Thanks. This means even the original full release had the story with aliens/ants. I thought it was only in the shareware version. I guess they changed the story later for the retail version you talk about.

I enabled some of those hi-res graphics in this port. You can open config file and set hires=1, for bigger menu buttons, intro, credits and end game screens from the Mac version, and big_font=1 for bigger font. Some images like the one in the main menu use a different color palette and it doesn't render properly, so I disabled it. I haven't figured out how to fix that. If you set hires=2, the logo at the start of the game will change to Bungie logo.

Some stuff from the Mac version like setting the controls, rendering options and enemy kill count I haven't found in the code, so my guess would be the released source code wasn't that of the Mac version, but the earlier version.

Also speaking of trends in that time, I've read on Abuse Moby Games page that they were porting the game to PlayStation 1, but Sony didn't allow them to release it because it was not a 3D game and it was "just" a port. Imagine that.

Hello! I've just discovered your port. It's cool that you have added support for high-res graphics from the Mac version. However, it seems that the game can only run in high-resolution mode with in-game graphics of the original size.

A while ago I was playing around with the various DOS versions of Abuse and discovered that versions up to v1.05 have an option to run the game in the 640x480 resolution with upscaled graphics.

In your port, setting the screen resolution to 320x240 and using a scaling factor of 2 gets a somewhat similar result to this old mode, but it is not possible to properly combine this with high-res screens and fonts, as they get double-sized too and do not fit on the screen.

I wonder if the double-pixel mode can be still found somewhere in the source code, and added as an option to be coupled with high-res menu graphics? I have no idea how the native Mac version handles the actual gameplay screen, but it would be logical if this mode were used.

Also for some reason, when I'm running the game in low-res mode with scaling, the messages in the tutorial level keep flickering, but stay normally on screen if running in high-res with no scaling.

Hey, I just stumbled upon this in a bit of nostalgia. In case anyone is interested, I found an old (incomplete, iirc) reference for the LISP functions used to script Abuse. Not sure how much those have changed since the original release.

I also found an old mod I was working on that allowed you to switch between two characters. My intention had been to make puzzles that required something where you had to be in two places at once (a la The Lost Vikings), and plans to switch between top-down view and side scrolling view. I don't remember exactly how far I got with it, and I don't know if it will work in modern versions, but I did get it working in the original release.

GOG won't let me post any links so here remove the line breaks below:

Hello, and thank you for writing back. I would have replied sooner, but like you see, this thread was dead for months, so I rarely check it. I'm not exactly sure what is the problem you have.

The MAC version was made to run in 640x480 and uses new larger icons, fonts and background images which need that resolution to fit on screen. The MAC version had the menu running at native 640x480 so icons and stuff fits, and the in-game screen was just 320x240, but they used double-pixel mode to fill 640x480.

In this port when you set game screen to 320x240 in the config file and use scale 2(double-pixel mode), that doesn't give you real 640x480, because the internal resolution is just 320x240 and hi-res stuff can't fit. The hi-res images and big font is only to be used if you set the game screen to 640x480 or higher in the config file. Then both the menu and in-game area will be rendered at native 640x480 and it will fit properly. You can still scale up that if you wish using the scale parameter.

As for flickering text in tutorial, I don't know what is up with that, somehow I missed that.

That lisp thing might get useful. As for the mod, how are you supposed to run that ?

Nothing to contribute, but just want to thank you for keeping this game alive :)

The original Abuse loaded a main LISP (abuse.lsp) file that handled loading all the graphics and the rest of the LISP files. Mods would provide their own main LISP file that could be specified on the command line.

I originally provided a .bat file (duo.bat) that would load the LISP file for my mod.

Awesome work, Antrad88!

I remember Abuse from back in the day, when it appeared on demo disks and such. I can't remember if I ever actually owned it, though I think I may have... but it never really "grabbed" me back then. Now revisiting it via your port, it's good fun and I'm sad I didn't give it more of a chance back then. Heck, the fact it shipped with an editor and encouraged modding makes me think it should have been WAY more popular, even today. Just look at Doom and Wolfenstein 3D!

Was/is there much of a modding community for the game nowadays? If so, where do they hang out?


Question though: how do I get the mods in the addon folder to work, especially the Aliens one?

I can run fantomx11's mod, but I tried a command line of "abuse -a modname" and most of them seem to either do nothing ("aliens") or crash on startup ("bong"). :(

If you were able to run my mod, then I would think you would be able to run any mod that worked with any later version of Abuse. My mod was created with the original DOS version.

If I recall, the Aliens mod was just changing the sprites to look like Xenomorphs, but it was a long time ago, and I could be mistaken.

As far as a modding community is concerned, there was one in the early 2000s. They had all kinds of lofty goals for Abuse 2 and 3, but those projects died a quiet death as many such projects do. The closest thing I ever saw to a completed mod was FRABS. I am unaware of any community around Abuse anymore.

Loved the game back then, still love it heck i even loaded it up on portables like psp and my android phone

This is why all games source code should be made public after N years, for some reasonable value of N. Whether the code is actually under an OSI approved open source license or not, having the code would enable people to fix bugs in the damn games and add high res, widescreen and other useful things to the games like this!

Kudos for doing this, I love this game.

AFAIK the modding community died around 15 years ago. You can find links to some old fan sites in the README, but those are only available via the Interne Archive Wayback Machine, and most mod download links there are dead now.

However, you can download the FRABS campaign/mod and put the new exe and the user folder in there and it should run, but I have not tested it from start to finish.

I couldn't get the Aliens to run either, only mods that run are twist, leon and pong using the method you mention.

The code should compile both on Linux and Mac, but someone else has to do it, I never used a Mac.

I couldn't agree more. I would make it something like N years after the last official update/patch. It's such a shame. We have paintings hundreds of years old being restored, movies being remastered, but we can't do much for video games.

... because some dumbass lost the source code or made rights complicated.

I also would like to thank antrad88 for his recent update to the game.

As well, I would like to use this opportunity to ask people here if they know of any bugs or glitches in the game. I'm planning to route a speedrun of the game, and exploitable bugs/glitches are always nice.

I'm aware of the game's mechanic which makes off-screen enemies inactive, that's wonderful. Also I believe I read something about reloading a save from the wall panels recovering your health, that might be useful.

sometimes source code get recoverd/saved by community/someone....
in this recent case, Turok, "someone" prefers to make some fast buck on ebay :/ Let's see what arises from this...