselves released a patch that cured the "single save" problem. it gave you free reign over the six available.

and in regards to your question, in a very real sense, i am.

and i am very happy that i am able to play these games now. many i've wanted to try for a while but the combination of "finding them" and "getting them to run" was just too intimidating a prospect at the time.

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 4:25 pm

just thought i'd upd(t)ate.

using zdoom, i never bothered to explore the options menu, so i now i have jumping capability.

furthermore, after exploring more with the command line (and then into an ms-dos boot disk), i got Blood running again. i was so excited i totally started playing and killing zombies left and right (and forward and backward).

also, concerning moslo. are there some games that are just not impacted by it. i tried playing Alien Trilogy, and the difference between running it at full speed and half didn't seem very big at all.

edit: another totally important question. concerns Elder Scrolls: Arena.

i can get the game to work in dosbox, but it runs hell slow. when i try to access the .exe after booting up in DOS, it says i don't have enough EMS. can anyone explain? is there anything i can do?

it290 · Post by **it290** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:57 pm

You mean it says you don't have enough EMS when you're booting up in real DOS? If that's the case, you probably need to strip down your autoexec.bat as much as possible. There are some tricks you can do to get more free memory available, but I don't remember them as I was an Amiga guy back then.

As far as it running slow in DOSBox, try playing around with the # of CPU cycles while running the game. You might be able to get it running OK. I managed to get Albion playing at a decent speed on my (Athlon XP 2200), and that game is probably about as demanding as Arena. If your system is much slower than that it probably won't work very well, though.

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 6:03 pm

i'll look into the former suggestion.

as far as the latter. my slow results came after i had optimised it as much as possible (best result was frameskip of 2, and cycles at 8-9000, if i remember correctly).

i have a P4 1.8 Ghz, and at best i get around 12-18 fps (based on sight). so in short its playable if i'm really in the mood, but mostly, i'd just opt not to deal with it.

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 3:41 am

If you're using real DOS (esp. if you're using Win 98), go to your autoexec.bat file and check if if there's a line with:

device=[your drive]:\[your path]\emm386.exe noems

in it, remove the 'noems' part, save, and restart.

dave4shmups · Post by **dave4shmups** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 5:11 am

Man, it's too bad that Strife and Rise of the Triad didn't make it onto the PS1 and/N64.

Then again, considering how Hexic supposedly turned out...

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 6:04 am

It's too bad the female enemies in ROTT were never used due to the low memory on most PCs (and PC compatibles) of the time.

Vexorg · Post by **Vexorg** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 9:45 am

FRO wrote:
captain ahar wrote:and one question, why the fuck doesn't xp include dos?

dos is fun.
I agree, DOS is fun. The real reason XP doesn't include DOS is because it's a true operating system. The command prompt allows you to do many things that can be done in DOS, but since DOS (read: Disk Operating System) is an OS, & XP is an OS, it doesn't make much sense to run the 2 together.

Windows 95 was an Operating Environment, which ran on a DOS backbone. The same was true for Windows 3.11 & all flavors before it, but Windows 95 was much less dependent on DOS than it's predecessors. Windows 98 was the first true Microsoft OS, though it's dependence on DOS was still hefty. With Windows ME & Windows 2000, Microsoft shook the DOS tie & those OS' became truly autonomous. XP is just an evolution of that & further limits what you can do in a DOS environment. It emulates DOS functionality to an extent, but doesn't rely on it & need it.

Sorry for the lesson, but I thought I should flesh that out a bit.

Some clarifications on this: It was actually Windows NT 3.1 that was the first true DOS-free Windows operating system. This was a separate product from Windows 95, 98 and ME (insomuch as anyone will acknowledge the existence of ME anymore.) From the start, the intent was to eliminate the Windows 9x platform entirely and move to NT for all Windows products. This began with Windows 2000, which was based on NT, and with the release of Windows XP in 2002, the desktop operating system moved to NT as well, which is where we are today.

In a nutshell, Win98 and ME were just as dependent on the underlying DOS components as 95 was. It wasn't until 2000 and XP that DOS truly went away.

Post by **Shatterhand** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 4:32 pm

I just second what Vexorg said

Many people belive Windows ME was the first step to go outside of the DOS realm, because Windows ME didn't had an option to use Pure DOS if I remember correctly.

Windows 98 + Lots of bloaty = WIndows ME

FatCobra · Post by **FatCobra** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 6:50 pm

I remember Rise of the Triad! That game was weird, but fun.

I've got Tyrian 2000 running on my Dad's XP Laptop via DosBox, but the game doesn't run as smoothly as it would if I just click on the EXE file, but then I don't get sound or gamepad support. Cool game.

Abadonware rocks!!!