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Gaming Solar Winds
Solar Winds is a pair of DOS games by Epic Megagames in 1993, with the first game Solar Winds: The Escape being free, and the second game Solar Winds: Galaxy the commercial sequel which was renamed to Solar Winds II: Universe later on.
The sound detection fails or the game hangs if cycles are set to max. Setting a specific fairly slow value like 5000 solves this. You can type CYCLES 5000 on the DOSBox commandline to do this, you don't need to edit the config file.
- The mission progression is fairly simple and linear. Press M if you aren't sure where to go next. Sometimes it's a bit janky and you'll get duplicates of old missions.
- Save before every battle. It's annoying to travel a long way only to die.
- Using the E-Band Converter device gives you power from defeated enemies. Always have this on.
- At the end of The Escape, the government gives you an item. Transfer this into space before you go through the wormhole or you'll blow up.
- The Engineering screen or coNfig mode can be used to change energy levels:
- Power into Weapons causes more damage apparently?
- Power into Life Support repairs hull quicker. Hull strength is shown by the colored dot over the ship.
- Full power into Sensors allows you to see ships around planets.
- Shields are false economy in a battle, if you get hit once then you won't win as much energy back.
- The Weapon and conNfig screen let you choose waveforms/frequencies of laser and shield. Apparently, matching shield to your enemy's laser allows you to take more damage, so mismatching your laser to their shield should cause more damage?
- There is friendly fire in this game. Enemies can shoot each other (common with two enemies). You can also get hit by your own missiles if you get in their way.
- There's apparently a cheat to give you 700 power with some combination of function keys on the Engineering screen, but I could never get this working.
- https://www.mobygames.com/game/solar-winds-the-escape
- https://www.mobygames.com/game/solar-winds-galaxy
- https://archive.org/details/SolarWindsTheEscape
- https://www.myabandonware.com/game/solar-winds-the-escape-20f
- https://www.myabandonware.com/game/solar-winds-galaxy-20e
- https://www.classicdosgames.com/game/Solar_Winds.html
- https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/SolarWinds
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Winds
- https://tcrf.net/Solar_Winds:_The_Escape
- https://tcrf.net/Solar_Winds_II:_Universe
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