Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous is where information or notices are posted that do not fit anywhere else.

Getting Any Controller to Work on PC

Modern PCs can use any game controller including console ones. Three simple steps allow this.

First, make sure the computer can sense the controller. This means drivers. For console controllers, it means an adapter of some kind.

Second, open up Control Panel (on Windows machines) and open up controllers. The computer should sense the buttons being pressed, analog sticks being moved, etc. Calibration can be done here if needed.

Third, use a program like Joy2Key (which is free) that maps any keyboard key to a controller button.

There are other programs available aside from Joy2Key. One of them is Xpadder (which you might have to pay money for) that maps Xbox 360 controller support to your controller.

A Notice to Indie Developers

All ‘indie’ games (independent games) will be reviewed on the same scale as every other game on this website. There will be no distinction between ‘indie games’ and other games. The legitimately good indie games will score well. The bad indie games will suffer terribly.

For some irrational reason, people began to separate indie games into their own unique category from other games. We would get ‘racing’, ‘shooting’, ‘RPG’, and ‘Indie’ while an indie game can be racing, shooting, or RPG as well. There will be no differentiation here because the player’s money is not differentiated. An indie game cost uses the same exact currency as every other game.

There are some indie game developers who are using the ‘wall’ of differentiation of indie games to be absolutely lazy. They demand people buy a game with absolutely terrible graphics or sound because it is ‘indie’. They insist people overlook bad pacing. Some indie developers are so selfish, the player is not even expected to have fun because ‘it is an indie game’.

Screw that.

Here, at Post Console, there is no such thing as ‘indie game’. There’s just games. If you cannot compete or differentiate your game among games that are, at least, decades old, then you should find another line of work. While that sounds harsh, remember that it is our money, not yours. If you try to exchange garbage for money, we are going to throw the garbage right back at you.

We don’t NEED games to survive. The only reason why anyone would pay for something they don’t need is that it has a very high value. You must create that value.

Letter to those who have never played an Ultima

Dear gamer,

Like history, the perception of video games begins when a person is born. As they get older, they hear of older games and become curious. Since there are many RPG fans, they hear talk of this game series called ‘Ultima’ that inspired an adventure/RPG series they do know such as Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Zelda, World of Warcraft, and others. Naturally, they want to participate in all Gaming Goodness so they turn to the elder gamer and ask:

“What Ultima is the best one to start?”

It doesn’t matter what the answer is, the gamer will become frustrated and not understand why the Ultima game (whichever one it is) does not behave like the modern game. Horror stories erupt such as:

“I’m trying to play Ultima like Diablo…”
“What is with all this talking to NPCs? I want to play this game like Wizardry or Might and Magic!”
“OMG there are no Dungeon and Dragon rule sets. How can anything make sense!?”

This letter is written to inform the reader of a serious contextual change that occurred which acts as a wall preventing modern gamers from getting into the Ultimas.

Prior to the early 1990s, PC games were developer based while afterward they became production based. Developer based means the developers were more like novelists while production based means the developers were more like movie directors. Ironically, Origin was the spearhead of this shift with the release of Wing Commander in 1990 (and ultimately bankrupted the company because production based gaming meant more demand of extremely expensive 1.4 mb diskettes).

Video games were not only made differently, they were consumed differently. Today, the modern PC gamer expects to install the game and immediately go without once looking at the manual and using only one hand (on the mouse) for the entire game duration. When absorbing the game’s “story”, the parts of the brain that are activated are the same ones that are used for watching television or a movie. In the Developer Era of video games, you were not just expected to go to the manuals, part of the game experience was the manuals. The game designers would be the same people who wrote the manuals and wrote them in such a way that they would be the first tool for immersion as it is what the gamer first sees and touches. When you play these Developer Era games, the parts of the mind that are active are the same ones that are used for reading novels or playing complicated puzzles. There is a reason why Adventure Games flourished in the Developer Era but died out during the Production Era.

All Ultima games are Developer Era. If you hate reading novels, you will never get into an Ultima game no matter which one (including the Underworld games). There is a massive amount of text that needs to be read in each and every Ultima. Don’t even think of starting an Ultima and skipping the manuals. It’s not because the gameplay is complicated, its because the game experience starts inside those manuals. Ultima games came in jewel boxes with multiple manuals, cloth maps, trinkets, and were extremely expensive in their day ($60 for Ultima II in 1982, $70 for Ultima VI in 1990, etc). To put into perspective, Fallout and Baldur’s Gate came out around 1998 and Elder Scrolls: Morrowind came out in 2002. The Ultima series essentially was over by the time the Super Nintendo launched. The most ‘modern’ Ultima (VII) came out in 1992 and is over twenty years old. This series is ancient.

If you can’t make it through the Ultima manuals, do not bother going any further. When Steve Jobs was asked why Apple kept focusing on music and movies and not books, he replied, “The masses do not read books.” He’s correct. Gaming wasn’t a mass market yet in the early days.

So please do not try to play Ultima like Diablo or Baldur’s Gate or Wizardry. Play it for what it is. RPG series competed against the gamers’ finite time and money. While other RPGs were focusing on stat driven combat, Ultima intentionally tried to carve out the RPG in non-combat ways and even went so far to diminish the role of combat. Is this good? Is this bad? Only you can say. It is, however, unique.

Just read through the manuals. If you can’t get into the game from the manuals, then don’t start. The manuals are Ultima’s prologues.

And whatever you do, make your own interpretations instead of relying on someone else (e.g. Spoony).

PS- My answer of the question of what is the best Ultima to start with would be Ultima VI. Ultima VII’s social collapse doesn’t make sense without seeing VI. VI also provides a good pathway into the earlier games. VI has a rough interface adjustment that needs to be made which filters out all the impatient gamers who think RPGs are just clicking a few buttons repeatedly. Just like FPS games are now ‘corridor shooters’ stripped of the original ambitions of FPS, RPG games are now ‘combat stats’ with the actual ‘role-playing’ stripped out of it. Dudebro was present in RPGs long before he came to FPS.

Why a Joystick is important to the PC gaming experience

PC gaming is best experienced when you do things with it that console gaming cannot do. Aside from mouse driven games, the biggest difference the PC has is the joystick experience.

My age may be showing, but it amazes me that there are people who have grown up without the joystick experience. Once upon a time, the only controllers for PC games were joysticks or keyboards (the mouse was not yet invented). The Atari 2600 came with joysticks as well. Consoles had joysticks until the NES obliterated them with the D-pad. The joystick dominated in the arcades. With arcades gone and the mouse so prevalent, I suppose there are gamers out there who have never had the joystick experience.

One thing the joystick can do is transform the PC into a flight simulator. This doesn’t mean your dad’s boring realistic flight simulator, it means game-like ones where you fight space aliens or fly as an ace in World War I or something. The joystick is the controller with the most immersion. It is why arcades use it. You really feel a sense of control by how you handle the joystick. The teeny tiny analog stick on the game controller doesn’t compare AT ALL. Perhaps that feels comfortable for tiny Japanese hands, but you haven’t lived until you handled a nice stonking joystick in an incredible dogfight.

“But aren’t joysticks expensive?” you ask. “I hear joysticks cost over $100!” There are some niche flight simulator joysticks that cost that much. But you can get a logitech joystick for about twenty five dollars which is the price of a game controller.

There are many GOG games that require the use of a joystick in order for the game experience to work. They are:

Descent 1 and 2
Descent 3
Independence War 1
Independence War 2
Aquanox 1
Aquanox 2
Freespace
Freespace 2
Wing Commander 1 and 2
Privateer
Wing Commander 3
Wing Commander 4
Apache Vs. Havoc
Comanche Vs. Hokum
IL-2 Sturmovik
Incoming
Super Hornet
Red Baron Pack

I’m sure there is more, but that is a good start. Sometimes it is fun to play games with a joystick just because. Sometimes playing Tyrian 2000 with a joystick can be refreshing than just playing it with a controller.

It is important that the gamer not castrate himself. Get a nice, big joystick and discover gaming in a new light.