Ideal way to play ROTT these days?

[f2bnp]

#4286

Heya,

been meaning to give ROTT a closer look however I’m not sure where to begin. Did ROTT ever receive a source port or engine re-implementation? I seem to recall trying an OpenGL one a few years ago, but it was not as authentic as I would like.

Is playing the original the generally accepted “best” way to experience this game?

[claw]

#4287

There’s WinROTT and something called rottexpr that I couldn’t get to work, and also the GOG version of the game is pretty well packaged. I’ve tried WinROTT and it seems pretty broken on Windows 10 – It always runs fullscreen with the window title and menu bar visible, and the resolution selection doesn’t work properly.

I’d say the best way to play it is the GOG version, which includes some helpful utils to play COMM-BAT games via DOSBox’s IPX tunneling if you care about that.

I’ve not found any accelerated versions, but I doubt the game would really benefit much from that. I think it would make the limitations of the Wolf3D engine rather more obvious…

Edit: I just tried the more recent WinRottAPI which is supposed to be for Windows 64 bit machines and it doesn’t feel right at all. Movement is very juddery on my machine at 1024×768, and the window is too small for the game screen so it gets cropped on the right and bottom edge. The WinROTTGL version doesn’t work at all with missing DLL errors for me, I guess it needs some OpenGL DLLs I don’t have. Stick with DOSBox!

[watchful]

#4289

Maker of WinROTT has a “GL” version which I actually prefer to the DOS version. It’s quirky to install so try following this guide: https://www.gog.com/forum/rise_of_the_triad_series/installing_winrottgl_v170

Note that there is a newer version found here by tweaking a broken link on maker’s website. My preference is also to turn off the models this GL version provides in favor of the sprites. Feels closer to the original yet without jankiness of original controls. One other quirk with WinRottGL is it doesn’t seem to correctly load the stored settings changed in its menus, at least not with my install. So I just reapply them each time I launch.

All that said the DOS version is still functional with WASD controls and mouse turning after some tweaking of sensitivity. The lower resolution though can make it hard to see far away enemies, which often have instant hit-scan attacks.

[f2bnp]

#4303

I ended up giving WinROTTGL 1.70 a spin and did have a bit of fun with this game. There’s a newer version of WinROTTGL around, but I couldn’t get it to work and apparently has all sorts of issues so I didn’t bother.

It played well enough without deviating from the core experience. With a little bit more polish, this could be the definitive way to experience this game.

[watchful]

#4332

So apparently there is a remaster (separate from 2013 reboot) coming in 2021:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPFS99n4X2I