2015-01-18 18:23:16

To be honest guys now pcs games are being converted.
piter that game rocked by the way, I do want the shooting range it was about the only game I had managed to play to some extent in my dos system when in transition mode.
Gees, You know something guys, when tom ward first put out that we should have games converted, I thought especially since I was a dos pureist, I don't really care for this.
Piter, as for dos, why freedos exactly?
My reason is this.
I do have somewhere images of dos 6.22 hanging round, you can emulate a 386 sx unit with 4mb ram maybe 8 or 12 or whatever with mono or basic colour graphics and I'd be happy but I have no idea how to make these into well image files they are on source disks.
I do have a torrent of old operating systems, from demonoid, however to be honest those were one off the things that went in my last hard drive crash.
ms also had I think freely available to, the last dos 7.10 from windows 98 as freeware, however, dos over 6.22 bar fat32 support had the issue that ms were already cutting out a lot of the bits and bobs in the os.
I can help you with games more importantly a few extras depending on the bios you could emulate.
The specs I had were 4mb ram 386sx mono screen with optional colour.
My box could go to 12mb of ram if expanded I had 80mb of hard drive space, fat 16 drives can be up to 2gb of disk space before having to go to fat 32.
there are a lot of sites supposed to host dos 7.1 on them
http://www.syschat.com/download60.html&act=down
that's one of them its supposed to be virus free.
There was apparently an original site for this which had the original image and os.
Sadly, this has the full setup, Norton, and a whole of extra stuff, drivers, programs and utilities.
Now, after searching the Linux and other places I have found for old games an internet archive page of all of them.
and I have also found the old much loved especially in my university days disk imager rawwrite.
So if you want any of my disks that are not in the huge game list of stuff I put up on the audyssey list, in which I have quemm and other things, I will give you.
I can give you my collection of disks.
Though thinking of that now, I can probably give you my collection of disks that are including the bootable images of some of the dos and other things as soon as I can dig up my floppy drive that is.

2015-01-18 19:31:51

Petermach,
Thanks for adding the classic PCS sounds.
I do like yours better.
Your idea of playing the full sound of the wall being cleared is great!
I checked and both the screen reader and the DOS/Windows self voicing version had the same 8 bit 11 k sound files.
The only difference was adding the instructions recorded by Joan in 8 bit 22k wav format.
One problem I found, Jaws does not allow me to use the arro keys to switch from modern to classic mode.
I have to first remove Jaws as it grabs the arrow keys and doesn't allow me to change the settings.
Adding c for classic and m for modern in the choice menu, will fix the problem.

2015-01-18 20:15:44

@crashmaster
Freedos is, well, free and similar enough to real dos that we won't be running into compatibility issues. It also has the advantage of being open-source, so if I ever decide to make a premade mess configuration that has dos, a configured screen reader (probably JAWS because, again, it's free and it also supports the soundblaster TTS in case the dectalk idea fails), plus a couple of games, there's going to be a smaller chance of running into trouble. On the other hand somehow I doubt microsoft is going to care either way and I can get just about every version of dos, including 6.22 from archive.org under the mess software collection.

<Insert passage from "The Book Of Chrome" here>

2015-01-18 23:23:40

Hello,
@pitermach and phil: I'd love to see more conversions of games, in fact someone was playing Panzas in north africa, on Teamtalk and that would be an interesting conversion. Also, what was the PCS car racing circuit like?

2015-01-19 00:15:57

This is such a nostalgia trip for me. I'm enjoying this game a lot.
I too would like to see some more of the old games get a rewrite. Of course, the one I really want to see is Shooting Range, but I know that Phil intends to do a major overhaul on that at some point. Still, I remember spending many, many afternoons blowing up propane tanks, and rescuing that poor cat from the trash bag. At least, I prefer to think I was rescuing it, although it sounded as though you mortally wounded it when you hit the bag, so who knows, lol.
Either way, Breakout was my second favorite of the old PCS games, so I'm ecstatic to be able to play it again.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2015-01-19 02:02:10

@Aaron,
Here is the instructions for:
P C S CAR RACING CIRCUIT
PRODUCED BY
PCS GAMES
WRITTEN BY
CARL MICKLA
SOUNDS BY
PHIL VLASAK
VERSION 1.1
COPYRIGHT 1997

Feel the sweat run down your back wile you try to control your
super charged computer down the straight away towards the next
critical turn. Will you make it or will it be curtains?
you can race your car against opponents on five different tracks.
you use your ear and hand skills to successfully navigate a turn.
You are being challenged by 25 of the
world's best drivers and if you beat the record score, your name is
saved.  Go out there and make them smell your exhaust and let them
hear your tires squeal.

OPTION MENU
You may use your up and down arrow keys to check out all the
choices.  Hit the ENTER key to select your choice.
The first option is Examine TRACK RECORDS. 
There are two short and three long races.  The two short races are
two lap qualifiers.  One track is an oval and the other is a figure
eight.  The three long races are two ten lappers of the oval and
figure eight, and the other is a road race course twelve and one
half miles long.

     After you make a course choice you will be at the starting
line, your engine will start.  Then hold down the CONTROL or alt
key and the UP arrow key to shift gears until you hear the car pick
up speed. 

LETTER HOT KEYS
Letter hot keys can do the jobs of control, arrow, and function keys.
For example, the 'G' or 'g' keys will do the job of the control
plus up arrow keys in shifting gears.
You need to do this whenever your speed gets to low and you need to
gather speed quickly.  When your engine sounds like it is at a
comfortable speed.  Take your finger off the control and arrow keys
or g key.  Once you have your speed up
to a level you like then do not use the control or alt or g key.
After a threshold is met the control or alt or g key has no more
effect than the up arrow or f keys. 

FASTER AND SLOWER KEYS
As you press the up arrow key or f key you will hear a series of
tones from the PC speaker to represent the speed of your car. 
     The up and down arrow keys or f and s keys are used to control
the speed. Up arrow or f key makes the car go faster and down arrow
or s key makes the car go slower. 

Using the right and left arrow keys or r and l keys will allow you
to turn right or left.

The space bar is the break, and will slow you up quickly. 

     While you're traveling, you will hear a single high pitch tone
and the word LEFT or RIGHT. This is a warning telling you that a
turn is coming up and you will have to negotiate a left or right
turn. The turn is successfully navigated by listening for three
quick high tones, and turning by hitting the appropriate arrow key
or l or r key.
A safe turn is navigated when you hit the arrow key or l or r key
on tone two, three, or four after the three high tones. We suggest
that you experiment on a qualifying race at a slow speed because
the time to hit the arrow key or letter key to turn depends on the
speed you are going. If you hit the
arrow key or letter key one tone after the third high tone you will
be on the track shoulder early in the turn. If you hit the arrow
key or letter key at the fifth tone after the third high tone, you
will be on the shoulder
late in the turn. If you are on the shoulder you will have a speed
loss and hear a bump sound. If you miss the safe or shoulder zones
you will crash. 

DASH BOARD GAGES:
You can use the function keys or number keys as your dash board. 
F1 or 1 key will display the help screen. 
Note, this will pause the action of the game.
Hitting any key will resume it. 
F2 or 2 key will allow you to change the sound settings. 
F4 or 4 key tells you what lap you're on. 
F5 or 5 key is your speedometer in miles per hour. 
F6 or 6 is a clock, how much time has past since the race started.
F7 or 7 key tells you how far you have traveled in the race. 
F8 or 8 key gives the time difference between you and your nearest
opponent.
F10 or 0 key will allow the game to work better with braille
displays.  This feature toggles on or off, and your last setting is
saved to disk at the end of the race.  The next time you race, your
setting will be used.  This feature does two things.  It leaves the
cursor on the word of choice in the menu, and adds a punctuation
mark to represent your speed and the pc speaker tone during the
race.  With a braille display you will get a dash for a normal
tone, and an equals sign for a high tone.

Now go and smell the gas and rubber, you will be running so close
together, clawing for every tenth of a second, running closer
wheel-to-wheel than you ever have before.

2015-01-19 06:32:28

Personally, sinse I only got involved with audiogames in december of 2005, I never played any of Phil's dos games as they weren't on his site at that point, so I'd love to see some remakes as what I've heard about several sounds really intreaguing. So, more remakes would be cool!

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2015-01-19 10:45:38

wow, Phil! I didn't know such awesome games were made in dos. Mainly because my English was so bad this time so I couldnt navigate websites on my own. So I only played lots of Danish text based games. smile

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
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2015-01-19 17:31:57

If there's anything I plan on rewriting next, it's probably shooting range. My 3 most favourite games were, in no particular order, that, breakout and Panzers in north africa which is the one I logged the most time in I think. However, as much as I'd like to write a faithfull windows conversion I don't think I could do it accurately as I'm not sure how the various calculations worked in that game which is why I'm still planning on working on that dos emulation project. On the programming front, I'll probably release a 3rd version of breakout that lets you use I and K in addition to the arrows in menus and maybe look into some stats. After that I want to take some time to learn bass so I can go cross platform, then possibly change breakout so it uses that and come out with a Mac version, then I can think about coding new ideas. Initially, I was planning to release it both on Windows and Mac, but even though the pure basic manual says changing the sound frequency and panning is supported on both Windows and Mac in practice it doesn't actually work on the mac which is why Angelgift also hasn't been released on it.

<Insert passage from "The Book Of Chrome" here>

2015-01-19 17:48:44

hi pitermach and all, when I want to extract the game using win rar, it gives me a hundreds of errors about an unknown archive.
what should I do?
I try to open the game in the archive without extracting it but it didn't work also.

going in to the wilds, collecting pokedex, and capturing them are my kind of thing,
training them, making them evolve, and generally making them stronger is my ultimate goal,
fighting other manamon tamers, winning the tournament, and fighting octoros are what these manamons like to do,
and ultimately, I become the master of mana!

2015-01-19 19:58:21

@Hanif,
I have put version 2 of Breakout on my web site:
I zipped it up rather than using 7zip.

http://www.pcsgames.net/breakout20.zip
There is no installing the game.
You just need to unzip it and go inside the
breakout20 folder
Then run the breakout.exe file
There is a readme.html file for instructions.

2015-01-19 23:28:12

Hmm, I never played Panzers in North Africa. But wasn't that what GMA Tank Commander was based on? Are there differences between the two games, besides the obvious fact that a DOS environment wouldn't have been as complex?
Same with the car racing game. I remember it vaguely. The sounds were actually not bad at all for their time. But I don't recall the exact game mechanics. Would a remake of that give us anything that Top Speed or Rail Racer hasn't already done?
And oh yes, Shooting Range was absolutely brilliant. I don't know why I was obsessed with that game, but it was great. The sounds, the variety of guns, it just totally drew my 10-year-old self in. I think that was one of the first audio games I ever played.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2015-01-20 01:32:41

The Panzer game used the actual stats of the World War 2 tanks.
It allowed you to use the tanks from Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States.
It took place in the sands of Africa so there were no large hills or valleys to get in the way and much easier to program.
It was turn based, so you could take as long as you wanted to decide what to do.

2015-01-20 02:06:41

I really loved the remastered version of the breakout. I hope to see more ports from Peter with fresh audio and UI rather than Emulating everything from dos. It's so great playing classic versions and remastered. It's something similar to many video games being refreshed after many years. Congrats! good work!

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2015-01-20 09:38:42

hello.
I've downloaded the version 2 of Breakout from PCSGames website in post 36, however I found some bug in it.
1. when you run the game, it asks you to select clasic or modern sound mode, however NVDA doesn't read the message, although you can use up and down keys to select modern or clasic mode, you cannt hear the message.
2. when you chose each sound mode, the intro will play. however, if you press enter to skip it, the sound skips but at the same time the first game mode is slected automatically to play. so in order to skip the game intro, i press the arrow keys and then the game main menu appears.
3. when i use jaws, the arrow keys doesnt work to move in the menu items, it seems that game doesn't install the key hook for jaws stuff.

All the best,
Adel, Akbari.

2015-01-20 13:30:46

hey Peter. Nice game. I played it for 2 hours

ReferenceError: Signature is not defined.

2015-01-20 14:57:40

I can confirm that the arrow keys don't work under Jaws, that's probably why he's going to add letter key equivalents, since PureBasic probably has no equivalent to the BGT Install_Keyhook() function, since PureBasic is a general purpose language.

2015-01-20 18:21:17

I'm loving this game, and I wish that Pitermach would program more ports, although the emulator would also be nice I think in this situation I'd prefer ports, and I would save the emulator stuff for the massive games like Fallthru.