Sideline PC shmup

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Okay, I got it working with DOSBox. No sound or music yet even though I configured it, but whatevs, I'll get that fixed.

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=279114

Basically, disable DOSBox's internal memory handling of xms, ems and umb, and load up JEMMEX to do it. I imagine this is what the .conf system11 included is supposed to do. Main.exe is the game itself in DOS, run SNDSetup first to set music and sound config (DOSBox should be able to autodetect the settings if you select SB16, otherwise IRQ 7 DMA 1 by default). DOSSetup will let you config game speed, difficulty (set to easy by default??) and if you want sound music on/off as well as controls.

edit, haha, beaten to the post, but yeah, disable DOSBox's internal memory handling and you're fine

Wait, DOSBox can mount bin and cue files? I always mounted with Daemontools and used the MOUNT command to mount it as a CD drive.

It's cool so far, but you can't skip the title screen opening. Ohshit, you start in a tunnel, it's hard to tell that you can crash into the top and bottom at the start!

The game really has an R-Type mixed with Darius Gaiden sort of feel, with Garegga options. You can get up to two options on your ship and switch their config on the fly (forward, rotating firing front/back, moves based on where you move, 360 rotating), you get full screen bombs, shield pickups that give very forgiving protection even from stage collisions... there's also a TON of different weapon/missile pickups based on sparkly orb colour and what letter you pick up. I have no idea what's useful or what isn't yet, so having so many different weapon types thrown at me in stage 1 is a bit overwhelming in terms of experimentation! Need a weapon/item guide. o_o

[Ghegs]

Wait, DOSBox can mount bin and cue files? I always mounted with Daemontools and used the MOUNT command to mount it as a CD drive.

It was a revelation to me too, imgmount is the command.

It's cool so far, but you can't skip the title screen opening.

You can, press ESC.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Oh, neat!

Also it looks like your option shots are based on your 'main' gun. The missiles you use are launched from the ship directly but don't affect option shots. Keep collecting the same colour / missile and they'll get upgraded, switching weapon type doesn't upgrade it but it won't reduce it from the level you're at (so collect a few red orbs, get a spread shot, you'll still have the same level when you switch colour).



Just had the game crash on me at the stage 1 boss. Hopefully that's a fluke, I think I might've left my 'core' set to Auto or something, it might not play well with that. Yeah, set CPU to Normal, got through the first boss without an issue. Bit of tweaking needed to get it working, but it plays great, very much like an arcade shmup! Hasn't crashed on me since, Stage 4 is one heck of a difficulty leap. o_o

[2D•TRON]

Just read this thread -
Well done all involved!

Nice little story of the game that was once forgot!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Okay, so here's a big snazzy item list/guide thingy since there's like no info for this game anywhere and this game really is super sexy.

Main Weapons/Missiles

You can find these both floating around when breaking open item pods and sitting still in static locations. The ones that float around will not go offscreen when they touch the edge of the screen but will instead bounce around for quite some time and you can let them cycle through their different colours (weapons) or letter (missiles). When you die you lose your missiles, but you keep your main weapon (it seems to get depowered by one level though). To level up your weapon/missile type, collect the same ones in a row, you'll know you're maxed out when you get a score bonus, switching weapon/missile type retains it at whatever power level you were at.

Whatever Main Weapon you have determines which of 3 option shot types you use. I have no idea what the official naming is supposed to be so I just made some up for the time being.



Main Weapons + Option Shot Listed in Cycling Order

Red: Spread Shot + straight (kinda weak, but decent allpurpose weapon)

Blue: Laser + boomerang (fires in 8 way all around your ship when maxed out! lots of coverage, pierces through enemies, slow to fire and damage is weak, good for stages, bad for bosses)

Cyan: Rotating Orbs + slicer (3 way weak spread when maxed out with 5 circling energy balls, the orbs don't block shots but they'll seriously damage anything they touch, so any enemies that try to ram you will get hurt, helpful for bosses too as a lot of bosses launch destroyable objects)

Silver: Homing Laser + boomerang (fires beams that turn at 90 degree angles when they are moving perpendicular to an enemy, they'll even reverse direction in order to hit enemies behind you, can a bit slow but pretty decent overall)

Brown: Torpedo + slicer (hardest weapon to use in the game, great damage but when you launch it phases out of the screen after travelling a certain distance to pass through objects, and will explode after a set distance, at close range you can hold down the shot button and pump them into enemies but at mid to long range you need to let go of the shot button when a phased torpedo is passing through an enemy, letting go of shot will explode any torpedoes currently onscreen, can be used to hit enemies through walls)

Orange: Wave + straight (standard straight shot type, not terribly wide, but does decent damage when you're up close with it)



Missiles Listed in Cycling Order

M: Forward (fires 6 missiles quickly forward when maxed out, quite useful)

H: Homing (fires weak missiles that obviously home in on enemies, not all that great sadly due to low damage)

T: Twin (works similarly to Gradius's missiles, max level fires a pair of missiles vertically that travel along the ceiling/ground until they hit an enemy)

V: Strong Forward (these only fire two missiles when maxed instead of M's six, but it loses the spread in exchange for doing roughly 3 times the damage per missile!, it seems their explosions hit multiple times, probably the best missile to use against bosses)

X: Parachute Bombs (fires bombs that drop downwards slowly and explode when they hit something, probably good damage, but you need to be right above enemies to hit with them)

O: Vertical (works much like T missiles, fires pairs of missiles vertically but they explode when they hit something instead of travelling along the ceiling/ground)



Option Pods

You can pick up and hold a max of two of these, they will block a lot of different bullets/attacks as well as give you additional shots. The type of attack they use depends on what colour main weapon you're using (see above):

Straight: bullets fire in whatever direction your option pods are facing, simple but effective for damage

Boomerang: blue boomerangs shoot out a short distance from the option pod then suddenly lockon and change direction to attack nearby enemies, a tad weak and they'll miss enemies at long range since they don't adjust their direction at all after the lock-on

Slicer: fires streams of crescents that slowly turn to home in on enemies, travels slowly but the streams are made up of lots of individual crescents so it can cut through multiple enemies before the stream dissapears, they have a large turning radius so you need to fire them near enemies for them to actually be effective

You can adjust your Option Pods using the Change button to one of 5 different formations:

Forward (both fire right) -> Backwards (both fire left) -> Front+Back (spins around your ship vertically, one pod fires left, one fires right) -> Controlled (the pods stop spinning, they will shift position when you move left or right, you can angle them diagonally or even vertically with this) -> Rotate (the pods spin around your ship automatically firing in all directions, handy for blocking attacks if you're not sure what's ahead)


Other Items

Bombs: gives you another bomb, you can carry a max of 7, the game throws a ton of them at you in stage 3, they tend to move very erratically and can be difficult to actually pick up, bombing clears the screen of shots but doesn't do that much damage unfortunately, and you get no invulnerability during the short bomb explosion, so don't ram into anything

Shield: looks like a pale white orb surrounding a dark outline of your ship, when shielded you can take 3 hits before it disappears, after taking a hit your ship will glow white for a few seconds, you're totally invulnerable during this time, note that the shield blocks ANY type of damage, even running into a part of the stage or a boss only counts as 1 hit, does not increase your hitbox size like Gradius shields either, very useful, you could ram into a boss or through solid walls with one if you need to

Point Items (Food): stuff like ice cream cones, burgers and bones (?!) appear and seem to be just point items, generally you get points for getting weapon/bomb/shield pickups when you're maxed out too

You seem to get extends every so often based on score, no idea what the extends are at though or if it changes based on difficulty.

[Captain]

Oh look its a new game i never played before that looks freaking awesome.

*grabs and runs*

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Stage 4 boss is rough if you don't have a hard-hitting weapon. Went into it with blue laser, big mistake, its homing orbs take forever to shoot down safely without a good damage weapon like orange. Got beaten up badly. -_-

Oh man, stage 5 is crazy, so many enemies start trying to ram you and the screen gets flooded with shootable bullets. Then the pipes start breaking and the chunks can actually hit you and ohgod it's so hard to pay attention to all the projectiles onscreen, jesus. Managed to get there on a single credit (on default lives/bombs, normal difficulty), but was out of lives early in the stage.

And then there's stage 6 - pure bullshit with fast enemies popping out of walls to ram into you, and the segment before the boss that's pretty much guaranteed to hit you the first time you play since you'll be in the wrong position. You learn the stages or you get fucked, badly. Was credit feeding and the boss ripped me a new one with its super fast circle spreads in a few seconds. Ouch.

[psistwu]

Hello. I am quite familiar with SideLine. Maybe I can share my understanding about the weapon system base on what BareknuckleRoo said.

Primary Weapons
The floating color diamonds are the primary weapons. There are 5 level of it and if you acquire the color as same as you have now, it will be upgraded. Acquiring a different color will change your primary weapon, with the same level you have now. When you die, your primary weapon will be downgraded by 1 level.

Red: Spread Shot + straight (kinda weak, but decent allpurpose weapon)

Actually, when being fully upgraded and hitting enemy in point-blank range, it is powerful.

Blue: Laser + boomerang (fires in 8 way all around your ship when maxed out! lots of coverage, pierces through enemies, slow to fire and damage is weak, good for stages, bad for bosses)

I don't think it's weak. If you can hit the target with two or more laser beams, it makes a lot of damage. Besides, it is able to penetrate enemy's armor if it is not too thick. It is my second choice.

Cyan: Rotating Orbs + slicer (3 way weak spread when maxed out with 5 circling energy balls, the orbs don't block shots but they'll seriously damage anything they touch, so any enemies that try to ram you will get hurt, helpful for bosses too as a lot of bosses launch destroyable objects)

It is useful in some circumstances like level 5. And if you play with another player, it's a good tactic to have one of you choose this as primary weapon.

Silver: Homing Laser + boomerang (fires beams that turn at 90 degree angles when they are moving perpendicular to an enemy, they'll even reverse direction in order to hit enemies behind you, can a bit slow but pretty decent overall)

I would say it's purple.

Brown: Torpedo + slicer (hardest weapon to use in the game, great damage but when you launch it phases out of the screen after travelling a certain distance to pass through objects, and will explode after a set distance, at close range you can hold down the shot button and pump them into enemies but at mid to long range you need to let go of the shot button when a phased torpedo is passing through an enemy, letting go of shot will explode any torpedoes currently onscreen, can be used to hit enemies through walls)

It's my first choice since it's the most powerful primary weapon in the game. In addition to its power and the capability to pass through obstacles, when the a torpedo explodes, it keeps damaging the surrounding enemies for a short time. If you are a skillful player, you'll find this property very helpful. When facing a boss, there is no other choice better than this one, especially the boss in level 6. It kills it in no time. (I really mean it!)

Orange: Wave + straight (standard straight shot type, not terribly wide, but does decent damage when you're up close with it)

Secondary Weapon
The floating letters provide secondary weapons. There are 3 levels of it and it works similarly to primary weapons if you acquire a new letter. However, when you die, you lose your secondary weapon.

M: Forward (fires 6 missiles quickly forward when maxed out, quite useful)

H: Homing (fires weak missiles that obviously home in on enemies, not all that great sadly due to low damage)

T: Twin (works similarly to Gradius's missiles, max level fires a pair of missiles vertically that travel along the ceiling/ground until they hit an enemy)

V: Strong Forward (these only fire two missiles when maxed instead of M's six, but it loses the spread in exchange for doing roughly 3 times the damage per missile!, it seems their explosions hit multiple times, probably the best missile to use against bosses)

X: Parachute Bombs (fires bombs that drop downwards slowly and explode when they hit something, probably good damage, but you need to be right above enemies to hit with them)

O: Vertical (works much like T missiles, fires pairs of missiles vertically but they explode when they hit something instead of travelling along the ceiling/ground)

M: Nested Missile

V: High Explosive Missile

X: Decoy (It makes enemy who is capable to aim aim the decoy instead. But it also damages enemy when they collide each other)

O: High Explosive Bomb

Other Items

Bombs: gives you another bomb, you can carry a max of 7, the game throws a ton of them at you in stage 3, they tend to move very erratically and can be difficult to actually pick up, bombing clears the screen of shots but doesn't do that much damage unfortunately, and you get no invulnerability during the short bomb explosion, so don't ram into anything

You are invulnerable for a short time when you activate a bomb. You can even go though obstacles and walls without any damage. Use them wisely, it may even save your life.


That's all I can think of now. I also made some video recordings for level 1 to 4. You're welcome to watch them if you're interested. Here they are:
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4

[Ghegs]

Just had the game crash on me at the stage 1 boss. Hopefully that's a fluke, I think I might've left my 'core' set to Auto or something, it might not play well with that. Yeah, set CPU to Normal, got through the first boss without an issue. Bit of tweaking needed to get it working

Yep, core needs to be normal, otherwise the game will crash on Stage 1 boss if you fire when he's coming on screen, and Stage 5 boss as well. This was covered in the instructions, even before the modifications.

Nice job on the weapon descriptions, that's the start of an ST right there.

psistwu, good to see you here. He's the guy who tracked down the original producer, so without him this project wouldn't have happened.

[Captain]

Any way to config the keys used in the game?
Using ctrl to shoot is really bad.

[Ghegs]

Any way to config the keys used in the game?

Sure is. Go to dossetup like mentioned in the instructions, under "5. An optional step".

[Gespenst]

Hi, just managed to run the Win95 version on Windows 7 x86.

Basically these are what I've done:
-Get the MSCDEX.exe from here and place it in the game folder, it's required for both MAIN95.exe and MAIN95W.exe
-Set either the MAIN95.exe or MAIN95W.exe (windowed) compatibility to Windows 95
-Mount the bin/cue onto the FIRST CD DRIVE LETTER, i.e if you have more than one virtual drives (let's say, F and G), you must mount it on F. However, if your first CD drive letter is actually a physical CD drive, here's the way to change the drive letter: http://windows.microsoft.com/is-is/wind ... ive-letter

Not sure whether this trick works on x64 OS, but maybe worth trying.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

You are invulnerable for a short time when you activate a bomb.

Really? Oh, I guess that's handy, it's just super short. I was expecting to see your ship turn white or something like when you're hit with a shield, I remember bombing and soon after crashing into those jumping enemies in stage 4 that have tons of health. It's definitely not a very big window, as soon as the blast ring leaves the screen you're open to being hit.

I don't think it's weak. If you can hit the target with two or more laser beams, it makes a lot of damage.

There's a few larger bosses it works well against and the penetrate is nice, but there's also a few bosses with small hitboxes where you won't see nearly as much damage. I like it a lot more now, but it's still horrible for dealing with sections where you need to shoot down a lot of bullets/enemies.

X: Decoy (It makes enemy who is capable to aim aim the decoy instead. But it also damages enemy when they collide each other)

That's really cool! Is this actually a useful weapon? Or does it just tend to make enemy shots go awry and so erratic that it's harder to hit?

I would say it's purple.

It's more of a dark grey orb (I had my brightness up before I think) with grey/slate in the middle of the beams. Not really any purple anywhere in there.

[psistwu]

It's more of a dark grey orb (I had my brightness up before I think) with grey/slate in the middle of the beams. Not really any purple anywhere in there.

In a closer look, I think I agree what you said.

By the way, I have finished whole stages of easy difficulty and put them on YouTube. I think some of you may want to take a look.
SideLine Walkthrough (easy) (spoiler warning)

[Ghegs]

WOW, I had totally left out a rather important part of the instructions when I restructured it and removed the references to virtual drive programs. If anybody still has any problems getting the game running, please don't hesitate to ask.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

In your Sideline Stage 7 walkthrough, look at 0:55-0:56 - see how your homing missiles keep curving down into that pit even after the robot's destroyed? That's because there's a shootable bonus item hidden in there. I found it by accident when I saw my grey lasers tracking it... it's actually a 1up item that's there!

[CStarFlare]

WOW, I had totally left out a rather important part of the instructions when I restructured it and removed the references to virtual drive programs. If anybody still has any problems getting the game running, please don't hesitate to ask.

(I replaced my config with the config you've got on your site) When I try to load jemmex, I still get this error:

Error: XMM already installed

I assume this is why I'm still hitting a brick wall when I try to load "main." Maybe I need to just grab a fresh download of DOSbox - I can't remember if the one I'm using is something I tried setting DOOM up on or if it was installed when I installed Daggerfall from the Elder Scrolls Anthology, but maybe there's some conflict from those uses that I'm to DOS-dumb to understand.

[Iori Branford]

Setting controller to Gravis Gamepad enables 4 buttons. The unassigned one becomes Start.

Calibration of this controller seems unreliable; if Right and Down stop working, set the controller again to recalibrate it.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

(I replaced my config with the config you've got on your site) When I try to load jemmex, I still get this error:

Are you sure you replaced the config file properly? The latest version of Dosbox is silly and looks for its config file by default buried within C:\Users\[USER]\AppData\Local\DOSBox in Win7, and not in its default directory. Also you might need to physically rename the file if it's named something other than dosbox-0.74.conf (I don't know if there's a way to change how DOSBox locates its config file, I've not ever had to set up different config files for games before.)

Okay, I just got that error message to appear by fiddling with my config file: it happens if you try to load Jemmex but it detects that XMS memory is enabled and available, i.e. if you have xms=true in your DOSBox config file. Make sure you have xms=false and ems=false in your config file! You need to disable internal DOSBox handling of xms and ems for Sideline to work. (I tested, Sideline doesn't care if you have umb=true, it runs fine like that I guess.)

The config file ghegs has posted opens weird on my machine in Notepad, it's like a compressed mass of text, it's like the spaces/line breaks were cut out or something or notepad doesn't like its formatting (??).

[CStarFlare]

Tried that and got a little farther than usual. Now, the load fails with a

"MSCDEX not found or function error, abort!"

I'm probably going to just plug in my XP laptop, haha.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

This is because it's looking for a CD drive and isn't finding one. Are you sure you have a CD drive mounted/setup in your config file? If you have the xms & ems thing resolved, all you should need is this [put this at the bottom of your dosbox config file]:

mount C C:\Sideline\ [change it to point to the main directory]
imgmount D "C:\Sideline\sideline.cue" -t iso -fs iso [change it to point to the sideline directory, have the .bin and .cue in there, or just point it to wherever they are]
c:
JEMMEX NOEMS LOAD

then it's just a matter of running the setup files to configure sound and controls and then main to play

[beermat]

...

The config file ghegs has posted opens weird on my machine in Notepad, it's like a compressed mass of text, it's like the spaces/line breaks were cut out or something or notepad doesn't like its formatting (??).

Typical cross-platform newline issue. Linux uses \n, windows uses \r\n. The conf file should look fine in wordpad. Like it would kill them to have notepad accept \n as a newline, it's bugged me and probably thousands of other people for decades

[rfeese]

Tried that and got a little farther than usual. Now, the load fails with a

"MSCDEX not found or function error, abort!"

I'm probably going to just plug in my XP laptop, haha.

I had the same error. (I'm on Linux by the way) I think this may be due to filename case sensitivity related to the .bin file and contents of the .cue file. I renamed sideline.BIN to sideline.bin and edited sideline.cue (it is a text file) to reference sideline.bin. Then I was able to run the game without any problems.

Another thing I noticed is that the game tries to create a swap file on the C drive, so you will need to have a C drive mounted in dosbox for that to work.

[PooshhMao]

So, very nearly ten years later after posting this, I finally got it working nicely.
Awesome. Thanks very much for all the help involved, especially Ghegs.

I'd say this is the best DOS shmup. Raptor, Tyrian and Stargunner are fine and dandy, but have 'western-developed' written all over them. This could very well have been a competent early 90's arcade shmup by a Japanese developer.

Bit of a pain in the ass to get up and running - any chance the original developer could provide us with <dreaming> the original source code<\dreaming> a nocd patch?

Not that he owes us.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Was working toward the 1CC on this. I'm close on Normal, I just have to manage the serious difficulty spike in Stages 5 & 6. I tried out Hard to see what changes... Sadly all enemies have health increased, which makes some much more difficult to kill and keep from overwhelming he screen. The start of Stage 6 feels harder than anything else in the game (Stage 7 is super easy by comparison with the shield weapon).

Maybe I just can't figure it out, but I struggle to avoid getting rammed from behind while killing the giant hopping enemies in a timely fashion.

[Ghegs]

Cool that you're still working on the game. I trust you're going to make a 1CC video when you get it? Very easy to do with DOSBox, though I recall the game's cutscenes and gameplay are at different resolutions which means DOSBox will make separate video files of them upon recording, but putting them back together is easypeasy.

[donluca]

Read through all the thread. Incredible read, fascinating, to say the least. Well done to everyone involved!

I'll have to try it one of these days.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Cool that you're still working on the game. I trust you're going to make a 1CC video when you get it? Very easy to do with DOSBox, though I recall the game's cutscenes and gameplay are at different resolutions which means DOSBox will make separate video files of them upon recording, but putting them back together is easypeasy.

Yeah, I noticed that when I was recording that it made a whole bunch of AVI files. I've been subjecting myself needlessly to Hard difficulty. Stage 4 is doable for me but usually eats some bombs, but the damn things in stage 5 that fill the screen with bullets fire so quickly that combined with the chunks from the exploding pipes, that runs go downhill fast. The start of stage 6 I think requires the red weapon ideally (to hit the enemies from behind while killing everything else). It's tough, because the game tends to fill the screen with weapon pickups, which can be disastrous if you grab one you don't want at a bad time. I'll hopefully get a recording up soon though!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Has anyone managed to 1CC this yet? I'm currently writing a game discussion guide in depth, having managed to find two 1UP items in the game. The final boss of the game is brutally tanky and comes with an insanely hard final form. I've gotten up to the final boss so haven't quite recorded a clear yet, but I see the game also loops, so I've also got to discover if the game infinitely loops like a Konami style game, if it only has a second loop with a TLB or something, etc.

Also Ghegs, it looks like your website for the game's down. The text of the site is still available on archive.org at least but we'll have to get the game uploaded and available elsewhere on other sites hosting MS-DOS freeware games.

[Ghegs]

Also Ghegs, it looks like your website for the game's down. The text of the site is still available on archive.org at least but we'll have to get the game uploaded and available elsewhere on other sites hosting MS-DOS freeware games.

Ah yeah, I changed the provider for my site a while back and have been lazy about putting some things back up. I'll try to put Sideline back in later this week.