HTML RAGS Completed Tales of the Drunken Cowboy [v1.1.0g] [Mdqp]

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TotDC is one of those legendary games that keeps drawing you in to try out and explore new things and playstyles game session after game session. An incredible space opera where the player controls Celeste Blake, the gun-for-hire mercenary captain, and her colorful crew aboard the space-faring Drunken Cowboy.

It is cleverly written, full of fluff and universe-building, and doesn't insult the player's intelligence and offers good challenges, puzzles, and objectives. It is a text-heavy game, and you'll do well to read through the material for this game for it is not nukiage. I've been recommending this game since its early development oh so many years ago -- a time before F95 and Patreon -- and have continued to do so to the present day. That's how good it is!

mdqp has been around for a long time (and continues developing games to this day) and have been pushing various game engines to their limits and beyond. Even this early work (though it's not his first game) was among one of the best adult games on the scene in those wild, glorious days. It is hands-down one of the very best games that used the antiquated Rags engine, and has appeared in list after list after list of the coolest games using Rags. Fortunately, Rags implemented the ability to push web versions just before its death-knell so that the end-user no longer needed to fiddle around with its engine.

I looked for and found this thread after mentioning this game to someone not less than twenty minutes ago at the time of this post. It's too bad that most people had already moved on from the Rags engine by the time F95 even became a thing; hence, the lack of posts in the thread. It really deserves more attention as folks are really missing out on a grand experience if they've never played it. Do give the game a try! And for you veterans out there, revisit a classic! You don't even have to have Rags as there's a web version of the game. I highly recommend Tale of the Drunken Cowboy! Cheers!

 

[mdqp]

snip

Hey there, thanks for the kind words! I personally still like RAGS games, but admittedly the way they operate make them kind of a niche nowadays so browser support or not, I am not surprised people aren't checking them out too often, my games included.

By the way, did you know TOTDC 2 is (VERY SLOOOWLY) getting developed? A public demo is still far away, but I have been going at it in my spare time for a while now, and at least most of the technical stuff seems to be working fine already (the game will use Ren'py this time around).

 

[Back]

By the way, did you know TOTDC 2 is (VERY SLOOOWLY) getting developed?

I did! Every so often I still visit your blogspot, btw. I've posted there several times under a number of random pseudonyms over the years. You've always been a cool dude, and I've always admired your dedication to pursue your hobby in game development. Fun times and good memories. You stay safe now, mdqp, and continue to remain awesome, y'hear! Cheers, bro!

 

[Emmitudo]

This is still my number one adult game of all time, even though I could never actually finish it, puzzle later on I get stuck on every time If the maker ever sees this, thank you for making it, and you rock!

 

[mdqp]

This is still my number one adult game of all time, even though I could never actually finish it, puzzle later on I get stuck on every time If the maker ever sees this, thank you for making it, and you rock!

Happy to know my game is still your favourite! ^_^

Maybe you can check the

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here and see if it helps (the old wiki is down, so we only have the archived version left).

 

[eightypercent]

I am about to download this after playing Celeste Blake: the Evindium Affair
https://f95zone.to/threads/celeste-blake-the-evindium-affair-v0-85-dracis3d.1441/

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Celeste Blake: the Evindium Affair isn't completely finished but there are many endings and it is a magnificent VN. The author, Dracis3D, did post in Jan 2021 saying that they would update it at some point. Can't recommend it enough... but now I will go download the "original".

 

[mdqp]

I am about to download this after playing Celeste Blake: the Evindium Affair
https://f95zone.to/threads/celeste-blake-the-evindium-affair-v0-85-dracis3d.1441/

You must be registered to see the links

Celeste Blake: the Evindium Affair isn't completely finished but there are many endings and it is a magnificent VN. The author, Dracis3D, did post in Jan 2021 saying that they would update it at some point. Can't recommend it enough... but now I will go download the "original".

I hope you'll have fun with this. Given that it is a RAGS game, there are all sorts of quirks and limitations, but I think my game does offer something, even nowadays (there are a handful of elements I regret, but overall I am satisfied with how it turned out). If you have problems with RAGS, check my blog for a browser conversion of the game.

 

[xj47]

...

Really like the game, great work!
However I do find that the way mental resistance is implemented makes exploring lewd content a little difficult.
I am looking at modding a save file so that resistance can never drop below 1, do you know if this would break game-logic in some severe way?

 

[mdqp]

Really like the game, great work!
However I do find that the way mental resistance is implemented makes exploring lewd content a little difficult.
I am looking at modding a save file so that resistance can never drop below 1, do you know if this would break game-logic in some severe way?

Glad you like the game! ^_^

That shouldn't break the game-logic in any significant capacity (from what I remember), so if you can do that you should be good to go. Note that at the start of a new game you can activate the cheats, and among those there should be an option to set the value whenever you want (again, if I remember correctly).

 

[vcxvcxvcxvxcv]

walktrough please

 

[mdqp]

walktrough please

The old wiki page is down, but there is an archived version:

You must be registered to see the links

It's not a complete walkthrough, but it should cover quite a lot.

 

[HypnoKitten]

Hi everyone, its been forever since I played this but wanted to play it again... can't seem to find the right version of RAGS for this game, for Win10. Tried 3.0.60 ( https://f95zone.to/threads/rags-help-section.1243/ ) with no luck, the other links there are down.. anyone still playing this? How are you running it?

 

[axz2]

Hi everyone, its been forever since I played this but wanted to play it again... can't seem to find the right version of RAGS for this game, for Win10. Tried 3.0.60 ( https://f95zone.to/threads/rags-help-section.1243/ ) with no luck, the other links there are down.. anyone still playing this? How are you running it?

It runs in 2.4.16.0

 

[mdqp]

Hi everyone, its been forever since I played this but wanted to play it again... can't seem to find the right version of RAGS for this game, for Win10. Tried 3.0.60 ( https://f95zone.to/threads/rags-help-section.1243/ ) with no luck, the other links there are down.. anyone still playing this? How are you running it?

You can check my blog for a browser version, if you can't get RAGS to run.

 

[HypnoKitten]

You can check my blog for a browser version, if you can't get RAGS to run.

Thank you!! No idea why I was having trouble finding your blog but found it now. And thanks again for one of my absolute fave games

 

[mdaka42]

Is there a way to skip the illusionist? Cant leave the planet because of him. Or is that a delayed game over? If so how fun is that to know that you failed the game only several quests later?

 

[mdqp]

Is there a way to skip the illusionist? Cant leave the planet because of him. Or is that a delayed game over? If so how fun is that to know that you failed the game only several quests later?

The last moment when it's possible to undo this is when you show up in front of where he lives, and you are given the choice to run away. If you don't run away, then it's a delayed game over (although you can speed it up by re-entering his place over and over again). It's been a while since I added this scene, but I probably thought players had enough warning.

Normally, it would be way too late to change the scene since development ended, but I need to update the game in preparation for the sequel, so I could do some minor adjustments, if you have any suggestions.

EDIT: I think it's also possible to avoid the game over if you never go to Europa 4 again, but as I said it's been quite some time, so I am not 100% sure.

 

[mdaka42]

EDIT: I think it's also possible to avoid the game over if you never go to Europa 4 again, but as I said it's been quite some time, so I am not 100% sure.

Thanks, but as I said I cant leave Europa 4 because of this, brainwashing does not allow to choose another planet on the ship, thats the strangest part of this decision to force bad end even when you are ready to leave the planet. This also gives you false impression that you can still somehow accomplish this quest and wastes your time.

You can however save edit yourself out of this script since the illusionist flag is signed obviously enough

 

[mdqp]

Thanks, but as I said I cant leave Europa 4 because of this, brainwashing does not allow to choose another planet on the ship, thats the strangest part of this decision to force bad end even when you are ready to leave the planet. This also gives you false impression that you can still somehow accomplish this quest and wastes your time.

You can however save edit yourself out of this script since the illusionist flag is signed obviously enough

Fair enough. I'll add one more chance for the players to get out of this situation, so it's not as punishing. I was harsher in the past, and I guess I went too far with this one. I wonder if there is anything else I should change, that won't require too much time to tweak (for example, I really regret starting the first mission with a pseudo-maze, but substituting that with something better would probably require too much effort).

 

[Back]

Fair enough. I'll add one more chance for the players to get out of this situation, so it's not as punishing. I was harsher in the past, and I guess I went too far with this one. I wonder if there is anything else I should change, that won't require too much time to tweak (for example, I really regret starting the first mission with a pseudo-maze, but substituting that with something better would probably require too much effort).

Firstly, I want to say I haven't played this a great many years so my memory might be a little fuzzy on a couple of things. Just wanted to get that disclaimer out there. Secondly, I'm a fan so that may skew things a bit since I always thought that this was the best RAGs-based game at the time and still do today.

Regarding the Illusionist on the first explorable planet, respectively, I disagree -- I don't think it was unfair. You'd be locked into the ending if you went down that rabbit hole for too long but you had chances to bail. The game has several bad endings and they're mostly telegraphed, but it's also a fair point that there are delayed ones as well. Of which, an "easy"-mode option is to maybe warn players when that happens by your corrupted AI? Though, that does take away from immersion however.

Regarding the maze, I know that it was reworked a couple times and it was more punishing for some players to get over the hurdle back in the day, but folks could tell there was a lot effort put into it and gave a sense of how (tough) puzzles can be in the game. Maybe just add some kind of force-through option using your virtual assistant or the ship's computers or something to allow players the option to "bypass" it -- showing the path, shutting down the artificial environment, or whatever -- but at the cost of something significant yet overcomeable like a loss of credits or a temporary stat drain as the price for this quick benefit? A favor returned to Celeste from another merc or a hacker or some other person she "helped" (in one way or another) from the past? But it's not like there aren't several ways to overcome it when playing blind.

Content-wise, I wish there were more significant M/F interactions for Celeste since, as I recall, this game felt heavily skewed towards F/F interactions per mdqp's preferences. For improvements, off the top of my head, the Aztec-bug planet (I don't know what to call it) was a long trek with a couple of the puzzles that were vague, iirc. Wasn't one of them color-based? In fact, any color-based puzzles should include shapes or some other identifier to help distinguish things from each other for those players that have problems seeing them.

Also, I hate having to confront and battling the RNG instead of playing the game -- like getting the pendant(?) through discovery from the mining caverns on the second major explorable planet. People wouldn't even know about it unless they were already aware of it somehow so it's easily missed. Finally, there were some minor loose ends that could use some wrapping up like updating the placeholder lore for some places and items (e.g. like the exo-suits that said there will be a place for them in the future but there was never an opportunity for them in game). Maybe they'll show up in the sequel? I would have loved to smash my armored, combat exo-suit's gauntlet upon some deserving bastard that was up to no good against Celeste or her crew or some kid or some other victim. That would have been cathartic, lol. Man, I might just have to replay this to give myself a reminder of all the cool things that's in it -- like that side mission joining up with other mercs to find out what happened to the missing ship on the ice planet. That was damn cool, and I felt like Celeste was on top of her A-game as a badass, no-nonsense merc in that mission. Badass. Sprinkle more of that into the next game -- not everything needs to be sexual. ;D

In any event, stay awesome mdqp and to all the players that have discovered and are enjoying TotDC! TotDC is quite the space-opera, adventure game with real depth and not just simply nukiage. An indicator that folks have some class when playing and enjoying such a quality game with its non-braindead puzzles! Cheers y'all and here's hoping for more kickass games of this caliber from more devs in the future!