Utterly mad Pack retro-game coop bash!

[Vagrant]

I don't know if I can get this organised but I'm planning such a thing, in fact let's officially call it...

The Pack Retro-Game Coop Bash of '09... or something!

What would such a thing entail?

Well, this is only for PC gamers, for one thing (bloody favouritism!), and it'll involve solely co-op games of about '01 and before. We're talking Serious Sam, Doom II, Duke Nukem 3D and the likes, anything anyone could care to suggest.

We deliberate on a game, then upon a date -- polls will be used if there's enough interest and it's necessary -- and we'll get everyone sorted out with the appropriate game and software, of course, and then on the pre-ordained day, we'll stomp around in some silly old game.

I don't know about you but the thought of 8-player Duke Nukem 3D (which you can now play in XP in windowed mode thanks to new engines for the game) consisting entirely of pack members, just having a laugh, is an entertaining one.

So, here's an interesting question: WAI RETRO?

It's so that as many people as possible have a chance to join in, the idea is that if you have a PC with an Internet connection (and possibly some minimalistic form of 3D graphics) then you should be able to participate.

And it's not just limited to the games I've mentioned either, if you can think of a game that's both coop and released in or before '01 then it'll get added to the list of considered games! All games can be considered for this, none need be excluded provided they meet the criteria, but I've said this... so no need to retread.

How many of you would be interested in such a thing?

[Whisperwind]

could be fun indeed! my first thought is diablo 2 (*squee*), and my 2nd thought it that whatever game(s) we pick, we have to make sure they're still available for fairly cheap (i recently went looking for some old games i love only to find they are $80 because they're "rare" now)

[Vagrant]

Yeah, I did do some checking in to Diablo II and there are two reasons I didn't mention it:

- The game and the expansion pack (that has the werewolves) are sold separately, they're $19.99 each, usually, unless bought second hand (in which case one is likely to get a useless CD key). There's also the Diablo Battle Chest, which is $34.99, and contains Diablo I & II, plus expansions. This is all a bit costly.

- The game could be 'loaned'. <.< Either that or it could possibly be obtained from a legal download service. But whether considering the bulky full downloads or the rips, it's huge, 2GiB~ and up, and that's going to take anyone who isn't on at least 2Mbit broadband an era to download.

I'd love to play Diablo II as well though. After all, it has werewolves, how could I not?! It's a bit of a tricky game to deal with though, but if everyone would be willing to put up with the huge download (or pay the hefty price of the game) then we could include it in our list of games to play as part of this retro-bash, definitely!

[Whisperwind]

yah, d2 is what made me mention the costs.. my only other thought for co-op would be guild wars (since its a one time pay mmo), or attempting one of the free to play mmos (but they usually have huuuuge downloading times, one i quit playing i found took up 10 gigs of space! i had only been playing for a month and it started out as a 2 gig download!) X_X

i dont know if gw is old enough for the retro theme, though..

[Wingman]

The only game mentioned that I own is Diablo 2, and there's a very limited market for older games up here, as there are three stores that sell computer games. One of which has two copies of Tabula Rasa, and a WoW expansion, that's it. The other has largely the same selection, but with some Warcraft games thrown in.

I did see a copy of Serious Sam at the computer store, though.

[outwarddoodles]

The only games I played/owned in that era were Diablo 2, Age of Empires, Civilization 3, Stronghold, and Total Annihilation. But considering I was ten and under from '01 back, and too much of an RTS nerd to play such awesome games as Duke Nukem ....

This is actually an excellent idea, considering that these sort of games can run on just about any computer and experience little to no lag at all. In fact, I can carry most of these games on my flash drive...

- The game could be 'loaned'. <.<

*cough* This is a very valid point. Half of the games I mentioned up top were not legal copies in the least, and the ones I did own were loaned out to every friend imaginable so we could play. x P These games are now just as easily obtainable through limewire and the like (not that I'm advocating piracy here!). Keep in mind that upscale games like Diablo 2 were prepared for this dilemma, and although you can play single-player on a illicit copy without issues, you won't have the multiplayer option.

[Vagrant]

Response to Wingman's post: Hm, lots of Diablo II, it seems like this might be a popular choice at the end of the day.

Still, as far as Duke Nukem 3D is concerned, it's only 20~MeB to download, and I have it n my GoG.com account, which I could share so others have access to it. Or it could be bought, of course, since it's only $5.99 at that store.

As for Serious Sam, you could pick up that if you want to Wing and join Moon and myself in a game, but only do so if it's cheap. So far though, it's looking like Serious Sam and Diablo II are the main choices, unless anyone wants to snag DN3D from GoG.

Response to outward's post: Yep, that's the idea! Whenever I start something like this, I want to make sure that as many people can get involved as possible, I don't like discluding people or leaving anyone feeling left out. My solution was to make it a retro-gaming session, so that every kind of computer out there could be used to take part.

All one needs is the interest and a PC.

The RTS games are noted, I've now got them in the games list, so if anyone's interested in the games that outward mentioned, pipe up and I'll mark their priority.

As for Diablo II, it looks like we have another call for that! It's looking like our first bash may be in Diablo II, as so many either have it or are greatly interested in it. For those that don't have Diablo II, just contact me and I could help you... loan it. <.< At least just for the retro bash. If Blizzard wasn't so ludicrous as to ask $40~ish for a game that old and would put it up on GoG.com instead for a reasonable price, then I'd recommend buying it, but these days Blizz has become an entity of Pure Greed (see: World of Warcraft). Sooo... yeah. It's a big download, though.

Another thing to consider is that the max resolution Diablo II can play at is 800x600, there are three solutions to that:

1. If you have a good monitor and good drivers which can fix the aspect ratio (this is something I love about Win 7) so it's not all stretched, then you could play it at 800x600, fullscreen.

2. You could play it in a window, but that'd be an 800x600 window, which is tiny.

3. The best option; you could use a glide-wrapper to play the game VoodooFX style, which means that nifty things can be done with it, such as running it in windowed mode and upscaling it to ludicrously high resolutions.

But we'll talk about that when we decide on our first game, for sure. I'll write up all the instructions everyone could need once we've decided.

As for Duke Nukem 3D, as I mentioned above, if that's a game that interests you then GoG.com has it for $6. I mention Duke3D because it's such a funny game to play multiplayer, and using Yang to handle the connections, it runs really well. Moonraiser and I have already given it a quick test and it worked surprisingly well.

Moon and I have also played Serious Sam, we've gotten about halfway through that and we can attest to that functioning perfectly as well, that game's a good laugh too, but it does require a very minimalistic 3D graphics accelerator, but almost all computers have that these days as minimum (this is why I set my max as 2001, so it wouldn't tax the on-board 3D capabilities that some computers have).

In general: But yeah, to wrap up, the idea is to host something that everyone could enjoy, and if anyone's even just interested then post your interest and I'll tell you about these different games.

The more, the merrier!

And as far as interest goes, so far we have...

- Myself
- Moonraiser
- Whisperwinid
- Wingman
- outwarddoodles

And to get something like this going we'd only really need three other people for something like Duke or, say, what's the max amount of players a Diablo II server can handle?

I shall check.

Also eight players, neat! If we get more interest than eight then it'll be no trouble in arranging more than one session. So let's see what we get!

[Vagrant]

Okay, making a new post for this so I don't flood my old post (I just hope I won't annoy anyone with this, but I don't like making my walls of text -too- massive and unreadable!).

Anyway!

outward - Diablo 2: As far as Diablo multiplayer goes, there are options and they aren't too arcane.

1. Changing certain config files in the game so that we can play on truly free servers (not Battle.net, then) is child's play. So either one of us would have to run a Battle.net server emulator, or we'd just join one of the many, many free servers out there.

2. Diablo II supports LAN play, this is good. There are many systems out there which would allow us to play over the Internet via Diablo II's LAN mode.

Neither of these solutions is particularly hard to implement or use, in fact, they're designed to be easy. So no worries there.

outward - loaning: I completely concur, this is yet another reason why I picked an older era of games, this means that we can obtain games without having to spend a couple of nights constantly downloading (on slower connections, at least).

Once we choose a game, I'll be willing to offer Rapidshare links via PM to those interested (and I'll make a note of that, too). One thing to remember: Offering links to hosted stuff isn't illegal, only hosting it yourself is. And I just find and share the links, I don't put 'em up. That's a handy legal loophole. <.< I wouldn't put the links in a thread though, out of respect to our admins. But PM I could do.

I'd recommend the Rapidshare approach too, because it's usually faster (600~KiB/s for me, constantly, on an 8Mbit connection, and on my 2MBit connection I used to get 220~KiB/s constantly) and it's more reliable.

When I say that it's more reliable, what I mean is that I know that the game I provide in links is going to be the same game I've checked out myself. I have a good nose for malware, and for finding clean stuff, so before I shared anything I'd download it myself just to be absolutely sure. Once I'd checked it out, -then- I'd share the links in the comfort of knowing that I'm not going to get people infected with nasties.

Again, no legal worries because I'm not hosting the games myself, nor will I provide direct links (just a link to the page holding the links), so that's all good. And these games are so old that I don't think the companies are really going to care anyway, and if it bothers anyone we can just agree to keep the games just until the retro bash is over, and then they'll be deleted.

Regarding Chattery: I think I'm going to ask about this now, since it would be best.

We'll probably want to be able to talk in the game, so what would be the best option?

1. We could use the game's own facilities, though considering the age of the game the font might be a bit hard to read. (It was good in Duke Nukem 3D though, but that was running a modern engine called xDuke.)

2. We could all run in windowed mode and use a special IRC channel to communicate.

3. We could use a Skype session.

4. We could use a Google Talk session.

5. We could use Ventrillo.

Opinions?

[Whisperwind]

as for the chatting, i think it depends on the game. i still hop on d2 with friends and have no problem using the chat system in game, but i dont know about the other games. i do notice, though, that when i alt-tab to a different window, it slows my computer down a bit (03 alienware laptop: great for running one heavy program, sucks at running multiple small ones).. so we might have some trial and error to match up on one chat program.

im not quite sure i follow about not using battlenet though - why wouldnt we? a loophole for "loaned" games?

[Vagrant]

Okay, lots of information here, so bear with me.

Okay, first of all...

Interested Parties

- Myself
- Moonraiser
- Whisperwinid
- Wingman
- outwarddoodles
- Lupin
- Takyoji

We have one slot left! So if anyone's interested, pipe in now! Other games will be arranged though, so if we have more than one person interested then other sessions will be organised soon. But for this session, we need just one more.

Name of the Game

Considering that there's been a lot of interest in Diablo II from the start, and that everyone either owns the game, is getting the game, or will get the game, this is the best choice.

We will be playing Diablo II with the Lord of Destruction expansion.

If anyone has only the original Diablo II, or neither, then send me a PM and I'll help you with obtaining the game, either legally or as a 'loan', your choice (specify when you PM me, I don't mind either way).

The Ordained Time and Day

I gather that weekends are usually best, so how's everyone with Saturday the 11th? That's just over a week from now, and it gives everyone time to get everything sorted out.

The time is the more worrying concern.

So here's what we're going to do: Anyone who has a preferred time, post that time here along withh your time zone.

What we'll do then is deliberate a happy average that everyone can agree to.

So that's that!

---

whisperwind: Anyone who doesn't have a perfectly legal copy of the game won't be able to play on Battle.net, this is because Battle.net goes by CD key, and if it detects an illegal key or a duplicate key, it simply won't let the person connect.

We do have an alternative though, it's called bnetd, it's a Battle.net emulator. Lupin will be hosting bnetd for us, and it'll work exactly the same way that Battle.net does in Diablo II. So we don't have to worry about anyone being left out.

Plus, with bnetd, we have the added bonus of being in total control of our own game, there will be no restrictions as this'll all be just for fun. There are loads of restrictions with Battle.net and it doesn't make it that fun.

The idea is that if we want to start off with certain items and/or states, we should be able to. But we'll talk about that closer to the date. Still, yes, lots of advantages to bnetd.

[Whisperwind]

ah ok that makes more sense =] thanks for clearing it up (ive always just played on battlenet, didnt even know there were other ways!)

as far as times, i'm along for the ride. i usually have a family dinner at 6:30, 7ish (EST), so i might hop off and hop back in later, but you dont have to work around me.

[Spongy]

Sign me up.

[Silent Hunter]

Would you be willing for me to play? You mentioned that some games could be"loaned."

[Vagrant]

Sorry SH, Spongy got in before you. It's only eight per game, but other games will be arranged!

[Vagrant]

To everyone involved: This is the new thread.

[Silent Hunter]

Sorry SH, Spongy got in before you. It's only eight per game, but other games will be arranged!

OK, please keep me informed. On the loaning stuff, do you mind if I PM you a couple of questions (depending on how you define loaning, you may not want to pust it publicly).