PowerSlave / Exhumed (1996) (DOS game)

Powerslave is a first person shooter with an arcade style level progression. There are 20 consecutive single-player levels and 12 multiplayer deathmatch levels.

Unknown alien forces have invaded the city of Karnak, and isolated it from the rest of the world. The inhabitants were subjected to torture, or injected with a substance, turning them into servient mummies. Even the mummy of king Ramses was not spared. After multiple failed attempts from world leaders to send armed forces to deal with the situation, you were chosen among a select few of the world's best special forces to infiltrate Karnak and destroy the invading forces from within. The mission turns awry, however, when your helicopter is shot down, and you find yourself alone, hoping to complete your mission and get out of the fray alive.

Contrary to the later console adaptations of the game, each of the 20 singleplayer levels are played back to back with the player hunting for keys and secret areas to proceed onto the next level, similar to other games of the time, such as DOOM. The game features a single save slot for each playthrough and has a checkpoint system, allowing the player to continue from the latest checkpoint they have found. Levels range from ancient cities and temples through sprawling caverns of also lava variety all the way to the alien Kilmaat ships, and are filled with traps and keys hiding multiple pathways from initial access.

The player starts their adventure with a mere Machete, but can find weapons such as a Revolver, M60, hand grenades and a Flamethrower to magical weapons such as the Cobra Staff that fires seeking snake projectiles, and the Eye of Ra gauntlet which summons Ra to strike enemies down with lightning. Basic enemies include mummies and men-turned-zombies representing ancient gods; Anubis, Bastet and Set. Mystical being such as the Am-Mit, Selkis and a lava beast called Magmantis are also included. The alien Kilmaat forces are represented by Kilmaat soldiers and Kilmaatikhan. Crazed wildlife is represented by Rats, Giant Piranhas, Terranian spiders and Omen Wasps.

Although the multiplayer in the game is set up to be deathmatch-only, it's possible to play the singleplayer levels with enemies.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/powerslave_

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There's a start script included to start DOSBox (for both Windows and Linux). The Linux script is called 'start.sh', and the Windows counterpart is called 'start.bat'. The Windows launcher batch script has been improved since previous GaYMZ releases, and should now work to launch DOSBox no matter what version is installed.

Extract 'powerslave.7z' to get the game directory. 'start_scripts.7z' should be extracted inside the game directory. Extract 'powerslave_cuebin_flac.7z' into the game directory as well, to get the in-game music.

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If you run the DOSBox start files (start.sh, start.bat), you get in-game music automatically, because the image file is mounted by DOSBox.

Oh, and you need to have DOSBox installed on your system.

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A remaster of PowerSlave, called 'PowerSlave Exhumed', (that merges the PC/PS1/Saturn versions) has been released:

https://powerslaveex./author/villsa/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1678430/PowerSlave_Exhumed/

The original GPLv3 source code, from before Kaiser joined Nightdive Studios to develop the official PowerSlave remaster, is available at:

https://github.com/svkaiser/PowerslaveEX

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The original 'dos4gw.exe' has been renamed to 'dos4gw.bak', and replaced with the better open source DOS extender DOS/32A. This improves performance.

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DOS/32A was not included in previous GaYMZ releases, but its use is recommended for those as well, to increase performance. The new Windows launcher batch script (start.bat) can also be used with those releases.

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File names inside the game directory have been changed to lowercase.

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The BIN file, FLAC files and CUE sheet were made with this script:
https://github.com/linux4ever07/scripts/blob/main/cuebin_extract.sh

The source image file for the game is this Redump release:
Powerslave (USA)

This is the script I used to recursively lowercase the game directory:
https://github.com/linux4ever07/scripts/blob/main/ch_case.sh

Maybe these shell scripts can be helpful to other people who want to upload DOS games. I'm mostly uploading this as a proof-of-concept, to show how DOS games with CD audio can be packaged to save HDD space and bandwidth.

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To acquire good copies of games, I recommend browsing the Redump uploads on archive.org (https://archive.org/download/redump_pc_A). Simply change the letter "A" in the URL to whatever letter in the alphabet you need. You need an account @ archive.org to be able to download the games though