The Tex Murphy games.

Krathoon

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

Erlkönig

I remember Mean Streets being the game that made me learn touch typing. Having to type out eight chess pieces in a minute felt like a major accomplishment to 10-year old Erl.

Krathoon

It has already been 6 years since the last game, Tesla Effect.

Jazz

"Do you know who I work for?"

"No, but I'm guessing it's an acronym."

(Probably misquoting, it's been a while.)

MegaMan001

https://youtu.be/HJcxNVeVgH8

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.

BlackDragon480

Pandora Directive is tied as my favorite FMV game of all time, with Gabriel Knight: Beast Within. They are the 2 closest to a high end TV mini-series in amount and quality of writing and acting. Jane Jensen and Aaron Conners are both great authors.

Jazz

I'm thinking the languid pace and nature of these games (at least from UaKM onwards, I have yet to play either MS or MM) might be delightfully well-suited to playing on the Steam Deck in due course.

MegaMan001

Oh, everyone should know that gog.com (Good Old Games) has every single Tex Murphy game.

Jazz

MegaMan001 wrote: »

Oh, everyone should know that gog.com (Good Old Games) has every single Tex Murphy game.

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.

Drez

I was playing through them all from the beginning last year, I think. I finally played through and beat Mean Streets for the first time ever. That was an amazing experience. I had beaten Martian Memorandum years earlier as well as Under A Killing Moon and The Pandora Directive. I re-completed MM and UAKM, but stopped halfway through Pandora. But I plan on going back to it again. I never beat Overseer and I was basically working up to that. Still haven’t touched The Tesla Effect even though I had kickstarted it - I wanted to beat Overseer first.

Then question is - what happened to The Poisoned Pawn???

Drez

Jazz wrote: »

MegaMan001 wrote: »

Oh, everyone should know that gog.com (Good Old Games) has every single Tex Murphy game.

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.

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.

Drez

Damn, well I guess Posioned Pawn was “shelved” due to creative differences. That makes me very sad.

Jazz

Drez wrote: »

Jazz wrote: »

MegaMan001 wrote: »

Oh, everyone should know that gog.com (Good Old Games) has every single Tex Murphy game.

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.

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?

Drez

Jazz wrote: »

Drez wrote: »

Jazz wrote: »

MegaMan001 wrote: »

Oh, everyone should know that gog.com (Good Old Games) has every single Tex Murphy game.

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.

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?

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.

Krathoon

Yeah. For some reason, gog only has the CD version of Overseer.

Krathoon

MegaMan001 wrote: »

Oh, everyone should know that gog.com (Good Old Games) has every single Tex Murphy game.

You can get them all DRM free.

Krathoon

I was impressed with how quickly they made Tesla Effect. They know the right people to get the job done.

I wonder were Tex Murphy does his laundry or goes to the bathroom. His apartment doesn't have those facilities.

Drez

Krathoon wrote: »

Yeah. For some reason, gog only has the CD version of Overseer.

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.

Drez

Wait, now I’m confused. This is suggesting otherwise:

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.)

Jazz

Just had a shot at running GOG Overseer (which I noticed, as you guys have already posted, is indeed the DVD version - I assume chosen for higher-quality video). FMV ran fine, but when it got to the first 3D section (Tex's office), there were immediately a lot of missing textures noticeable. Movement around the office seemed okay, stuff was responsive if clicked on, but it wasn't optimal. Having dipped into the settings prior to starting, as usual, I'd only made two changes* - one of which was switching on animated textures that were off by default. Wondering in that was the culprit, I found my way back to the settings (F9, just fyi), changed that setting to off again, and the game crashed to desktop... rather amusingly leaving my desktop at the game's native 800x600 resolution. (When quitting normally, my desktop switched back to its normal resolution.)

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.

Krathoon

Hmm. I guess they got the DVD version working.

Jazz

Well, sort of. For a given definition of "working". It runs, at least. I'm using Windows 10.

Drez

The big thing is to make sure you have the k-lite codec pack is uninstalled. A lot of people have that and it conflicts with Overseer (and possibly UAKM and Pandora).

Krathoon

It might need that dgvoodoo wrapper to get the graphics to work right. I think it has a DirectX wrapper.

Jazz

Drez wrote: »

The big thing is to make sure you have the k-lite codec pack is uninstalled. A lot of people have that and it conflicts with Overseer (and possibly UAKM and Pandora).

99% certain I don't have that installed, which is probably handy then!

Krathoon wrote: »

It might need that dgvoodoo wrapper to get the graphics to work right. I think it has a DirectX wrapper.

I'll have a look at that, thanks for the tip! *reminisces about Voodoo cards*

Space Pickle

I had Pandora Directive back in the day!

I was never able to finish it. The Area 51 part with the alien gas that kills you was too tense.

Krathoon

Here is a guide for dgvoodoo2.
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/DgVoodoo_2

Zilla360

Under a Killing Moon was the first FMV game I ever played and the first CD-ROM game I ever came into contact with.
It was mind blowing at the time.

Krathoon

I am installing all my gog Tex Murphy games. Mean Streets through Overseer. I will also install Tesla Effect on Steam.

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.

Krathoon

I played Mean Streets some. Definitely old school. Was this remade into Overseer? It may be best to skip this one and play Overseer.

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.

Krathoon

Here is a link to fix the midi music in Overseer.
https://www.gog.com/forum/tex_murphy_series/overseer_background_music_not_playing

The engine for this game is a little wobbly.

Drez

I dunno. I’m glad I played through Mean Streets. It’s very rewarding.

Krathoon

Drez wrote: »

I dunno. I’m glad I played through Mean Streets. It’s very rewarding.

Fortunately, they let you use autopilot on the speeder. You don't have to manually fly everywhere.

Drez

Krathoon wrote: »

Drez wrote: »

I dunno. I’m glad I played through Mean Streets. It’s very rewarding.

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.

Krathoon

I can't get animated textures to work in Overseer. This game engine is kinda sucky. It think this was the first time they worked with hardware accelerated graphics. I tried switching to software mode and it totally bugged out.

Tesla Effect was a way better production. It seems like they got a better development team for that one.

Krathoon

Ahhh. Overseer has a domino puzzle.

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.

Krathoon

I have a VM with Win98 SE on it on a USB drive. I could try running the DVD version of Overseer in that. I will have to find my DVD. It may behave right. This is a touchy game.

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.

Jazz

Zilla360 wrote: »

Under a Killing Moon was the first FMV game I ever played and the first CD-ROM game I ever came into contact with.
It was mind blowing at the time.

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.

Krathoon

I was looking at my cases and there are two cases for Pandora Directive. Allot of CDs. I can't find my disc 5 and DVD of Overseer. I found it cheap on eBay and ordered it.

Jazz

Pandora Directive was six CDs, wasn't it?

Krathoon

Jazz wrote: »

Pandora Directive was six CDs, wasn't it?

I would have to check. If so, Overseer had less cds with only 5.