omg, 286 with B/W CRT display
Scorched Earth 2000 – Web
91–100 of 154 posts
Re: Scorched Earth 2000 – Web
#92Mother of all games. Played so much SE when I was younger, one of my all time favs. This version is ok but I prefer the original which is easy enough to run via dos-box, emulators of similar ilk or even online in a few places: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Scorched_Earth_1991 https://dos.zone/scorched-earth/ https://www.playdosgames.com/play/scorched-earth I loved turning the explosion to the max and launching Nu…
> Despite many clones I've never found one that really captured the feel and fun of the original.
Not trying to be contrarian, but for factual correctness I'm going to point out that Scorched Earth is a clone of an earlier game, Tank Wars. I've played both and I agree that Scorched Earth had more to it, but it wasn't the original.
Re: Scorched Earth 2000 – Web
#939 year old me got my first "hacking" experience out of this game. With the shareware version, you could not select the ultra tank that could shoot 3 bullets for a human, but you COULD if it were the computer player. The "hack": -start a game with a normal tank VS ultra computer player as p2. -save the game (as a file). -open the game file. -read the ASCII text and just flip which player has which text. Now, I had my…
I "hacked" Cap'n Hector in Escape Velocity.
The game was shareware and he'd show up to ask you to pay the fee. After the trial period he'd start lobbing missiles at you. There was a basic editor you could open to adjust all the ship stats and weapons, so while you couldn't turn him friendly you could at least de-claw him.
I remember thinking it was weird how "easy" it was to work around, but it's hard to imagine the studio would care much: a pre-internet 14 year who loved the game that much is probably more useful as an ambassador than a paying customer.
Re: Scorched Earth 2000 – Web
#94I did not realize Pocket Tanks was a derivative work.
Worms is as well. It’s an entire genre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery_game
I like Hedgewars which is an open source game similar to Worms but with hedgehogs. It is available as package in most Linux distros but also on Windows, Mac and FreeBSD. I believe it is available on Steam as well.
Re: Scorched Earth 2000 – Web
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't I remember doom developing pretty organically from wolfenstein and a few other (what would now be called) first person shooters around that time? The name "hexen" is coming to mind too. I would put that whole era as the start of something new, so different from the strategy games and side-scrollers that preceded it. Those first person games were the first time I thought computer games were actually more fun tha…
Warcraft II and Doom are both examples of, while not being the first in their genres, defining their genres and inspiring every studio to stop what they are doing and make something in that genre.
> ..and inspiring every studio to stop what they are doing and make something in that genre.
This. After Doom, there were maaany releases where a studio had X out there, and then released [3D version of X]. Or also throw themselves onto the fps genre. Almost to the point of killing innovation.
Don't get me wrong: that, and the 'infinite' storage of CD-ROMs got us many nice games.
But neither did much to sharpen game developer's creativity skills. Many "me too! (meh..)" releases in that era.
Re: Scorched Earth 2000 – Web
#96original Scorched Earth is only 4 years older than Worms
Hard to understand for me why would anyone play this when they can play much funnier Worms. I mean I played Scorched Earth with my cousin before Worms existed, but once they released Worms why would we play it?
I am still playing Worms Armageddon in 2026 with my kids on PS3 at least once or twice a week (the original graphics didn't age very well for 4K TVs), though not retro levels, they are way too small, dunno why they didn't scale them up for higher resolution.
Re: Scorched Earth 2000 – Web
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be a nice thread on here, to see what people's first hacks were, especially from that era when people were usually just alone and stumbling on these things.
While not the first hack by a long shot and not even mine but I always loved the idea of how it worked. There used to be program called Gamehack or something like that. Essentially you would start the game and point this application at said game in RAM, then take note of something like the score being "187" or whatever. Jump into 'Gamehack' and it would search for everything in memory with that value. You would then…
I used a tool called ArtMoney; apparently still actively developed and sold from an .ru domain.
Re: Scorched Earth 2000 – Web
#989 year old me got my first "hacking" experience out of this game. With the shareware version, you could not select the ultra tank that could shoot 3 bullets for a human, but you COULD if it were the computer player. The "hack": -start a game with a normal tank VS ultra computer player as p2. -save the game (as a file). -open the game file. -read the ASCII text and just flip which player has which text. Now, I had my…
I "hacked" Cap'n Hector in Escape Velocity. The game was shareware and he'd show up to ask you to pay the fee. After the trial period he'd start lobbing missiles at you. There was a basic editor you could open to adjust all the ship stats and weapons, so while you couldn't turn him friendly you could at least de-claw him. I remember thinking it was weird how "easy" it was to work around, but it's hard to imagine the…
I did something similar for the sequel Escape Velocity Override when I was a kid. It also had the same Captain Hector. Though in my case I buffed my own ship's armor and shields instead. I was not very good at the game (still am not to be honest), so I kind of needed that anyway to get through it.
I also remember that in EV Override you needed to stay below a certain amount of money to not trigger Captain Hector, and I would set the system clock back so it wouldn't think that the trial period had passed.
There are two modern spiritual successors to the EV games that might interest you if you haven't heard of them. Both are open source and have a decent amount of content (but aren't complete): Endless Sky, and Naev. Where the former is much closer to the old EV games in feel.
Re: Scorched Earth 2000 – Web
#999 year old me got my first "hacking" experience out of this game. With the shareware version, you could not select the ultra tank that could shoot 3 bullets for a human, but you COULD if it were the computer player. The "hack": -start a game with a normal tank VS ultra computer player as p2. -save the game (as a file). -open the game file. -read the ASCII text and just flip which player has which text. Now, I had my…
It would be a nice thread on here, to see what people's first hacks were, especially from that era when people were usually just alone and stumbling on these things.
Adding money to a CIV 1 save game file with the PCTOOLS hex editor.
Re: Scorched Earth 2000 – Web
#100[dead]