Imphobia #12 for Windows?

category: offtopic [glöplog]

I know there will again be a lot of flames in response to this posting, so I will post this without reading the replies, just in order to make my thoughts public...

When I read Imphobia #12 the first time many years ago, I really loved the atmosphere created by the music and the graphics combined. Now on modern PCs, it is still possible to listen to the music, but the graphics of the magazine aren't displayed correctly. This is due to some coding tricks that were used in the magazine engine. For example, it uses screen mode 12h (640x480x16) and with a trick manages to display 48 colours at once instead of just 16. This trick is currently not supported by DOSBox, which is necessary to run the magazine under Windows 7 (as well as XP and Vista).

Wouldn't somebody be willing to code a Windows based engine for Imphobia #12 that looks like the original? I thought about doing it myself, but the data file is too cryptic for me; of course an option would be to contact the original coder (Wizard) and ask him for decryption routines, but I don't want to bother him, maybe he is busy or does not have these routines any more. OK, I realize that without decryption routines, probably nobody will be able to port the magazine to Windows, so maybe I shouldn't have started this thread anyway.

added on the 2012-10-31 17:06:26 by Adok

Quote:

Wouldn't somebody be willing to code a Windows based engine

Any day as long as Darkness uses it for Imphobia 13 :)

added on the 2012-10-31 17:14:14 by hfr

I'll try to reply even if you might not read and later might sent the answer to your email.

In the dosbox settings there is a line:
machine=some graphics card setting, there might be svga_s3 there right now or something else

If you change this to machine=vgaonly it works like a charm. I don't know which version of dosbox do you have, but this is a recent more compatible vga mode that makes it possible now to watch stuff correctly that use hardware vga tricks that need more accurate syncing. It works greatly in most other tricky demos too!

added on the 2012-10-31 17:24:33 by Optimus

ah, thanks for that tip, optimus. kukoo2 now looks fine too ;)

added on the 2012-10-31 18:09:49 by post malone

does the coppereffects work as well?

added on the 2012-10-31 18:14:06 by rudi

there's still a minor bug in fc-panic's scroller part (dosbox screws that part up bigtime with svga_s3 ;) ) but yaay. i think i'll just keep this setting as default :)

added on the 2012-10-31 18:19:41 by post malone

Quote:

the data file is too cryptic for me

Are you serious?

I decoded it by looking at it it for less than 3 minutes - because it's a fucking Caesar cypher.

added on the 2012-10-31 19:27:15 by Gargaj

What was the point of "encoding" it then? Might as well go with ROT26. ;)

added on the 2012-10-31 19:34:03 by tomaes

Quote:

What was the point of "encoding" it then?

Obviously it still keeps some people from hacking around in the file. :)

added on the 2012-10-31 19:49:36 by Saga Musix

Mensa protection.

added on the 2012-10-31 19:58:34 by las

It looks like the words are scrambled a bit too.. try reading straight from the data file and it won't make much sense. It's like it skips around every sentence or so.

added on the 2012-10-31 20:51:54 by phoenix