Happyland Adventures - ADG Episode 334

[@lethal_guitar]

The DosBox Staging fork has a neat feature where it will actually lock to 70 FPS on high refresh rate VFR displays (e.g. G-Sync), completely eliminating these framerate mismatch issues typical for DOS games.

[@Pixelmusement]

That's good to know. For the moment though, I'm just glad my monitor can handle a 70 Hz 1080p signal through DVI. :B (Though I leave it on 60 unless I absolutely need 70.)

[@simplyhard]

02:21 Aahp-schep-pet "The monkey ship"

[@LPavownage]

huh, I remember the tileset graphics from this being lifted into a series of game maker tutorials I used in the 2000s... Small world.

[@Tippi-ej5uh]

Thought I was one of the very few who knew this

[@midimittens]

I thought the tiles looked familiar! I used to use those all of the time haha.

[@shoofly]

I’m so glad you posted this. Loved playing this as a kid!

[@ianeborn6823]

This was actually a rather interesting video! ^_^ The game itself was cool, and covering something simple, brief, and pleasant made for a nice change of pace today. But I think that it was the discussion of the technical aspects, and of your history with Allegro, that particularly caught my interest--a nice bit of history, that! ^_^ So, thank you for sharing! ^_^

[@ElfinaAshfield]

This one is one of my favs from my childhood. I got it from a shareware compilation CD and was amazed by how tiny it was yet has a these levels, score items & stuff. That jingle from the title screen is probably one of the catchiest back then.

[@bengmo64]

Good old allegro, I remember using that and a free IDE i think it was called djgpp maybe? Never really got far with it, just the bones of a basic vertical shooter, but i spent many happy days teaching myself

[@lasskinn474]

not sure if there was an ide, but djgpp is what a dos port of gcc compiling and building suit of tools was distributed as. it provided the earliest(?) free capability to do protected(32bit allowing practically endless sized buffers) mode programming for dos without much hassle or paying for watcom or such, you could then get access to the newer vesa modes with linear framebuffers without much hassle and in general it was pretty great for the time, but it was already when commercial stuff was going to directx. I'm pretty sure you could use it with glide too.

[@GreySectoid]

DJGGP was just the compiler, the free ide was called rhide I think.

[@Ramstaandy]

Swede here. If I remember my IPA right, the transcription of "Apskeppet" would be /ɑːp'ɧɛpet/. The closest you could get in English would probably be awp-SHEPP-pet. Oh, and the name means "The ape ship".

[@TheOnlyToblin]

Was gonna post this myself, but decided to check comments first, and here we are. :) And yeah, that was nowhere near the correct pronounciation :)

[@JomasterTheSecond]

This and Icy Tower were two of my favourite ever freeware games as a kid. To this day, the level 1 music is kinda permanently stuck in my head.

[@redrum0127]

johan peitz... i recognized the name immediately. that guy still makes games, and they're some of the best pico8 titles ever made. very interesting to see his early stuff.

[@negirno]

Ahh I remember downloading this way back when from a freeware games website, maybe from the original Free Lunch Design one. Alex the Allegator is also a good game from them.

[@lasskinn474]

allegro, blast from the past

[@LynxSnowCat]

I remember making a wrapper for the Allegro libraries to decrypt ( ARC4/allegedly-RC4 ) game data and saves without getting the password every time it updated. I'm not certain at which point I figured out it would be easier to work with decrypted files, but I had so much fun hacking around the the bugs/balance issues than actually playing some games that I've bought the authors' remakes to dig into the game files and see what they changed (while porting to newer game engines/libraries).

[@Pixelmusement]

I never bothered with password encrypting the data files for my Allegro-made games because one, I didn't want to FORGET the passwords, and two I didn't see it as particularly strong protection and figured anyone dedicated enough to get inside was gonna find a way in and the casual person wouldn't have a clue how in the first place regardless. :B

[@LynxSnowCat]

@@Pixelmusement Good point; I've seen a few promising games 'lost' when the developer didn't have the means to decrypt the released files (following a drive crash, etc.) and were frustrated into abandoning the project (and their user handle) for a while... Mostly because people keep derailing their forum/blog/chats to ask when the next update/release of the stranded project is. But I think that the weak protection/encryption/obfuscation schemes are an important filter to keep people who _really_ don't know/care from breaking things, and worse: stealing assets for their own audience.

[@Pixelmusement]

@@LynxSnowCat Theft of assets to make crappy side games with no intent to ever sell them is not really worth worrying about, and anyone determined enough to steal assets for a game to make money off of them with their own dubious projects are GOING to find a way to get access to the assets one way or another, even if they have to brute-force their way by separating them out from screenshots and audio grabs. :P

[@Cyberbrickmaster1986]

My first exposure to this game was a Multimedia Fusion remaster on Caiman's website back in the 2000s. I wasn't aware that it was originally a DOS game for some time, but given the original was digital only and was lost before eventually archived on the internet, that probably explains why. It's just too bad I can get the music in that version to work in Linux, regardless of multiple tweaks in Protontricks and Winetricks.

[@TheGerkuman]

The music for the level makes me think of the Paul Simon song 'Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard'. I guess because the main melody line sounds a bit like the acoustic guitar from it. But it's almost certainly a coincidence.

[@Pixelmusement]

The main musical theme actually seems to be a mish-mash of at least three different melodies I've heard before but don't recall the names of. :P

[@Roobar_Plays]

Ah, the good old times

[@GL1zdA]

I remember playing it! Never have been a fan of the „hidden passages” mechanic.

[@Pixelmusement]

Having too many non-indicated secrets can certainly be annoying, but because the levels here are not very big and because the player can move fast and snappy, it's REALLY easy to find them without having to burn tons of time to do so, thus why I give this game a pass on that otherwise antagonistic mechanic! :B

[@1981patx]

Interesting tech stuff, never played this :)

[@SmeddyTooBestChannel]

i keep wanting to get into lower-level-API based development and SDL and Allegro have been in my sights. ive been using stuff like Construct and Godot and feel like I should move on to more "proper" things at some point, or at the very least understanding stuff like collision detection and enemy loops and whatnot without the aid of game engines already doing that for me

[@Pixelmusement]

I mean, there's nothing wrong with learning those concepts at a lower level for sure, but the amount of work involved to put that knowledge to practical use is far higher than using high-level game development environments. If you do decide to learn to use SDL or Allegro, I highly recommend sticking with non-accelerated 2D graphics, since if you go hardware accelerated or go 3D you are effectively multiplying the workload by a factor of 1000%, and that's NOT an exaggeration! :o

[@psychmyst]

I knew it! I thought it looked like Flicky!

[@TheCongressman1]

Oddly one of the most memorable pc games of my childhood. It's not an amazing game by any means, so I'm not sure why it stuck with me so much lol. I think I just liked all the secret rooms. I will say, it does have a strange vibe though. It's the kind of game I could see someone making a stupid creepy pasta about.

[@poeterritory]

Wonder how he came up with the music for this game. It seems to fit the theme well.

[@Pixelmusement]

I actually recognize three of the melodies in the main game song from different songs I don't know the names of, so I think he just took some of his favourite up-beat melodies and slapped 'em all together as a mish-mash of sorts. :B

[@GreySectoid]

Allegro and DJGPP compiler, nothing else needed for making great games, well maybe also Deluxe Paint :)

[@Pixelmusement]

And some flavour of tracker, be it Scream, Fast, or Impulse. ;)

[@Patashu]

OH I played this game... that's what it's called

[@HeiseSays]

When are you doing a new AMA?

[@Pixelmusement]

Haven't really felt the need to...? Though given that you're asking I'll take that as a point of note that maybe I should do another one sometime in the near future. :B

[@HeiseSays]

@@PixelmusementI listened to an old video while doing renovations on my house. I’m now interested in hearing how the years have treated you.

[@joshsa4935]

@@Pixelmusement I too watched your older videos and wonder how you are doing in life :D

[@SteveMacSticky]

I always triple buffer my vertical blank, if you know what I mean...