Tag: tutorial

Doom – How to play it nowadays

Alright, here comes one of the all-time classic 3d-Shooters probably everyone knows. Definitely one of my favorites too.

Introduction

Just in case you don’t know Doom:

Doom is a first-person shooter developed by id Software. It was first released in 1993 and is considered a pioneering game in the first-person shooter genre.

In Doom, players assume the role of a space marine who must fight his way through a series of levels infested with demons and other monsters. The game features fast-paced, violent gameplay and an intense atmosphere.

One of the key features of Doom is its use of 3D graphics, which were groundbreaking at the time of its release. Doom also introduced many gameplay mechanics that have become staples of the first-person shooter genre, such as the ability to switch between different weapons and the use of power-ups to enhance the player’s abilities.

Overall, Doom is remembered as a classic game that helped define the first-person shooter genre and is still played by many people today. It has spawned numerous sequels and spin-offs, as well as a number of imitators.

Doomsday Engine

So given it is 2023 and Doom is 30 years old, how can we bring the Doom game into the modern era? Yes, there are several ways. Lets start with one of my favorites, including a nice front end for all the various versions and mods. Can I introduce you to Doomsday Engine?

Doomsday Engine is a source port of the original Doom game. A source port is a modified version of a game that has been developed to work on modern platforms and devices.

Doomsday Engine was developed by Jaakko Keränen and is designed to be compatible with all of the games in the Doom series, including Doom, Doom II, Heretic, and Hexen. It features improved graphics, support for high resolutions, and many other enhancements.

One of the key features of Doomsday Engine is its support for 3D graphics, which allows the games to be played in true 3D with features such as dynamic lighting and shadows. It also includes many other features, such as the ability to create custom mods and play online multiplayer games.

Overall, Doomsday Engine is a popular choice for fans of the Doom series who want to play the games on modern devices. It is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

The projects website can be found at https://dengine.nethttps://dengine.net/

How to install Doomsday Engine?

Prerequisites

  • Some Doom WAD files. You can grab the shareware version of Doom from anywhere on the internet or just from archive.org
  • For the full episodes you can buy Doom from Amazon, CDKeys or other any other place

Linux

If you are using Linux, the chances are very high that your package manager got a version for you ready. Head over to your Software Center, Apt repository or whatever your distribution calls it, search for Doomsday Engine and install it. Done. Find your menu entry to start the engine.

Windows

If you are using Windows, as most users probably do, do the following:

  1. Head over to the Windows downloads and install the latest stable release of DE. At the time of writing this was 2.3.1 and download “Doomsday 2.3.1 — 64-bit msi”. If you are using a 32-bit version, go and download that MSI.
  2. Once downloaded, double click the MSI file and install it to your desired location. Like c:\Games\Doomsday\ as example
  3. There should now be a Doomsday Engine entry in your start menu. Click it.

Where are the games?

  • Doomsday Engine should start. If you have Steam or GOG installations, these games should show up automatically on Windows.
  • If you got several WAD files stored in single folder, or you are using Linux (or Mac) click on “Select WAD Folder….” and navigate to that location. Now your games should show up.
  • From here you can simply click on a game you like to play and hit the “Play” button (triangle) to start it.

Enjoy Doom on modern hardware.

Settings

Of course Doomsday Engine gives you various options to amend your gaming pleasure. From changing the resolution, selecting audio plugins, network settings and more.

You should see a wheel in the bottom right corner that looks like in the picture below. If you, hit the “Esc” button, then it should appear.

There you can explore all the options the new engine offers. Play around with it and see what works best for you. High resolution, or high framerate, more or less effects, and more. We are not covering all the details here, so enjoy playing around with it.

Enjoy doom in the modern era.

Feedback and comments are very welcome. Something didn’t work for you? Let me know too.

How to sort your games on the Everdrive GBx for Gameboy

You just bought your new Everdrive GBx 7 for the Gameboy, copied your games on it and now struggle to find an individual title because there is literally no sorting on the GBx flashcard? Yep, that was the situation I found myself in. The GBx’ (current) OS does not support sorting…

So here is the simple solution:

Pre-requisite:

– You need the tool “SD Sorter”. You can download it from the official page either for Windows or Linux at https://www.trustfm.net/software/utilities/SDSorter.php

  1. Create a backup of your card (or games) as always
  2. Start SD Sorter
  3. Select your SD card on the left hand side
  4. Select “Name” under “Sort by”
  5. And if you got subfolder, also tick “Process subfolders” under “List option”
  6. Then press “Sort SD Card” and the tools is doing its job
  7. Safely remove your SD card, insert into your GBx and you are set.

Any questions or problems? Use the comments section below.

Don’t have a Everdrive GBx 7 yet? Get one from Amazon.

OSSC Firmware 0.88 released

OSSC (Source: manual)

The new 0.87, resp. 0.88 firmware for our beloved OSSC (Open Source Scan Converter) was released earlier this month with the below changes. 0.88 fixed a bug with profile imports as per following change log:

  • New OSD
  • Mode preset selection improvements
  • Selection made independent of physical input
  • 480p preset defined by hsync length in auto mode
  • Added 720p_50, 1080i_50 and 1080p_50 presets
  • Minor clamp/alc related improvements
  • Profile import fixed in v0.88.

I used the opportunity to update the OSSC Firmware Upgrade Tutorial, as the Firmware Update function is now a sub-menu within the “Settings Opt” menu.

Click here for the tutorial on how to upgrade to the latest version.

Wiimms Mario Kart Fun – Tutorial

Here is a short tutorial on how to create a copy of “Wiimms Mario Kart Fun” ready to play on your Wii (or emulator)

What you need before you start

– Latest release of Wiims Mario Kart Fun files from here: http://wiki.tockdom.com/wiki/Wiimms_Mario_Kart_Fun

– Mario Kart Wii ISO file NTSC or PAL version (as example PAL version might be called something like “Mario_Kart_PAL_Wii.iso”). Check out Amazon, if you don’t own a copy yet.

How to patch your ISO file

  • Extract the Mario Kart Fun archive you downloaded; at the point of writing the file was called mkw-fun-2019-10.v1.txz.
  • Copy the ISO file into the extracted folder
  • if you are using Linux (or Mac) make sure you run “sudo chmod a+x *.sh” to make the scripts executable
  • Then you start the “create-image” scripts
    Windows: “create-image.bat“
    Linux/Mac: “./create-image.sh“
  • 1st question asks about language during the creation process, type “de” for German, “en” for English, “es” for Spanish. Default is English. Input your preferred language or directly press Enter.
  • 2nd question is about language within the game itself.  The following options are available:
    G : Deutsch
    U : English (America)
    E : English (Europe)
    M : Español (América)
    S : Español (Europa)
    Q : Français (Amérique) => aucun message de chat
    F : Français (Europe) => aucun message de chat
    I : Italiano => messaggi di chat
    J : 日本人 (Japanese) => no chat messages
    K : 한국의 (Korean) => no chat messages, no Wiimmfi texts
    If you don’t want to force any changes in-game language related, select “-“, as I do here. Type “-” and Enter.
  • 3rd question is about fallback language. Not sure why this is required as we selected no changes just before, but nevertheless, we type “E” for English (Europe), as I am using the PAL version here, and then Enter.
  • 4th question is about track language; many options to choose from, let’s go for the default option, which is the native language related to each track. Type “x” and Enter.
  • 5th question is about translating names of custom tracks. As we have just chosen native language names before, lets select “no” and press Enter.
  • 6th question is about the output format, various options possible. I go here with a standard ISO format. Type “iso” and press Enter.
  • 7th question is about if you want to shared the existing save game from your Mario Kart Wii or a new dedicated, unrelated save game. I prefer a new save game so lets type “yes” and press Enter.
  • The script shows you then a summary, here is ours::
    ==========
    Summary
    ===========* Language (de,en,es): en
    * Force game language or ‘-‘ (G,U,E,M,S,Q,F,I,J,K,-): –
    * Fall-back language (G,U,E,M,S): e
    * Language of track names:: x
    * Translate also names of custom tracks (no,yes): no
    * Image file format (iso,ciso,wdf,wbfs,gcx,wia,riiv): iso
    * Use private savegame (no,yes): yes* Continue with these settings? (no,yes) [yes]:

    Yes, looks good, let’s press Enter.

  • Then the script is doing its magic this might take a while….. if everything went well, it should output something like1 iso image(s) created
    2019-11-03 19:14:00 .. 19:23:51 (9m+51s)
  • That’s it. You can now either copy the ISO on a SD or harddrive connected to your Wii and load the game via USB Loader or load the ISO directly in an emulator like Dolphin. Have fun.

OSSC Firmware Upgrade Tutorial

If you are the lucky owner of an OSSC (Open Source Scan Converter) to scale up your retro games on your modern TV, then you like to ensure to keep your firmware of your device up to date to profit from fixes and enhancements which are constantly released. Great support on the OSSC here.

OSSC (Source: manual)

What do you need?

These are the steps to follow:

  • Grab the latest firmware from here: https://www.niksula.hut.fi/~mhiienka/ossc/fw/
  • Write/Restore the downloaded file to the Micro SD Card with the help of your image writer software
  • Put the Micro SD card into your OSSC (slot is on the left side of the display)
  • Switch the OSSC on
  • Press “Menu” on the remote control
  • Press “Down” until the menu says “Settings opt”
    Press “OK”
  • Press “Down” until the menu says “Firmware Upgrade”
  • Press “OK”
  • Confirm to flash by pressing “1”
  • Wait until the OSSC finished to verify and flashes the new image
  • When it says “FW update ok” you can switch the OSSC off, remove the SD card, wait a few seconds and turn it on again
  • It should now work with the latest firmware

Experienced some issues? Comments and feedback welcome.

Remark: If you are on an even elder version then I was, the “Firmware Upgrade” menu entry is in the menu root directly, and not within the “Settings Opt” sub-menu.

Don’t have an OSSC yet? Check out Amazon to get one.

FAQ Chimp-Tools (Xbox Classic)

Having used the Chimp-Tools lately to clone an Xbox-Harddisk to replace it with a bigger sized disk, I put together all possible errors that I came across while trying solve my issue:

  • Ensure you use the latest Chimp build: https://github.com/Rocky5/Chimp261812
  • Verify to use the path Chimp expects:
    E:\applications\chimp
    E:\applications\chimp loader
    E:\apps\chimp
    E:\apps\chimp loader
    E:\chimp
    E:\chimp loader
  • Use standard RGB cable and not the Component or any other 3rd party video cable
  • Disable the widescreen option in your Dashboard and use normal aspect ratio
  • Disable 480p, 720p or 1080i options
  • Linux users: Use a Windows machine to FTP transfer your files over to the Xbox; for some reasons the permissions attributes don’t work with Chimp (this was for example the issue I experienced and with Windows it worked without any problem)

More to come….

 

From Youtube.com

PS3 Emulator – RPCS3

As I am usually more interested into older systems to play, I read the first time about a working PlayStation 3 emulator today. You as well? They call themselves the ‘The world’s first open-source Sony PlayStation 3 Emulator for Windows and Linux’, so we are probably not the only ones. So lets have a look at what RPCS3 exactly is and what it can do already. From their ‘About’ page:

Retroarch – How to add or play games?

Even though Retroarch is a really great frontend for emulators using libretro API, it can be a bit confusing for beginners to get started and play a game as it is not a simple File->Open as most people are used to from other (standalone) emulators. At least it was for me, until I figured it out. Hence a very quick tutorial on how to

Play a game instantly with Retroarch

Once you got Retroarch installed on your system (this might be worth another article) and started it up, you look at its frontend. By default this is XMB which looks similar to the Playstation 3 (PS3) interface with horizontal and vertical aligned menus. To load a game from your device, which needs to be supported by Retroarch obviously, go to

  • Main Menu
  • Load Content
  • / (3rd item, depends on the Operating system you are using (eg. Windows, Linux, OS X, …..)
  • Then browse to the directory where your game is located and select it
  • if the game is zipped, select Load Archive
  • If the filetype is not yet associated with a core, the you can select the core here. Give it a try, which one works best on your system. (If a core is already associated, the game starts immediately.)
  • Now the game should start

Load and scan your game library

Probably the preferred option of everyone is to scan the whole library and then easy select the games from each of the systems available. Including a nice boxart.

How to do this? Lets have a look.

Preparation: In my experience it works best, if you store all your roms within folders separate by systems: So have a SNES, NES, Gameboy, … folders with each of the games in it.

Steps to scan a folder:

  • Go to “Import content” (the + sign)
  • Scan Directory
  • Browse to the folder you like to scan.
  • Once in the folder, select “Scan This directory”
  • Depending on the number of roms within the directory to scan this can take quite some time…. Retroarch shows the progress in the bottom left corner.

Once finished, a new icon with the system(s) scanned shows up on the right hand side on the horizontal menu axis. Go there and select the game you like to play. Have fun.

Hope this helps some newcomer. Questions, comments or any feedback in general is very welcome.

 

Upgrading OpenELEC to LibreELEC: check size failed error

Not directly a gaming topic, but one or the other might use OpenELEC, resp. LibreELEC now. When I tried to upgrade to the latest LibreELEC I got a “check size failed” error message, and the upgrade failed.

Background: OpenELEC used a small FAT16 partition (128mb?) as the system partition which is now to small for the new versions, hence the size check fails.

Solution: You have to increase the partition size of the system partition. I tried to use GParted unter Linux which is an excellent tool, but failed on this exercise due to missing support of FAT partition being smaller then 256mb in the library used (libparted).

Workaround:
– Use any partition tool you like; I used an Ubuntu live disk and used GParted, but I remember Parition Magic from my windows time as example
– decrease your data partition (2nd) to get some additional storage before your data parition, right after the SYSTEM partition (1st)
– copy the content of the system partition to a backup storage (like USB stick, SD card, whatever)
– delete the system partition
– create a new primary partition with 512mb (or more)
– label it “SYSTEM”
– and format it with EXT4 (thats what I did)
– Copy the content of your backup storage bak to the system partition
– Reboot

Hope this helps.

Joe

(migrated tutorial from phpBB)