Re: [SWCollect] Found Empire, but still need it (and Fire-Brigade note)
Empire could have had mouse support -- Origin's OGRE from, IIRC 1986, has mouse support. I think Wasteland (one of my alltime favorites) had support in '87. Hugh Falk wrote: So you're looking for the original Empire for the PC? I never played the PC version (just ST and Amiga). I can't imagine playing that game without a mouse, and I don't think they would have included mouse support for an IBM game in 1987, did they? You might also want to pick up Empire II: The Art of War. This is a Win 95 game from New World Computing. FYI, there is also a scenerio disk (sold seperately) for the Master's Edition, which you have. Hugh -Original Message- From: Lee K. Seitz [mailto:lkseitz;mail.hiwaay.net] Sent: Monday, November 11, 2002 2:59 PM To: Software Collecting Subject: [SWCollect] Found Empire, but still need it (and Fire-Brigade note) Argh! Went to a thrift store and found a copy of Empire. Got someone to show it to me (it was in a display case) and it was for the Amiga. I bought anyway, even though I shouldn't be spending money on such things. This is my second copy of Empire. The other is for the C-64. I was introduced to this game in college. I spent the week of spring break painstakingly creating a map of North America. (My car was in the shop, so I was trapped on campus with nothing else to do.) I still have my copies of Empire Deluxe and ED Scenarios that I bought new. I was thrilled when I found a copy of ED Masters Edition at a used CD store and got it for less than $10 (IIRC). I never new it existed until then. It was nice to have a version that would run under Windows with only one minor problem. (The DOS version runs, but bad things happen if you try to Alt-Tab away from it and come back.) Why can't I find a friggin' copy of the PC version?!? Okay, I admit I haven't been looking real hard. (As in, I'm not watching eBay.) But in doing so I've found two copies, just not for the right computer. Anyone want to trade a PC copy for an Amiga or C-64 one? (BTW, Jim, thanks for finally adding it to MobyGames. I somehow missed it when you did that.) Also saw an interesting game called Fire-Brigade. I see the company that made it is still around (http://www.panthergames.com/). Anyway, the game was for the PC and came in a case similar to the clamshells that Disney videos come in. Everything seemed to be there, except the 3.5 disk(s?). (The 5.25 disks were there.) Panther Games is an Australian company, so I don't know if this packaging is typical of Australian games, or if it was sold in the U.S. like this or what. I almost bought it, but decided I'd already overspent just getting Empire. Anyone intersted in it? -- Lee K. Seitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect;oldskool.org/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect;oldskool.org/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect;oldskool.org/
Re: [SWCollect] MobyScale question
Jim Leonard stated: Yep: http://www.mobygames.com/info/MobyScale Is this link not in the version you have? If not, it may not be the most current. Rather than try to dig up my own copy, I just searched on Google. This link isn't indexed by Google, nor does it seem to have any pages linking to it. So it appears no one has the complete, latest version of the document on their sites except you. BTW, this is the one thing that bothers me about MobyGames. It's often hard to find non-database content. For example, when I start a new game entry, there's a link to new game style-guide. But what usually happens is I get down to the description and want to add a Moby tag. So then I go look for a link to the style-guide and can't find one because the Game Wizard is the only place it appears. -- Lee K. Seitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect;oldskool.org/
RE: [SWCollect] [ SWCollect ] What's your favorite find?
Awesome info. That's the sort of thing I wanted to know can't find anywhere. Thanks. I read this article a while ago... http://sch57.msk.ru:8100/~khim/hackers/part3/chapter19.html which describes the Ken Williams/Mark Duchaineau thing from at least 1 person's perspective. Unbelievable. (This is the TOC: http://sch57.msk.ru:8100/~khim/hackers/toc.html) Reading too much stuff like this makes you realize how little you've accomplished in life. Seems like everyone who's someone had already established themselves by age 20 (don't even start about Ray Tobey). A few messages back you'd said you'd written 50 or so games by age 20? One of Tom Leher's (has a compilation on Amazon) lines was something like By the time Bethooven was my age, he had already been dead for 2 years Sigh. Are there any old foggies out there (game developers who didn't start coding when they were 10)? -Original Message- From: John Romero [mailto:john;monkeystone.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2002 1:41 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [SWCollect] [ SWCollect ] What's your favorite find? Back then, most games filled up all available memory and rarely ever did they have to load from disk, so most games back then were NOT keeping protection in mind. It was a very easy thing to tack on, though, because what would usually happen is the guy in charge of protection would get the game file, then break that up into various pieces himself and write a bootstrap loader that loaded a chunk of game in at a time, then loaded a chunk of loader for the next piece, then executed the loader chunk to load the next piece, etc. Usually they would only have a 256-byte loader (trk 0, sector 0) that would load in the first loader, which was usually the place where they pulled various tricks to hide the loader code. Sometimes they would load in a piece of code that loaded in at the end of the stack ($100+), over the input buffer ($200+) then when it was done do an RTS which would go to the address that was stored at $1FE-1FF, which ended up being the start of the next loader chunk... It was pretty crazy. I believe Tom McWilliams did most of Sirius' copy protection and he used the little ship graphic from Gorgon while loading the rest of the game.it definitely made it look like Nasir did the protection himself, but I don't think he did. I could definitely verify this for a fact if you need to know. BTW, did you know that Ultima II's release was held up because Mark Duchaineau didn't want to protect it with his normal code (he wanted to use his new SpiraTrack scheme) and Sierra was *locked* in to using his protection code.??? - John -Original Message- From: Dan Chisarick [mailto:junk6;bellatlantic.net] Sent: Monday, November 11, 2002 10:27 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [SWCollect] [ SWCollect ] What's your favorite find? BTW I have all 89 issues of Computist + the four errata issues. The Super IOB images are on Asimov. Mail me if you're interested in any sort of info, etc. I'm not great, but I've normalized a good stack that weren't in any of those issues. John, if you don't mind yet another question your way... classic game copy protection is one of those perverse fascinations of mine. Some of them (Nassir's 4+4 encoded, spiral quarter-tracked, self-modifying loader-that-sits-on-video-memory with a nibble-count mess) were just unreal. Mercifully, most schemes were home-grown almost-DOS 3.3 variants. When writing games that integrated with copy protection, what considerations did you have to make? Was development done w/the protection in mind, or was it normal file-based code until it was ready for commercial release? -Original Message- From: Edward Franks [mailto:xyzzy;kc.rr.com] Sent: Monday, November 11, 2002 2:07 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SWCollect] [ SWCollect ] What's your favorite find? On Sunday, November 10, 2002, at 09:36 PM, C.E. Forman wrote: [Snip] I've been thinking about this... and wouldn't it be safer to play off backup copies? I mean, the disk could get munched in the drive, the label could get scratched going in and out... or is that attitude too anal for the rest of this group? B-) If you can make backup copies. Grrr. Magazines like The Computist can be invaluable if you just want to make your legal backups. -- Edward Franks [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail- [EMAIL PROTECTED]/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently
RE: [SWCollect] Found Empire, but still need it (and Fire-Brigade note)
Nope, you're right...the Master's edition does contain the scenario disk. Hugh -Original Message- From: Lee K. Seitz [mailto:lkseitz;mail.hiwaay.net] Sent: Monday, November 11, 2002 11:52 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SWCollect] Found Empire, but still need it (and Fire-Brigade note) Hugh Falk stated: So you're looking for the original Empire for the PC? I never played the PC version (just ST and Amiga). I can't imagine playing that game without a mouse, and I don't think they would have included mouse support for an IBM game in 1987, did they? I don't recall, although Jim's MobyGames entry says it didn't. I have a vague recollection of being able to use function keys to scroll the map and everything had a keyboard shortcut, IIRC, so it wasn't too unwieldy. You might also want to pick up Empire II: The Art of War. This is a Win 95 game from New World Computing. Feh. I bought Empire II at a dollar store some years ago. Played it, didn't like it, included it with a second copy of Empire Deluxe I'd found and sold on eBay. I think it's the exploration aspect that appeals to me most. Empire II lacked that. Incidentally, the guy I sold ED to was working on a version for the Palm. Last I heard it had become a project to create a general strategy war game that you could tailor to your desires. I'm probably about due to e-mail him asking for a status again. FYI, there is also a scenerio disk (sold seperately) for the Master's Edition, which you have. There is??? Are you sure? I know there was a Scenario disk for Empire Deluxe that was sold separately, but it's included on the Masters Edition CD-ROM (along with the DOS and Windows versions of ED). I've never heard of an additional Scenario disk beyond that. -- Lee K. Seitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect;oldskool.org/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect;oldskool.org/
RE: [SWCollect] Found Empire, but still need it (and Fire-Brigadenote)
The DOS version of Wasteland does indeed have mouse support. Like the mouse support in the three DOS Bard's Tale games and Dragon Wars, it's not very useful mouse support, though. -- Stephen On Tue, 12 Nov 2002, Hugh Falk wrote: I don't remember Ogre or Wasteland having mouse support (for DOS), but I can't verify that right now. Anybody else recall? Hugh -Original Message- From: Chris Newman [mailto:allvideo;ix.netcom.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2002 5:39 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SWCollect] Found Empire, but still need it (and Fire-Brigade note) Empire could have had mouse support -- Origin's OGRE from, IIRC 1986, has mouse support. I think Wasteland (one of my alltime favorites) had support in '87. Hugh Falk wrote: So you're looking for the original Empire for the PC? I never played the PC version (just ST and Amiga). I can't imagine playing that game without a mouse, and I don't think they would have included mouse support for an IBM game in 1987, did they? You might also want to pick up Empire II: The Art of War. This is a Win 95 game from New World Computing. FYI, there is also a scenerio disk (sold seperately) for the Master's Edition, which you have. Hugh -Original Message- From: Lee K. Seitz [mailto:lkseitz;mail.hiwaay.net] Sent: Monday, November 11, 2002 2:59 PM To: Software Collecting Subject: [SWCollect] Found Empire, but still need it (and Fire-Brigade note) Argh! Went to a thrift store and found a copy of Empire. Got someone to show it to me (it was in a display case) and it was for the Amiga. I bought anyway, even though I shouldn't be spending money on such things. This is my second copy of Empire. The other is for the C-64. I was introduced to this game in college. I spent the week of spring break painstakingly creating a map of North America. (My car was in the shop, so I was trapped on campus with nothing else to do.) I still have my copies of Empire Deluxe and ED Scenarios that I bought new. I was thrilled when I found a copy of ED Masters Edition at a used CD store and got it for less than $10 (IIRC). I never new it existed until then. It was nice to have a version that would run under Windows with only one minor problem. (The DOS version runs, but bad things happen if you try to Alt-Tab away from it and come back.) Why can't I find a friggin' copy of the PC version?!? Okay, I admit I haven't been looking real hard. (As in, I'm not watching eBay.) But in doing so I've found two copies, just not for the right computer. Anyone want to trade a PC copy for an Amiga or C-64 one? (BTW, Jim, thanks for finally adding it to MobyGames. I somehow missed it when you did that.) Also saw an interesting game called Fire-Brigade. I see the company that made it is still around (http://www.panthergames.com/). Anyway, the game was for the PC and came in a case similar to the clamshells that Disney videos come in. Everything seemed to be there, except the 3.5 disk(s?). (The 5.25 disks were there.) Panther Games is an Australian company, so I don't know if this packaging is typical of Australian games, or if it was sold in the U.S. like this or what. I almost bought it, but decided I'd already overspent just getting Empire. Anyone intersted in it? -- Lee K. Seitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect;oldskool.org/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect;oldskool.org/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect;oldskool.org/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect;oldskool.org/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To
