{"id":754,"date":"2010-04-04T01:56:09","date_gmt":"2010-04-04T06:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/754"},"modified":"2016-11-09T13:52:03","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T21:52:03","slug":"the-humans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/754","title":{"rendered":"The Humans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/humans-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/humans-1-300x178.png\" alt=\"humans\" width=\"300\" height=\"178\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-4449\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/humans-1-300x178.png 300w, https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/humans-1.png 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>And finally, we get to something that isn&#8217;t a RPG: <em>The Humans<\/em>, a 1992 cavemen-and-dinosaurs-themed puzzle-platformer.  Although it isn&#8217;t the oldest game on the Stack, it&#8217;s probably the game that&#8217;s been on the Stack the longest &#8212; which came as a surprise to me when I compiled the list; for years, I thought that honor went to <em>Bloodnet<\/em> (a 1994 cyberpunk\/vampire adventure game with some RPG elements).  I suppose <em>Bloodnet<\/em> weighed more heavily on my sense of backlog guilt, because I abandoned it so near the beginning: for a time, when the Stack was much smaller, it was the one game that I felt like I hadn&#8217;t even given a serious try.  (Today, I have over a hundred marked as not even tried at all.)  Whereas I was fairly advanced in <em>The Humans<\/em> when I shelved it, putting it into extended I&#8217;ll-get-back-to-this-soon limbo.<\/p>\n<p>I abandoned the game the first time around due to frustration over its pixel-precise demands.  And yes, the game does make the gaps I have to jump uncomfortably wide sometimes, so that my first attempt falls short, and my second attempt falls down before jumping as a result of trying not to fall short.  But in truth, it wasn&#8217;t just the game&#8217;s demands that caused my frustration, but my own demands on top of them.  In those days, I was not just a completist, but a perfectionist.  The game provides you with a limited number of lives &#8212; okay, it&#8217;s not quite that simple. The game puts multiple cavemen on each level, and lets you switch control between them <em>Lost Vikings<\/em>-style.  If one of them dies, he <span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_754_1('footnote_plugin_reference_754_1_1');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_754_1('footnote_plugin_reference_754_1_1');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_754_1_1\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">1<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_754_1_1\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">I use the masculine pronoun because there don&#8217;t seem to be any females, which makes me fear for the future of the tribe.<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_754_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_754_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });<\/script> is immediately replaced by a spare, but you can run out of spares.  The number of cavemen you have available persists from level to level, and only increases if you rescue a captive on the occasional level where that&#8217;s an option.  So, to my younger self, part of the challenge here was to make my tribe as large as possible &#8212; that is, to do all the rescues and never let anyone die unless a puzzle demands it.  (Sometimes the only way to sneak one caveman past a hungry dinosaur is to take advantage of the delay while it eats another caveman.  This is not a very good-hearted game.)  Note that this doesn&#8217;t really affect your ability to finish the game: you can jump in with a full set of lives at the beginning of any level.  There&#8217;s a scoring system that would be affected by this, but I didn&#8217;t care about that even in my perfectionist days.  No, hoarding all those lives was just a self-imposed challenge that I&#8217;m willing to forgo today.<\/p>\n<p>I recall attempting the game again some years later and finding that it disagreed with my newer sound hardware.  The sounds here aren&#8217;t anything special, really &#8212; just a bunch of looped tunes that play in the background &#8212; but I deemed it to be an essential part of the experience anyway (for reasons I may elaborate in my next post), and reshelved it again.  DOSBox takes care of that, of course.  But for some reason, DOSBox crashes the installer.  I seriously thought for a while that I wasn&#8217;t going to be able to play this game: it refuses to run until it has a config file telling it about your sound and video hardware, and the only way to generate that is with the installer, which brought down DOSBox in impressive manner, with ill-formatted double-wide text and a completely unresponsive prompt.  Fortunately, I was able to run the installer natively, even though the game itself balks at this treatment.<\/p>\n<div class=\"speaker-mute footnotes_reference_container\"> <div class=\"footnote_container_prepare\"><p><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_label pointer\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_754_1();\">&#x202F;<\/span><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button\" style=\"display: none;\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_754_1();\">[<a id=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_754_1\">+<\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/div> <div id=\"footnote_references_container_754_1\" style=\"\"><table class=\"footnotes_table footnote-reference-container\"><caption class=\"accessibility\">References<\/caption> <tbody> \r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_754_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_754_1_1');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_754_1_1\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>1<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">I use the masculine pronoun because there don&#8217;t seem to be any females, which makes me fear for the future of the tribe.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n <\/tbody> <\/table> <\/div><\/div><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function footnote_expand_reference_container_754_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_754_1').show(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_754_1').text('\u2212'); } function footnote_collapse_reference_container_754_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_754_1').hide(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_754_1').text('+'); } function footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_754_1() { if (jQuery('#footnote_references_container_754_1').is(':hidden')) { footnote_expand_reference_container_754_1(); } else { footnote_collapse_reference_container_754_1(); } } function footnote_moveToReference_754_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_754_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } } function footnote_moveToAnchor_754_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_754_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } }<\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And finally, we get to something that isn&#8217;t a RPG: The Humans, a 1992 cavemen-and-dinosaurs-themed puzzle-platformer. Although it isn&#8217;t the oldest game on the Stack, it&#8217;s probably the game that&#8217;s been on the Stack the longest &#8212; which came as a surprise to me when I compiled the list; for years, I thought that honor [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,14],"tags":[367,68,366],"class_list":["post-754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-platformer","category-puzzle","tag-bloodnet","tag-problems-running-games","tag-the-humans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4450,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions\/4450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}