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PowerSlave: Exhumed (Nightdive) Is Releasing on February 10, 2022 (update: out now!)
- Thread starter Shard Shinjuku
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Dude fuck yea. Buying this tonight after wasting money on Sifu. This'll be a 100% hitter for me.
CRT OFF
CRT ON
Thank you both for these examples, it's basic but I'll take it!
I was going to say this looks bad but the examples on the GitHub are incorrectly scaled, checked out example shots of Gunmental Arcadia and YHTWTG on their respective steam pages and I like the slot mask look. It seems like it's is configurable too with curvature and composite artifacting on some shots but not others.It's a good one but it doesn't surpass the one created by Kyle Pittman (You Have to Win the Game, Gunmetal Arcadia)
GitHub - MinorKeyGames/CRTSim: A lightweight reference implementation of the CRT sim from Super Win the Game, etc.
A lightweight reference implementation of the CRT sim from Super Win the Game, etc. - MinorKeyGames/CRTSimgithub.com
Just in case anyone from Nightdive studios is considering extensive CRT options for future releases it might be worth checking out the Gleylancer rerelease (as well as the filter Nacery posted)
It might possibly be the Public Domain shader CRT lottes, not sure.
Thanks, I had no idea Greylancer had an Xbox+Switch re-release, bought immediately.
Ooh, keen to pick this up! I love Nightdive's work and hearing about this game over the years, especially the DF Retro video, really sold me on it
It's so cool :D I was astonished at how good the CRT filter was aye, plus the right stick option for controlling secondary fire is a game changer
It's so cool :D I was astonished at how good the CRT filter was aye, plus the right stick option for controlling secondary fire is a game changer
You can actually adjust the CRT settings in the options, which is what surprised me. There are several sliders, not just a simple on/off toggle.
More quality CRT shaders in games pls.
The same company also released Gynoug and the Turrican collection.
Ah, the pc wiki has a screencap of the options. My apologies for calling it basic, I can't wait to play around with it
One of the pics I posted was of the settings menu.:)Ah, the pc wiki has a screencap of the options. My apologies for calling it basic, I can't wait to play around with it
Thank you both for these examples, it's basic but I'll take it!
I was going to say this looks bad but the examples on the GitHub are incorrectly scaled, checked out example shots of Gunmental Arcadia and YHTWTG on their respective steam pages and I like the slot mask look. It seems like it's is configurable too with curvature and composite artifacting on some shots but not others.
Just in case anyone from Nightdive studios is considering extensive CRT options for future releases it might be worth checking out the Gleylancer rerelease (as well as the filter Nacery posted)
It might possibly be the Public Domain shader CRT lottes, not sure.
Which are the settings for the filter that you posted on that tweet? the one from the screenshot above?
Guess who didn't 'click to expand' your first shot! lol
I don't know the exact settings they used for sharpness/intensity etc but that's the Trinitron aperture grille which is Mask Type 1 or 2 (looks like Type 1 to me, I don't see the wider RGB phosphors of Type 2). My guess for the others is:
Mask Intensity: 0.5 to 1
Scanline Intensity 0.7 to 1
Sharpness: 1.9 to 2.5
Trini-Curve/Curvature: looking at their third shot either Trini-Curve is on or some curvature is being used
Corner Round: 0
CRT Gamma: Not going to be able to tell off of a cam photo but probably some increase from default to compensate for the grille darkening the picture, so 2.2+
Sorry for derailing the thread!
Good to know. Might try it on mine, provided the HUD elements handle it ok.
The HUD elements (health and ammo) were centered and easy to read. No problems for me at all.
I'm getting some annoying microstutter in the third and fourth levels. It's really weird because my RTSS framecounter shows a steady 60 fps but it is definitely stuttering in some areas of the maps. Tried enabling and disabling vsync, externally limiting frame rate to 60 fps on RTSS, changing the in game frame limiter from 60 to 120... nothing gets rid of it.
And wow I can't believe people played this without checkpoints. I just did that section in level 4 where you grab the key and there are insta-kill fireballs you need to time yourself through. You are pretty much guaranteed to die at least three times here until you get the timing right. If I needed to redo the entire level every time that happened I would definitely have quit the game.
I assume those fireballs instakill on normal difficulty too? I'm currently playing hard
And wow I can't believe people played this without checkpoints. I just did that section in level 4 where you grab the key and there are insta-kill fireballs you need to time yourself through. You are pretty much guaranteed to die at least three times here until you get the timing right. If I needed to redo the entire level every time that happened I would definitely have quit the game.
I assume those fireballs instakill on normal difficulty too? I'm currently playing hard
While it's great these guys are getting these old games out there again it's a bit of a shame they are not completely accurate to the originals. The Blood remaster still is not all the way accurate to the original. I almost bought it but after reading that I realized I'm good with my GOG version and source port engine.
I guess this sort of thing happens when all the remasters are done in a completely new engine.
I guess this sort of thing happens when all the remasters are done in a completely new engine.
I'm playing on normal, they didn't kill me but where pretty damaging. I can't recall how it was in the original for those.
Game was pretty tough back in the day, not just lack of checkpoints but the fact it was played using a 2D controller made it harder than it feels to play now. But I was pretty persistent with these things as a kid. Checkpoints are certainly welcome playing now though, plus I prefer this solution over quicksaves.
Yeah it would be nice to have more options that closely match the original versions. In Powerslave's case I can understand why they did what they did with a hybrid, but I can't fully call it preservation without the original experiences of both Saturn and PS versions being available (even if in practice they weren't that different). But eh that could be a lot of work so I cant really blame them for not including it.
Just finished it with the good ending, took me 6 hours and 55 mins. What a great time I had with it, I love these old school fps games, bring on some more please! The Kilmaat Sanctuary was so hard and confusing but most of the levels had great design and shortcuts, gg Nightdive.
I think I got laughed at in the ACA thread for saying I was more excited about things like this Gleylancer release (and Gynoug too) due to how feature-rich they are, but it's so true. I can't stand how limited the screen options are with Hamster's releases, even though I still love what they do.Just in case anyone from Nightdive studios is considering extensive CRT options for future releases it might be worth checking out the Gleylancer rerelease (as well as the filter Nacery posted)
Back on-topic, bought this on Switch. :)
Tip for new players that can be missed. You can grenade jump. Aim down, jump and drop a nade at your feet and you will be launched. Of course you will lose health, but you can now skip some parts and solve some puzzles differently.
No, this happens if the source code is not made available and/or the publisher refuses to pay for further patches. In the case of Blood, Atari is to blame for both.
Also, even with the source code the Build engine is a hacked together, janky mess that is a nightmare to read and debug. Recreating all those weird effects that in some cases amount to intentional abuse of bugs of the Build Engine is a sisyphean Task.
Blood: Fresh Supply is perfectly fine as it is now for a general audience. The remaining differences to the original are mostly minor and really only noticeable for hardcore Blood veterans, and those can and do use the source ports anyway, since the originals are still available.
In the case of Powerslave Exhumed I actually like this choice of Nightdive creating this Frankenstein version. I get that releasing both PSX and Saturn versions separately would not have appealed to most players. This way people get to see all of the content of the console versions in one playthrough.
If you really want the remasters to be completely accurate to the originals you would need to relinquish mouse/analog controller aiming, widescreen and higher framerates as well. At that point why not just emulate the originals?
I haven't reached far enough into the game yet to confirm if it still works, but in the Saturn version the cobra staff could be used for this purpose also. Was especially handy for essentially running up walls by aiming diagonally down at the wall you want to scale.
From what I understand, these guys do things very similarly to the way Bluepoint does: they have a "host" engine, Kex, which handles low-level input, rendering, cross-platform nuances etc., and then they quite literally have hooks into the original code so that things can be as pitch-perfect as possible. While I am certain you end up having discrepancies, they are very often very small, platform-level things that 99.9% of people will either not notice at all or forgive. It's a really smart way of doing this kind of work and helps to get these things out fast, but in a way where Nightdive can respond very quickly to problems since it's their own codebase for the nitty gritty details rather than the business logic of the game itself.
Just tested this, slamming the snake staff missile into a wall gives knockback that can be used. Pointing it at the ground just makes it go forward from where you point
...Eh, I might as well pick it up. Nightdive do good-ass work.
Addendum: Okay, this is doing the thing that really annoyed me in Borderlands 2, where the mouse sensitivity slider can only move in large increments and my ideal setting is between two of the increments. At least I don't need cheat engien to fix that here.
Addendum: Okay, this is doing the thing that really annoyed me in Borderlands 2, where the mouse sensitivity slider can only move in large increments and my ideal setting is between two of the increments. At least I don't need cheat engien to fix that here.
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Pretty much this. Unlike your typical game engine, Kex is built around the idea that the game loop is itself a code object that can be literally anything, which you can then add whatever code and libraries you want to add. And it's all low level code (except for the parts we export to Angelscript for modding, but that doesn't change the semantics as the Angelscript hooks are all still low level code as well), it's not like Unity or Unreal where they expect you to interact with their scripting system without touching the code. Though you can change the code in Unreal, but that process is a lot more complicated because their engine is built around their templates.
This way, we can keep all the original code as the same, its physics are its own, we can even keep things like sound mixers intact (Quake 2021 is using its original sound mixer as is, with the Kex audio API in place of what was the DMA driver), but introduce out own APIs for handling things like input and networking in an abstract way for all platforms. The only thing that ever truly changes is the renderer, because it's the only way to make it compatible with any modern API, even with our RHI abstractions.
Sometimes you can get things like bit-rot that changes some behaviours unintentionally. Code bases that were brought in from different versions due to lack of accurate version control or disassembles that were interpreted incorrectly (sometimes even the tools get it wrong, hexrays would absolutely lose the plot with x86 imul64 instructions). Or even just compiling the same code with a new compiler or porting it to 64bit.
We can even hypothetically have multiple game loops in the same executable, thus in theory multiple games by switching the loop object (think like how Halo MCC works) though so far have never needed to design a game that needed to do this.
Is there any chance of a hotfix to add an option to invert mouse input? I was hoping to play a bit this weekend.
We have it in testing right now (not just this, there's a few things we needed to patch, but it's in the mix).
It's appreciated!
Don't stay too late on our account though. I can wait!
CRT ON
Fucking incredible.
EVERY SINGLE old game being re-released should include this. Nightdive is an example to the industry.
Holy crap. I've been checking on and off for Forsaken to show up in Australia (for years lol) and it's finally there! Bought!
Made it up to Heket Marsh on Pharoah difficulty and only now discovered the presence of these Team Dolls.
I was seeing a lot of geometry on the map that I could not figure out how to get to but now I think I do. I would love to plat this but I think I will hunt all those down on normal difficulty.
I was seeing a lot of geometry on the map that I could not figure out how to get to but now I think I do. I would love to plat this but I think I will hunt all those down on normal difficulty.
Alright, off to a good start.
Now. The Team Dolls.
I can't believe I'm doing this fucker again.
Fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
Thank you for the insight and as always great job on this port. This might be my favorite of all your releases so far.
Beat the 2nd boss on Pharaoh mode - it's been tough but a lot of fun.
I appreciate that if you hit a checkpoint or enter a level in a poor state the quit to main menu & load takes you back to the world map. Often this has been needed to jump into an earlier level to stock up on health and ammo. 2nd level has a pretty easily reachable full ammo and health orb - I just try not to use my pistol or leave it at half ammo in case I need to do this.
Normal playthrough after this is going to feel so breezy in comparison.
I appreciate that if you hit a checkpoint or enter a level in a poor state the quit to main menu & load takes you back to the world map. Often this has been needed to jump into an earlier level to stock up on health and ammo. 2nd level has a pretty easily reachable full ammo and health orb - I just try not to use my pistol or leave it at half ammo in case I need to do this.
Normal playthrough after this is going to feel so breezy in comparison.
Yeah, there are so many parts you can skip once you get the nade' and hover combo.
I've got the staff now and it appears to work as I remember, been jumping up a few walls with it. I recall using that technique to scale a wall to get to the start of laser maze doll run in the Saturn version.
I am relieved from your screenshots to see they put a checkpoint before that. At least I won't have to do the runback after my sure to be many many deaths.
Emulation of afine texture warping commonly found in PS1 games.
It is done!
Will have to do a Hard playthrough as it did not unlock both but I have seen all the tricks this had to offer. What an absolute gem of a game.
*edit* Oh my god - just fired up a normal playthrough for the no Ankh run and the damage taken is night and day. A single life bar on normal takes 10x as long to drain from a single spider than 5 Ankh health bars do on Pharaoh. This is going to be relaxing in comparison.
Swathes of enemies missing too - I like difficulty modes that add enemies rather than just beef up damage alone and call it a day.
Will have to do a Hard playthrough as it did not unlock both but I have seen all the tricks this had to offer. What an absolute gem of a game.
*edit* Oh my god - just fired up a normal playthrough for the no Ankh run and the damage taken is night and day. A single life bar on normal takes 10x as long to drain from a single spider than 5 Ankh health bars do on Pharaoh. This is going to be relaxing in comparison.
Swathes of enemies missing too - I like difficulty modes that add enemies rather than just beef up damage alone and call it a day.
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