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Latest Comments by Hamish
Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer - Part 5: Quaking in My Boots
1 Apr 2021 at 6:02 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: CybolicThe Frogger soundtrack you say? Hmmm, not sure it has quite enough mummy vibes :P
The 1997 version of Frogger is a beautiful game with excellent graphics that lean into the technological limitations of the time to achieve something very stylish, and the music is amazing. With any other game though the result is hilarious. :tongue:

It is just a shame the difficulty leaves it next to unplayable. Broadening the levels beyond a single screen would work fine but you need to have checkpoints after each frog for it to work. I am going off on a tangent now though.

Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer - Part 5: Quaking in My Boots
1 Apr 2021 at 5:39 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: CybolicI do remember thinking that some of the tracks were odd choices for some of the expansion levels (at the time, I didn't know they had their own soundtracks).
Yeah, for Scourge of Armagon at least the Trent Reznor music does not really fit, but the Jeehun Hwang soundtrack can charitably be described as generic at best. I got well into Dominion of Darkness before I learned that it had its own music, but at least I was able to unlock the secret levels when replaying it.

I was using a Windows Quake CD for the music as the Linux box is best kept as a collectible, but now I am using burned discs from the ripped cue sheets included with the GOG.com release. I have also seen it play with the Quake II CD as well as the 1997 Hasbro version of Frogger. Ribbit. :wink:

Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer - Part 5: Quaking in My Boots
30 Mar 2021 at 6:24 pm UTC

Quoting: damarrinHamish, I have a Voodoo card I can send your way if you promise to send it back sometime this century.
At this point I am hesitant to take responsibility for anyone's hardware but my own but I appreciate the offer. I would be too nervous about it getting damaged, no matter how careful I am.

For the past month I have been trying to get one article out every Monday, but that is probably going to become more sporadic from here as I will actually need time to play the games in order to write about them. As the temperature goes up so does my workload, but I will keep writing as I can.

Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer - Part 5: Quaking in My Boots
30 Mar 2021 at 12:12 am UTC

Quoting: GuestJust out of curiosity, does red hat from then come with tux racer? Not sure if that was mentioned in a previous post, so forgive me if it was.
Yep, it is installed along with the regular GNOME games.

I would not put too much stock in the FPS numbers reported by Quake but it does serve as a rough comparison. You almost never get exactly the same result twice from a timedemo just a ballpark.

Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer - Part 5: Quaking in My Boots
29 Mar 2021 at 6:30 pm UTC

Anybody wanting to try my shell script can download the following:
http://icculus.org/~hamish/dianoga/quake-glx-launch.sh [External Link]

Those needing the libglide2x.so library can use this link:
http://icculus.org/~hamish/dianoga/libglide2x.so [External Link]

And my raw Quake timedemo data can be found here:
http://icculus.org/~hamish/dianoga/quake-timedemos.txt [External Link]

If you are using Sawfish as your window manager with GNOME I found that choosing either the "simple" or "mono" themes from the Appearance settings and changing the colour of active frames to be black worked well for faking full screen.

What have you been playing recently, come tell your thoughts
28 Mar 2021 at 3:34 am UTC Likes: 1

Finally trying my hand at some of the Mission Packs for Quake, and Scourge of Armagon has been impressing me so far. Honestly finding it to be a pleasant break after I slogged through the original four id Software episodes in preparation for my next article. Levelord does not disappoint.

EDIT: A little disappointed to learn that Scourge of Armagon has a new soundtrack which was not included with the retail Quake: The Offering package. I might be able to burn my own disc from the GOG.com version to use though.

Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer - Part 4: Installing Red Hat Linux 7.3
24 Mar 2021 at 6:50 am UTC

Quoting: DigitalSinEverything about SuSE back then is superior, it's so heavily modified compared to other distros at the time, i.e. the kernel and XFree86 ... 7.3 had a real animated bootup that is superior to even today standards. Check it out!
While I am not opposed to possibly playing with other distributions at some point, you are trying to sell this to a guy who is not even running a display manager on his modern Arch Linux machine. :whistle:

Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer - Part 4: Installing Red Hat Linux 7.3
23 Mar 2021 at 5:43 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: kneekooNice! :D Also update the link to this article in the previous one.
You always forget something. Fixed now.

Quoting: x_wingNice update. Regarding the driver problems you mention, couldn't they be related to your Mesa version? Maybe the regressions are not related to the kernel.
It almost certainly is a problem in Mesa, which is what got me using Fedora Legacy in the first place as I wanted to see if the issues were fixed in an update for Red Hat Linux 9.

Regardless, I am better off sticking with Valhalla or any other distribution with a glibc older than version 2.3 for the best compatibility with Loki games.

Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer - Part 4: Installing Red Hat Linux 7.3
22 Mar 2021 at 10:13 pm UTC

Quoting: BumadarShogo: Mobile Armor Division I completely forgot about that game. Wonder how it held up over all those years.
Well, I am biased as Shogo is a personal favourite of mine. My brother and I were actually gifted a signed piece of concept art by Monolith Productions as part of their 20th anniversary celebrations. It was also the first game I won with the Rage 128 Pro from the Windows 98 installation along with Blood II.

Quoting: BumadarCreative cd drives where never great, well not that I can remember, so the LG is a good move
The irony is it was the Creative drive that first caught my eye at the dump as it helped betray the age of the computer. Throws the colour off now too since the LG is not nearly as yellowed as the rest of the front of the case.

I had another earlier LG CD-ROM drive from 2003 I could have used but since I was off period anyway I figured I might as well go for more functionality.

Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer - Part 4: Installing Red Hat Linux 7.3
22 Mar 2021 at 6:45 pm UTC Likes: 1

Just in case anyone is interested I have prepared a guide for installing the Fedora Legacy updates on Red Hat Linux 7.3 Valhalla:
http://icculus.org/~hamish/dianoga/fedora-legacy-valhalla [External Link]