Talk:BioForge

message: I am dubious if the game fits in the cyberpunk category. It's mostly about aliens, robots, planets and space, not cities, gangs, hackers or cyberspace. Pictureuploader 11:46, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cyberpunk 

message: Relegating the game to be a mere clone of Aitd is a little simplifying. Fighting monsters in a desolate, bleak, 3D environment sounds more like Doom, perhaps it would fit in a "Inspiration" section IvanDíaz 11:24, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I can confirm that. The screenshot I added shows the severed arm. -Phorque 18:54, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

text: The survivor in the cell is a security guard named Caynan, who was taken prisoner and served as a test subject for futher experiments in the Mondites cyborg assassin project. He has been driven insane by experiments, and if i recall, gene therapy that turned his skin color blue. He severs his arm off-screen (and before gameplay begins), apparently trying to get through the force bars on his cell. His arm is used to access a finger print scan on the cell block exit (as he was a security officer, his hand print still works to unlock the door). -- Raijin1999  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.236.245.98 (talk) 16:00, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Technical section 

message: I remember that Origin games from this time had Director-like adverts in the CD (from a Origin division named chicken-boy or somesuch) One of these announced an extension of Bioforge that continued the plot from the end. Tomorrow I will post the details, somebody knows if it was published? IvanDíaz 12:05, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bioforge Extension? 

message: I remember Bioforge having some pretty memorable quotes. I might even dig up the game again if nobody else can find them.
One was something along the lines of "I didn't have to kill you... but I (prefer/enjoy (?)) the silence." if you kill the space marine you interrogate on the roof. Can anyone verify the exact line or any other good ones for inclusion in the article? -Phorque 19:01, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's awesome. I'm creating a wikiquote page. Thank you! =) - Phorque 20:31, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quotes 

message: My question was about the quote in the first paragraph which reads "...since the player is unaware of his identity, which depends on his actions during the game." I thought that the identity was chosen at random. I don't know of any significant change in gameplay that would allow you to finish the game, yet impact what identity would be chosen for you. Can anyone support this quote? ClarkBHM 02:25, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: On that note, how do you find out your name is "Lex" regardless of your identity. I just can't remember that. - Phorque 09:38, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Gameplay section

message: Thank you all for the nice and productive cooperation!! Pictureuploader 09:06, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks to you too. It's been a trip for me remembering all the funny little things about this game. - Phorque 14:31, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Untitled 

message: can somebody tell me where that quote came from so that i can footnote it? -  15:46, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  ken demarest quote 

message: Some of this information is incorrect. For instance, Dr. Mastaba is NOT the same person as the Prime Paragon. He's just the base commander of Daedalus and head of the ABA project. The Prime Paragon is the leader of the Mondites, whom you never actually meet in the game. You read a little bit about him at one of the terminals, but it's just a plot device to give you some impression of how insane these people are.
I am not terribly familiar with wiki editing yet, but I am big fan of this game and I will make these corrections as soon as possible.
-CyberRaptor
:I made those changes. It's been years since I had the game in my possession so I can't prove or disprove most of these facts. - Phorque 18:07, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hey, good work. Can't fault you on your edits. I just cleaned up tiny patches. - Phorque 05:49, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

text: As usual on the Internet, someone somewhere already had way too much time: http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Bioforge/index.html . Reading that brings back memories... --Cyberman TM (talk) 09:14, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs Work 

message: Because of the game's age, and because it was designed strictly for DOS, the emulator DosBox is most likely the only way one could play it now. Anyone who reads this page is obviously someone who has an interest in BioForge, classic games, etc. With this in mind, I'd like advice on whether it would be appropriate to add some sort of instructions on getting the game to run on newer computers, or at least whether I should add a link to the DosBox website. CyberRaptor 11:03, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Getting BioForge to work 

message: Its an interesting read, i made some small copy edits to remove POV. Images need to relate more to the article content rather than just decorations, as decorations they are nice but dont comply to fair use. There is a cite in the article which needs to be addressed as its a subsatancial statement. Gnangarra 09:45, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have to disagree with you about the images in the article. I've played BioForge extensively, and I think they help to convey an overall sense of what the game is about. The one showing the injuries visible on the game's character is especially important, because it relates to the information regarding the technology used in making the game. Certainly the screenshots aren't doing any harm; I was thinking of adding another one myself. CyberRaptor 02:31, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  GA failed 

message: As mentioned above, your identity was determined by your actions. If you open the file SCRIPT\CONOPER.SCP,
you'll find a function called PERSONALITY_WEB_COMPUTE. These script files seem to be semi-compiled, it looks
like comments and indentation are intact, commands might be too ("I" if "IF", "E" for "ELSE", "THEN" for
"THEN", and {brackets} like C/C++/friends); however variables seem to be binary garbage, probably pointers.
That said, it's really easy to make sense of the code, and you can do a search in the rest of the files for the
variables to guess what they mean. With that in mind, I believe I reverse-engineered the identity computation.
There are four (4) decisions that affect the outcome. These are:
RTW: Roland (Tower Guard) [1 = left alive; 0 = killed]
DOR: Dane (Operation Room) [1 = left alive; 0 = killed]
ESC: Dr. Escher (Excavation site) [1 = helped her; 0 = not helped]
GEN: Gen (Alien City) [1 = left alive; 0 = killed]
As said above, if GEN = 0 the game can't be completed (or I haven't been able to), but you still get an
identity. Also, note how killing Caynan doesn't seem to make a difference, which makes sense, because all the
choices are against non-hostile enemies, and Caynan is hostile.
The personality net is:
RTW DOR ESC GEN Identity
 0   0   0   0  TOMIK SARTA
 0   0   0   1  UNION SOO
 0   0   1   0  UNION SOO
 0   0   1   1  NESTOR STROM
 0   1   0   0  REMARRO MONIK
 0   1   0   1  BERIN DODESKADEN
 0   1   1   0  JOHN HIGHHILL
 0   1   1   1  BERIN DODESKADEN
 1   0   0   0  JONATHAN ONE
 1   0   0   1  MORGAN BLADE
 1   0   1   0  MORGAN BLADE
 1   0   1   1  RATHMAN PANE
 1   1   0   0  MERL TRUSTIC
 1   1   0   1  POPUL MARKO
 1   1   1   0  POPUL MARKO
 1   1   1   1  VIDOR SELMAK
(original order in the script is a bit different, ESC starts with 1 and not with 0)
(1,1,1,1 is "you have been very nice" and 0,0,0,0 is "very evil")
Now, in the Operation Room console, when you use the code, several things may happen.
1. You haven't spoken with Gen yet (see below how to get the code earlier; or just reload an earlier savegame
after you got it the right way). In this case, you haven't had a chance to take all four decisions, and the
personality is not computed. You'll see the default confidential information for all patients.
2. You have spoken with Gen (or killed it). In that case, you can see the default confidential information on
all patients, except the one you are, which will be changed to
   RESULTS: Subject Survived Procedure.  Subject designated AP-127, and moved to Security Cell 3 for Recovery.
You can get the code early by looking at the save game file (the code is random like all the others and is
stored in the variables ESCHER_ID1_TO_MATCH..ESCHER_ID5_TO_MATCH which are in GAMEDAT/VARS.DEF corresponding to
the most recent played game; they can be found in the GAMEx.IM1 savegame files too, which are just a container
for all the files inside GAMEDAT).
If you want to see all the texts without starting the game, they can be found in MONITORS\TEXT.FLX (for
English; GTEXT.FLX for German and FTEXT.FLX for French), but it's a semi-binary format. "PROJECT ABA CASE
HISTORIES" is what you can always see; "PROJECT AFA CASE HISTORIES" is the confidential information. You can
see how the protagonist is indeed called Lex, at least internally.Nuk 18:58, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Personality 

message: The game does seem to run perfectly with DOSBox. There are some important things to mention though, which also apply to a native environment with no emulation:
* If the emulation speed (DOSBox cycles) is too low, the game won't start - the introduction cutscene will play, you will be able to select a difficulty setting, but then the game won't get to where it actually starts (the cell). I believe this is a problem of the game itself, I recall it failing to start the same way (or taking a very long time) on a 33MHz 486, which was bellow the requirements. To solve it, cycles should be at least ~7500. 10000 is recommendable, and with 12500+ the game will run rather well. (The default key in DOSBox to increase cycles is CTRL-F12).
* The game seems to perform a test to set the speed (SPEED_FACTOR), however it seems to work badly. The speed of the game doesn't seem to depend on the machine (CPU speed / frames per second), but only in the SPEED_FACTOR setting; therefore it only makes sense to use the same SPEED_FACTOR always. However, in some machines it gets set to some large value, causing the game to work slow-motion (despite getting high frames per second). This variable is stored in INSTALL.OPT, a text file with different options. I believe the "neutral"/correct setting is 0. Negative values cause the game to run faster, positive to run slower. (To test this, try some high number such as -15 or 15). _TIMETEST should be 1 if a test has been performed and SPEED_FACTOR has been set, but I didn't make sense of that option - it doesn't work as it should. There's no need to change it.
Nuk 19:11, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  DOSBox, cycles and SPEED_FACTOR 

message: I spoke with him myself by email and he did indeed say that in regards to the development of BioForge. However, there were a few minor discrepancies in what had been written here, which I have fixed. CyberRaptor 23:27, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh shit! That's so cool of him. Couldn't you have found out the reference/citation for this? Where did he say this? It's the only missing reference in this article. - Phorque 12:24, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ken Demarest quote 

message: The game ending (in an obvious way) drops hint for its continuation... what happened, why didn't they make one? I loved this game SO much... and i have no idea why, honestly it isn't so good... but the combat scenes were wonderful, so was the gfx style.Gylfi (talk) 23:00, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sequel? 

message: It's been since I played the game back in that year that I wonder.. what the hell is the use for the middle-right punch? It does JACK.Gylfi (talk) 23:00, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Combat question 

message: I believe this has not been seen yet, I thought I would share. 
I've been browsing for any BioForge content for years and I believe this event has not yet been discovered.
I've discovered it just today - that you can not only look at the picture of Dane's fiancé Launa, but you can also show the picture to himself in the operation room ! 
However Dane does not recognize the person because, as can be read from the Mastaba's notes, during the 2nd stage of Project AFA subject's memory is completly wiped out. 
This detail indeed amazed me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7n88r1CaGM
-jackal  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.195.6.7 (talk) 11:56, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Showing photograph of Launa to Dane  

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thread_title:  External links modified