"The Reap" PC Shooter in WinXp?

ST Dragon · Post by **ST Dragon** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 12:46 pm

Hello,
I recently tried "The Reap" PC (1997 Shooter Like View Point / Zaxxon), but the game refuses to run full screen in WinXP.
It will load in Win95/98 compatibility / windowed mode, but it's very slow and will crash randomly.

http://wayoftherodent.com/wil/the%20reap.htm

Is there a patch or any other method of making this work in WinXP @ full screen?

Thanks in advance.

MJR · Post by **MJR** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 4:40 pm

Before I go hassling the programmers of this game you should at least try the official patch from housemarque website, OK?

http://www.housemarque.com/games/thereap/reapatch.zip

Nuke · Post by **Nuke** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 6:25 pm

The patch didn't work for me, but it might be the fault of a old cd rom instead of the actual game

MJR · Post by **MJR** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 6:49 pm

OK, I'll try it myself and see what happens

ST Dragon · Post by **ST Dragon** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 6:55 am

Thanks!
I'll check it out!
Based on these reading, it should work fine.

http://www.ntcompatible.com/The_Reap_c11751.html

And this Cyrix fix patch:
http://dlh.net/cgi-bin/dlp.cgi?lang=eng ... zip&ref=ps

ST Dragon · Post by **ST Dragon** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 7:00 am

What a coincidence!

I was playing Alien Incident (Adventure PC game) last night when I noticed a game flyer/poster of Stardust in one of the early rooms.

It turns out that this company created all 4 games, Alien Incident, The Reap as well as Stardust & Super Stardust.

Now it makes sense why their games are so heavily based on ray traced & pre-rendered sprites

http://www.housemarque.com/game_thereap_tips.htm
http://www.housemarque.com/game_stardust.htm
http://www.housemarque.com/game_superstardust.htm

How interesting!

MJR · Post by **MJR** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 7:48 am

Yes. I was around when alien incident and super stardust '96 were created. Housemarque was formed when terramarque and bloodhouse formed. Pixel artists from terramarque helped out with alien incident; I was responsible for some of the animations

I never collaborated on any those shooting games, except for playtest and feedback. which is a pity. I was always doing something else and was too busy. At least they gave me special thx in super stardust HD

By the way, one of the most important designers from super stardust and alien incident, Petteri Putkonen, is now a game designer in 'earth no more'; joint project from 3Drealms and Recoil games. It will be his first big-time game project since alien incident so I'm quite excited about it

ST Dragon · Post by **ST Dragon** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 8:48 am

Hey how is it going MJR!

I love your AMIGA art, especially this Elf Mania background:

The dragon's expression is so cool & the purple shade was an excellent choice for this mystic treasure dungeon.

MJR · Post by **MJR** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 8:52 am

Thanks

But I dont really make much games anymore, making comics now

anyway, I had no time to check the reap for XP yet, hope the patch worked OK..?

ST Dragon · Post by **ST Dragon** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 9:08 am

I'll try the patch when I get home

Nice comic.
That robotic ostrich they're riding reminds me of one of the robot enemies in Sonic 2

By the way, what's that hairless, cross-eyed, retarded looking bird in your avatar?!

It looks as if it had a hang over!

MJR · Post by **MJR** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 9:14 am

I've got to admit I never played sonic 2..

Just a pic I painted many years ago at work when I was bored and pissed off.
full image is here: http://www.miharinne.1g.fi/photoshop/misc/PENGUIN.jpg

it actually abuses pills..

ST Dragon · Post by **ST Dragon** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 11:19 am

He He!

Hence the expression!

Concerning your Elf Mania background, it's incredible how detailed AMIGA images can be by just using 32 colours of shades!
On other systems & consoles this would have been mistaken as a 256 colour image.
The AMIGA could achieve a true 16bit colour palette.

SNES: 15-Bit Colour
PC-Engine: 9-Bit Colour
Mega Drive: 9-Bit Colour

Post by **Shatterhand** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 12:13 pm

Elfmania had some gorgeous graphics..., full frame-rate, amazing AI, excellent soundtrack, lots of stuff flying on screen... at the techicnal side, the game was really impressive.

Shame it wasn't a very good game...

MJR · Post by **MJR** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 2:28 pm

Shatterhand wrote:Elfmania had some gorgeous graphics..., full frame-rate, amazing AI, excellent soundtrack, lots of stuff flying on screen... at the techicnal side, the game was really impressive.

Shame it wasn't a very good game...

I would say it is actually a good game, since I didn't develop it (I was only involved with never-released datadisk), however it's concept was misleading, it wasn't really a beat'em up, but some strange hybrid from another dimension with floating characters and falling coins. Stavvy wanted it to be "a beat'em up with no violence"; which was wrong decision from the start. Still, I consider it good for what it is.

Elfmania can be enjoyable if you only could get past the fact that characters werent really punching or jumping, just floating and stroking each other in a strange, faggy way. What's there to find that it actually has a proper AI (only amiga game I know which actually had a neural net; the AI could make decisions on the fly and alter it's mind any second!), characters had strong or weak points (and AI knew that), you could apply some serious tactical gameplay and there was more than one way to beat the grid.

But the way characters moved and changed blows was radically against what people expect to see. When you play beat'em up, you want to get the feel of the actual impact and feel of beating someone. Not some strangely floaty coin-collecting gay elves from another dimension

Stavvy simply had a wrong mindset for designing a beat'em up. If he had decided to do a cute platform jumping game or shoot'em up instead, it would have been so much more succesful. Galactic or PID had so much more potential.