The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent
vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums
here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules
document is now in effect.
Here is the thread where we talk about the Tex Murphy games. Currently, I am playing through Tesla Effect. I supported the crowd funding and I have a physical copy. The series in order is Mean Streets, Martian Memorandum, Under a Killing Moon, Pandora Directive, and Overseer. Really I need to go back and play some of the old ones. I only finished Under a Killing Moon.
https://youtu.be/Fubvpa5w0ps
+4
Posts
"No, but I'm guessing it's an acronym."
(Probably misquoting, it's been a while.)
Steam | XBL
One of my clearest memories as a kid was playing Under a Killing Moon on our family Gateway PC and laughing so hard at this I cried.
Me and my brother played it so much our Mom made us take turns every two hours.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
Steam | XBL
That's where I have them.
They're all on Steam, too (I only have TE there).
As far as the Deck goes, GOG at least (and thus I assume Steam) has native Linux versions of all of them except Overseer and Tesla Effect. Tesla Effect scores a platinum on ProtonDB but Overseer is borked, sadly.
Steam | XBL
Then question is - what happened to The Poisoned Pawn???
Overseer is broken in general. You can get it working in Windows 10 but it’s definitely the most difficult one to get functioning properly and I’m fairly certain that no one has gotten the DVD version working on a modern system.
I'll have to try the GOG version, that's the most likely to have success I guess. But I wouldn't be suprised if it's still broken.
That's a shame about the DVD version. It was one of the first games to ever ship on a DVD, wasn't it?
Steam | XBL
I got Overseer working, it was just the biggest pain in the ass. It was the video codecs and Bink, I believe. The others have that problem to some degree too.
I believe it may have been one of the first on a DVD, yeah.
I wonder were Tex Murphy does his laundry or goes to the bathroom. His apartment doesn't have those facilities.
I remember reading about this - it had something to do with the DVD drive codecs that were used at the time that couldn’t be emulated or something along those lines even by mounting an ISO rip of the DVD as a virtual DVD drive.
I tried myself and failed. I own the DVD version on disc from its original release but I think I literally never ever got it working.
https://www.unofficialtexmurphy.com/viewtopic.php?t=4890
https://www.gog.com/forum/tex_murphy_series/overseer_dvd_version_available_with_200_installer
So either I’m totally misremembering or...hell, I dunno.
(According to this, the current GoG version is the DVD version.)
I tried restarting, but it told me only one instance could be running at a time. Sure enough the process still existed in Task Manager (again, only true after the crash), so I killed that and started again. Autosave had worked and dropped me right back in Tex's office, still with invisible textures.
Other things of note: when it shifted to 3D it gave some warning about an "error code that was not an error". I just hit OK and it carried on. Wonder if that's related to the missing textures too. The other thing was an "ffdshow" dialog that popped up on starting it; I told it to enable that and it seemed happy enough.
So, so far it seems playable but in a rather iffy state. I'll fiddle around with it some more later.
* - the only other change I made was to rebind the keys to a WASD layout. This seemed not to take; when going into 3D, the game responded only to its default arrow key-based layout, or holding right mouse button and moving that way, which I'd forgotten it did. Movement was buttery smooth as you'd expect.
Steam | XBL
Steam | XBL
99% certain I don't have that installed, which is probably handy then!
I'll have a look at that, thanks for the tip! *reminisces about Voodoo cards*
Steam | XBL
I was never able to finish it. The Area 51 part with the alien gas that kills you was too tense.
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/DgVoodoo_2
It was mind blowing at the time.
I may get a gog copy of Telsa Effect some time just so I have a non DRM version. I'll wait until it is $10.
Edit: I played some Overseer. Yep. It is a remade Mean Streets. I will probably play this version. I am also running into the invisible texture problem. I will try dgvoodoo2.
Edit. The dgvoodoo2 fixed the textures. I get a crash when I try to set animated textures. Also, I am not hearing any music. I think there is supposed to be some midi music.
https://www.gog.com/forum/tex_murphy_series/overseer_background_music_not_playing
The engine for this game is a little wobbly.
Fortunately, they let you use autopilot on the speeder. You don't have to manually fly everywhere.
Oh definitely.
I just liked manually piecing everything together. Thought it was pretty cool.
Tesla Effect was a way better production. It seems like they got a better development team for that one.
Edit: For some reason, Overseer will not start up from GOG Galaxy. I see the task in task manager, but the program is not starting up. If I run the exe from the game directory, it works. So, I made a shortcut to it on my desktop.
Edit: It may be easier to run the gog version in the VM. I don't know if they changed it too much to run it in Win98.
I think it was probably my second or so? Certainly one of the earliest... I think Dune may have been my first CD game, and Wing Commander 3 wasn't too far behind. I'm trying to remember when I got Strike Commander on CD as well; that may have been slightly later, I think I had the one that had Privateer on the same disc. Anyway, I digress...
UaKM did suffer from one limitation that was immediately obvious even that early on, which was that it could only animate one character at a time. Still, not enough to ruin it by any means, just something of a distraction, that of course was solved by the time The Pandora Directive came along. Of course by that point CD-based consoles were mainstream and the technology had matured extremely quickly, in hindsight.
Steam | XBL
Steam | XBL
I would have to check. If so, Overseer had less cds with only 5.