A ridiculous contest/game jam idea I had the other day

I just remembered that my first effort with the OHRRPGCE was back in fall 1998 or so and I was going to make a lame mini RPG with the freely available 4 map version, so I could get the full unrestricted version of CUSTOM.EXE. I never did finish it, but yeah.... Memories.

I was thinking how amusing it could be if people were to use the extremely old 4 map version of OHRRPGCE via DOSbox and develop short games with it for a contest/jam. I somehow get the feeling this is something that may have already been suggested or even done, but I wonder how people feel about this. 4 maps, no plotscripting, BAM music made in NOTATE.EXE. Like, how epic would that be.

I like that a mini-contest like that could provide some good testing for the backwards compatibility of the current version of the ohrrpgce. It should be able to play rpg files from the 4-map version without problems

Also, you kinda make me want to fire up Notate in dosbox. I haven't touched notate in a billion years

NOTATE!!! YES!

ah, how I've missed the lovely sounds of .BAM files

There could also be an honorable mention prize category for most appropriate inclusion of CHUFFY.BAM

I recently loaded Notate up on my sister's computer in DOSbox, then her and I collaborated on making a hilariously bad and silly track for nostalgia reasons. We used to make tunes on it when we were kids back in the late 90s!

I was actually kind of disappointed when I got the newest version of CUSTOM after being away from it for a decade, and it was using MIDI instead of BAM

(Don't kill me because I've only been using the OHR for a few months.)

I just downloaded the 1998 4-map version, but DOSBox crashed when I tried to run custom.exe. I'm not having this problem with game.exe, but NOTATE looks like garbage:



Oh well, if all else fails I can run Windows 95 in a virtual box and use the DOS prompt in that.

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Sent from my iPhone

Is the 1998 version available on the Wiki?

Edit: Nvm

If I remember, it always looked like that when I'd first start it up. Look for the "Clear Track" button, and that might fix it.

Wow, I totally forgot about NOTATE... I wish I had all my old tunes.

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⊕ P E R S O N A L M U S I C: https://open.spotify.com/album/6fEo3fCm5C3XhtFRflfANr
⍠ C O L L A B M U S I C: https://dustpuppets.bandcamp.com/releases

It's Ctrl + X. I recall that from keyboard muscle memory alone. *so old*

Heh, this would be a fun contest.

You can get the 4 map version from http://hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce/archive/, but yeah, doesn't work in DOSbox. Has anyone tried running it on a 32 bit version of Windows? AFAIK it should still work in Win 8, aside from sound.

James may be right about OHRRPGCE.PAL being missing: adding a file with that name caused CUSTOM to fail in a different way. However, after copying OHRRPGCE.PAL and OHRRPGCE.ALL from EOTE1 it still doesn't run (nothing happens after running it).



It should have that ability, but it doesn't. There are some problems with maps, especially wallmaps.

Waaaahhhh, damn it all. I had run early 2000 builds of game.exe in DOSbox with no issue so I just kind of assumed the 4 map version would work too, but I just tested it and it doesn't. I'll try fiddling around with DOSbox config settings and see if I can come up with something.

OK, that version of CUSTOM.EXE is definitely corrupt. It is exactly 5*2^15 bytes long and has been cut short. That also explains why some of the data files were missing: it was split over multiple floppy disks and something has gone wrong; possibly a whole floppy disc was missing.

I'd be very keen on finding a working pre-2000 copy of custom (as well as games that old: I only have ~20 from 1999 or earlier). I just tried scanning the CP, Op:OHR, and Bahamut gamelists, and while there were several .zips containing custom.exe, the oldest was from 2003. You might have to settle for the version from 2000.