Zomb's Lair - Reviving Old Classics

[Zombeaver]

Gothos has now been added to Zomb's Lair.

[Zombeaver]

Iron Assault has now been added to Zomb's Lair.

[Zombeaver]

Logical Journey of the Zoombinis has been updated to version 2.0. This updates the game version to Logical Journey of the Zoombinis Deluxe, adds Retroarch support with shaders and bezels, controller support via Antimicro, Reshade support, and ASuite for management.

I still plan to do this with a few more of the older packages, bringing them in line with the feature set of the newest ones, but a user recently made me aware of the Deluxe version of the game which brings a few improvements over the original (which is what was used in the original package) so I figured it'd be a good opportunity to take care of this one.

[Kondorito]

So many awesome memories with the Zoombinis from my childhood! What a great game! I remember playing it wondering what happens when you take all of the Zoombinis to the new land...

Spoiler

Nothing.

 

[zetec-s-joe]

Wow, zoombinis! Played this at school 21 years ago on Windows 95, it was probably the first PC game I had played. The Pizza level was the best one

[Zombeaver]

Lifeforce Tenka has now been added to Zomb's Lair.

[Zombeaver]

Take No Prisoners has now been added to Zomb's Lair.

[Zombeaver]

Rocket Jockey has now been added to Zomb's Lair.

[Zombeaver]

Black Dahlia has now been added to Zomb's Lair.

[Zombeaver]

Martian Gothic: Unification has now been added to Zomb's Lair.

[Zombeaver]

Future Cop: L.A.P.D. has now been added to Zomb's Lair.

[RosieTheB]

On 1/17/2020 at 1:45 AM, PretentiousHipster said:

Thanks so much for archiving these memorable games.

I seem to be having an issue with Obsidian. The video is fine, but the audio wouldn't stop stuttering. I tried changing it to windowed mode and noticed that you can change the buffer length. The longer the buffer, the more time before it starts skipping, but no matter what that's all it does. Is there any way to fix this?

Thank in advance.

 

On 1/17/2020 at 2:43 AM, Zombeaver said:

Try replacing the Windows 95.cfg in the Obsidian\configs folder with this one and see if that helps:

Windows 95.cfgUnavailable

Thanks so much from me as well - I've just discovered your Biosys refurb having given up the search years ago and I'm super excited to play it. I'm having the same stuttering issue with the audio. @PretentiousHipster, did replacing the .cfg file work? If so @Zombeaver, could you please post it again? It says the file is unavailable.

Thanks!

[Zombeaver]

@RosieTheB it's still there, you just have to be logged in to the forums to download attachments. That isn't for Biosys though, that's for Obsidian. Biosys was the first game I did with PCem, when I didn't know exactly what I was doing, so I really need to remake it.

My suggestion would be to just update the version of PCem to the newest (v17). Just drag the files in and overwrite. They've improved their dynarec quite a bit over time so that alone may solve your issue. If not, let me know and I'll walk you through some settings changes to make.

 

[RosieTheB]

@Zombeaver quick reply, thanks! I downloaded and unzipped the latest PCem and dragged all the files across to ../Games/Zomb's Lair/Biosys and overwrote but no good. Opening Biosys now just runs PCem with a blank window.

Do I need to install PCem properly or before dragging the files over? I found the "INSTALL" file in the PCemV17Win folder with some installation instructions and shell commands. Do I need to do any of that first?

Edited March 13, 2021 by RosieTheB
"@" mention hadn't linked properly

[Zombeaver]

10 minutes ago, RosieTheB said:

@Zombeaver quick reply, thanks! I downloaded and unzipped the latest PCem and dragged all the files across to ../Games/Zomb's Lair/Biosys and overwrote but no good. Opening Biosys now just runs PCem with a blank window.

Sounds like you've done something wrong then. Should work exactly the same as it does before. I'll take a look tonight.

11 minutes ago, RosieTheB said:

Do I need to install PCem properly or before dragging the files over?

No. It's portable.

[Zombeaver]

@RosieTheB Okay so, yeah, I'm not sure what you did but you must have done something wrong because I just tried it and everything worked as expected. You just have to drag all the files from v17 into the install folder and overwrite all. Then start the game with Biosys.bat (not pcem.exe).

You're going to want to make a few settings changes afterwards though. Press Ctrl + Alt + PgDn to switch to windowed mode. Now make the following changes:

Video > Render Driver > OpenGL 3.0
Video > Output Stretch Mode > 4:3
Video > OpenGL 3.0 renderer > Input Stretch Mode > 4:3
Video > OpenGL 3.0 renderer > Input Scale > 4x

Now you'll be all set. If you still have any performance issues afterwards, there are some further tweaks that can be made.

[RosieTheB]

@Zombeaver yeah, I'd already tried to play with settings in the Misc > machine bit before updating, which it didn't like. Uninstalled and reinstalled and the drag/overwrite worked fine after that. 

Thanks, will change those settings and let you know if it works!

[Zombeaver]

Evil Dead: Hail to the King has now been added to Zomb's Lair.

[Zombeaver]

Nightmare Creatures has now been added to Zomb's Lair. Took some time to mess around with shaders in PCem a bit (in addition to the normal Reshade, Antimicro, etc. bells and whistles) with pretty good results.

None:

Cyberpunk Reshade preset + Bezel + CRT-Mattias shader + screen reflection:

[Zombeaver]

I discovered a minor issue with Nightmare Creatures which I've hotfixed. The package has been updated so any future downloads will be unaffected but if you've already installed with the previous version you can find a quick drop-in hotfix in the below post.

https://www.zombs-lair.com/post/nightmare-creatures-hotfix