Friday, October 3, 2014

The Elder Scrolls Travels

    Spurred on by my last post, I decided to attempt and create a launcher for the TEST games. Of course it can't include Shadowkey, but best just ignore that for now.
    I managed to find all three of the available TEST games, Stormhold, Dawnstar, and Oblivion. The first version of Stormhold I found was a Russian translation, but I opted to find an English version. I then found an emulator to run them, KEmulator.
    I decided to try and put them all into a launcher, like the ill-fated attempt with the Ultima games. This time, however, I wanted for the person to put the game folder wherever they wanted on their computer and still be able to run the games. Because the games open up through a shortcut, I needed to make the shortcuts relative. This was not that easy. Queue an hour or so digging around on Google until I found a way of doing it (You can thank this website for the idea). With that done I needed to create the actual launcher.
    I decided to use Virtual Basic again, as I had some knowledge on how to use it. Setting up the layout was easy enough; I just placed a few buttons and put the title. The hardest part was, again, making the path for the launcher to start the games relative. I dug around until I found the first instructional video on making a game launcher for virtual basic that I watched, as I remembered the video showed how to make the launcher relative. I found it and did what it said, and it didn't work at first. It turned out to be my fault, I had forgotten a slash. I tried it again and it still didn't work. And, again, it was my fault; I forgot to build the version (really stupid).
   In the end, I actually got it working. The games aren't that good, but it's cool none the less.
Elder Scrolls Travels Oblivion running in KEmulator
The launcher interface

Here is the download: The Elder Scrolls Travels Launcher
    Thanks for reading and I hope you come back next time!

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

The Elder Scrolls and the Nokia Ngage

    A while ago, I got obsessed with the Elder Scrolls series. I got the three most recent games (Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim), got the first two (Arean and Daggerfall) from the Elder Scrolls website, and even managed to find the two spinoffs (Redguard and Battlespire).
    I actually really enjoyed playing Redguard; it was a pleasant action-adventure game in the vein of Tomb Raider. The gameplay is pretty good, with a slightly awkward fighting mechanic, but otherwise pretty workable game. It leans heavily on lore, with tons of necessary dialog and story constantly thrown at you. I, however, am fine with this. I fell in love with the history of the Elder Scrolls series with Skyrim, and all this lore in Redguard was cool with me.
    Anyway, back to the point at hand. So I found all these games, but I knew that there was more. Four more to be exact: the games in the Elder Scrolls Travels series. They are, in order of release, Stormhold, Dawnstar, Shadowkey, and Oblivion (the mobile version, not the computer or canceled psp version). I have searched for these, and they are not easy to find. And even if I did find them, I'm not sure how I'd play them
    The one I searched for the most, however, was Shadowkey. Shadowkey was the only 3D Travels game released. Unfortunately, it was only ever released for the Nokia Ngage. No matter how hard I searched, I couldn't find an Ngage emulator. There are one or two things that call themselves Ngage emulators, but are unable to play any of the actual Ngage games. I eventually consented to the fact that it would be impossible to play Shadowkey on my computer.
    So now I'm just searching for good Ngage and copy of Shadowkey (for a reasonable price) to pop up on ebay. There are a few up right now that I have my eye on, but still not sure whether it would be worth it. Shadowkey only got mediocre reviews, but I have kind of been obsessing over it.
    But that is just what I do. I obsess over something until I get it, play with it a bit, then move on to the next thing. For now, however, I'll just keep on looking.
    Thanks for reading, and I hope you come back next time!

P.S.
    If anyone has found a way to play the Travels games on the computer (or has even just found their files), I would love to see it.