Finishing MegaTravveller 2

[Blue Ghost]

Did anyone ever manage to complete this game? I could never get into the ancient site.

 

[MichaelSTee]

Many many years ago, I did. I don't remember the details. But I do recall that once you get into the string of pearls, the "tests" you have to complete are fairly simple questions. Then you get a device that saves the planet. You get knighted by the duke.
The game doesn't end there. From that point, you can continue to play and visit any world; play out any of the small quests that were not needed for the main quest. Or fly your ship and do the merchant thing.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

YouTube shows how to go through the game.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Thanks. I just remember wandering around outside the thing, but not being able to get in. I can't remember why.

 

[Hyphen]

Thanks. I just remember wandering around outside the thing, but not being able to get in. I can't remember why.

I think I read a walkthrough somewhere once, that showed how you had to go to every Ancient site and retrieve a MacGuffin from each one before you could get into the Rhylanor structure and switch it off.

(Which meant you needed to get permission to visit at least 3 Red Zones on the way...)

 

[Blue Ghost]

It's so long ago I can't remember what I did, but I think I had gotten three artifacts, and I kept walking around or over the ancient site where the secret dohicky was, but could never get in.

Whatever. I guess in my OTU (the 386 version anyway) Rhylanor is a slimey pink world orbiting a star.

 

[Supplement Four]

I just didn't like this game. I didn't like how each city was the same. It got boring.

MT 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy, I loved, though. It felt like playing Traveller, BITD.

 

[Blue Ghost]

What struck me was that the original Grand Theft auto and Grand Theft Auto 2 used the same kind of top-down view for the cities, only 3D accelerated. If the game were redone with original GTA's game engine, then that would be something I'd buy again.

Zhodani Conspiracy was kind of a cool game.

 

[Supplement Four]

Zhodani Conspiracy was kind of a cool game.

I fell in love with the game when I heard a rumor of a crashed ship. I rented an ATV and went into the wilds and started exploring, then I found the ship--went inside!

For the day, it was a cool game. It was a lot like roleplaying. You moved the group all at once, but if you needed to separate, you could break the group up into individual characters.

Looking down at the 2D map was a lot like looking at graph paper in my face to face game.

I loved The Zhodani Conspiracy, and I used its character generator for Traveller pen-n-paper characters all the time. I'd print them out in txt docs.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I checked out some video on YouTube of MT1, and remember liking it more than other RPGs that had been released around that time. Wasteland, as an example, which had Traveller overtones, but was in a post Apoc America.

What I liked about MT2SOTA was the expansiveness of the game area. Very sandbox. I can't imagine the team of artists who spent time drawing out all those planetary maps. I got a little PO'd that I couldn't land anywhere with my ship, contrary to what the game manual said.

MT1ZC was more Traveller like because it dealt with a geo-political threat. It was more grounded and a little more basic. I think SOTA tried to be a bit more scifi like, which from your reaction was good and bad I guess.

I guess in retrospect, I didn't see this at the time, but in retrospect it doesn't strike me as being connected with the MT era at all. Not a big deal.

What did you think of the starship combat?

 

[Supplement Four]

What did you think of the starship combat?

I only remember the fights in Zhodani Conspiracy. Fun enough, but filler until you got to the planet's surface. Interesting with landing and maneuvering how fuel was such an issue.

What I didn't like about the second game wasn't the story. It was the sameness of each world. They tried to sell it like a positive, but going to each world was the same. It bored me. If you've been to one world, you've been to all of them.

The game had more worlds than Zhodani Conspiracy, but it felt smaller to me because of the world interface design. In ZC, I'd get to a new world and explore! It was exciting and fresh. In the second game, a new world just meant more of the same.

 

[Blue Ghost]

It was a bit bothersome, each city being a dupe of the other, just with different textures. It was more expansive. I liked the game world being larger than the few subsector with Zhodani Conspiracy. The graphics were a bit sharper to.

All in all I thought both were interesting games.

 

[Blue Ghost]

A quick note here, I was going to post a YouTube link to some GTA2 footage, but it's all kind of violent. But you cruise over and do a quick search, you'll see that it looks very much like a very sexed up version of both MegaTraveller games.

I'm sorry MegaTraveller 3 never manifested. That would be a really rocking game with today's graphics.

 

[sithknight]

Help me - ship travel is driving me nuts

OK,

So I decided to necro this thread because I am *trying* to play MT1. I have the DOS version, applied the patch, and have ground combat down fairly well. (Wish I could disable the footsteps sound though ...)

Anyhoo, using DosBOX with Defend Reloaded. And the ship steering is driving me insane. I have the Maneuver program running, a guy with Pilot-3, and I go tearing across the screen, out of control. Even just tip tapping on up arrow and down arrow is a risky process. So...

HOW THE HELL DO YOU FLY THIS SHIP WITHIN THE EMULATOR.

My guess is my Cycles are too high. I set them for a 286 speed chip, but what else? Should I try frameskipping? Any other ideas? Help me.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

My guess is my Cycles are too high. I set them for a 286 speed chip, but what else? Should I try frameskipping? Any other ideas? Help me.

I've used programs like FRAPS to bring tick cycles down to original speeds. Kind of a pain though.

 

[sithknight]

What is a tick cycle? Same thing as a dosbox cycle?

I'll check fraps ..
Thank you so much for replying!

 

[aramis]

What is a tick cycle? Same thing as a dosbox cycle?

I'll check fraps ..
Thank you so much for replying!

It's the time taken by the clock between signals. Most machines took multiple tics per instruction.

A few, which used clock multipliers, managed 1 instruction per tick.

In DosBox, the cycles are whatever speed the machine is going to emulate, rather than the hardware clock... but that's important, because we've gone from 1e3 ticks per second and 4 ticks per instruction (early z80) (so ≅ 250 instructions per second) to multi-core machines passing 3 GHz (3e9 ticks/sec) and 1 instruction per tick if stacked properly (3e9 instructions theoretical maximum), more with matrix operation commands and dedicated graphics processors... Most dos games were for 10 to 50 MHz (1e7 to 5e7 ticks per second) and 3-6 ticks per instruction...

 

[bjjones37]

This was my first intro to the Traveller universe. It is what prompted me to purchase the CDs from Marc to begin with. I also really enjoyed SSI's Star Command. It had a very Traveller feel to it for me. Omnitrend's Universe 2 was also fun but I always got stuck in one place downworld and could never puzzle it out.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Windows 95 games were typically using 30 ticks per second for their AIs and graphics. DOS 6.0 games from the Windows 3.11 era probably had fewer ticks. And so on.

 

[aramis]

Windows 95 games were typically using 30 ticks per second for their AIs and graphics. DOS 6.0 games from the Windows 3.11 era probably had fewer ticks. And so on.

That should be frames, not ticks.