Revs: How Geoff Crammond squeezed a Formula 3 sim racer into just 32KB on the BBC Micro @TimberwolfK

Timberwolf Revs for the BBC Micro is clever for more reasons than you'd expect. In addition to code in the sky and pioneering the idea of sim racing, it also took an approach to building tracks which would set the racing game template for more than a decade. I get deep into the detail explaining just what it is that Revs does and why it's so clever.

Also I find a game that is remarkably playable for something of its era.

As mentioned, this video would not exist without the excellent research at revs.bbcelite.com

Further thanks to @RMCRetro for the images and video of their vintage-correct BBC Micro and Microvitec CUB setup, and @RoseTintedSpectrum for organising the actual process of getting it to me because I am rubbish at asking for help.

IBM BIOS font recreation by VileR, int10h.org (CC-BY-SA 4.0)

Many hardware images from Evan Amos and Stuart Brady were used, or at least saved to a directory at some point in the production process.

Stock footage and images from Pexels.

Map of the circuit:

0:00 Games with things in common
0:30 But first, nostalgia
1:15 The BBC was for posh kids
1:40 Hat-bashing moral wasteland
2:20 Period-correct cultural references
3:11 The BBC was respectable
3:50 Winding up the real hardware crowd
4:42 Scared of being a simulation
5:36 Revs 4 Tracks
5:58 Keyboard delights and horrors
7:26 Non-BBC Revs
8:34 One planar tracker too far
9:08 About that code in the sky thing?
9:38 Talking graphics and memory layouts
10:32 Yes that's not technically a "screenshot"
11:24 Beam racing in your racing game
11:49 Breaking down the screen
13:44 A lot of conversations about blue
14:33 Code in the sky! Finally!
15:00 The track is also clever
15:55 Track-like properties
17:28 How nearly every driving game did 3D
18:25 Oh, and it's flicker-free
20:14 Outro, further reading and that

Games shown:

Revs (BBC Micro)
Geoff Crammond's Formula One Grand Prix
Elite Plus
Granny's Garden
Revs Plus (BBC Micro)
Hard Drivin' (ZX Spectrum)
Wheelie
Revs (C64)
Revs Plus (C64)
Network Q RAC Rally Championship

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 21 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus fact: While both Revs and F1GP feature fake driver names, the ones in Revs have both an element of humour and an indication as to what to expect from each driver - Miles Behind is, as you might expect, often to be found languishing at the back of the grid.

#bbcmicro #revs

updated 1 year ago

Revs: How Geoff Crammond squeezed a Formula 3 sim racer into just 32KB on the BBC Micro

Timberwolf 2023-02-08 | Revs for the BBC Micro is clever for more reasons than you'd expect. In addition to code in the sky and pioneering the idea of sim racing, it also took an approach to building tracks which would set the racing game template for more than a decade. I get deep into the detail explaining just what it is that Revs does and why it's so clever.

Also I find a game that is remarkably playable for something of its era.

As mentioned, this video would not exist without the excellent research at revs.bbcelite.com

Further thanks to @RMCRetro for the images and video of their vintage-correct BBC Micro and Microvitec CUB setup, and @RoseTintedSpectrum for organising the actual process of getting it to me because I am rubbish at asking for help.

IBM BIOS font recreation by VileR, int10h.org (CC-BY-SA 4.0)

Many hardware images from Evan Amos and Stuart Brady were used, or at least saved to a directory at some point in the production process.

Stock footage and images from Pexels.

Map of the circuit:

0:00 Games with things in common
0:30 But first, nostalgia
1:15 The BBC was for posh kids
1:40 Hat-bashing moral wasteland
2:20 Period-correct cultural references
3:11 The BBC was respectable
3:50 Winding up the real hardware crowd
4:42 Scared of being a simulation
5:36 Revs 4 Tracks
5:58 Keyboard delights and horrors
7:26 Non-BBC Revs
8:34 One planar tracker too far
9:08 About that code in the sky thing?
9:38 Talking graphics and memory layouts
10:32 Yes that's not technically a "screenshot"
11:24 Beam racing in your racing game
11:49 Breaking down the screen
13:44 A lot of conversations about blue
14:33 Code in the sky! Finally!
15:00 The track is also clever
15:55 Track-like properties
17:28 How nearly every driving game did 3D
18:25 Oh, and it's flicker-free
20:14 Outro, further reading and that

Games shown:

Revs (BBC Micro)
Geoff Crammond's Formula One Grand Prix
Elite Plus
Granny's Garden
Revs Plus (BBC Micro)
Hard Drivin' (ZX Spectrum)
Wheelie
Revs (C64)
Revs Plus (C64)
Network Q RAC Rally Championship

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 21 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus fact: While both Revs and F1GP feature fake driver names, the ones in Revs have both an element of humour and an indication as to what to expect from each driver - Miles Behind is, as you might expect, often to be found languishing at the back of the grid.

#bbcmicro #revs

I review M25 Racer while driving around the M25

Timberwolf 2024-06-20 | M25 Racer, or London Racer, or whatever else it was called when you lifted it out of the bargain bin and wondered whether to gamble an amount of money on it being kind of OK, money which could have bought you three cheap pints and a kebab instead because it was 1999 and we hadn't invented inflation yet.

I did not have three cheap pints or a kebab before coming up with the idea to review the game while travelling around the road which inspired it, and I'm not sure that's a good thing to admit. Will I be able to assemble some kind of vaguely coherent review with no script, no opportunity to fact-check, one of the worst sound recording environments available, a strict geography-imposed time limit and the need to, at some point, concentrate on the actual driving? In theory the presence of this video should make that a foregone conclusion but... well, it's Timberwolf.

Junctions:

0:00 Start your engines
1:42 The bit where I actually start talking about the game
2:40 Davilex and that
3:31 Kind of OK
5:58 Gameplay progression
7:28 German car warfare and the case for budget games
8:34 Problems arise
9:49 Wait, that was it, success, why are there three minutes left?
10:35 Wheelbarrows
11:52 Who needs Top Gear anyway?
12:49 A quantity of fun

Images from Pexels, MobyGames and iStock (paid)
Some public domain content from Wikimedia Commons

I completely stole that "Cybermorph is a reference 1 fun" thing from @NikkiandBunty and their community because I am a deeply unoriginal human being. Also I enjoy confusing references that make sense to a grand total of about 39 people.

Bonus fact: although I tag 1999 as the point where hardware acceleration became enough of a norm games started being designed around it, being a budget-conscious title this does feature software rendering modes, down to a rather grainy 320x240 if you're running it on something already past its best.

Tech note: while London Racer received a few XP patches and the like, M25 Racer has suffered the march of time and really doesn't run well on modern systems, tending to exhibit timing issues and missing textures even with dgVoodoo 2 in use. Thankfully, modern computers are fast enough for PCem to be able to emulate a sufficiently fast Windows 98 system complete with period-correct Voodoo 2, which is how I captured the game footage here.

#m25racer

How one bug changed my memories of Dungeon Keeper

Timberwolf 2024-05-23 | I set out to play Dungeon Keeper and reminisce about it! Which went great until I found KeeperFX and it was... not what I remembered. Yes, it's one of those days where having nowhere good to record a video only ranks somewhere about #21 on the list of issues I have here.

Notable sins:

0:00 A dungeon of my own
1:22 Subversion and serendipity
2:50 Parental porkers
4:11 Clock speed woes and KeeperFX
5:31 Coveting the actions of smarter people
7:48 Making life difficult
10:00 Seven minutes is a lot of nothing to say
11:35 Welcoming the Age of Plastic
12:32 That bit with the dogs
13:45 Bad times for the Lord of the Land
15:02 Making sacrifices to see what happens

Stock footage from Pexels
Except the skiing, that is genuinely me being a dumbass on a mountain
"Peter Molyneux - Game Developers Conference 2010" by Official GCD (CC-BY 2.0)

CC-BY 2.0: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0

KeeperFX project: keeperfx.net

Bonus fact: Dungeon Keeper spent a long time in development, with trailers and prototypes from as early as 1995. While early in-game footage looks quite different, scenes from the game's pre-rendered intro appear in their final form in trailers from 1996.

London in VGA: finding the real Sherlock Holmes behind The Case Of The Serrated Scalpel

Timberwolf 2024-04-12 | The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel is a great game. But who was Sherlock Holmes? How much does his London overlap with the real London? Is this even slightly about video games any more?

Yes, we've gone high-concept with a background of traffic noise as I attempt to master detect the master detective himself. Plus my studio is still out of action and I kind of wanted a day trip.

Case Files:

0:00 221B or not 221B
1:35 Oh yeah, video games
2:01 Tangential detail
2:58 The game is afoot
4:46 An ideal character
6:02 Holmes 2.0
7:43 A problem with the real world
10:26 The classic Holmes setup
11:53 Cold reading
13:58 Another location
15:54 Immediate roadblock
17:08 Scathing reviews
18:31 Holmes 1.0
20:21 A bit of flavour
22:09 Watson the goffik
23:12 Yards Scotland
24:44 Sour reviewers
25:38 Holmes' admiring public

Stock footage from Pexels
Huge amounts of public domain imagery from Wikimedia Commons
Dr. Joseph Bell, 'The Daily Round'. Wellcome L0001109.jpg, CC-BY 4.0

PC Zone scan provided by the Retro eXo project.

Every attempt has been made to ensure book images, Sidney Paget illustrations and other Sherlock miscellanea has been taken from images stated to be in the public domain. If you believe this to be in error please contact me and I will try to rectify and credit appropriately.

CC-BY 4.0: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Bonus fact: While the game may be approximate, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle moved his medical practice to London in 1891 and many of the Sherlock stories were written while he lived in South Norwood, meaning that many of the locations in the books were based on real-world places, although sometimes disguised with a slight name change as in the case of "Caulfield Gardens"

#pointandclick #adventuregame

What Simon the Sorcerer says about game design at point and clicks creative peak

Timberwolf 2024-01-28 | I'm delving into my collection of adventure games, and in doing so find that Simon the Sorcerer tells us an awful lot about the genre in its heyday, and why that heyday was going to be a lot shorter than we expected in 1993. Or 1994 if we wanted Chris Barrie voicing the explanation of it.

How did I find the adventures of He Who Sorcers? And why did vintage magazines claim this was possibly better than Day of the Tentacle? And am I going to get every last one of the Internet People correcting my pronunciation of "Elvira"?

Frustrating puzzles:

0:00 A little bit adventurous
1:02 It was twenty years ago today
2:34 The gap narrows
4:11 A British game about a wizard
5:18 Day of the US-centric Comedy Reference
6:32 Those Monkey Island comparisons
7:45 Ron Gilbert's conclusion
9:15 Combinatorial logic
10:50 Handmade with love and MT-32s
12:30 It wouldn't be Timberwolf without the blackboard
13:35 Cardinal sins of adventure gaming
15:57 Too much forest
17:35 An infringement of copyright
18:26 Shopping, 1997 style
19:34 The inevitable conclusion

Media credits:

Chris Barrie by ...some guy, CC-BY 2.0
Sci-fi & Fantasy Weekender 2017 by big-ashb, CC-BY 2.0
Stock footage from Pexels
Some public domain imagery from Wikimedia Commons
Some CC-0 sounds from Freesound

PC Zone and Computer Gaming World scans provided by the Retro eXo project.

CC-BY 2.0: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

Yes, they could probably also show more colours with copper tricks. If it happened, you can tell me.

Bonus fact: Simon was apparently dreamt up by Simon on a long car journey, with a section along the M5 being a key moment of the character's creation. And we just played I Spy.

#pointandclick #adventuregame

What were XMS, EMS and Conventional memory and why did the PC have them?

Timberwolf 2023-12-06 | What was all that talk of memory managers and AUTOEXEC.BAT boot menus about? How would an 8MB 486 fail to run a game which worked fine on a 1MB 286? Why was EMM386.EXE definitely not on Ultima 7's Christmas card list? And why does your friend have digitised sound on that game when you do not, even though you both have the same soundcard?

It's #doscember , and so time to delve into one of those questions of DOS that I never quite understood: what were EMS and XMS, and how could I have the wrong sort of memory?

The DOS/Dos joke was done better (and earlier) here: youtube.com/watch?v=RnZkWLK3BfE . Maybe it'll become a tradition or something.

Memory map:

0:00 A premise of sorts
0:52 5150
2:16 Pinhead
3:46 That segment thing
5:18 Where 640K came from
8:35 The 80286 arrives
10:05 Popcorn
11:00 Where EMS came from
11:43 Bank switching
13:57 Where XMS came from
15:23 Emulation
16:13 Precious conventional memory
17:50 HMA and the A20 gate
18:55 DOS wars
21:22 Better DOS and making memory
22:54 Boot disks and menus
23:32 DOS/4GW and that

Media credits:

Installation floppy disks (3.5-inch) for Microsoft MS-DOS 6.22 image by Blake Patterson from Alexandria, VA, USA, CC-BY 2.0
Raystown Lake, Huntington and Lititz trip image by Bob, CC-BY 2.0
Some CC-0 sounds used from Freesound
Some CC-0 and public domain images used from Wikimedia Commons
Stock footage from Pexels
Some stock imagery from Pixabay

CC-BY 2.0: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

Bonus fact: that 286 shown inexplicably on the floor of a very, very messy room was also later a 486/100, then eventually a K6/200 until lack of availability of AT motherboards supporting modern sockets forced me to finally buy a new case. I also did, eventually, tidy my room.

#doscember #⁠doscember2023

Adding AI to my 26 year old QBASIC game | QBASIC Rescue

Timberwolf 2023-11-10 | "You're a moderately successful web developer, and yet you spend your evenings programming old QBASIC games," as a friend of mine said the other week. There's not much more to the video than that, really.

I wrote a game AI for the first time, in the language I was using as a teenager. It kind of works. Mostly.

Subroutines:

0:00 About time
0:58 Where's the blog post, then?
3:05 Improving physics
4:36 Channeling Crammond
6:20 Fancy tracks
7:37 Assumptions and distractions
8:19 The new focus of Timberwolf's Stuff
10:04 Putting the "I" in
11:46 The wrong track
13:40 Predictions and... yeah, distractions
15:20 I am happy. Ish.
16:54 A la carte
17:52 Is it too late to switch to tweezer repair?
18:36 What was in my head

Music from YouTube Audio Library.
Stock footage from Pexels.
Sound effects CC0 from Freesound.

Download links:

Velocity: https://files.timberwolf.club/youtube/VELOCITY.BAS
Track Editor: https://files.timberwolf.club/youtube/TRACKED.BAS

Bonus fact: new Velocity is designed to be completely independent of any support files (hence the DATA statements!), but the original used to save fastest lap times to files in the shared network area. This and the "network" play was of course an immediate temptation for people to run their own hacked versions to set improbably fast laptimes and cheat at multiplayer. Much of the code I stripped out in my first cleanup was related to detecting what I considered to be impossible laptimes and issuing stern warnings to the player setting them.

#msdos #qbasic

I think The Need For Speed might be the great lost DSI Test Drive game

Timberwolf 2023-10-14 | Road & Track Presents: The Need For Speed straddles two epochs. One is obvious: it's the first title in a multi-decade series that's spawned countless classics, duds, and pioneering oddities. (Pun unintentional). But there's another, less obvious one: the swansong of the late '80s premier driving game codesmiths, recently acquired by a publishing behemoth but still carrying enough of their own identity to make one last Test Drive.

I fear the odds of people seeing the thumbnail and clicking just to comment "no Test Drive 4 came out after this game, how can you not know this?" are high. But I'm doing it anyway, because this was my immediate impression upon firing up PC CD-ROM The Need For Speed to prove to myself I can indeed win the tournament twice and my repeatedly losing to the X-Man on 3DO NFS is the fault of the console.

Checkpoints:

0:00 I'm right about Britpop and you know it
0:49 We're not in 16-bit land any more
1:24 Here comes the premise
2:16 A tale of one developer
3:54 Showcases and X-men
4:22 Versions upon versions
5:28 Realism, of a sort
7:48 The bit everyone replays to see if I broke the law
9:04 Graphical compromises and constraints
10:20 More Test Drive elements
11:24 Hitting the A-team in their stupid van. Or just a wall.
12:15 Roads or set pieces
13:50 Returning and ending

Oddly, for all NFS2's tracks feel like disconnected set pieces it's one of the few games early in the series to have one based on an actual real-world location, Pacific Spirit. There's a Tom Scott video about it and everything. Somehow, other than the stretch along the coast it still feels like a bunch of disconnected set pieces to drive.

Comments, you know the pre-moderation drill by now. I edited out a whole section mocking bad faith misinterpretations because, y'know, I don't really get those any more. DO NOT MAKE ME FEEL MY FAITH IN HUMANITY HAS BEEN MISPLACED.

Bonus fact: The EAC RALY cheat unlocked for finishing the tournament twice mostly just changes the car handling, unless you race on Rusty Springs in which case it unlocks an alternative reskin of the track called Oasis Springs.

Revisiting the streets of my youth via Sierras Police Quest

Timberwolf 2023-09-14 | It's time to go back to the streets I spent my childhood on. To answer that question, "can you go back again?"

But which are the streets of my childhood? Are they suburban Surrey, or are they the EGA rendition of Lytton from the first Police Quest game as viewed through a vintage Amstrad? Yes, it's one of those inscrutably high-concept video ideas where I yet again avoid just showing a game for a bit and making some simple observations about it, all wrapped up in a thinly-disguised excuse for making a 30-mile journey just to get some chips.

Case files:

0:00 I think I'm going back
0:55 My life, 1987-1991 (and also 2013)
2:40 What intrigued me with Lytton
3:50 Philosophical storm
5:15 Freedom and the art of car maintenance
6:18 My love of mundanity
8:15 Police Quest is sort of fair, though
10:00 Filling in the gaps
10:35 No, really, I did plan the trip around this
11:12 Chemical-induced damage
12:34 Shattering my childhood roadblock
14:37 A pub story
15:28 Good Cops, Bad Criminals
16:47 A bit about Sierra
17:38 A clumsy story
18:29 Bridge and poker
21:16 The inevitable VGA remake
22:34 Near 23 minute TTN
23:25 Some sort of conclusion. Also chips.

Acorn Electron, ZX Spectrum and Chevrolet Caprice images from Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Additional video stock footage from Pexels.

Some CC-0 sounds used from Freesound.

Ken Williams image by Cade Peterson, CC-BY-SA 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 - the section of video where this image is shown may be adapted under the same licence.

Jim Walls image from the Sierra News Magazine.

Hop Hip by Kwon from the YouTube audio library.

Bonus fact: The cameo appearance and occasional use of an asset or two from Leisure Suit Larry may partly be down to Al Lowe handling programming duties on Police Quest.

Is Flight Unlimited the first true modern flight sim... and should I have run it on a 486 DX2?

Timberwolf 2023-08-27 | Any question can be answered "yes" if you get to define your own parameters. Nevertheless, I would like to tell you about Flight Unlimited, why I think it does indeed deserve consideration for pioneering two vital tenets of the modern flight sim, and what it was like to play it on a 486 DX2/66, barely above the minimum spec. And what were we doing with a 486 that late in 1995 anyway?

Plus, while it may be an interesting diversion into the past to play Flight Unlimited on an emulation of suitably underpowered vintage hardware, there's also a case that when given more resources it's a better game than its immediate successor, the unique flight model and crisp software-rendered graphics eclipsing generic '90s GA sim techniques and blurry early 3D. At the very least, it was less of a pain to get running.

Navigational aids:

0:00 What is the modern flight sim?
1:12 Where everyone comments a different flight sim
1:32 The 286 era and upsetting Amiga or ST owners
3:00 Pushing boundaries
3:38 I spend too much time in Blender
4:06 The clock-doubled 486
4:54 It's how Wikipedia claims you say Meigs
5:49 Ultima Underworld takes to the skies
6:54 Careless CD (mis)management
7:40 Alpine Shepherd Boy
8:21 That 486 thing again
9:30 s'good though, innit?
10:36 The blackboard returns
11:55 No continents
13:02 A fluid situation
14:20 Inevitable compromises
15:05 Gliding over the complicated bits
15:40 The notional 486/1000
16:47 Well actually the foreground is polygons actually
17:18 I guess we have to play Flight Unlimited II. Sigh.
17:56 The great jelly wars of 2024

Photo of Seamus Blackley (and Charles!) by Seamus Blackley, CC-BY-SA 4.0. Photo unmodified except for the background behind it. The CC-BY-SA 4.0 larger work exemption applies to this video as a whole, but the section 6:07-6:12 may be adapted under CC-BY-SA 4.0 terms (both myself and Seamus Blackley as original author must be attributed and a compatible licence must be used).

Additional sound effects CC0 from Freesound.

I pre-moderate comments, it may take some time for them to appear. Low quality and excessively negative comments will be discarded.

Music: Lucky Rubber Ducky by Quincas Moreira, from the YouTube audio library.

Yes, I did indeed spend a lot of time making those stupid rendered bits work. I'm still far too proud of that "virtual world" one even if it doesn't line up exactly right.

Bonus fact: that is indeed my original 286 in its original configuration as a 286 sitting on the floor of a very chaotic bedroom. I'm not sure why it's on the floor as it was definitely on some sort of desk most of the time, but the mess surrounding it and possibly my need to take a photo suggests some kind of transitional state for bedroom layout, computer, or both.

I am completely unable to review Derail Valley

Timberwolf 2023-08-09 | I've started playing Derail Valley and I love it to the point I need to tell you all about it. Which is a problem, because it turns out that the moment the cameras are rolling and I'm gathering gameplay footage I become completely unable to articulate just what it is that sets this aside from the usual pulling of a single lever and waiting for things to happen of supposedly more realistic simulators.

Also I make a sandwich and a flask of tea on... er, somewhere slightly to the left of camera in my neverending quest to find a YouTube niche even smaller than "indie simulators and old PC games". If you're still enjoying things by this point you are a wondrous person and I appreciate you.

List of signals:

0:00 I am late. Again.
0:39 The problem with train simulators
1:43 I make tea in an entirely uncontroversial way
3:03 Finally, some gameplay footage
4:30 I made that tea for a reason
7:07 Ambition
8:14 I am great at shunting. Honest.
9:23 Hilly antagonists
10:42 This video has a problem
12:47 Under pressure
13:12 The economical disco train and its downfall
14:45 Functional naming and more failure
15:45 Life on the edge
17:36 Sensible and proper
19:16 The pleasure of potential failure
22:27 The hopping game
23:25 More safe shunting
24:09 Navigational issues
25:00 The bit with the outcome
25:48 The bit after the outcome
27:05 The sandwich returns

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated.

Additional sound effects CC0 from Freesound.

A brief except of Maple Leaf Rag by E's Jammy Jams is used in this video.

Bonus fact: no, really, this was an absolute horror to record and I found myself consistently unable to say *anything* interesting about what is a rather enjoyable little indie sim with plenty of challenges to keep you busy. It's great fun scuttling across the map in a little shunter delivering all sorts of things to those functionally-named places, whether you bring along sandwiches and tea for extra authenticity or not. Developer altfuture have a roadmap of even more things they'd like to add, including a potential US-themed future DLC pack with beefier locomotives and a different map.

I became captivated by this obscure German bus simulator.

Timberwolf 2023-07-03 | The man for whom the word "boring" apparently has no meaning finds a new question to ask: if truck simulators are the joke which came good, then what's a bus simulator - some kind of avant-garde artistic statement?

The actual answer is a combination of charmingly homemade indie project, historical documentary, and a strange world of finding calm in the stress of having a million things to do in a vehicle approximately 50% too big to do any of them with.

One day I may even understand the ventilation controls. But today is not that day.

This bus stops at:

0:00 It's a bus simulator.
0:51 Love letters and symphonies
2:18 I just want boredom, OK?
3:23 I am not a salesman
4:23 Click things and hope
4:49 Celebrating the small
5:55 Oh this is going to get the comments, isn't it.
6:41 Sampling
7:15 Errant Mercedes
8:49 Daily bus problems
9:55 A history lesson
11:48 The inevitable editor bit
12:32 Bad at the editor, bad at the concept of buses
13:48 Dead-eyed child
14:25 Sympathetic assessment
15:25 Rough edges
17:00 Over-stimulated, under-DLCed
18:20 Invested in Grundorf
19:19 No you're clunky and dated

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Especially this video, given it's ultimately about Berlin in the past.

Bonus fact: The front seat passenger view at around 6:54 is driving through Hackney in London, a little up the corner from Ridley Road, the early headquarters of Amstrad. I did film that bit also but my partner and I ended up having a discussion about whether we should try going to the pub on the corner, so the footage ended up being mostly of the pub. We still haven't tried going yet.

Bad Influence!, GamesMaster, and Digitiser: British gaming TV in the 90s and its return

Timberwolf 2023-06-07 | Bad Influence!, GamesMaster and Digitiser - three British gaming TV instutions, but where are they now? Join me and a whole host of other retro tech and gaming YouTube people for memories, homages, modern interpretations and more. What was on your telly in the '90s, and did you ever successfully campaign to be allowed to watch people play Sonic instead of the continuing adventures of Harold Bishop?

Because I didn't, and that's why everybody else had to help me remember GamesMaster.

Thank you to the vocal and visual talents of:

@aBadEducationTV
@MoreFunMakingIt
@Yesterzine
@Digitiser
@RoseTintedSpectrum

And the ever-lovely Chris Bell for Super Page 58, the greatest Digitiser archive this world has ever known. Visit it today. Or another day of your choice. superpage58.com

Digitiser Live (28th/29th July 2023) event info and tickets:

FAQ: digitiser2000.com/main-page/digitiser-live-weekend-2023-faq
Tickets Friday: harrowarts.com/whats-on/event/an-evening-with-mr-biffo
Tickets Saturday: harrowarts.com/whats-on/event/digitiser-live-3-0

Breaking Bad Influence:

Uno: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxnekvAfrfo5xLFtlKfS7iETP3y5tPNas
Due: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxnekvAfrfo7AtJzAvzGWKj6AXb6Jmd_q
Tre: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxnekvAfrfo7JrBnq3IBHGxMxl_IvMxvi
What's-a matter you: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxnekvAfrfo7Nt5pjz1vP03ifJHJNGxEj

Mr Biffo has an excellent Patreon with tiers to suit all budgets: patreon.com/MrBiffo
Rose Tinted Spectrum also has an excellent Patreon. You could be called a beanie baby! patreon.com/RoseTintedSpectrum/posts

Photo of James Marsters for that one terrible pun by Patrick Lee, licensed under CC-BY 2.0 [creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/]. I modified it from the original source.

Bad Influence! and GamesMaster clips supplied by the Internet Archive, originally by Yorkshire Television for ITV and Hewland International for Channel 4 respectively.

Digitiser and Breaking Bad Influence clips used with permission.

Supplementary stock footage from Pexels.
Some imagery from Wikimedia Commons public domain collection.
Sound effects from Freesound CC0/public domain collections.

This week Z is reporting on:

0:00 A difficult relationship
1:36 I don't half say 'in the nineties' a lot
2:40 A vital question
3:16 Of course you were
4:30 Micro machinations
5:20 Bin with an openable flap
6:03 Children are rubbish at reviewing things
6:37 Rise of the regrets
7:25 Don't tell the Supervision people
8:03 Nam Rood
8:50 Nam Wolf
9:45 Stand by for Datablast
10:46 Michael Heseltine content
11:16 Illuminatus
11:40 GamesMaster Live (with aBadEducationTV)
14:05 Cows in space, sheep on TV
15:57 Repeatable and reheatable
16:35 Lesley Gore Special
17:18 The rules of the land
17:47 Competition time (with More Fun Making It)
19:45 The disembodied head of Moore
21:01 The ballad of Bandana Dave (with Dudley of Yesterzine)
22:54 Recently revived
23:35 Digitising
24:49 Connect up via modem
25:40 Whatever you do, don't mention retro Kickstarters
26:59 Really, you could just watch this instead
27:32 Translating Teletext (with Mr Biffo)
28:55 David Braben's toilet habits
29:18 Bringing Back Binfluence
29:50 This is another thing you could watch instead
30:49 Mystery Science Theatre 1996
31:03 WHY? (with Rose Tinted Spectrum)
32:06 It concludes
32:58 I am officially less good at this than Andy Wear

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way.

Bonus fact: at the time of writing I've still got three of those damn ciders to get through, because the local shop only did them in packs of four. This is what we call dedication to the craft.

Er... alright, these days Violet Berlin produces interactive exhibitions for museums and that, including a recent exhibition on war games for the Imperial War Museum. Andy Wear appeared in Mr Biffo's Found Footage, in a homage to GamesMaster. Andy Crane probably still exists somewhere. And we hope Sohail continued his redemption arc to have only the best opinions about games.

I really hope everyone understands the idea of taking the piss out of something you genuinely loved otherwise that's going to be a LOT of unnecessary defending of Bad Influence to get through...

Screamer - Graffiti Softwares PC answer to Ridge Racer

Timberwolf 2023-05-10 | The 3D arcade racer was the big hit of the mid '90s arcade - colourful, fast-moving, simple and yet also endlessly replayable. Then the Playstation brought them into the living room with a spectacularly faithful Ridge Racer conversion. As a PC owner, I was convinced a good 486 could do something just as impressive when it came to polygon-throwing. Screamer certainly looked like it'd be the game... but was it?

I'd tell you, but apparently I can't even get the thing installed correctly. Yes, it's one of THOSE videos.

Unlockable tracks:

0:00 There's a box, and it's bad
1:05 Vintage installer time
1:58 A brief history(ish) of Graffiti and Screamer
5:15 The Playstation arrives in Europe
5:50 It all goes horribly wrong
8:36 The PC's year of being the ultimate gaming machine
10:18 Actually it's Daytona USA we should be talking about
10:52 A lesson about environment mapping
12:24 Engine sound effect piracy
13:03 A weird sort of nostalgia
14:16 Controllers from the future!
15:42 Things fall apart
18:18 Trouser Bandit League
19:13 Fondness for Screamer, or perhaps its era
20:07 Really we're all just at the whim of the box

Thanks to Genesis Temple for their detailed history of IDEA Soft and Graffiti, which I found incredibly useful while making this video. If you enjoyed it, buy them a Ko-fi at genesistemple.com

Also, inevitably, to Evan Amos for his ever-useful library of console images and the community of Pexels.

Music links will probably appear below, but if not they are "Bunny Hop" and "Sand Castle" by Quincas Moreira, from the YouTube Audio Library.

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 22 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

#dos #retro #stuffinboxes

User Created Expansion Set: the free community-made expansion for Chris Saywers RCT2 from 2003

Timberwolf 2023-04-26 | Did I ever tell you about the *other* early-2000s RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 expansion pack? Well, no, of course I didn't. That would be silly, because if I had this would just be making the same video again. But yes, alongside the disappointment of Wacky Worlds and Time Twister was a third expansion, full of satisfyingly challenging scenarios, new rides and scenery, and all linked together by two stories you could read at length in the accompanying manual.

Bonus: it was community-made and free. The best of all the prices. I dig into history to show you a little more about UCES, the User Created Expansion Set, and some of the custom rides and editors which made it possible.

Visit a preserved version of the UCES site and download it here: uces.rctspace.com

Ride List:

0:00 You did a location shot for THIS?
0:36 Pluggable and swappable
1:23 Object Editor
2:06 Sim Rides, not Sim Theme Park
2:42 Dodgy '70s comedy routines and that
4:05 More custom rides
4:44 Wasted potential
5:37 Time Twister, but not
6:30 Remote working before it was cool
7:43 A viable product
8:55 The birthday present
9:32 How does it play?
11:48 A slight gripe
12:48 Favourable comparisons
13:28 Essential download?
14:22 It's just outtakes you don't need to watch them

PHP forum code shown from PHPBB, phpbb.com

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 15 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

#rollercoastertycoon #openrct2 #retrogaming

Duke Nukem 3D, the Build engine, and my 1990s attempts at level creation

Timberwolf 2023-04-05 | Duke Nukem 3D is an all time classic. It's a shame I was only ever any good at making levels. And even for that I needed the help of a vintage guide.

I recount why Duke was great, why including the Build editor was even more great, and take you through my vintage attempts to build a slice of suburbia and set a map inside an office, a type of building I had never even visited at the time. They've aged rather better than my teenage attempts at edgy humour. And yes, I still remain endearingly rubbish at FPS games.

If you have any further information on the whereabouts of CASTLE.MAP or the other long-lost contents of Stereo's web page, I would love to hear them.

In the interests of avoiding the same situation for my own closest brush with a "functional" and possibly even "playable" level, you can download OFFICE.MAP here: https://files.timberwolf.club/OFFICE5.MAP

EDuke32 can be found at eduke32.com, with registered versions of Duke available on Steam or seemingly relatively plentiful and cheap on eBay, providing you don't want an original big box with all the manuals.

Sector tags:

0:00 The test to see who watches the full video before commenting
1:02 I get to use my GPU for once
1:45 Well, there goes the advertising revenue
2:30 Saying you want a revolution
3:14 Real locations, real corny one-liners
4:16 I am bad at games
5:32 Level editors are brill
6:55 How many submarines does one game need exactly?
7:41 Fast feedback
8:45 A delve into the personal archives
9:26 It's my room!
10:05 Build is complicated
10:44 Young Timberwolf buys a book
11:25 My obsession with CASTLE.MAP
12:23 OFFICE.MAP, my finest hour. Almost.
14:34 Everyone gets bored and wanders off
16:20 Cause for optimism

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 17 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus fact: After build Ken Silverman would be one of the first people to become interested in voxel-based graphics, starting work on his Voxlap engine in 2000 and after a few demos releasing the full source code in 2005.

Stunt Car Racer by Geoff Crammond: a tale of clever suspension modelling and PC port disappointment

Timberwolf 2023-03-01 | Stunt Car Racer is an Amiga and Atari ST classic, an unusual diversion of Geoff Crammond simulating a thing which does not exist in real life, and also the source of some disappointment for 9 year old me when I got the PC version home and discovered the importance of checking which format the screenshots on the box come from.

But how does it handle all those jumps, twists and turns on a game that is eminently playable on everything down to the humble ZX Spectrum, even if it doesn't look quite as pretty as you'd hope on some of those platforms? I delve a little into the secrets of Stunt Car Racer's physics, its history, and why it's a suspension-bobbling anomaly in Crammond's stable of normally circuit-bound racers.

Many thanks to Frank Gasking of Games That Weren't (gamesthatwerent.com) for the screenshots of Stunt Car Racer Pro. Also available in book form (bitmapbooks.com/products/the-games-that-werent) - in addition to a wealth of research, exclusive interviews and games even I hadn't heard of it has the usual excellent quality you'd expect from Bitmap Books and is an ideal use for a spare £30.

As ever, this video would not be possible without the hardware photography of Evan Amos (or RMCRetro in the case of the BBC Micro) and stock footage from Pexels, or at least I would have to own more vintage hardware and do a lot more silly things in front of a camera.

A list of chassis-twisting landings:

0:00 I fail at planning
1:13 Polygons on the Amiga
1:53 The Division Bell
2:40 Low speed adventures of Evel Knievel
4:03 Enforced roof-having memory puzzle
4:50 Magazines with multiple Amigas
6:23 Brownaround
8:17 The odd one out?
9:36 Before Sir Geoff of Racingland
10:27 Yes, I was writing code in that shot
11:08 What else is "roving simulation" going to make you think of?
12:18 The bit about the physics
14:19 A game about springs
15:12 Any port in a storm
16:15 Ah yes, the CPC... er, PC
17:07 Timberwolf learns a lesson about screenshots
17:58 More musing about release dates
18:25 The curse of 1980s PC gaming
19:15 Positives of the PC port
19:53 What next?
21:10 Unity projects and a million mobile games
21:40 Spiritual sequels and crashing an MX-5

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 23 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus fact: notice how in some ports the speedometer reads to 240, while in other ports it reads to 300 or more? When you're promoted to the Super Division, the car can exceed 250km/h on the faster tracks. Ports with the 240km/h speedometer handle this by wrapping the display around and starting again from the left hand edge, whereas other ports are able to use the extra margin available to display those enhanced Super Division speeds.

#stuntcarracer #retrogaming

Rescuing an old QBASIC game from 1996 and making it playable: Oval Racer gets revisited

Timberwolf 2023-01-04 | Can I fix the flickery mess of my first ever QBASIC driving game, from 1996? Of course. It'd be worrying if I can't. But join me as I dive deep into vintage code, show some of QBASIC's weird optimisation rules, and even find time to dabble in the realms of classic DOS fixed-point polygon rendering.

Yes, it's one of those. Have your copy of The Revolutionary Guide on standby.

Also, watch @WhatHoSnorkers: youtube.com/JamesO'GradyWhatHoSnorkers

And as promised, for anyone in need of a last-minute wedding present: https://files.timberwolf.club/RACE20.BAS

Subroutines:

0:00 I never manage to do what I'm supposed to
0:53 Anyway, here's Oval Racer and it is SHORT
1:35 Vintage code roadshow
3:04 PC speaker inbound
4:03 Timberwolf's donkey tribute
4:42 I have strong opinions about 1960s music. Again.
5:10 A new meaning for "only cheating yourself"
6:35 It gets real
7:27 Some QBASIC tricks
8:18 Unexpected bonus dog content
8:48 Reverse gear
9:13 The mandatory educational bit
10:51 Old PCs and that
12:35 This is totally how a car is made honest
12:51 But why?
13:37 My favourite type of programming: deleting code
15:10 The classic BASIC effect
16:08 Maybe it should be possible to win?
16:37 For certain values of functional
17:23 Serious expectation adjustment
18:06 Being optimistic about one's teenage self
18:21 Oval Racer is STILL short
19:35 Let's randomly diss a load of TV programmes
20:47 EXIT FOR

Games shown:

Velocity 2 SE
Velocity SE
Oval Racer (naturally)
DONKEY.BAS
Darkside
BeamNG.drive

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 21 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus fact: all that music stuff refers to the battle for UK singles chart #1 4th-10th February 1965, between two cover versions of You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'. Andrew Loog Oldham, manager of the Rolling Stones, was so incensed at the poor taste of the British public (Cilla's version was ahead in the charts the previous week) that he took out an advert in Melody Maker at his own expense to point out how much better the Righteous Brothers version sounded - inadvertently coining the phrase "Wall of Sound" to describe Phil Spector's kitchen sink approach to pop music production.

Wait, wasn't this supposed to be about BASIC?

The History of QBASIC and my history with it

Timberwolf 2022-12-07 | If you had a DOS PC in the 1990s, chances are it came with QBASIC. In this video I talk about how it came to be, from the earliest IBM PC with BASIC in ROM to... well, PCs with BASIC not in ROM. I then explain how MS-DOS's bundled-in BASIC captivated the imagination of a younger me, with a little help from a school programming club.

Yes, It's a #doscember video. It's released in December and it is largely about DOS.

There are also games (DOS games, natch) you've probably not seen before. They're not very good, but that doesn't change the fact you've probably not seen them, unless you're watching this video for the second, third or even fifth time, an activity I'm fully on board with.

And where else are you going to see someone hold up a copy of The Revolutionary Guide to QBASIC, eh?

Program Listing:

0:00 How I fail at retro gaming YouTube
0:55 Nobody saw that coming did they?
1:28 Transitional bits
2:40 Let's hope this doesn't wind up all the ST owners
3:18 The beginning, finally
4:17 IBM PC DOS
5:28 That's a lot of BASICs.
6:02 That which shall not be named
6:38 Oh wait so all of that was pointless
6:52 BIOS copying explained by virtual chalkboard
8:58 I just wanted to show off that wild Compaq bundled software
9:58 I get into GW-BASIC... sike it's just truck sims again
12:14 QuickBasic
13:15 The trouble with DOS
15:15 A game, at last! Not mine. Geoff's.
15:47 Wait, I thought you said you programmed BASIC?
16:32 I really hope none of those 1996-1998 filenames are "hilariously" offensive in a teenage way
16:47 Authentic imagery of the British school system
17:48 The programming club approaches
18:13 Self-demystification and enraged Logo fans
19:00 Social dynamics
19:26 I lied. Sort of.
19:55 Timberwolf's Games: Fast Driver
21:28 A Graphical Interlude
22:01 Ultima Net: too cool for school
24:08 I fall behind
24:54 Timberwolf's Games: Oval Racer
25:05 Timberwolf's Games: Velocity
26:08 Timberwolf's Games: Velocity 2
27:45 Timberwolf's Games: Flying Eye
28:30 Crocodile Clips!
29:06 The end in sight

Yes, I only have high... er, medium resolution pictures of my first computer at the point when it had already been upgraded to a K6/200, and by that point was an old PC we had kicking around spare to be a server for our student house. Digital cameras weren't exactly household items in the 286 era. Maybe if you're all really nice I'll dig around in the nostalgia box and see if I've got an out-of-focus film photo from a cheap, light-bleeding 35mm fixed lens camera for the next time I mention it.

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 29 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus Fact: many of the QuickBasic language features we know and (possibly) love from QBASIC only came along in later versions, and if it looks like I'm struggling to get a program together in the footage of QuickBasic 2.0 it's because everything I'm used to is yet to exist!

Bonus Game: spot the error in the example "kind of C program I wrote when I was 12" section - worse still, something which was widely suggested by many C tutorials in magazines and books of the time!

#doscember #qbasic

RollerCoaster Tycoon 2: not an instant Chris Sawyer classic?

Timberwolf 2022-11-23 | What about the gaming world of 2003 made RCT2 not the instant classic you'd expect, given how popular and well-loved it is even today? And does it really take me 51 minutes to explain what Marcel Vos did in just 13? Yes, I tried to create a video about RCT2's scenario progression, and because it is me I started looking at what original reviews thought of it, then exactly how well Wacky Worlds went down at the time, and 15 pages of script later here we are. I put a Transport Tycoon Deluxe box somewhere it's not meant to go.

You may as well just watch Marcel's: youtube.com/watch?v=uHFaw-jHQ8w

But what is behind the surprisingly low scores for a classic game that has endured far beyond many of its 9/10 and 94%-scoring contemporaries? Why do people with YouTube channels say the game progression is bad, and what do we mean by good game progression anyway? What has early '90s CD-ROM-'em-up The 7th Guest have to do with any of this? Did I seriously draw a punk monk while attempting to come up with a visual metaphor for supernatural abilities? And how many commenters are going to spot and enjoy the many, many easter egg ride names I use in my own scenarios?

The following attractions are open today:

0:00 Hello again, context, whatevs
0:56 In case of Sonic attack...
1:39 This review does not exist in isolation
2:25 I return to narrating voxels
3:47 Vintage technical progression
4:39 Ah, so that's how The 7th Guest is relevant
5:17 At last, some sort of point!
5:57 uh well that's Sim Theme Park actually
6:57 Nobody plays RollerCoaster Tycoon now
7:28 A call for help
8:27 That having an actual point idea again
9:34 Hello, it's Ian Craft
10:27 RCT's short term reward loop
11:55 Classic scenario unlock progression
12:37 Not so classic scenario unlock progression
13:58 THAT scenario.
16:44 I show you a save game from 1999
17:26 Not a beginner scenario
18:27 Introducing game mechanics
20:50 RCT1's scenarios are great progression
23:27 RCT2's scenarios are not great progression
24:28 It's just an expansion tho
25:43 But not a great expansion
27:17 Yes I actually like Harmonic Hills
28:03 Secretly, it's just an excuse to mention the Groovies
28:58 The roller coaster British Rail built
29:51 Terrain problems
30:25 Wait, you're RESEARCHING these?
31:19 Oh dear, it's the Frontier expansion packs
32:15 Why I can't do an angry game review channel
33:23 Or possibly any channel, for that matter
34:16 Close your eyes for the next segment
35:30 Headless guests!
36:30 Quality Control, how does that work?
37:52 Wacky Worlds - not all bad?
39:00 Let's watch cartoons instead
39:25 Time Twister: "kinda... better I guess?"
40:15 Actually decent Frontier objects?
40:55 A beginner scenario at the start for once!
41:31 The problems come back
42:55 Justifying "kinda... better I guess?"
43:45 UCES, a whole video in itself
44:28 My great lost expansion pack
45:34 Undermining the last three quarters of an hour
46:42 Yet another point I didn't cover
47:12 Let's annoy the Grand Prix Unlimited fans again
48:24 Vague memories of assisted coaster piracy
49:15 Yeah, let's end it here

Stock footage from Pexels, Pixabay, iStock and Wikimedia Commons (CC0 only)

Games featured:

Sonic 3
OpenRCT2
SimCity 3000
Theme Park World / Sim Theme Park
OpenTTD
RollerCoaster Tycoon 2
The 7th Guest
RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic
RollerCoaster Tycoon
Minecraft (Bedrock)
Super Mario Bros.
Factorio
Planet Coaster
RollerCoaster Tycoon 3
Grand Prix Unlimited

Yeah okay, so I started writing a script and forgot to... well, stop.

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 178 hours long and boring, rather than 52 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus fact: RollerCoaster Tycoon featured a cheat protection mechanism where it checked the date of the scenario tracking file to make sure it had not been modified since the game last wrote it. Unfortunately this did not take into account Daylight Savings Time, meaning players of the first game had to get used to losing their scenario progress every six months, a problem which took multiple patches to fix.

Even worse, if you didn't have completed save games for each park you'd already finished the tool for recovering your scenario progress would be unable to unlock them, and wasn't always reliable even if you had. Often you'd have to play the parks again from the last saved point to unlock the scenario, meaning any vintage RCT1 fan had a lot of parks saved the day before scenario completion ready to load and unlock progress once more.

#rct2 #retrogaming

The Incredible Destruction Physics of X-Com: Apocalypse

Timberwolf 2022-10-19 | Why are all my favourite X-Com memories from Apocalypse? Is it the blend of real-time combat with the notoriously punishing tactical difficulty the series is known for? Or is it just goofing off to play stupid games and ruin people's buildings while they stand by, unable to do anything because the weapons have been edited right out of their hands?

Predictably, it's BOTH.

I explain why my favourite variety of X-Com is real-time, provide a little historical context that turn-based strategy wasn't quite so universally loved as you might think, and naturally dive in to how physics which let you collapse entire buildings work without also collapsing your 486.

Undermined foundations:

0:00 We've been here before
0:45 "Weird" doesn't narrow this down much
1:09 No Internet, just Teletext
1:30 An interesting pronunciation of "start".
2:25 That TV probably didn't support Teletext, did it now.
3:09 Real time and its consequences
4:55 Scaled down geography and scaled up furniture prices
6:38 Keeping up the difficulty
7:20 Time to get the editors out
8:32 Yes, you can see what else I've got installed!
8:49 Elerium Catch League 2084
9:26 Base layout editing
10:00 Unexpected equipment miniaturisation programme
10:44 Overkill
11:32 I finally get to the point
12:24 Fred Action: Space Asshole
13:10 Teardown lives up to its name
13:50 X-Com: Demolition Team
14:45 But how does it work?
17:04 Back to "why I likes it"
17:40 Such a thing as too much destruction
18:20 Shuddering to a conclusion

Games Featured:

X-Com: Apocalypse
X-Com: Terror From The Deep
Red Faction: Guerrilla
Teardown

Digitiser is a trademark of Paul Rose, content used with permission. Teletext images kindly provided from Chris Bell via Super Page 58, ultimately copyright DMG Media Ltd. Moc moc!

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 19 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus fact: X-Com Apocalypse was originally intended to have a vastly richer and more complex series of alien dimensions with procedurally generated cityscapes, as opposed to the single fixed dimension which ended up in the game. Once the Organic Factory building is destroyed the aliens will lose all capability to access Mega-Primus, meaning the game can be played indefinitely with no opposition other than any hostile organisations X-Com refuses to repair relations with, or any that became infiltrated earlier in the game.

How Good Is Midtown Madness 2s London?

Timberwolf 2022-09-07 | Look it's just me walking around London finding places a video game sort of looks like.

Yes, it's time to visit London, in both its real-life 2022 incarnation and its low-polygon year 2000 equivalent from Midtown Madness 2. Why do games about places he's been fascinate Timberwolf so much? How well does Midtown Madness 2 manage to both feel like London, and capture the geographical layout of London? Is it possible for someone to genuinely be fascinated by bollards?

And of course we couldn't possibly get through 20 minutes of this without a little explanation of how Midtown Madness and its sequel manage to compress entire cities into hardware that was barely up to a moderately-sized village.

This Train Is Delayed Due To Track Defects At:

0:00 I stand on a bridge!
0:44 The idea of locality
2:25 Please SCS, it would make my entire YEAR.
2:48 The Lower Thames Street Experience
3:36 Generic London is best London
4:36 It's all bollards
5:08 Far too much irrelevant detail about the Tube
6:40 Maybe they should have set it in outer London
7:09 Let us compare things!
7:58 Isn't this supposed to be about games?
8:25 I talk a little bit about mods
8:44 Life advice: don't go west of Holborn
9:50 Wait, 200MHz isn't powerful?
12:06 How a bit of it works
15:30 The Other City
15:54 The Conclusion Begins
16:31 How I played World Racing instead
17:04 The existential uncertainty of Midtown Madness
17:53 Undesirable action
18:26 Supercar cabs
19:25 The Conclusion Continues
20:00 The Conclusion Concludes (that I should give up on gaming videos)

Oh hey, the games featured list isn't a nightmare this time:

Midtown Madness 2
Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020)
Train Simulator
Forza Horizon 4
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Midtown Madness
MM2 City Toolkit
Descent
Mercedes-Benz World Racing

If you genuinely liked the Tube bit: youtube.com/channel/UCcHuNKYzVMc06FXqsBEAV3A
If you genuinely liked the bollards bit: bollardsoflondon.uk
If you just want the London Eye in Midtown Madness 2: mm2x.com (MM2 Revisited mod)

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 20 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus fact: visiting all of the major Midtown Madness landmarks shown in this video (and a couple of others!) is a rather pleasant walk: start from Tower Bridge, walk through the City then down to the river at Blackfriars, carry along the Victoria Embankment to the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, up Horse Guards Parade and then along the Mall/Constitution Hill to Hyde Park corner at which point you basically walk across the park collecting landmarks.

For me it ended up being about 10 miles, although part of that was delays on the District Line (yes, really!) meaning I had to start at Liverpool Street, and also a *lot* of wandering around the alleyways of the City trying to find somewhere that was quiet enough to film bollards in. Oh, and my determination to film a thing which isn't even in the game. Although you do walk past the BFI IMAX to get there, a suprisingly recent thing to include in a 2000 game with it only having opened in May 1999.

Why arent there more open-source recreations of classic games?

Timberwolf 2022-08-18 | Why isn't the world of gaming awash with open-source versions of almost any classic game you care to mention?

BECAUSE IT'S DIFFICULT. And with that, I've saved the people who take time to read the description any need to watch 30 minutes of me scrawling on a pretend blackboard and battling at least 3 different disassembly programs to conclude that oh right, yes, the reason there is not an open-source version of Test Drive III is because IT IS DIFFICULT.

But then again you might enjoy the journey through what Test Drive III does wrong, how it could have been fixed, and why despite me not bringing a brand new reimplementation to the roster of open source engines the future of such things is looking quite a bit brighter.

mov ds, seg chapter:

0:00 Don't be the thing I mock in this intro.
0:19 I spent so long on this stupid laptop thing.
1:15 You may as well watch Yesterzine instead.
2:35 Test Drive's performance problem.
3:48 I learnt 16-bit x86 assembler and DOS for this, I hope you're happy.
6:36 A reminder of happier times.
6:47 I have replicated the problem.
7:42 Why couldn't they be bothered, eh?
8:32 Timberwolf in CGA makes bad life choices.
8:51 Let's talk about reverse engineering for a bit.
10:12 People skipping chapters counts as engagement, right?
17:18 Throw a Chris Sawyer game in, that always gets views.
18:35 IT IS DIFFICULT.
22:28 IT IS DIFFICULT, this time in reference to Test Drive 3.
23:41 An even more disappointing version of Test Drive 3.
24:05 Other people do cool and useful stuff.
26:50 The spice must flow in reverse.
27:44 Arrakis isn't the only option.
29:21 Oh wait, someone already reverse engineered it.
29:41 Do be the thing I suggest in this outro.

Games/Things Featured:

OpenTTD
OpenRCT2
Exult
ScummVM
Gran Turismo 2
Frontier: Elite 2
Captain Amphibio's 3D Frog Arranging Simulator
Test Drive III: The Passion (finally)
Test Drive II: The Duel
A really rubbish version of the DVD screensaver for MS-DOS
Alex Kidd in Miracle World
Grand Prix Unlimited
Ghidra
DOSBox debug build
Chris Sawyer's Locomotion
Sourcer

Sebastian Macke's Maps: simulationcorner.net/td3/td3.html
Spice86 Project Page: github.com/kevinferrare/spice86
Masm2c Project Page: github.com/xor2003/masm2c

There is also a C# version of Spice86: github.com/OpenRakis/Spice86

Yesterzine's history of DSI Part 1: youtube.com/watch?v=92h69Gh8TFQ

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 30 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus fact: Hit Squad re-releases of Test Drive III mention the performance problems on faster PCs in the game manual. Hope you've got a Turbo button on your 486 DX2.

Remastered and Definitive Editions: The Sierra and LucasArts Way

Timberwolf 2022-07-27 | Remastered editions... the trademark of modern gaming? Or are they older than you think?

The answer is yes. Of course it's yes, otherwise this would be a very short video. Which it very noticeably isn't, as I cover the journey of Sierra and LucasArts in their attempts to update and refresh their games for a new audience. Find out how the plot of Leisure Suit Larry is 6 years older than you'd think, how the adventure game was revolutionised by a company that had almost gone broke, and maybe even learn a little bit about how the graphical in all those adventures was squashed down to fit vintage floppy disks.

And I realise that my life will never be quite what it was before I played damn near every game in the Leisure Suit Larry series.

Savegames from past the difficult bit:

0:00 Remastered and Expanded: The Definitive Edition
1:01 Point. Click. Remaster
1:18 The return of Ron
1:50 The (graphical) adventure begins
2:18 Not just an adventure with graphics
3:13 Suddenly... the PCjr!
3:47 Oh no, more technical details
8:04 That's a lot of games
8:55 We try to get this video demonetised
10:41 Mullet Hair Manny
11:35 George Lucas enters the scene
12:15 A game without a genre
12:42 What's wrong with Sierra anyway?
13:33 LucasArts and the case of the dubious acronym
14:37 Meanwhile in Coarsegold
15:04 The original retro demake
16:14 How many times do we need to release King's Quest?
18:00 Indiana Jones and the Run Length Encoded Image
19:31 No dithering in the corridors!
20:55 Looming problems
21:33 The version of Maniac Mansion you remember
21:54 The version of Zak McKracken you don't
22:50 VGA looms
24:00 And now the opposite... VGA-native games in EGA
25:00 Sierra gets VGA right first time
25:49 Adventure game sass fest
26:16 This is really just a lot of listing games
26:50 The remaster gets remastered
27:21 Trouble in remake town
28:00 The fans step in
28:53 The worst "Romancing The Stones" pun ever
30:07 Kings Quest 3 multiplied by 2
31:18 The point at which I've played too much LSL
32:14 Graphic adventures kill themselves
32:38 I kill remastered and definitive editions

Games featured:

Why must I do this to myself?

Mafia Definitive Edition
Grand Theft Auto San Andreas
Space Quest 1 (SCI)
Thimbleweed Park
Grim Fandango (Remastered)
Mystery House (Apple II)
Kings Quest (PCjr booter)
Space Quest (AGI)
Police Quest (AGI)
Leisure Suit Larry (AGI)
Softporn (Apple II)
Maniac Mansion (EGA v1)
Kings Quest IV (SCI)
Kings Quest IV (AGI)
Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (EGA)
Space Quest III
Loom (EGA)
Maniac Mansion (EGA v2)
Zak McKracken (EGA v2)
Zak McKracken (FM Towns)
Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (VGA)
Loom (VGA)
The Secret of Monkey Island (VGA)
Monkey Island 2
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Kings Quest V
Space Quest IV
Police Quest 1 (SCI)
Leisure Suit Larry (SCI)
Kings Quest 1 VGA Remake
Kings Quest 2: Romancing The Stones
Kings Quest 3 (AGD Interactive)
Kings Quest 3 (Infamous Adventures)
Leisure Suit Larry 3
Leisure Suit Larry 6 (CD-ROM/SVGA)

FM Towns photo by Lee LeBlanc, licensed under CC 2.0 Attribution Generic

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 3 hours long and boring, rather than 33 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus fact: In addition to all the PC remakes and remasters, there was also a separate version of Kings Quest for the Sega Master System which recreated all the graphics in tilemap form, and Kings Quest VI on the Amiga was rebuilt from the ground up in Revolution's Virtual Theatre engine due to the terrible performance of the SCI Amiga port.

Hard Drivin: From Arcade to ZX - all the versions I didnt cover.

Timberwolf 2022-06-23 | What's the least plausible version of Hard Drivin'? Which is the best to play? And how do the more technically interesting ones work? I go on a journey to find all the versions I didn't play in my video about Hard Drivin' for the Mega Drive which, thanks to that video's topic and the fact I spent most of it explaining how graphics work... is most of them.

In amongst the loops and jumps we have unreleased prototypes, weird Japan-only variants, and some dire 8-bit home computer ports. Did they really make Hard Drivin' work on the GameBoy? Find out!

Skip to your (least) favourite:

0:00 Timberwolf at the wheel
1:28 Really the first?
2:00 I am not good at Winning Run
3:16 Something about graphics accelerators
5:01 System 21 is not a PC.
6:12 ...but Hard Drivin' kinda is.
7:13 The arcade sequel and its physics
9:11 A little bit about Street Drivin' and Airborne
9:38 16-bit home computer versions
10:44 Hang on, isn't this supposed to have a wheel?
11:32 Good Times Unlimited
11:57 Hard Drivin' 2 doesn't join up.
12:34 Race Drivin' on an A1200 is nice!
13:20 Race Drivin' on the Mega Drive is OK.
14:42 A version more ridiculous than the Mega Drive
15:05 3D on the ZX Spectrum
16:00 Let's explain attribute clash
17:35 Include this if you mention the Spectrum. It's the law.
18:12 Oh wow I'm bad at Starglider
19:15 Madlads.
21:14 Alan Sugar's Electronic Discotheque
22:27 The C64? Really?
23:00 The one which didn't get finished
24:18 They did WHAT??
26:44 A 16-bit 8-bit version
27:23 The tale of Mikey and Suzy
28:54 How to live without a GPU debugger
30:40 Yes, I played the SNES version. Sigh.
32:54 Maybe I'm just bad at all games with "Star" in the title.
34:16 A plethora of expansion chips
34:56 SNES Race Drivin' is good! If you cheat.
35:45 I just wanted to include the PS1 boot sound
37:07 Back to SEGA for another excellent '90s boot sequence.
38:10 Bus Bending Simulator is a Hard Drivin' game?
39:13 I put my own car on the line
40:31 The ultimate version of Hard Drivin'
41:00 Credits.

Music by:

Something Sinister by ant512 (CC-BY 4.0)
FCHP by elPatrix (CC-BY 4.0)
Instant Suppression by KJ Jose (CC-BY 4.0)
Lonely Heart by Andreas Viklund (CC-BY 4.0)
Dreams 3 by The Solid Energy Crew (CC-BY 4.0)
Endless River by Zilly Mike (CC-BY 4.0)
Hannibaugh by Pip Malt (CC-BY 4.0)
Faraway Love by Andreas Viklund (CC-BY 4.0)
Amber by Jan125 (CC-BY 4.0)
Bounce by ant512 (CC-BY 4.0)
Ice-Breaker by Zilly Mike (CC-BY 4.0)
Fresh Bits by KJ Jose (CC-BY 4.0)
Down the Elevator Shaft by Pip Malt (CC-BY 4.0)

Where indicated, music files licensed under CC-BY 4.0: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Alan Sugar photograph by Damien Everett
Console images by Evan Amos

Games featured:

Oh bloody hell.

Hard Drivin' (Arcade)
Winning Run (Arcade)
Race Drivin' (Arcade)
Street Drivin' (Arcade)
Car & Driver (PC)
Hard Drivin' (PC/Amiga)
Grand Prix Unlimited (PC)
Hard Drivin' 2: Drive Harder (PC)
Stunts/4D Sports Driving (PC)
Race Drivin' (Amiga)
Race Drivin' (Mega Drive)
Hard Drivin' (ZX Spectrum)
Driller (ZX Spectrum)
Everyone's A Wally (ZX Spectrum)
Magic Mushrooms (Acorn Electron)
Manic Miner (ZX Spectrum)
Starglider (ZX Spectrum)
Hard Drivin' (Amstrad CPC464)
Hard Drivin' (Commodore C64)
Hard Drivin' (NES, unreleased)
Race Drivin' (Gameboy)
Hard Drivin' (Atari Lynx)
Race Drivin' (SNES)
Starfox (SNES)
Super Mario RPG (SNES)
Hard Drivin' A Go Go (PlayStation)
Race Drivin' (Saturn)
BeamNG.drive (PC)

BeamNG track: The Nostalgia 1989 by mike22 (beamng.com/threads/the-nostalgia-remake-of-the-original-hard-drivin-track.7249)

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 7 hours long and boring, rather than 41 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus fact: while it may seem implausible, several of the Hard Drivin' stunts including the loop and bridge jump have been completed in real life. While a loop requires a reasonably high performance model to reach the speed required to successfully traverse it, it is entirely possible in a standard road car.

MegaDrive Hard Drivin: too clever for the console?

Timberwolf 2022-05-25 | How can one of the MegaDrive's worst racing games be one of its cleverest? In search of yet more racing game pain and suffering, I discover that the only pain I'm going to encounter with Hard Drivin' for the MegaDrive is quite how many diagrams I need to draw to explain it to you. Maybe it's time to upgrade to something a little newer than Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced.

See what makes Hard Drivin' interesting is that, on the face of it, Sega's 16-bit wonder can't do polygons at all. We know this. It's why Virtua Racing needs that fancy extra chip in the cartridge. So how is Hard Drivin' doing this all on a standard console? And why would the original developers and indeed players not really have worried about that famous frame rate?

Skip to the end of polygon drawing:

0:00 Lazy Generic Angry Game Reviews
0:27 The real intro
1:53 Turns out there are stupid questions
3:02 PC graphics cards: NOT for games
4:39 People will want access to the stupid inserts, right?
5:27 Console graphics: FOR games
7:03 Let's talk about sprites
8:15 How do '80s driving games work?
11:53 The Polygon
13:05 Let's talk vintage frame rates
14:09 The Polygon at the arcade
14:37 We finally get to the point... almost
15:05 Challenge Timberwolf: Hard Drivin' Championship Lap
20:37 A review of Hard Drivin' of sorts
21:26 How does it work, if you're not on a MegaDrive?
22:20 OK, but what if you ARE on a MegaDrive?
22:46 Timberwolf manages to avoid the point again...
23:00 ...or maybe not
24:12 Yes, I did just explain how Hard Drivin' works
25:48 How to double buffer without two buffers
27:06 Time to mention that £70 cartridge
28:02 How did Virtua Racing work?
29:10 15fps. It's the law.
29:51 Is it time for an iconoclastic verdict already?
30:33 It's been 31 minutes, let's give up and rent games

Music from original games and by DivKid / Nico Staf

1. Rich In The 80s - DivKid
2. Fast and Run - Nico Staf

Games Featured:

Hard Drivin' (MegaDrive)
Outrun (Arcade)
ZZT (PC)
Teenage Mutant Ninja/Hero/Whatever Turtles (NES)
Car & Driver (PC)
Indianapolis 500: The Simulation (PC)
Formula One Grand Prix (PC)
Formula One Grand Prix (Amiga)
Hard Drivin' (Arcade)
Test Drive 2: The Duel (MegaDrive)
Virtua Racing (MegaDrive)

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 3 hours long and boring, rather than 31 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus fact: F1GP has one of the strangest frame rate options of any game, where you select the number of frames per second of simulated time, and if your PC isn't fast enough then one second of simulated time will take longer than one second of real time. It's a genuine problem for recording and sharing hotlaps, where this slowdown makes things easier.

#megadrive #harddrivin #polygons

Carmageddon 2 Had A Wild Mod Scene

Timberwolf 2022-05-11 | How did a controversial game end up spawning a fantastic mod scene? I delve into Carmageddon; the uneasy relationship between gaming and mainstream media in the late '90s, how it skirted the censors, and whether it was a good game or one that only sold because it irritated the newspapers. Then I look at the sequel - can I finally lay to rest my teenage frustration at being unable to beat the game's end-of-group missions? And what was it about the game's mod scene which made none of that really matter?

Direct Controversy Access:

0:00 The News, circa 1997
3:06 But what is this all about?
4:13 Finally, some gameplay footage
5:37 Was Carmageddon 1 any good?
7:28 Modding your game
8:01 Carmageddon 2 arrives and I don't have the right graphics card
9:33 Progress roadblock
10:12 Challenge Timberwolf: Complete an easy Carmageddon 2 mission
15:13 It's still my favourite though
16:08 The Mod Scene and its survival
18:11 Who did I forget?
19:06 The future of preservation
19:50 The three flavours of C2 mod
21:18 Limitations
22:40 The third category
23:45 Why were vintage mod scenes so great?

Music by Geographer / The 126ers / The Whole Other / Houses of Heaven / TrackTribe / Devon Church / Dan Henig / Quincas Moreira (YouTube Audio Library)

1. Val Holla - Geographer
2. On My Way Home - The 126ers
3. The Machine Assembly - The Whole Other
4. Escape - Houses of Heaven
5. Duck In The Alley - TrackTribe
6. Weak Knight - Devon Church
7. Berlin at Night - Dan Henig
8. Darkdub - Quincas Moreira

Games Featured:

Destruction Derby
Carmageddon
Carmageddon 2

Links:

Toshiba's Road Reaction 2000: rr2000.cwaboard.co.uk
CWA Board: cwaboard.co.uk
Ultimate Car Pack: moddb.com/mods/ultimate-car-pack/downloads/ultimate-car-pack
Seduction of Destruction: sod-4-u.webs.com/versionfiles.htm
Dethrace: github.com/dethrace-labs/dethrace
BRender source code: github.com/foone/BRender-v1.3.2

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 26 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus fact: Stainless seemed to enjoy method acting a little too much - creating the crash sounds by running themselves over using a large American car (I believe put in game as the Hevy Impaler shown at around 7:30), and making the Max Damage Pratcam extra realistic by hitting the actor with a pool cue. Die Anna was thankfully spared the same treatment.

Viper Racing: Sierras OTHER 1998 Racing Sim

Timberwolf 2022-04-27 | A never-heard-of-'em from the golden era of PC sim racing? Of course I need some of that. Providing it's on a budget label, which my copy naturally was.

But parsimonious late '90s purchasing decisions aside, does Viper Racing's dedicated single model focus result in a satisfying simulation experience? You're a mere twelve minutes from finding out. Also finding out why games stopped following that model. Plus learning the phrase "Smörgåsbord Simulator", which I did not coin and will almost certainly fail to pronounce every time it appears in my script.

Difficult Gear Shifts:

0:00 The tyranny of the roster
0:27 I fail to say "Smörgåsbord"
1:45 It's 1998 and 200 cars is not normal
2:43 One car. That's what's normal.
4:33 Velvet Realism and Nico
5:13 Getting a 23-year-old Viper running
6:30 Does it hold up?
7:25 The slightly more good bits
9:05 Gran Turismo with 0.5% of the car list
9:25 Don't let Timberwolf in the paint shop.
9:39 Let's not make another mod hunting video
10:04 Inevitable joke about the M25
10:20 Buried for a reason?
11:35 Third time's the Smörgåscharm?

Music by Telecasted / RKVC / Everet Almond (YouTube Audio Library)

1. Cattle (Telecasted)
2. Crops (Telecasted)
3. That One Bar Scene (RKVC)
4. American Idle (RKVC)
5. Down The Drain (Everet Almond)

Games Featured:

Forza Motorsport 7
Gran Turismo 2
Test Drive
Test Drive 2
Car & Driver
The Need For Speed
Porsche Challenge
Beetle Adventure Racing
F355 Challenge
Viper Racing
Grand Prix Legends

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 12 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus fact: The first "Dodge Viper" I encountered was a Matchbox model called the Sunburner, strongly resembling the concept car but renamed after a licence agreement with the Chrysler Corporation failed to materialise.

The Forgotten Mods of Midtown Madness

Timberwolf 2022-04-13 | Remember when adding things to your game was "modding" and not "paid DLC"? Apparently Timberwolf does, but the Internet doesn't. In this video I reinstall Midtown Madness, review it, then go searching for the mods I thought were lost to disc rot and the council waste collection service many years ago. Can I still find them 20 years later?

(No cheating inferring the answer to this from video existence and/or length)

Yep, it's a weird nostalgia trip through a very blocky version of Chicago. Will I be able to do it from the wheel of a car that was never on the game disc, or will I forever be confined to a choice of Beetle, Mustang or Eldorado?

Oh. And there are some challenges.

Chapter Madness:

0:00 I fail at digital preservation. And going to the pub.
1:53 Let's play some Midtown Madness
2:47 Flight Simulator for cars?
3:51 Does it hold up today?
5:34 Modern expectations, vintage Internet
6:35 The days of SDKs
7:24 Ignore the flag, this was the past
8:37 I try to access Internet sites from 20 years ago
11:31 The precarious state of Midtown Madness in 2022
12:23 Did I succeed?
13:32 Timberwolf's Federally-Mandated Speedometer Challenge
14:50 My favourite mods and why
15:45 Timberwolf's Airborne Volvo River Crossing Challenge
16:50 Later mods and bigger ambitions
17:57 We go to Arch County
18:53 The less precarious state of Midtown Madness in 2022
20:02 Bonus Volvo

Music by Mini Vandals / TrackTribe / Dan Lebowitz / Jingle Punks / Endless Love / Corbyn Kites (YouTube Audio Library)

1. Tacklebox Blues (Mini Vandals)
2. Delta (TrackTribe)
3. Finding Light (Dan Lebowitz)
4. Anomalous Hedges (Mini Vandals)
5. Greaser (TrackTribe)
6. Duck In The Alley (TrackTribe)
7. Ditch Diggin' (Jingle Punks)
8. Duck In The Alley (TrackTribe)
9. Staycation (Corbyn Kites)

Games Featured (briefly, in most cases):

Microsoft Midtown Madness
Microsoft Flight Simulator
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Forza Horizon 4
BeamNG.drive
Grand Theft Auto III

Thanks to the Open1560 project, Midtown Madness Archive and Midtown Madness 2 eXtreme, without whom this video would have been a lot shorter, sadder, and riddled with glitchy menu graphics. Also to Graeme Cole for the incredibly useful Octagon Simulator, ideal for all your fake game show needs: greem.co.uk/octagonsimulator

There are also Midtown Madness communities still keeping the game going on Discord!

Madness Crew: discord.gg/xjWe8uurE9
Midtown Club: discord.gg/jQDPV667xe

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 20 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus fact: the "Chicago Edition" on the game box hinted at multiple city-based editions similar to Flight Simulator's scenery packs, however this was dropped for Midtown Madness 2 which features both London and San Francisco.

Mafias Fairplay mission: a better racing game than Spirit Of Speed 1937?

Timberwolf 2022-03-30 | In this video, I compare games from completely different genres - because both feature 1930s car racing, and both are rather infamous for their treatment of it. But is a difficult mission better than a game which is difficult to enjoy in any way whatsoever?

(I mean, we kinda have a foregone conclusion here)

Yes, it's time to challenge Timberwolf. First to complete Mafia's notoriously difficult race mission, and then to attempt to derive any joy whatsoever from playing Spirit Of Speed 1937. Only one of which he manages. And when the virtual dust has settled, I decide: just which is the better simulation of 1930s Grand Prix racing?

Skippable clickables:

0:00 The threat.
0:29 Fetch the tongs!
1:51 The original dull taxi mission game start
2:41 Cinematic pretensions
3:33 Plot? In my games?
4:31 Git gud. Unless it's cars.
5:53 Linear Game Blues
6:22 Challenge Timberwolf, Mafia Edition
14:30 The Other Game
16:39 Accurate Byfleets (I try to be positive)
17:34 Challenge Timberwolf, Have A Horrible Time Edition
24:48 Let's wrap up and uninstall this nightmare

Music by Brian Bolger / Chris Haugen / Aaron Lieberman / Topher Mohr and Alex Elena / Doug Maxwell / Dan Lebowitz. (YouTube Audio Library)

1. Black Mass (Brian Bolger)
2. Et Voila
3. Gypsy Stroll
4. Gypsy Dance
5. Intimate Tango
6. Mysteries

Games Featured:

Mafia
Grand Theft Auto IV
Grand Prix Legends
Spirit Of Speed 1937

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 26 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus fact: if it wasn't for the inclusion of SafeDisc, Mafia would run perfectly on a modern operating system.

Hardwar: The space trader the 90s forgot

Timberwolf 2022-03-16 | In this video, I finally buy a game I've been meaning to buy since 1998. And naturally, explain why quite a large number of other people also did not buy Hardwar in 1998 and probably are not going to buy it in 2022 either. Yes, it's yet another video with a game and title no-one is EVER going to search for! Almost like I'm bad at publicity or something.

Along the way I dig out an early DOS prototype version, explain why the gameplay didn't fit the late '90s laddish and club-bound ethos, look at the surprising amount of post-launch support, pronounce the game title as "hardware" at least twice, and fail at unboxing a graphics card due to outside interference.

Yes, we have dog content.

Manifest:

0:00 A guessing game
1:16 Slipstream 5000
2:08 256 darker and moodier colours
2:33 In-joke for 39 people
2:47 Saying more than "Find Out!"
3:06 Elite and plot
3:29 Let's talk about Hardwar then
4:55 Hardwar is difficult
6:52 Why isn't Hardwar more well-known?
7:23 We do talk about Wipeout
8:00 A Gremlin in the marketing
8:43 Bad timing, 3D engine edition
10:05 Why I took 24 years to buy it
10:40 Fandom to the rescue!
11:56 No reason for a chapter heading, I just liked this music track
12:57 Obtaining it (or not)
13:30 Timberwolf elects not to go clubbing, plays Hardwar instead

Music by Loyalty Freak Music (public domain) and Jason Shaw (CC-BY):

1. Everyone is so alive (Loyalty Freak Music)
2. Sk8board (Jason Shaw)
3. It feels good to be alive too (Loyalty Freak Music)
4. Boom (Jason Shaw)
5. Feels Good 2 B (Jason Shaw)

Games Featured:

Slipstream 5000
Hardwar
Frontier: First Encounters (FFED3D mod)
Wipeout
Hardwar (early DOS prototype)

Bonus fact: the original release version's skies matched far better with the fog effect, reducing the "draw-in" effect you see a few times during my footage.

#hardwar #findout

Made of springs: BeamNG.drive and the history of sim racing physics

Timberwolf 2022-03-02 | Why is BeamNG.drive the destroyer of CPUs and yet at the same time the future of driving game physics? Yes, it's another Timberwolf video full of chalkboard diagrams, detailed explanations, and me holding things while there is an object on my head. Was Grand Prix Legends really the landmark game which changed sim racing forever, or was it merely one step in a gradual evolution full of games we've since forgotten?

I explain what a sim is, why the list of what gets included and what isn't is so controversial, and how the history of racing sims tracked improvements in CPU technology. Including explanations of how those physics engines worked and why they worked the way they did. Along the way I ask why sims got so difficult, and whether this was necessarily the height of realism everyone claimed it was.

Plus I try to play in the style of the Velvet Underground. Badly.

0:00 Surprisingly little attribute clash
0:32 The definition of "sim"
1:19 Let's restart that Gran Turismo argument
3:21 I mock the early 2000s (again)
3:48 Filming the North Circular for limited fun and no profit
4:36 A-level maths and 12MHz 286s
5:43 2D physics models
7:22 Kaemmer's Dream
8:01 Simulation in three dimensions
8:58 I hold bad games (again)
10:20 Was SODA just too difficult?
10:57 The game you were thinking of
11:14 The bit where you can complain how bad I am at a thing
11:35 GPL's influence
12:00 Why sims got difficult
14:05 Why sims stopped getting difficult
14:50 Your flexible friend
15:24 Oh yes, this was supposed to be about springs
16:06 Physics asplode
17:10 More forgotten games only Timberwolf remembers
18:05 The inescapable sim argument
18:32 I drive a bus to make a point
18:56 Really, yet another truck game?
20:03 Can we have the featured game yet?
20:55 Too many AI cars for an i5
21:45 Making the difference with a tyre model
23:05 About that sim definition...
23:53 But is this the next generation?

Games featured:

Chequered Flag
BeamNG.Drive
Gran Turismo 2
Hard Drivin'
NASCAR Racing
SODA Off Road Racing
Stunts
Grand Prix Legends
Assetto Corsa
WinSpringies/XSpringies
1nsane
Rigs of Rods

Music from YouTube Audio Library

Bonus fact: most Gran Turismo games from 2 onward have offered the option to equip your car with "control" or "comfort" tyres with a more realistic level of grip, although as this does not affect AI vehicles races will become very difficult.

#beamng #madeofsprings

Quid Game: Cheap Trucking.

Timberwolf 2022-02-16 | Can you get your truck simulation thrills on the cheap? If slowly reversing a trailer into a cone (while trying not to) is your idea of a thrill, then certainly. Even more so if your ideal truck simulation is bouncing over a low-detailed rendition of California while the most ridiculous pop punk ever licensed for a relatively low fee blasts from the radio.

Yes, Quid Game is back, and this time it's about trucks. Because my other video was about trucks, and it was time to spill my low-budget game purchasing secrets. While finding yet more unacceptable non-standard ways to play truck simulators.

Things that may or may not have happened:

0:00 Timberwolf steals jokes before they can be told
0:37 Unpaid promotion
0:48 Trucks are less expensive than you expect
1:32 Four cheap games on the wall
1:40 Game #1 goes the way of a low-spec Volvo
2:13 And if Game #2 should accidentally fall...
2:48 A more quid-based look at Rig'n'Roll
3:41 Cutscene problems
4:50 Verdict with careful qualification
6:00 Re-evaluating rose-tinted recollections
7:25 Quid Games can be short games
7:45 Android shovelware is a great comparison
8:10 Oh, it's the foot gimmick again
9:17 Includes basketball
9:47 This was just an excuse for the gimmicks, wasn't it?
11:45 Allowed to have fun
12:44 Variety pack with two of the same cereal
13:12 Speaking of someone who needs some new ideas...
14:38 The Low Polygon Range Rover Preservation Society
15:19 Truck Simulator Simulator
15:45 Some sort of conclusion

Music from YouTube Audio Library, Chris Haugen / The 126ers / Dan Lebowitz / Midnight North

Games Featured:

Mario Andretti's Racing Challenge
Euro Truck Simulator 2
American Truck Simulator
Euro Truck Simulator
Trucks 'n' Trailers
Rig 'n' Roll
King of the Road
Scania Truck Driving Simulator

No dogs were harmed during the making of this video. One Timberwolf may have been harmed a little.

Games purchased for 79p in January 2022. Local prices and frequency of sales may vary. ETS2 with all its DLC is definitely not a Quid Game.

In the glove compartment!

#quidgame #intheglovecompartment

PC-RR and the importance of digital archives

Timberwolf 2022-02-09 | Is Timberwolf showing us yet more CGA weirdware, or is he getting a soapbox? Why not... both?

I show you PC-RR, a piece of railway modelling software from the very earliest days of PC gaming. And then use it to take you on a journey through bulletin boards, accidental piracy, and the importance of context in retrogaming.

It's basically six minutes of me waving ancient artefacts in front of a camera.

Music by Reed Mathis, via YouTube Audio Library.

Archives mentioned in this video -

Internet Archive: archive.org
Retromags: retromags.com
Super Page 58: superpage58.com

If I didn't mention Yesterzine in the description of a video talking about why the surrounding context in which videogames existed is important I would probably be In Trouble, so here is a channel all about it: youtube.com/user/Duds2k1

Revenge of the Chapteroids:

0:00 I think we're gonna need a smaller train
0:25 PCs to the rescue
0:48 Monochrome 1980s gaming time!
2:00 Upload-induced inconsistency
2:28 "A little imagination". Probably more like a lot.
3:03 Fake History
4:13 The actual point of the video
4:57 How the tapes got circulated
5:28 Unexpected golf
6:13 Memory failure with no error correction
6:45 Soapbox rant time!
7:31 Context as viewed through questionable music choices
8:14 Dreams and tape circulation
9:10 Timberwolf apparently grew up in black and white
9:47 We somehow shudder to a conclusion

Games featured:

Train Simulator
PC-RR
4D Sports Driving / Stunts
Jack Nicklaus' Greatest 18 Holes Of Major Championship Golf
Jack Nicklaus Signature Edition
Mobil 1 Rally Championship

Yes, this did really exist. I think.

Truck Simulators... really? Who plays them, and what were they like in the 1980s?

Timberwolf 2022-02-02 | Truck games: something just for nerds and people who play them on stream for a joke, right? Well, not quite. I explore the history of trucking games, look at some of the genre's biggest hits, and delve into the most controversial feature in all of simulated trucking: ETS2's UK junctions. Plus a detour into the exciting new world of foot-based gaming.

Look, it's been a long pandemic, OK?

0:00 The magic of a cardboard box
0:44 Adulthood and the big question
1:10 Truck simulation in 2022
2:10 Truck simulation on a 286
3:40 Anyone can program, even me!
4:14 Oh no, edutainment
4:38 The Russian connection
5:28 King of the Road
6:24 The Curse of California, Part 1
8:40 Shovelware nostalgia time
10:40 Not the Euro Truck Simulator you're thinking of
12:15 Timberwolf Makes An Effort
14:18 SCS and the challenge years
14:59 This is going to be stupid.
15:49 Recognisable modernity and sick jumps
16:41 The first famous one
17:36 The Curse of California, Part 2
19:08 But really, who is playing these?
20:35 Slow Gaming
21:09 Consumer Advice Time

Vocal cameo kindly provided by Dave of "Anyone For Seconds?" - listen to the podcast here: https://anchor.fm/anyoneforsecondspodcast

Music from YouTube Audio Library, Dan Lebowitz / ALBIS / The Whole Other / Unicorn Heads / Midnight North

Games featured, even if briefly:

Euro Truck Simulator 2
American Truck Simulator
Mudrunner
Big Rig
Velocity 2: Special Edition
Crosscountry Canada
Hard Truck: Road to Victory
King of the Road
Rig'n'Roll
18 Wheels of Steel: Across America
Euro Truck Simulator
Trucks'n'Trailers
Scania Truck Driving Simulator
Real Life
Sitting in a cardboard box pretending to drive a lorry

Drive carefully and always pay attention to the road.

Was Pizza Tycoon the 34th Worst Game of All Time?

Timberwolf 2022-01-26 | Once described as the 34th worst game of all time, did Pizza Tycoon deserve such a damning indictment? I look at the game itself, explore why some magazines drew extreme conclusions about games in the days before everything had to score at least 8/10, and explain why the worst games of all time aren't necessarily the actual worst games of all time.

And I played Wand of Gamelon for you. If that doesn't deserve a pity subscribe, what does?

0:00 Computer Gaming World's bold assertion
0:32 An inappropriate sponsor
0:43 I put a pizza on my head
1:02 Are the worst games of all time really all that bad?
1:37 The problem's the magazine, not me
2:46 Piracy!
4:08 Never trust Timberwolf to cook a pizza
4:40 It's the '90s, and games are obtuse
5:28 A low barrier to entry
6:21 Sabotage
6:44 Why did CGW dislike Pizza Tycoon?
8:13 Why "worst" games aren't always the worst
9:03 What Microprose did wrong
9:30 But should you buy the 34th worst game of all time?

If you'd like to live the horror for yourself, you can find Wand of Gamelon Remastered here: archive.org/details/foer-wogr-patched-12-9-20

It is slightly not quite as bad as the CD-i version.

Pizza Tycoon box art by Vertigo Acidburn. CGW magazine pages from the Internet Archive. Mr Blobby and related items almost certainly a trademark of someone, whether they'd like to admit it or not - reproduced here under fair dealing rights.

Music from Pizza Tycoon and the YouTube Audio Library.

Stay safe.

Bonus fact: Pizza Tycoon's furniture editor lets you place cigarette machines in your restaurants, a surprisingly late title to feature smoking in a non age restricted game.

#microprose
#dos
#tycoon

Catacomb 3D: ids Other Wolfenstein

Timberwolf 2022-01-19 | Did you know that id made Wolfenstein 3D... before they made Wolfenstein 3D? Join me for a trip through id's early raycasting engines: what a raycaster is, what id made with it, and other daring tales of what happens when you decide to make your own games on company time.

And yes. Once more, we're in the land of EGA DOS games. Please wear the special goggles to prevent long-term eye damage.

Believe it or not, there's a modern source port - which improves the appearance markedly by using a diminished lighting technique similar to later id engines: github.com/ArnoAnsems/CatacombGL

0:00 Intro
1:02 Wolfenstein 3D
2:40 Raycasting - how it works
4:37 Softdisk and Gamer's Edge
5:31 Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement
6:20 Commander Keen
6:57 The Softdisk contract / Keen Dreams
7:53 Hovertank 3D
8:58 The Ultima Underworld connection
9:50 Catacomb 3D
11:19 Catacomb Abyss
11:46 Catacomb Armageddon
12:33 Catacomb Apocalypse
13:30 Should you buy it?

#id
#wolfenstein
#catacomb

Populous: The Original God Game

Timberwolf 2022-01-12 | Would you believe there was once a time when Peter Molyneux's name wasn't merely a lazy reference for broken promises? But how did Bullfrog's original classic come about, and was the origin story quite as bean-centric and full of wild coincidence and derring-do as later tellings of it make out?

Join me for a trip through the history of Bullfrog, and a little investigation into the strategy and mechanics of Populous - the original "God Game"

Space Travel: The Kerbal Space Program Of 1969

Timberwolf 2021-12-29 | A little while ago I went on a quest to find the earliest "realistic" space simulator. Would it be from the year 2000? 1991? The early 1980s, even? But what if it was even earlier, hailing from the year of Abbey Road, Woodstock and the moon landings?

I then embarked on a longer, harder and infinitely more frustrating quest to get the very first space simulator running so I could play it. Did I succeed? Well - if I didn't, those chapter headings suggest I've just uploaded a video with 11 and a half minutes of dead air.

With many thanks to the simh team, the PDP-7 UNIX team, and the PDP-7 UNIX mailing list including some very helpful messages from Sebastian Rasmussen and Lars Brinkhoff, without which (and whom) this video would not exist in the form it does.

Games covered:

0:00 Kerbal Space Program
0:45 Frontier
1:27 Orbiter
2:04 Microsoft Space Simulator
2:48 Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space
3:31 Shuttle
4:48 Shuttle Simulator
5:06 Apollo 11
5:48 History of Space Travel
6:30 Getting Space Travel running
8:30 Space Travel

NIOSA is the weirdest game youve never seen

Timberwolf 2021-12-15 | I delve deep into the box of CGA games from my childhood and return with one of the strangest things ever to be downloaded from a bulletin board. It's NIOSA! A 1987 game in the tragically under-represented genre of Frijole-em-up. Perhaps the original walking simulator?

I explore the game, share what little information I've been able to find about it, and explain why it's games like this that I associated with that weird early PC gaming era.

PC Speaker Wizardry: The History of Sound Before Soundcards

Timberwolf 2021-12-08 | What did PC games do for sound before the introduction of the AdLib card in 1987? And was there digitised sound before the Sound Blaster or Covox Speech Thing?

Join me for a a typically light-hearted and yet surprisingly factual journey through the history of game soundtracks on the IBM PC.

WARNING: contains flashing images at 03:20. Also warning: contains PC speaker sound effects throughout.

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 14 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Image credits:

Fire: Kelly L, "Flame of a Gas Lamp"
All others public domain, CC0 or self-authored

Quid Game: Mobil 1 Rally Championship (1999)

Timberwolf 2021-11-24 | Welcome to Quid Game! A cross-channel collaboration started by Dudley of Yesterzine (youtube.com/channel/UCZOwtwsN4fy4BA1DyhZjt8g), in which a collection of retro YouTubers review a game that could conceivably be purchased in CeX for a quid.

In my video, I go lower than even that parsimonious budget to review Magnetic Fields' 1999 PC title, Mobil 1 Rally Championship.

Links and other Quid Game reviews:

Yesterzine - http://www.yesterzine.co.uk
Quid Game playlist - youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqPaeYdiNYyme27egtC6W2GfgTV-7Ihmf

Image credits:

London Trocadero image: swoosh by Master Man, CC-BY 2.0

Isometric Dreams: The Chris Sawyer Story

Timberwolf 2021-11-17 | What did Chris Sawyer do before Transport Tycoon? Why did he disappear from game production? And what allowed his games to be so complex on the slow and simple PCs of their time? Find out all of that and more in this lighthearted but detailed look at his career.

0:00 Intro
0:40 Memotech MTX games
3:30 Early PC conversions
4:40 Transport Tycoon
5:55 Transport Tycoon Deluxe
6:25 Roller Coaster Tycoon
8:13 Roller Coaster Tycoon 2
9:35 Chris Sawyer's Locomotion
11:31 Mobile games
12:32 Legacy

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 13 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Third party imagery and clips:

Roller coaster loop by KM L
Atari printer by McCormick/Multicherry
IBM disk drive by Michael Holly
Memotech MTX image by Bilby
PS1 Transport Tycoon screenshot courtesy MobyGames
Alan Sugar image by Damien Everett
RCT1 prototype by Chris Sawyer via Nic's Corner

Tutorial: Getting Started With OpenTTD 12.1

Timberwolf 2021-11-13 | OpenTTD has seen a few changes since I last uploaded a tutorial, and I like to think I've got a little better at making videos since then. (And found a few new mistakes to make!)

An update of my original OpenTTD tutorial showing you how to get started, and how to connect industries and towns with each of the four basic transport types:

- Road Vehicles
- Trains (including signals using the new 12.1 signalling menu)
- Boats
- Aircraft

Plus other information such as station and local authority ratings, prototype vehicles and new inventions, useful keyboard shortcuts, and maybe the occasional aside or joke. Does this count as a face reveal? I'm not entirely sure.

Websites:

OpenTTD on Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/1536610/OpenTTD
OpenTTD on GOG: gog.com/game/openttd?track_click=1&link_id=openttd_game
OpenTTD on Microsoft Store: microsoft.com/en-gb/p/openttd-official/9ncjg5rvrr1c?activetab=pivot:overviewtab

OpenTTD website: openttd.org
Donate to OpenTTD: openttd.org/donate

OpenTTD Reddit: reddit.com/r/openttd
OpenTTD Discord: discord.gg/hKzMGUx

CC-BY content credits:

Dumpster Fire "My memory" by Rob Swystun

Chapters:

0:00 Remember manuals?
0:30 Intro
0:48 Getting The Game
3:14 Making Money
6:50 Road Vehicles: Lorries
15:51 Road Vehicles: Buses
18:05 Grouping Vehicles
20:01 Trains
25:54 Signals
29:09 Double Track
31:34 Double Track Stations
33:35 Rail Networks
35:58 Boats
38:28 Canals
39:24 Prototype Vehicles
40:14 Aircraft
43:53 What I Didn't Cover

Behind The Scenes: https://timberwolf.club/bts-getting-started-openttd-12/

X-COM: The Wilderness Years

Timberwolf 2021-11-10 | Just what happened to X-COM between 1994's UFO: Enemy Unknown and 2012's X-COM: Enemy Unknown?

Join me for a trip through grand ambitions, odd ideas, hasty releases and games which never even saw the light of day. Where X-COM went and why the series lay dormant for years before its reboot.

0:00 Intro
0:26 Terror From The Deep
1:32 Apocalypse
3:45 Alliance
4:42 Interceptor
5:48 Genesis
6:58 First Alien Invasion
7:57 Enforcer
9:50 Outro

Major thanks to UFOPaedia (ufopaedia.org) and Terry Greer for their excellent collections of information about the series and the many things which were cut back or cancelled.

RCT2: Beating Quantums Edge (Part 3)

Timberwolf 2021-10-29 | #RCT #RollerCoasterTycoon #OpenRCT2
It's Rollercoaster Tycoon's most famously difficult custom scenario... and to finish my playthrough of RCT2, I'm going to beat it with room (and time!) to spare. I'll need everything I've learnt during the game just to make it through the first couple of months, let alone the whole scenario.

In this episode I attempt to add a little variety, after feeling a bit too much guilt about the proliferation of the Quantum Cheeseburger series. Inevitably, I find the coaster type I want to build isn't available. But never mind, the Merry-Go-Round will be! Unfortunately the financial challenge of the scenario starts to catch up with me, and it's a tense ride to get to what we all came here for... premium balloon-clicking content.

OpenRCT2: openrct2.org

RCT2: Beating Quantums Edge (Part 2)

Timberwolf 2021-10-28 | #RCT #RollerCoasterTycoon #OpenRCT2
It's Rollercoaster Tycoon's most famously difficult custom scenario... and to finish my playthrough of RCT2, I'm going to beat it with room (and time!) to spare. I'll need everything I've learnt during the game just to make it through the first couple of months, let alone the whole scenario.

In this episode I introduce my secret weapon for beating Quantum's Edge: the Quantum Cheeseburger! And I stretch my finances to start building an unusually homogenous park. Yes, it's "copy and paste: the game"! With much explanation of why queue lines should be the underpinning of any serious attempt at Quantum's Edge.

OpenRCT2: openrct2.org

RCT2: Beating Quantums Edge (Part 1)

Timberwolf 2021-10-26 | #RCT #RollerCoasterTycoon #OpenRCT2
It's Rollercoaster Tycoon's most famously difficult custom scenario... and to finish my playthrough of RCT2, I'm going to beat it with room (and time!) to spare. I'll need everything I've learnt during the game just to make it through the first couple of months, let alone the whole scenario.

In this episode I complete the hardest part of Quantum's Edge: getting through those first couple of months without getting the park closed down for a scandalously low rating. Explaining the need for some research tree prescience, and a Quantum's Edge cheat which I won't do (but will waste a lot of money demonstrating!)

OpenRCT2: openrct2.org

RCT2: Beating Amity Airfield With Only 3 Rides

Timberwolf 2021-07-16 | I blow RCT2's notoriously difficult early scenario wide open. Ridiculous ways to complete Amity Airfield, including abuse of one of RCT's most powerful game mechanics. Warning: may contain Ferris Wheels.

Marcel Vos's video on queue line mechanics: youtube.com/watch?v=xwd48VEnptI

GoRender: the secret behind Timberwolfs Trains

Timberwolf 2020-08-04 | I was asked how I turn MagicaVoxel objects into sprites, so here's a quick introduction to GoRender and some of its many settings. Not quite so many erroneous TRAIN FACTS in this one, but it could be useful if you want to try the same kind of voxel-based workflow I use.

You can download executables and code from the following link: github.com/mattkimber/gorender

(Open source, so feel free to go do Open Source Things with it!)