Skull Leader

Hmmm, looks like we'll just have to proceed with the regular version of the game for now. If we play the waiting game perhaps an option will present itself. I'm not too upset about that. (not yet anyway) I did the upgrade using Adobe Illustrator. By doing them as vectored graphics, we can resize to the newer monitor resolutions without any loss of quality. Honestly it may be a few months before I get down to the nitty gritty of figuring Unity 3D out.... I've got some model commissions I need to finish up for a few veterans and then I can focus a little more on it... in the meantime, it's 5 or 10 minutes here or there converting artwork. It was slow going at first, but I'm getting the hang of it, so I'll be able to whip them out a little quicker. Of course I'll post regular updates Just don't expect them to be very exciting yet lol.

It's still got some details to fix and work out, but this gives a pretty good idea of what the profiles will look like Comments? Criticism?

Decided to go with Smooth. I started with Roy but I've already decided to delete it all and start over...I decided to start work on the second pilot instead.

So... shall I try to replicate the pixilated graphics? Or try to smooth it out?

I'm starting work on vectoring some of the game art. I'm starting with the pilot profiles. This should take some time

That is the $64,000 question.... I've got a line out to a few of my computer geek friends to see what they say before I go throwing money down for a drive I'd likely only use once, lol

I can get an external 5.25 floppy drive. Most of the existing 5.25 drives are USB though... and my laptop is running ver. 4.00.950a, which doesn't support USB... so I don't know if just throwing an I/O-to-USB adapter on there would make it work, or if I genuinely need to find an I/O ported external floppy drive. I can probably solve that problem.

I actually own an old IBM thinkpad that runs windows 95... if you have a drive and trusted me enough, you could send them to me and I could do it (or try... ) I'm legit! Does your 5.25 drive have an I/O adapter? My laptop doesn't have USB ports

It's an expensive option, but you might be able to find an old PC98 laptop that runs windows 95 and rip them off that way. You'd be certain that the computer wasn't trying to alter the files Alternatively, what about an emulator that runs the pc98 version of MS-DOS or windows? Maybe you could rip the disc images that way without corrupting them? I see a couple of laptops on ebay, but at $2000 a pop, I don't know if it's worth it

Were PC98 floppies the same as IBM ones? I guess they would be. I'm getting in to breaking down the menu trees... I'll worry about the story and the dialogue after I've figured out how to completely get myself around the game. I've got a pretty good idea on those now... no idea if menu options change later in the game. There is an option from the main menu for a special mission if you have access to the "remember me" disks as well, it's a megaroad mission!

Damn dude.. I'm impressed!

Yeah, getting to play the Stampede valkyrie and the star crusader were pretty cool. I don't remember a great deal about the star crusaders, but I remember the SDP-1 Stampede valkyrie being a one man army Sadly, I'm an android guy, so the goggles app is a no go for me (the only alternative in the Google play store is still in beta and is getting terrible reviews) Btw, I have the entire story up to the point you take control of Hikaru captured.... screen by screen it's something like 130 pages of dialogue so far.

I also think I've found a way to rip the audio, but i'll have to do it as .mp3 files

I got the font issue figured out... its displaying japanese now, so I've begun collecting screen grabs for translations, etc

I have the game disks as .fdi files and I run them on a PC98 emulator (anex86 in this case, though others exist). I think I may be doing it wrong, because even with the japanese language font loaded, the text still shows up as gibberish. I have Skull Leader, Love Stories, and Remember Me, but I don't think I have the complete pack version. I have no idea how to rip the music honestly... I've got a message out to apollojoe as to how he did it, but I don't know if he speaks english, he may not respond. I still haven't decided if I'm gonna try to rip the bitmaps, or do new vector versions. I think new vector art would look better, especially scaled up on the bigger monitors of today, I do confess to liking the grainy look of the originals though... gives it a retro feel. I'm a *long* way from figuring out if I can do this... it could be 6-8 months before I even begin laying groundwork (if I can can apply myself in my spare time enough to learn c++) If anyone else (yourself included, Boinger) wants to get on board with this, I'm sure I'll need all the help I can get. Here is a short list of things I'm gonna need: 1. Complete translations of all the menus (when I played through it before, I was able to figure some of it out by feeling my way in the dark, but it would be nice to know what they really say) 2. Complete translations of all the dialogue (I've never played the game beyond a couple of missions, and as I said before, the text is gibberish, so I have no idea what they're saying) 3. A walkthru/Mission guide for each mission in the game, and the scripted events that occur in each. 4. (If anyone can do it), all of the music files ripped to some neutral format... either .midi or .mp3 I guess... I could "steal" the ones apollojoe has already done, but something doesn't sound right about a couple of them, I'm not sure what process he used to get these. 5. (again, if anyone can do it) I need full size rips of all the artwork. Being bitmaps, I could probably just screenshot it, blow it up, and re-draw, but thats a lot of work. Anyone else want in on this clusterf*#&? LOL Boinger, I'm interested in getting .fdi images of that complete pack if you ever get it figured out.

Well, I've always wanted to learn how to program... It just so happens that a copy of Unity 3D exists on my computer... everyone says it's the shiznit for game developing. Time to hit the books I guess

Nix rpgmaker... it doesn't do isometric maps

Just a quick glance shows that game maker: studio or RPG maker might be optimum for what we need. The game maps are isometric/false 3d, and the entire game (s) are menu driven

Your guess is as good as mine! I was a liberal arts major in college... I know exactly nothing about game programming or where to begin. They function similar to super robot wars... is there maybe a moddable version of one of those out there? And all the graphics are static bitmaps... it would be super easy to either port them directly or run them through adobe illustrator and make updated vectored versions (I guess you could add in small animations like the pilots flinching when attacked or gunfire,or valkyrie mode change, etc)

They're great fun to play! That was kind of the graphic update I envisioned but honestly, I'd settle for a version of the original that ran on windows lol Yeah that guy ripped a few of the songs but not the best ones lol

So I busted out the PC98 emulator earlier tonight and I was fooling around with Skull Leader and Remember Me.... it got me to thinking. How hard would it be to do an HD remake of these games? Perhaps doing them in a windows format, eliminating the need for a PC98 emu? I don't know how complicated it would be, but the games are awesome (for those who haven't played them, they're strategy games where you control entire squadrons of valkyries at once, and sometimes even the macross itself) and it would be a fantastic opportunity to throw in an English translation Where would one even start? Anyone with any programming know-how ever thought about this?

I didnt like the whole step away from ISIS thing... at first I thought it was going to be really funny, but it really started to wear off fast. I fear the show has run it's course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB1NiNKwueE This will *always* be the proper "Equalizer".... it needs to be an old british guy like Ed Woodward!

LOL I had already been a diehard fan for 20 years and set it aside for a bit by the time you found it! Hope you've gotten as much enjoyment from it as I have over the years I remember Edo, SkullOne, and Jemstone. She was pretty cool I thought, I did a victory dance the day we banned Edo as I recall.

I remember both!