Can you burn their houses down?
Nah. I guess houses are made out of the same material as my trusty torch that lasted me through many a night of pitch-black darkness without ever being consumed by the flame.
I can command my dog to bite them, though 
. But as it’s not allowed inside the house, unfortunately not while they are asleep.
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not really playing, but I got my copy of TIE Fighter collector’s edition running under DOSBox and even with xbox controller support. It took some time to combine all tricks I found online to work around the drifting issues of the analog sticks, but now I almost suck the same at it as I did back when using a Thrustmaster pilot joystick.
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How do you tell it to ignore some stuff? I’ve got this one game with controller support where it’s just going “down” every once in a while, so clearly there should be some small deadzone in the middle or something.
Using key2joy or some other tools you can tweak it. But I don’t get too good results, not to today’s standards anyway; the drifting mouse pointer and constant need to recalibrate in-flight brought back instant memories. That is also the trick that worked more or less: hit ctrl-c in game to calibrate. But that assumes you’re able to navigate the mission selection menus before with a crazy pointer. I’ll try and upload some footage later - it is quite hilarious.
Also there was a custom DOSBox version that allows to set a deadzone for the joystick, but the links to the original site is dead. Figures.
The game in question is Alien Rampage. I don’t think I noticed a calibration feature. Anyway, I haven’t really looked into it. Like you said antimicro/key2joy/whatever could be used instead, but theoretically it seems really convenient to just use DOSBox’s native controller support.
Here you can laugh at me trying to click on a menu button while the no-deadzone controller is doing weird stuff. It is actually harder to aim and hit one of those buttons as the pointer zooms past it than it is to hit an A-wing in a dogfight!
After calibrating in game, it actually becomes pretty playable
Also, I have installed my copy of X-wing Alliance. I never played that before (no joystick back when I bought it). So it turned out 16-bit windows installers aren’t executable on a Win10 64bit machine anymore
Luckily I found some other poor guys who went through all that pain before and made a 64bit installation patch and so on. This one needs no calibration at all and is very well playable (although the key mappings were a bit off for me). I even completed the first mission successfully without reading the manual!
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This video for @ZakPhoenixMcKracken.
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Eheh yes, I knew.
I first played Zak McKracken pirated version on C64, but then I had purchased an original copy, for Amiga.
It was with that version, that I understood what the VISA codes meant.
And, of course, I tried on purpose to insert 5 wrong codes 
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No no, I have seen his health insurance card. There was a name I know him for.
Eheh, that’s the original birth name! 
Jason The Newsguy is your original name? 
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Aha, so no torch-management-mini-game in this game!
That’s a game I have found thanks to GOG I have never seen before but thought the graphics are awesome!
I always use external tools to play such old DOS games with controller support. DOSBox will likely never beat the feature set of such tools anyway.
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I’ve played X-Wing a lot back then but can’t remember calibration problems. Now I wonder if I played with keyboard+mouse instead of joystick at this time.
It’s a bit of a disappointment, I know, but given the limited carrying capacity, it’s definitely good they don’t force you to lug heaps of torches around 
.
Actually, just yesterday I discovered that there is a potion that grants night vision (so much for “no magic”), which would have made my career as would-be-thief a much more successful one. Neither finding my way by crashing into random objects nor holding a blazing stick of fire was particularly sneaky, it seems. (Note to self: craft some more of these!)
But seriously: by and large I think they struck a pretty good balance between “realism” and playability. The restrictions that are in place mostly make sense and add to the experience. I actually had to laugh the first time a message popped up informing me I was too over encumbered to mount my horse . Certainly no game for compulsive hoarders and looters.
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I finished Gibbous and The Castle. What am I going to play next? Does anyone have suggestions?
(btw , The Castle was a masterpiece, while Gibbous… well, I liked the graphic and the music. 
)
I started Laura Bow 2 but it is too difficult, it’s a chore to play. So I don’t know what to play next… maybe I’ll continue Quest For Infamy, but that one is a chore too. Maybe I’ll continue Legend of Hand. That one was good (but a bit sketchy).
PS I also finished Escape Lala 2 (masterpiece).
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What about Knights and Bikes…
https://www.gog.com/game/knights_and_bikes
… or Jinxter?
Or The Last Day of June?
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Hmmm… I am too conservative… of those three, I can only play Jinxter. The others are too MODERN. But now that I recall, I had bought the Pawn! And it was damn hard. I have to give it another try! Good idea 
How’s Jinxter compared to the Pawn? And what about Guild of Thieves?
IMHO The Guild of Thieves is the hardest one, The Pawn and Jinxter are similar regarding the level of difficulty.
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Ok… can they reasonably be finished without a walkthrough?