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Fallen Angels


DrTypo

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Thanks Gunstar it worked perfectly! What a cool game, kind of like a 3D defender in reverse and slower pace. Ok it's not like defender. I think this game needs an overlay as I can't seem to keep everything in my mind. In the 5 mins I had to play it before Postman Pat took precedence over the TV, I managed to find a pilot, he knocked on the door of the craft (?) and I killed him.

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manual.pdf in the original archive, post #1 of this thread, but it's as easy as 1, 2, 3 :-)

 

 

Controls :

• Arrows: turn

• A : accelerate

• C : brake

• B : fire

• 1 : land

• 2 : enable/disable shields

• 3 : open/close airlock

• 7 : booster

• * and #: self-destruct

• pause : pause the game

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manual.pdf in the original archive, post #1 of this thread, but it's as easy as 1, 2, 3 :-)

 

 

Controls :

• Arrows: turn

• A : accelerate

• C : brake

• B : fire

• 1 : land

• 2 : enable/disable shields

• 3 : open/close airlock

• 7 : booster

• * and #: self-destruct

• pause : pause the game

 

I'm sure I can memorise 1,2,3 and 7!

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Got up to level 5. It seems a bit of a panic to find button 7 when mothership appears!

 

If you're still working on it may I suggest something interesting in the sky? I was thinking of the shape of a crescent of a gas giant planet (like Jupiter).

 

Also the terrain is very much the same after a long while maybe some exotic trees or acid lakes?

 

Also the aliens seem really detailed but the pilots are a load of pixels!

 

Nevertheless this is a marvellous game and actually commanded an hour of my very busy schedule!

 

All the best

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No need to panic when the mothership appears, if you miss it, it will be back very soon to give you another shot. I think he said he was done with this one, so it is what it is. Basically what you get with the original 8-bit game, with 3d tunnel and terrain, not much else is updated but slightly graphically. But maybe down the line he'll make a sequel? With some of the improvements you've suggested? I'd change some of the graphics myself too, but it's the author's decision. I'd suggest a better artist, but the Alien looks good, so it's not for lack of a good artist, just like the beta place-holders were good enough for them to leave them in. But it's really nit-picking for such a great game GIVEN to us all.

Edited by Gunstar
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On level one I collected 16 pilots and couldn't find the mothership.. then I RTFlightM as Sh3 suggested and found out that the mothership is in the sky!

 

Good point. If he did add some of my suggestions (or didn't) and made an official glass mastered release for sale....I'd buy it! (So long as it came with an overlay :grin: )

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Thanks for the nice comments everyone.

The sprites (pilots & ships) are blocky since they are only 32x32. It is because of anticipated memory constraints. Well, in the end there is some memory left but I prefer to leave it at that.

I have many many ideas for improvement but not enough time.

About the levels: there are about 9 kinds of terrain, 6 colors schemes and the day/night cycle (one day is about 6 levels if I remember right). The diffculty reach its maximum at level 20.

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That explains a lot.

 

I was at lvl 22, and was only racing through the landscape like a hunted pig, searching for survivors while trying to avoid any firing from turrets or ufo's.

There was just no time to return fire without being killed, and I was thinking... oh my, and there are 99 levels?

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That explains a lot.

 

I was at lvl 22, and was only racing through the landscape like a hunted pig, searching for survivors while trying to avoid any firing from turrets or ufo's.

There was just no time to return fire without being killed, and I was thinking... oh my, and there are 99 levels?

 

It's "old-school" gaming - just repeat the level until the player dies. ;) :grin:

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Can MacOSX users make JagCD's yet? If so, how and with what program? I read something somewhere about a dummy .wav file that someone created that the JagCD looks for, but it's been a while since I last tried.

 

I have a couple skunks but, as someone who primarily uses a combination of a Linux desktop and a Mac, I was curious enough to see if I could produce the .cdi and burn it. In Linux I used wine to run jiffi. The fonts in the GUI are unintelligible so I used the command-line:

 

wine JiFFi.Exe -i jag.cof -o output -uls

 

This produced the .cdi without issue. Now when it comes to burning... cdi can be converted into a nero format and burned with the native Nero application but I don't have that garbage installed. Most of my burning needs are met by my favorite native burning software K3B but I turn to wine for cdi and the only burning tool I use with wine is the excellent ImgBurn. I fired it up, loaded in the cdi, burned to CD at 2x speed. I did not use any special settings, just load and burn. The result worked in my Jag perfectly. This same process should work using wine on OS X.

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I was able to resolve the font issues in the GUI using winetricks to install corefonts:

 

winetricks corefonts

 

With that the GUI seems to work 100%. So there isn't much to document.

 

1) Run the ImgBurn setup package with wine.

2) Install corefonts with wintricks (winetricks corefonts)

3) Run jiffi (wine JiFFI.Exe)

4) Open the .cof with JiFFI and generate "ULS boot .cdi"

5) Load .cdi with ImgBurn and burn (default settings work fine). Burning slowly may be beneficial to the life of the Jag CD.

 

Having resolved the font issue I am going to try to wrap these in wineskin packages for Mac users. This will allow them to download and run them as if they were native apps. BTW, ImgBurn is an alternative to DiscJuggler for Windows users as well.

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This is the future, it is now.

 

But the only thing that could be saved is high score and level, and since you can choose to start your next game at any level (or the last one you played), the only thing that the memory track could do is save a high-score. And since you would have to take a picture of the high score screen to show the world anyway, you can just take a picture of your final score before you restart or power down. I know the original Rescue On Fractalus didn't save level either, and no need, for the same reasons, though it may have saved the high score, but I really don't think it did even that (my 8-bit is broken atm, so I can't look).

 

Just like an arcade game, a high-score is for that session, not an ongoing game over several sessions, so if you want an all-time high score, you will have to play a long session without dying...

Edited by Gunstar
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I was able to resolve the font issues in the GUI using winetricks to install corefonts:

 

winetricks corefonts

 

With that the GUI seems to work 100%. So there isn't much to document.

 

1) Run the ImgBurn setup package with wine.

2) Install corefonts with wintricks (winetricks corefonts)

3) Run jiffi (wine JiFFI.Exe)

4) Open the .cof with JiFFI and generate "ULS boot .cdi"

5) Load .cdi with ImgBurn and burn (default settings work fine). Burning slowly may be beneficial to the life of the Jag CD.

 

Having resolved the font issue I am going to try to wrap these in wineskin packages for Mac users. This will allow them to download and run them as if they were native apps. BTW, ImgBurn is an alternative to DiscJuggler for Windows users as well.

 

Haha, that's awesome! I always had the hunch that JiFFI would work under wine, but never had the time (or remembered) to verify. Thanks a lot for trying it out!

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I was able to resolve the font issues in the GUI using winetricks to install corefonts:

 

winetricks corefonts

 

With that the GUI seems to work 100%. So there isn't much to document.

 

1) Run the ImgBurn setup package with wine.

2) Install corefonts with wintricks (winetricks corefonts)

3) Run jiffi (wine JiFFI.Exe)

4) Open the .cof with JiFFI and generate "ULS boot .cdi"

5) Load .cdi with ImgBurn and burn (default settings work fine). Burning slowly may be beneficial to the life of the Jag CD.

 

Having resolved the font issue I am going to try to wrap these in wineskin packages for Mac users. This will allow them to download and run them as if they were native apps. BTW, ImgBurn is an alternative to DiscJuggler for Windows users as well.

 

Well I have created quite the coaster pile trying to make this work on Mac. Unfortunately Wine does not have the same support for optical drives on Mac as it does on Linux. Because of this burning software does not work through Wine and that eliminates the use of ImgBurn and DiscJuggler. There is a free application called LiquidCD that supports .cdi and supposedly burns DC discs fine. It trips up on the .cdi that JiFFI spits out. The only option I could find was to rip the cdi. I tried a lot of combinations of different tools for ripping, converting, burning, etc. The combination that seems to get me the closest:

 

1) Rip the .cdi with cdirip (using -raw and -bin options)

2) Convert the .cue files to .toc using cueconvert

3) Burn the first session using cdrdao (with -multi flag)

4) Burn the second sessiong using cdrdao (no -multi flag)

 

This produces a disc with matching track lengths to the disc that ImgBurn produced. All the LBA's match. It is good enough that ImgBurn verifies it against the .cdi successfully. Apparently something I can't see is off though because it does not boot in the Jag CD. I get the audio player. So this is where I'm stuck. At least I won't be making any progress before I order a new spindle of blank cd-r's.

 

For those that are curious JiFFI worked just fine. I was even able to make a .app using wineskin. I was thinking about making it available but the package is huge at about 150MB. That sure seems like a lot of overhead for a single dialog.

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Well I have created quite the coaster pile trying to make this work on Mac. Unfortunately Wine does not have the same support for optical drives on Mac as it does on Linux. Because of this burning software does not work through Wine and that eliminates the use of ImgBurn and DiscJuggler. There is a free application called LiquidCD that supports .cdi and supposedly burns DC discs fine. It trips up on the .cdi that JiFFI spits out.

 

Yeah, the .cdi format is getting long in the tooth, especially since the version of cdi that JiFFI outputs is an older one. I guess this should be addressed at some point, but it would mean that:

 

a) Someone will have to find a suitable format that can be written using modern software (and we're talking multi-platform here; windows, macosx and linux)

b) Aforementioned format should preferably be open or be easy to figure out (from what I remember, NRG format was not as straightforward)

c) Someone would have to invest a lot of time in creating coasters until everything works out ok

 

If anyone's interested, create a cdi image using the latest JiFFI version (so it has the padding string), burn it to CD, image it up with the new format, toast it back to a CD, test it to see if it works on a real machine and upload the image somewhere so I can grab it, and also mention the exact binary you used to create the cdi. Of course it'd be better if people from different platforms grabbed that image first and burnt it so we can be 100% sure it works. I can then take a whack at it. (Did I mention i have no JagCD unit?)

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