Some Guildhall Leisure / Kool Dog games

Started by Kryzon, December 18, 2020, 12:50:33

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Kryzon

Hey guys, I was cleaning some stuff and found 3 DVD cases with some old BlitzBasic game CDs. I remember it was part of the Blitz3D bundle deal, you'd buy B3D and get to choose 3 games. 

Here follows scans of the DVD covers and a download link to the CD ISOs for archival sake: 

Qube : removed links as the copyright must still be owned by someone - If proof can be provided that any / all are freeware then links can be restored 

EDIT: Okay, I'll only put up the screenshots then, as that's under Fair Use for purposes of illustration of a point:

KnightMare (by John Blythe) 


 

Dragon Tiles (by Steve Smith) 



Zone Patrol (by Wiebo de Wit) 


LineOf7s

#1
Thanks for that, this is proper old-school.  :)

Two things:  The CDs also include a bunch of demos of other games too (and Blitz Basic!).  There may just be an old favourite there for you.  Just had a grand old time revisiting GFK's "Hole In One" and getting +9 after two holes, and getting smashed in Double Top.  Good times.



The other thing is that a lot of Blitz/Blitz3D games seem to run like absolute arse on modern systems (Win10 specifically).  This didn't used to happen in my experience, but now they do; I suspect the shiny new gfx cards and drivers.  I first encountered this with Wiebo de Wit's amazing Thrust Deluxe, which still kicks arse to this day (highly recommended).  Nevertheless, they're unplayably slow out of the box.

That's where dgVoodoo2 comes in.

Download that bad boy, copy the .dll files from its MS/x86 folder to the folder of the old game (or demo) you want to play, and voila!  You should see a dgVoodoo watermark in the bottom right-hand corner to let you know the game is running through it.  You'll also notice it's not running at 3fps anymore, which is nice.  No installation, no mess, no fuss.  The defaults should work great for almost everything.

If you want to tweak it a bit though (eg maintaining ye olde 4:3 aspect ratio on a widescreen monitor without having to fiddle with nVidia/AMD gfx driver settings) then you can do that in the dgVoodooCpl.exe file.  You'll want to focus on the 'General' and 'DirectX' tabs for the Blitz/3D stuff.  In the DirectX tab you can also turn off the watermark if you don't need it anymore.  Once you've done your tweaking, copy the dgVoodoo.conf file (a human-readable plain text file) into the same game folder as the .dll files you copies earlier, the the .dll files will pick up the configuration changes you just made.

Hope that helps someone.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have some 20 year old Blitz games to revisit.  :)

PS:  I didn't have any luck at all with Windows' "Compatibility Mode".  More power to you if you do, but the above works great.

PPS:  Happily, this seems to be related to the 2D stuff specifically.  G-Tok (3D Defender clone) worked a treat.
"Life's biggest obstacles are your greatest opportunities to excel"

Kryzon

Quote from: LineOf7s on December 18, 2020, 20:43:38
Wow, I didn't know it had those demos! Cool stuff indeed. 

Hole In One and Platypus are the ones I know the most. And I remember KnightMare using a piece of MOD music from a free assets pack in the BB forums, the track is the_anvil_chorus.mod.

LineOf7s

What was the name of your (GFK) golf game on the Amiga that you kinda sorta based Hole-In-One off?  Was it "World Golf" or something?  I've been looking for it for years.
"Life's biggest obstacles are your greatest opportunities to excel"

fairgood

I remember George Bray from Idigicon giving out passes at the time for the 2000 ECTS show in London
Took 2 of them and went with a friend, met George at the show
They had an arcade machine setup with all those Kool Dog games on it for people to play


Kryzon

@Qube is there a way to restore just the DVD covers (the images)? I'm pretty sure they fall under Fair Use.

LineOf7s

Quote from: GfK on December 21, 2020, 21:32:26
Yep.  Also circulating as Apex Golf, depending where it originally came from.

[Edit] seems to be available here - two versions (below World Games)
https://www.planetemu.net/roms/commodore-amiga-games-adf?page=W
Sweet!  Thank you.  Snaffled.  Not sure how I'd missed that one; perhaps it was the Apex bit that put me off.
"Life's biggest obstacles are your greatest opportunities to excel"

LineOf7s

I've uploaded just the demos listed to some webspace for people to check out if they're interested.

Don't forget my dgVoodoo2 advice above if you have issues with them running like (Kool)dogs.  :)
"Life's biggest obstacles are your greatest opportunities to excel"