Jagged Alliance Jagged Alliance 2, Temple of Elemental Evil & Silent Storm Retrospectives

[jebsmoker]

yeah unless if you're some sort of independent contractor i wouldn't fuck with installing old games on my work computer

 

[biggestboss]

Work policy here allows it, I can do or play whatever I want during my lunch breaks. I beat the entirety of Age of Decadence on my work computer which was memorable because the CPU fans sounded like a hurricane the entire time I played it.

 

[jebsmoker]

Work policy here allows it, I can do or play whatever I want during my lunch breaks. I beat the entirety of Age of Decadence on my work computer which was memorable because the CPU fans sounded like a hurricane the entire time I played it.

amazing.

I had similar problems with Strat too; it just didn't look quite right. 1.13 did.
Have you tried with dgVoodoo (I didn't)?

can you detail what kind of hardware and software configuration you have? Strat works fine for me. i'm running at 1600 by 900 pixels with an RX 570 as my GPU with mostly up to date drivers and win 10

Monitor with 1920x1080 native resolution and a lowly Intel HD 4000 integrated GPU.

you can submit a query here. beyond that, the most concrete advice i have is 'try the latest version of your GPU drivers', but you've probably done that

https://github.com/ja2-stracciatella/ja2-stracciatella/issues

 

[Efe]

its not like there are any options besides display resolution for stratciitiicaicala

Spoiler

 

[Strange Fellow]

its not like there are any options besides display resolution for stratciitiicaicala

OK, I see the problem now. You shouldn't set the game resolution so high. 1280x720 or 1024x576 is about right IMO, but you could go even lower. The game is from the 90s after all, there are limits to how high a resolution you can set for it without it looking like shit (or in this case, becomes unreadably small). This only affects the menus, however, the tactical view always fills the screen.

 

[jebsmoker]

1600 by 900 is perfectly fine for me. what's your native display resolution Efe? the unscaled map and laptop UI elements are perfectly large enough and legible for me

 

[Lilura]

Since this has ss in the title, does anyone know if the first mission changes depending on the class that you pick for your character? I've started a new playthrough recently, and I got a mission which I don't remember playing.

Allies start off in the woods; Axis outside a bank.

 

[jebsmoker]

lilura... i must ask, what do you think of apeiron's jagged alliance-alikes. please don't tell me you think they're bad

 

[GarfunkeL]

its not like there are any options besides display resolution for stratciitiicaicala

You do all such things from the ini file, via using the INI editor. And as always, 1.13 has fixed this problem, though you still shouldn't go with extremely massive resolutions. Oh and if shit's not running well, you use the W7-8-10 fixes that come with 1.13 download.

 

[Egosphere]

Since this has ss in the title, does anyone know if the first mission changes depending on the class that you pick for your character? I've started a new playthrough recently, and I got a mission which I don't remember playing.

Allies start off in the woods; Axis outside a bank.

No, I mean the first 'proper' mission, not including the tutorial one. I'm protecting a german commander in northern germany in this playthrough. I think one of my previous axis campaigns started in Britain, though.

 

[Efe]

its not like there are any options besides display resolution for stratciitiicaicala

You do all such things from the ini file, via using the INI editor. And as always, 1.13 has fixed this problem, though you still shouldn't go with extremely massive resolutions. Oh and if shit's not running well, you use the W7-8-10 fixes that come with 1.13 download.

straticitiatilalallala doesnt have ini editor just a json file for a couple options as far as i can tell.
ill try straticilalalala again and if it doesnt work hopefully 1.13 with fixes (just some registry lines for compatibility options??)

 

[Lilura]

ill try straticilalalala again and if it doesnt work hopefully 1.13 with fixes (just some registry lines for compatibility options??)

The fixes included in 1.13 are the same ones I linked to in my retrospective. Thus, they work with 1.12 as well.

Other options:

Play in Windowed mode.
Play JA2 on WinXP/VirtualBox (flawless).

 

[biggestboss]

I used to be a full-screen all the time kind of person, but now I love playing older games in windowed mode. Besides being much less of a hassle, it's the best way to keep the integrity of the game's art assets and UI intact.

 

[Lilura]

At least on my system, hardware/driver scaling maintains 4:3 aspect ratios on 16:9 displays. And since I don't have a huge display, even resolutions of 640*480 look fine at fullscreen.

Of course, the real way to play is on a Trinitron CRT or equivalent, but they are big and heavy.

I feel sorry for people who never played 1996-2001 RPGs on CRTs.

 

[biggestboss]

I think NVIDIA drivers do have something that maintains aspect ratios, but there was a long stretch of time where I tried to get IWD2 to maintain 4:3 on 16:9 with an AMD card and couldn't get it to work. This is the guide I used for posterity: https://zeckul.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/icewind-dale-2-ultimate-installation-guide/ Step 5.1) Fix the aspect ratio scaling

TLDR: AMD is trash

 

[Lilura]

Yeah, in my experience, that shit can happen with IWD: HoW, too. But not with IWD 1.06. It can happen with BG2, but not BG. Even the widescreen mod doesn't fix it (when you set the WS mod to 4:3/800*600).

At any rate, I prefer fullscreen for +immersion. It also helps to unhook from the internet. Pretend OS and internet don't exist, and just play the fucking game.

 

[laclongquan]

Since this has ss in the title, does anyone know if the first mission changes depending on the class that you pick for your character? I've started a new playthrough recently, and I got a mission which I don't remember playing.

Not first missions. Allied and Axis all have each respective 1st mission (rescue your colleague and bank heist).

Second viable mission can change though, depend on random clue generator. And yeah, there is one, I think, sometimes can be rarely generated. Allied, I think. There is also a middle to late game mission, ballistic testing research facility, also rarely generated. It is a big ass field with bomb holes, combined with radio tower and big warehouse.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

lilura... i must ask, what do you think of apeiron's jagged alliance-alikes. please don't tell me you think they're bad

You ain't lived till you cleared Hard Life's gold mine solo with only a revolver.

 

[jebsmoker]

lilura... i must ask, what do you think of apeiron's jagged alliance-alikes. please don't tell me you think they're bad

You ain't lived till you cleared Hard Life's gold mine solo with only a revolver.

i actually pulled off the quest in which you have to defend an area with only a bunch of peasants armed with revolvers and lever-action rifles that have been collecting dust for the better part of a century fairly well. hard life is hard, but once you get into its groove, you forget its insane slavclunkness and appreciate the effort put into it

 

[JarlFrank]

Since this has ss in the title, does anyone know if the first mission changes depending on the class that you pick for your character? I've started a new playthrough recently, and I got a mission which I don't remember playing.

Allies start off in the woods; Axis outside a bank.

No, I mean the first 'proper' mission, not including the tutorial one. I'm protecting a german commander in northern germany in this playthrough. I think one of my previous axis campaigns started in Britain, though.

Yeah, I recently started the game again too, and got the German officer protection mission. Years ago the first mission was in Britain. But I had encountered both initial missions in the game before, I'm just not sure what makes the game decide which one to start you out with.

 

[Egosphere]

Since this has ss in the title, does anyone know if the first mission changes depending on the class that you pick for your character? I've started a new playthrough recently, and I got a mission which I don't remember playing.

Allies start off in the woods; Axis outside a bank.

No, I mean the first 'proper' mission, not including the tutorial one. I'm protecting a german commander in northern germany in this playthrough. I think one of my previous axis campaigns started in Britain, though.

Yeah, I recently started the game again too, and got the German officer protection mission. Years ago the first mission was in Britain. But I had encountered both initial missions in the game before, I'm just not sure what makes the game decide which one to start you out with.

what class were you in each case? I started in Britain as a sniper, officer protection in germany as a scout

 

[JarlFrank]

Since this has ss in the title, does anyone know if the first mission changes depending on the class that you pick for your character? I've started a new playthrough recently, and I got a mission which I don't remember playing.

Allies start off in the woods; Axis outside a bank.

No, I mean the first 'proper' mission, not including the tutorial one. I'm protecting a german commander in northern germany in this playthrough. I think one of my previous axis campaigns started in Britain, though.

Yeah, I recently started the game again too, and got the German officer protection mission. Years ago the first mission was in Britain. But I had encountered both initial missions in the game before, I'm just not sure what makes the game decide which one to start you out with.

what class were you in each case? I started in Britain as a sniper, officer protection in germany as a scout

I honestly don't remember which classes I played back in the day. Officer protection this time was soldier, but I played as sniper before so that might have started me off in Britain.

 

[Lilura]

There is some info on Strategy Core:

General mission overview [link]
First mission observations [link]
Progression of missions aka laclongquan talks to himself 9 years ago [link]

I didn't cover this aspect in my retrospective because I couldn't be bothered extracting the files to look at them properly.

 

[laclongquan]

Duplicate link, girl~ My musings are here

You know what? Reread my musings show that Silent Storm clue generation make a very good case for campaign completion meter.

You just wait until end game to get a report of 95% or hell, 75%. That would have driven us completely insane.

As it is now, even if we had missed one or two mission we wouldnt have known it unless reading fags and counting missions. Regional missions.

Also a good case for end game slides about campaign clue. if it had been presented in the order we get clues, new pieces of intel, in particular old dialog recorded ingame, it would have made a good game musings at the end, like fallout new vegas.

 

[Jimmious]

So guys, I decided to play some JA2 again, this time with Stracciatela. I installed it and run the game through the Stracciatela executable but even though I change the resolution it always seems... the same to me?
The game is displayed in a small area within a larger window. I imagine that's not what they mean with different resolutions? Should I do something else?