Psychotron And Co.

Posted on February 15, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

There’s one more Windows-based interactive movie on my list that I have neglected up to this point: Psychotron. To be fair, it’s actually just a demo that came on a disc with several other demos and 2 full games published by the same company (Merit Software). I vividly remember when I first picked up this title along with 19 others. I perused the multimedia on the CD-ROM, as is my custom. This demo had a number of Cinepak-encoded AVI videos. Videos that are pretty much on the bottom rung of all FMV I have experienced. Seriously, watching this junk almost made me snap and scrap this entire multimedia hobby if it meant I wouldn’t have to watch this kind of nonsense ever again.

How bad is it? First, the tracking lines. Yes, tracking lines. If I were to piece together their game-making process, I would have to assume that they filmed their actors with a tape-based videocamera and then replayed the video in a VCR hooked up to digital capture equipment. They most likely cued the tape in the right place, paused, started the capture gear, and unpaused the VCR. Thus, most videos seem to start with tracking bars.

Then there’s the actual content of the videos. The demo included scenes where you’re trying to get information from a mega-geek in a cemetary and from some mobsters at their poker game. Now, I have to admit that I’m an extremely poor judge of the acting craft. Generally, I can only spot bad acting if it’s really bad, especially wooden acting. These people play their characters as the most extreme stereotypes imaginable for nerds and Italian gangsters. I have edited together 7 videos (first 2 are the geek, last 5 are at the mobsters’ poker table) for your review:

Good acting? Bad acting? Overacting? Like I say, I’m no expert. But I’m not sure if I believe certain whiplash transitions like when the head mobster’s frustration turns to a calm resolve to cap you.

The Psychotron demo is a Windows app (MobyGames reports a DOS version but this demo is for Windows). It doesn’t work in native XP or Windows 95/VMware. Color me surprised. It looks like I will need to find a way to install Windows 3.1 (either on a real machine, via VMware, or through DOSBox) sooner or later to handle a number of games. I would still like to get a glimpse of how this game actually plays. I think this would be a great candidate for my I-movie engine re-implementation brainstorm, especially when I studied the directory structure and found dozens of straight text files that are shown in the game. Simple data structure; that’s what I’m guessing. From a spot check of some of the text files, I learned that the president of the United States in this game’s universe is Richard Marx.

I want to play some new game this evening. There is plenty to choose from on the disc. Here’s the menu:

Selection Menu for a bunch of Merit-published titles

I think I’ll check out that DOS-based full Blade Warrior game. Err, no I won’t. It crashes DOSBox (0.65). For giggles, I tried it in the WinXP command prompt. “Program too big to fit in memory.”

Let’s check out the demo for Isle Of The Dead. This works quite a bit better. The game is from 1993 and is sort of a one-off of Wolfenstein 3D. Your plane crash-landed on an island that happens to be infested with zombies. Explore around the island’s perimeter which is quite safe. Pick up your basic items (health, shotgun & shells, coconuts). You’ll get stuck pretty quick if you don’t use your machete to find just the right spot on the wall of vegetation in order to break through to where the real action is. The deadly action. The deadly, undead action. The nearly impossible-to-get-2-meters-into-the-jungle deadly undead action. One moment, you’re looking at this:

Isle Of The Dead -- Facing off with a zombie

The next moment, the zombie gang is tearing you to pieces (FMV! Flic files):

Okay, I’m pleased to say that I actually played a game today. So this is just the demo of Isle Of The Dead. According to this old review of the game, the full version cost $70! That’s not Canadian dollars, either– 214 is in Texas.

Skateboard Park Tycoon, Part 2

Posted on February 13, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

I told you I would revisit that Skateboard Park Tycoon game. I thought tonight would be a good night to do that thanks to the resoundingly dull experience with last night’s sim, Restaurant Empire (which, to be fair, I will probably revisit as well because I just feel that it should get better). There was at least one facet of SBPT that I had not yet experienced and that was the actual skateboarding action. Before I got into that, I wanted to try my hand at a new game and build from scratch with a fresh cash allotment.

There are three properties to choose from at the start, differing in quantity of real estate. There are also three difficulty levels to choose from: Easy starts you with $50K, medium is $10K, and hard is a measly $5K. It’s a good thing I started on easy again since once my park really got rolling, it seemed to hover in the neighborhood of $35K.

One of my first projects was to lovingly craft this monstrosity:

Skateboard Park Tycoon skating monstrosity

It looks sort of neat but scarcely any skater wanted anything to do with it, save for the platform on the lower left corner of the picture. That was an expensive lesson learned for when I start a new game.

5 days into my park’s operation, my first skater showed up. I’m not sure how that compares with my last game when I wasn’t really watching (and when I thought the skater was a mouse and tried to squish it). I sprinkled a variety of support structures all around the park which seem to satisfy the customer base. I also used the zoom feature (via the mouse scroll wheel) — something I discovered late in the game during the previous investigation — to great effect which allows me to have much more control over placement of objects. I created a network of railings of varying elevations in one corner platform which saw a fair amount of use. I also created what I would later refer to as the pain pit:

Ironically, this actually fulfills my initial goal laid out in my first SBPT post– to make sk8rs hurt. It seems to be immensely popular despite the fact that about 95% of the patrons go flying off into the pile you see on the right side of the picture. They dust themselves off and, like moths to the flame, come back for more.

But I finally started to hit my stride when I constructed this attraction:

I forget what it’s called, but I was careful to make it in 2 sizes because the manual emphasized that you needed to cater to a variety of skill levels. Indeed, these structures saw significant use. Another statistic the game provides is how much patronage each skating structure is receiving.

With much apprehension, it was finally time to try skating. Just like the main simulation part of the game, I wish I had tried the skateboarding portion earlier.

It’s not so scary after all! Actually, it’s extremely rewarding to be able to skate around and explore the park that you have carefully crafted using this 3D perspective. Above is my commandeered skater about to head up the ramp to the popular skating structure. I didn’t have time to try much in the way of tricks. I guess I can look forward to devoting at least one more gaming evening to this title.

Restaurant Empire

Posted on February 12, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

I’m doing something unusual because it’s my blog, my experiment, and because I can: I’m playing a game for which I don’t need to gather data for MobyGames. I bought Restaurant Empire some years ago with the honorable intention of actually playing it. Tonight I finally tried.

I figured that my experience with Skateboard Park Tycoon should have prepared me for this virtual restaurant simulator. True, it did help me get into the genre and pump me up in anticipation of this game. But in the end, it just turned out to be completely dull. I’m not sure what I was expecting exactly. I think that maybe I got the impression from the jewel case copy that the game also served as a database of the 180 recipes that you had at your disposal at various junctures of the game.

The game’s story (I didn’t realize simulation games needed those) is that you were inspired to attend chef school by helping out in the kitchen of your uncle’s fancy-schmancy Parisian restaurant. After graduating with honors, you visit the uncle to learn that he retired from the restaurant business 4 years prior. And that he has retained ownership of the piece of prime Parisian real estate and has essentially left it uninhabited for that duration. See, it seems that OmniFood — apparently the Electronic Arts of the gourmet food biz — is gobbling up the gourmet restaurant market. Our determined, yet inexperienced chef, sets out to challenge OmniFood and set up a competing empire.

The first step in this grand master plan is to — sigh — decorate the interior of the old restaurant that your uncle says you can now run. SimInteriorDecorator. What can I tell you? This just isn’t what I was hoping for in any video game in this experiment. I mean, it’s not as bad as an I-movie, don’t get me wrong. But when I have to choose between a rosewood side table and a redwood center table and decide where to put it, that just doesn’t mesh with my personal gaming tastes, and you know that I’m willing to put up with a lot for the sake of this project.

At first I was a little concerned when I could not locate the game’s manual. But that’s no matter since the game has a thoroughly hand-holding spoken tutorial to guide you through every aspect of the game. On balance, I think I preferred SBPT’s approach of just letting you have at it and trying all the buttons until you gradually figure things out. This game is every bit as micromanaged as SBPT, though, right down to the different fonts used for the header vs. contents of the menu you must lovingly assemble. I chose stuffed peppers for the main course of my menu, something that has a cost of $1.04 but retails for $16. Impressive. But that’s because there are plenty of other costs involved in running this restaurant. Like a $20K booze license if I should want to serve the stuff.

Maybe one day I’ll get back to this one, perhaps after I have given Skateboard Park Tycoon a more thorough examination.

I took a brief look through the data files installed onto the hard drive — I was curious what was occupying ~650 MB of disk space. There are many straightforward text files which merely contain scripts in some language I don’t quite recognize. I imagine it’s some proprietary matter. The scripts define object movements and placements and even dialog trees (more like dialog trunks since they don’t branch in any meaningful way). Here’s the script file labeled ‘Explode.txt’:

ParticleSystem "CandleFlame" 1.00
{
   Position = XYZ(0, 0, 0)

   EventSequence "BOOM"
   {
      LifeTime = 1
      EmitRate = 1500
      EmitRadius = XYZ(random(-5,5), random(-5,5), random(-5,5))
      Gravity = XYZ(0, 0, 0)
      Texture = "P_Glow_01"
      NumParticles = 100

      Initial Velocity = XYZ(random(-20,20), random(-20,20), random(-20,20))
      Initial Size = 10
      Initial Color = RGBA(255, 255, 255, 230)

      Fade So At 1 Size = 1

      Fade So At 0.25 Color = RGBA(Random(245,255), Random(111,121), Random(111,121), 180)
      Fade So At 0.5 Color = RGBA(Random(245,255), Random(53,63), Random(53,63), 125)
      Fade So At 0.7 Color = RGBA(Random(245,255), Random(53,63), Random(53,63), 60)
      Fade So At 1 Color = RGBA(110, 81, 253, 0)

      Fade So At 0.25 Velocity = XYZ(random(-50,50), random(-50,50), random(-50,50))
      Fade So At 0.5 Velocity = XYZ(random(-70,70), random(-70,70), random(-70,70))
      Fade So At 0.7 Velocity = XYZ(random(-100,100), random(-100,100), random(-100,100))

   }

}

Further, there is an anim/ directory that has pairs of files: the first has a .am2 extension and the second has a .am3 extension. The .am2 file is large (megabytes) and the .am3 file is small (kilobytes). I postulate that the latter is an index into FMV-type compressed data stored in the former. But quick exams of both file types reveal that they are more likely to be 3D engine data.

Safari Kongo

Posted on February 11, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

Safari Kongo sounds like another nice, lighthearted, kid-targeted, educational title. I was negligent not to notice the eGames logo on what looks like an OEM bundle CD-ROM. You may recognize the company name if you have ever perused the cheap CD-ROM section at a computer store. I have had a not-entirely-pleasant experience with one of their games so far. A game called Kid Mystic promised to be a delightful, possibly Zelda-type adventure. I’ll never be able to tell for sure since I have never, ever gotten it to run on any kind of actual Windows system, emulated Windows system (WINE), or virtualized Windows system (VMware). I’m a little more paranoid due to the fact that installing the game leaves behind some suspicious, spyware-looking files.

The game offers localization for U.S. English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, offering a small clue about where it was marketed. Safari Kongo also has video configuration options to select between 3Dfx Voodoo or Banshee cards, software rendering, or “other card”. The instructions claim that it is an OpenGL game. So why does the game complain that it can’t find a adequate version of Microsoft DirectX installed and then bail? At least I collected a splash screen:

The story of the game is that you are on safari with your significant other who is abducted by an uncannily Donkey Kong-looking monkey. Rescue him/her (configurable gender) before dinner time (the primate’s dinner time). It’s a colorful, 3D jumping adventure (according to the screenshots in the online help manual) featuring exceptionally little violence in keeping with eGames’ company charter. The game also looks to be written in Visual Basic (OpenGL libraries for VB? why not).

So I run Spybot Search & Destroy for good measure. It seems that there is a file called tsad.dll that was coincidentally installed right around the same time this morning that I installed Safari Kongo. tsad.dll is Conducent TimeSink, a module that spyware tracking sites claim is a conduit for tracking user behavior and delivering targeted ad campaigns. After I fight with the game long enough, I go ahead and remove the module. This causes the game to throw the following error on startup: “Run-time error ’53’: File not found: Addon2VB.DLL”.

Artrageous!

Posted on February 10, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

Artrageous! is a game that has held my curiosity since I first inventoried it from an eBay lot of 50 cheap CD-ROMs. The first order of business is to determine whether or not the disc actually qualifies as a game and can be entered into MobyGames. Flipping through the manual that accompanied the game reveals that there are a few little activities that specifically contain ‘game’ in the title. This fact unequivocally entitles the disc a spot in the MobyGames database. Let’s go.

The game launches into a little pre-rendered virtual reality plaza where your guide, Pim, explains all about Artrageous!. He makes the case that the CD-ROM offers incredible value over a physical museum visit because you are encouraged to touch and play with the art. There is a database hall with a huge cross-referenced database of artists and their works (as well as the museums that presently hold the works; BTW, the credits for this title are looooooong). For learning activities, there are areas branching from the plaza that discuss color, light, perspective, composition, and the life of art.

Color! I know color from all of my years of working with computer multimedia technology, or I thought I did. I strike out in search of some game that will make this title worthy of entry into the great gaming database.

Here is a color mixing game where you have to mix various levels of primary colors to produce the specified color. What colorspace? Blue-red-yellow, apparently, which I am unfamiliar with. So many colorspaces. I know RGB and YUV best, with a little CMYK. The game explains that this is the famous hue/saturation a.k.a. HSV/HSB colorspace that I have heard of, so I feel a little more grounded. To that end, the game is quite interesting in its challenge of building an HSV color wheel, piece by piece.

There’s another color-related game about color and music. You are shown Composition VII by Kardinsky which is supposed to represent a cacophony of sounds via its use of color. You can click on any part of the painting to hear what sounds stand in for colors. Deep blue represents a hit from Bach’s Tocatta. White is a heavenly sound. Black has nothingness associated with it. Yellow stands for birds chirping. There is no real goal so this falls more into the category of interactive learning activity vs. game.

Another color-related activity shows a world map with color pointers set up at various locations. Clicking on one reveals what special meanings that different cultures have traditionally attached to different colors (e.g., Washington D.C., USA values green, China mourns in white).

The Mona Lisa seems to figure prominently in the lighting category of activities. The narrator starts by explaining that it “has been used to bludgeon generations of art students.” Hey, the rest of us ordinary, non-art-appreciating mortals haven’t exactly been spared the beating either. Another art minigame, Creating Light, shows a canvas with a mish-mash of shapes (including the Mona Lisa). Your task is to click on one of the icons on the left sidebar which brings up the outline of some shape on the canvas. Drag the outline and place it on its appropriate shape. Alternatively, gaze at the image and figure out how many objects are hidden inside.

If you complete the game, you can go another round with the same objects on a different canvas.

The perspective section contained an interesting minigame. A bunch of objects floated around a room drawn with a 3D vanishing perspective. You have a certain time limit under which you must drag each object into more appropriate places in the room based on their relative perspectives. The game also allowed you to display a vanishing perspective grid to help you along if necessary.

There was an odd game about the golden proportion. I think it belonged to the composition section. This was the first time I had heard of the Greek notion that the perfect artistic ratio is 1:1.6. There was a minigame that has you identifiying as many golden proportioned pieces of a picture as you could within a certain time limit.

Finally, in the life of art section, there is a game which is essentially a basic jigsaw puzzle, only with all square pieces:

There are 3 difficulty levels which configure how many seconds you get to put all the pieces in the right places — easiest is 70 seconds, hardest is 30.

There was a lot of information and activities on offer in Artrageous!. I’m glad I chose to tackle this title on a Saturday as I enjoyed being able to devote a reasonable amount of time to exploring the various activities.

Creatures Adventures

Posted on February 9, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

I’m laying off the interactive movies until such time that I feel motivated to work on a non-PC system. So now for something completely different. How about a kids’ game called Creatures Adventures? All I had to go on for this game was a bare CD-ROM, received in a large CD-ROM lot, with pictures of some fairly creepy little creatures. These little guys are just goofy enough that I have to assume that the game is for kids.

I have little to work with so I jump right in and see what’s going on. The game installs without incident and has a movie you can play from the install dialog. I would upload it to YouTube but it’s a Bink file which is not yet supported by the service. The movie is an overly long sequence showing the creatures tediously spelling out the word “creatures” using a variety of weird methods and coincidences. I think this approach would work fine if the word in question was at most 4 letters long, but no longer. The final letter is launched via a special letter-launching weapon using a makeshift sniper scope, always a nice touch for a kids’ game:

There’s really no exposition when I begin playing the game. I start off in a baby’s cradle room where there are a few eggs on the floor, a cradle, and about a hundred other things to interact with. I click on one of the eggs and drag it to the cradle. A few moments later the egg hatches to reveal one of the little beasts who immediately toddles out of the room. I hatch the second egg as well. That’s when I realize I’m expected to take care of these little demonspawn.

I did a little googling and it seems that the eponymous creatures are members of a debatably adorable race called norns. The educational opportunities afforded by this game are listed as “taking care of others”, according to Amazon.com’s entry. Somehow, I don’t think playing this game would qualify you as a nanny.

Oh my, there’s a lot going on here. Where to start? There are up to four wee norns and you can quickly switch between them using the four bubbles on top. You micromanage their affairs and presumably try to keep them out of trouble (though I couldn’t find any immediate threats to their health and, yeah, I looked). You can dress them, feed them, advise them where to enthusiastically wander next, and even drag them around as you see fit. While the norn brat is exploring the world, you can click on nearly anything you see in order to interact with it. I rather enjoyed the above magical forest, dark and foreboding though it was, since most everything was a musical instrument of some sort. Groovy. Unfortunately, the purple norn pictured wandered into a castle (or maybe I told her to go there, I’m not sure) and was immediately presented with the most hated (by me) tile-based puzzle:

I despise these so much. It’s probably just me (in fact, I know it is), but I have never been able to solve one of these. The very same puzzle stopped me dead in my tracks while playing Resident Evil 4 in a way that no mutant zombie boss monster possibly could. So I pretty much left the purple norn to her own devices, who eventually dozed off, and went to monitor the green norn who, though young, was smart enough not to wander into forests where there are dragons quite visible in the background.

There are two omnipresent… things… floating wherever you go in this game. First is the horn with a firecracker strapped to it in the upper left quadrant of the screen. Clicking on this seems to swoop down a quickly shower the current norn. The mosquito-looking creature in the upper right quadrant swoops in and apparently entertains the norn briefly. Easily amused.

The game is quite the visual treat though I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, nor what the end goal was. One of the more interesting areas I meandered into had a wooden ramp up to a platform. On top of the platform was a bell. When rung, the bell summons a horse-drawn emergency medical center. Maybe this would have been useful if I could have hurt my norn somehow, likely inadvertently. There are also night-day transitions and weather. Norns don’t seem to like getting wet.

Lastly, I noticed that the game has extensive parental controls available. Parents can actually set per-child playing limits and bedtime. Just imagine that someone had to test this stuff.

Hmm, I just noticed that there is a help file installed along with this game; might have been useful an hour ago.

See also:

Creatures Adventures Revisited, where I played this game after reading the manual

At MobyGames:

Creatures Adventures

Gaming Pathology

Piles Of Games, Copious Free Time, No Standards

Category: Windows Games