Game giveaway [CMF exclusive].

[Rowne]

Okay, I've decided to do another game giveaway and this one's for all you CMF types.

Basically, I was poking through my old games collection the other day and I came across Inherit the Earth: Quest for the Orb, it had been stashed away because I'd bought the Wyrmkeep version (Windows) and the older variant was DOS-based, not much use to people these days or myself, I might add since I had a better version.

However, since finding it it's occurred to me that as ScummVM now supports it (and ScummVM is available for just about every OS out there, including some handheld devices, too), someone might actually want it.  Many people might not even know of this game though so this giveaway might come as a pleasant surprise to a few of you.

For those that aren't familiar with it, here's an interview with the game's developers that's littered with screenshots, that should give an insight as to what the game is about and what kind of game it is.  On top of that, I'll note that it's an adventure game in the mould of Monkey Island and Simon the Sorcerer.

The game originally was acquired from a trade (because when I obtained it a good number of years ago, I'd been actively seeking it and I was glad to simply get the game itself) so sadly, it's not boxed and it doesn't have a manual.  So it'll just be a matter of the game in a sleeve, I'll likely put it in an empty, unmarked DVD case though for that little bit of extra safety when mailing it.

Anyway, wrapping up, if anyone's interested in owning this game (and this is a giveaway, no costs or charges, I'll foot the P&P too), then post in this thread.  If more than one person posts (and I hope there's more interest than just one person), then it'll come down to a random draw.  Whomever wins that gets the game.

----

I reread this a couple of times but I knew I'd forget something.  I forgot a closing date.  After the 30th (GMT), no further entries will be accepted.

Still not sure anyone will actually be interested in this but the whole thing makes more sense if it has a closing date.

[Aridas]

okay... but are you sure you don't want to keep it for yourself?

[Rowne]

Two versions?  Why would I want two versions?  Fact of the matter is, I already bought a newer copy of the same game myself not so long ago that has a native Windows-based engine, I have no reason to keep the older DOS game.

So my options are to either toss it back in storage or pass it along to someone who might enjoy it.  I choose the latter!  I'm like that though, I tend to be more generous than is acceptably healthy.

[Blazehawk]

I'd be interested. I find DOS-based games rather enjoyable, even today.

*plods off to play...stuff* 

[Tapewolf]

That reminds me, I must get the Linux version one of these days.

[Rowne]

So, Seraline's in ... Tape, was that just a comment or are you interested?  ScummVM runs in Linux and all you need are the resource files.  So providing you can pull the resource files off the CD (I can't see any reason why not), then you'd be able to play it in Linux.

I've already tested it in ScummVM myself and it runs really well, with filtering (such as 2xSai and so on) it's really quite nice looking, too.  I should probably post screenshots of my own.

----

Then again, I might've misread that, you might've been talking about ScummVM itself, not Inherit the Earth.  I read it like that because Wyrmkeep already have Windows and Mac versions and the last time I visited their site, there was talk of a Linux version in development too that they'd likely released by now.  So it wasn't a big leap in logic.

So if you were talking about ScummVM itself, yeah, you should if only to try it, it's a pretty nifty program.

[Aridas]

I still say you should keep the old version and.. i dunno, put it on display?

[Blazehawk]

I must add that it also works great in DOSBox, for those who prefer it. 

[Rowne]

Aridas: Nein!

If I put it on display (instead of in storage), it'll stare at me accusingly and wonder why I'm not playing it or why anyone else isn't playing it and why, in general, it is in fact not being played.  I'm a big adventure game fan and I hate to see games fall into obscurity or left to sit around, only to turn to dust (or at least to be covered by).

This way, I'll pass it on to someone else who enjoys the game.  Maybe when that someone is done with it, they'll pass it on too so many more can enjoy it and maybe they won't.  Nonetheless, I won't feel guilty over having double copies (not including backups) of rare games that really could find better homes.

Seraline: This is also true.  I keep forgetting about DosBox because numerous simulators have come so far along.  It's still the best way to play Ultima VII though.  Exult was a good idea until they started farting around with the game mechanics.  *Mutter.*

[Tapewolf]

So, Seraline's in ... Tape, was that just a comment or are you interested?  ScummVM runs in Linux and all you need are the resource files.  So providing you can pull the resource files off the CD (I can't see any reason why not), then you'd be able to play it in Linux.

Well we can't both have it.  Admittedly it would be cheaper to send it to me than Seraline, but there you go.  And yes, Wyrmkeep do have a build for Linux, and while I once played a demo version of it (now lost), I still haven't bought the full thing.

By the way, I was one of the original dissenters on the Exult project, actually.  Of course I'm biased because they fixed a lot of bugs I was using in the walkthrough, so I do have a real interest in preserving the game flaws and all, but there you go.  Shame really - I actually digitized all the FM sound effects for them and AFAIK they're still being used today.  (Wonder if my name is still in the credits?)

[Rowne]

Well, the idea is that it'll be a completely random drawing from those that entered.

As for Exult, that's actually one of the issues I refer to by them changing the game's mechanics, a bug is part of those mechanics and some of the Ultima VII bugs were really fun.  It would've been better had they just tried to simulate the game perfectly rather than messing around with it.

[Aridas]

Or at least, fix any lethal, not-fun bugs, right?

[Rowne]

Well, yes.

By the latest official patch though I think Origin cleared out the last of the only really lethal bugs, which was the key not appearing in that bloody house (literally) in Minoc.

The rest of the bugs that were left were fun ones as I recall, like the gambling bug wherein if one used the system right, one could consistently draw in money, money squared in fact.

----

Then again, between robbing Lord British's castle, robbing the bank (the evil way) and utilizing the gambling bug, I'm always stupendously rich about half hour into Ultima VII ... and there are absolutely no charities or orphanages of little children to give all that money to.  <.<

[Blazehawk]

Then again, between robbing Lord British's castle, robbing the bank (the evil way) and utilizing the gambling bug, I'm always stupendously rich about half hour into Ultima VII ... and there are absolutely no charities or orphanages of little children to give all that money to.  <.<

That's when you give it to the Fellowship...and then once they love you, stage a hostile takeover. 

But even though you have enough money to make the world explode, you always have to empty the poor box.

"I'm feeling a bit poor today, Batlin, but I'm sure you'll understand."

[Rowne]

Well, that's better than my solution to the Fellowship.

Fellowship, meet Hoe of Destruction.

That was pretty much my solution to everything in that game, though.

Mad Mage, meet Hoe of Destruction.

Dragon, meet Hoe of Destruction.

Headless Gimboids, meet Hoe of Destruction.

Peoples of Cove, meet Hoe of Destruction.

Except to Lord British, he was impervious to most things ...

Lord British, meet "Castle Britannia" Plaque.

----

It's just a shame that future Ultima's didn't have items like that to pass the time with.  Though in Ultima VIII, I admit to spending most of my time exploiting the number of bugs I found where I could actually escape the World without cheating.  Out into the Doom-like ever repeating expanse.

I'm free, free!  Damn, the outside of the Universe is boring!

[Tapewolf]

Fellowship, meet Hoe of Destruction.

Except to Lord British, he was impervious to most things ...

Lord British, meet "Castle Britannia" Plaque.

I was rather partial to the Black Sword myself.  Especially when you asked it to kill the Ferryman.  But then I never had the original U7, only the 1998 re-release with the Forge-Of-Virtue add-on.


**EDIT**
And talking of having enough money to make the world explode, I originally did that in Ultima 6 by replicating the chunk files.  I made about 22 million gold pieces that way, but it had very nasty side-effects.  When I left the vault and went back, half the money was gone - it just wasn't there anymore, like it had dissolved.
When my brother found out what I'd done, said the money was so dense it had a Schwarzchild radius.  He was almost right.

I walked through Cove or somewhere with about 2m in my pockets, and it dissolved the town as I went through.  When I came back it had simply eaten all the objects in the town - it only left the people and the background tiles.

In desperation I constructed a series of 'banks', each holding a million or so, but it didn't really work - it just added Jhelom, Moonglow and a couple of other places to the list of casualties.

[Aridas]

You somehow created a black hole. I don't imagine anyone saw this coming.

[Rowne]

The black sword was grand but I always loved the plaque due to how ludicrous it was.  The avatar could defeat Batlin (eventually) and even the Guardian but Lord British was such a power that he was almost a WMD unto himself.  And yet, all it takes to off him is dropping a tiny plaque on his noggin and down he goes.  He must be really soft in the head, so to speak.

Good times.

Oh and I'm amused by your Ultima VI tale, it sounds like the ultimate curse for the rich person, it'd make a bloody brilliant Outer Limits or Twilight Zone episode.  The World is only big enough for money or possessions, so suddenly the World starts dissolving around the person who carries too much money.

Well, I had to construct these interdimensional bunkers to keep myself alive, Earth is pretty much gone but at least I still have my money.

Speaking of game Worlds disappearing though, I actually witnessed that happening in Everquest II, once.  It loaded improperly and the only things around were people and doors and everything was hanging unnervingly in 3D space.  EVeryone was going about their day to day lives as if it were normal but there was nothing there, eventually it loaded in, it was just like a bad case of lag but it was absolutely bloody hilarious while it lasted.

And I got a few odd stares from people who were wondering why I kept walking in and out of a house's door, too, since to me it was only a door and door frame.

[Blazehawk]

Speaking of game Worlds disappearing though, I actually witnessed that happening in Everquest II, once.  It loaded improperly and the only things around were people and doors and everything was hanging unnervingly in 3D space.  EVeryone was going about their day to day lives as if it were normal but there was nothing there, eventually it loaded in, it was just like a bad case of lag but it was absolutely bloody hilarious while it lasted.

And I got a few odd stares from people who were wondering why I kept walking in and out of a house's door, too, since to me it was only a door and door frame.

Something similar happened in Anarchy Online a while back.

Except everyone turned into palm trees. And then the server crashed.

Fun times. 

[Rowne]

MMO crashes are fun things.  Especially when one is partly responsible for causing them when one had no intention of doing so.

I remember in one MMO (which shall remain nameless to protect it from the humiliation of its own horrid coding), which had a guard who was higher than the max player level, guarding a certain city.  A group of players took that guard out and the server pretty much spazzed.  What the hell?  That's not supposed to happen.  He's not supposed to die.  They're not supposed to be that skilled.  We didn't code anything to deal with this.  Blaugh!

Then, of course, there was the time when Lord British forgot to turn his invulnerability on and got killed by a player at a public speaking.

Oh and then there was Brad, GM of the original Everquest who managed to drown himself a couple of times because he forgot to turn his invulnerability on.

Have I mentioned that I love MMOs?  It's so funny watching the developers totally screw up.

[Blazehawk]

MMO crashes are fun things.  Especially when one is partly responsible for causing them when one had no intention of doing so.

I remember in one MMO (which shall remain nameless to protect it from the humiliation of its own horrid coding), which had a guard who was higher than the max player level, guarding a certain city.  A group of players took that guard out and the server pretty much spazzed.  What the hell?  That's not supposed to happen.  He's not supposed to die.  They're not supposed to be that skilled.  We didn't code anything to deal with this.  Blaugh!

Then, of course, there was the time when Lord British forgot to turn his invulnerability on and got killed by a player at a public speaking.

Oh and then there was Brad, GM of the original Everquest who managed to drown himself a couple of times because he forgot to turn his invulnerability on.

Have I mentioned that I love MMOs?  It's so funny watching the developers totally screw up.

I remember some of that. It also reminded me of this: http://archive.gamespy.com/dailyvictim/index.asp?id=692
The first time I read it, I thought I was going to die laughing. It's a story about one MMO player's plan to get his stuff back by causing a server reset. Here's a sample of the madness:

"Unbeknownst to him, the majority of the over 65,000 liches had been spawned into the heightmap data file, so by exorcising them the cleric turned the seas to blood, the land to lava, and sent several towns 1000 feet below sea level."

[Rowne]

That was a truly grand piece of satire about what can go wrong when MMO developers get sloppy.  Of course, I can't see anything of that magnitude ever actually happening but since game devs seem to be getting more and more lazy these days, one never knows when the first great MMO apocalypse will actually occur.

Until then, we'll just have to enjoy the horribly amusing bugs of bad coding, such as logging out on a transport ship to log back in 300 meters beneath a mountain range somewhere (yep, that one's happened, not to myself though, I'd love to have seen it in person rather'n just the screens).

[Blazehawk]

  Hopefully I won't be the cause of it, as earlier I was playing with RunUO and I ended up getting a dragon boat lodged in a cliff somewhere near Trinsic. Then my backpack quite literally ate itself. 

[Rowne]

I am so, so tempted to play around with a UO server again.  As I said elsewhere, I've seen some damned interesting ones and a few that are utterly perverse.  The aforementioned Pokémon one comes to mind that uses the ability to shrink critters mixed with the animal taming ability to simulate battles.  I swear, Paladins yelling "Bumhug, I choose you!" and the likes are still some of the most vivid memories I have.

Oh and if you've not heard of Bumhug, he was a running gag in the UO server circuit for a bit, back in the Sphere days.  The long and short of it is that a good number of servers, especially the more noteworthy ones, all had the name 'Bumhug' in the Orc name rotation.  At the time, a friend and I were traversing the myriad dimensions of player-run UO and almost every World we stepped into ...

Oh, look.  It's Bumhug.  Again.
Shall we do the World a favour and off 'im?
Yes, let's.

Then there was the server said friend and I were tinkering around with that had a Starbucks in Destard that sold all sorts of nonsense.  There was everything from a Random Quotations potion that would have the player quoting random nonsense for the next 30 minutes (over a period of 10-20 seconds), a Karnov potion that had the person drunk off their nut whilst farting fireballs and even a gender-bender ... which resulted in one of the funniest UO discoveries ever: if you switch the gender, the person keeps their facial hair.  We were inundated with bearded ladies.

Then there was the Coffee Dragon, a Dragon that desired the caffeine on a regular basis, stupidly powerful and only barely killable with a big team of people, he had incredibly rare drops.  There was a way to get away from him though without wiping if things weren't going well.

I wouldst request that thou dost hand over any coffee thou hast with due haste.
*Clik-clik on coffee, clik-clik on Dragon.*
Well, alright then.  I bid thee farewell.

Not to mention the riddle door in one dungeon that we changed the riddle and answer too frequently which pissed people off no end because we put increasingly spiffy rares there and everyone was crowding that dungeon taking turns trying to solve 'that bloody gormless questioning wallface thing with the riddles'.

Annnd ... there was the alien device that turned places into slimes.

*Glub.*

Good times.

I'm almost tempted to start another server.  My only concern though is that without lots of player created content (and I don't know if I have my files anymore), Sphere is pretty barren and crap.  I've heard that RunUO is fully spawned and nifty but I don't know what the scripting is like for it.  I really am tempted to look into it again though.

... but I've wasted too much of my life on coding.

So torn.

----

Oh and more related to the coffee Dragon.  One thing I loved about Sphere is that it allowed one to setup talk scripts for the critters in the game if it was done right (it wasn't easy but it was doable).

I still remember the lich that frequently said: Now where did I put that Head of the Navigator?, a pun which only Monkey Island fans will get and our towns were policed by talking Dragons, too: Hmm, lawbreakers are tasty.

Interesting times indeed ... and I haven't scratched the surface of the tales I could tell but I think I'll stop there.

[Blazehawk]

Sounds spiffy.  I used Sphere myself for awhile, then got out of the freeshard scene, then went back and found RunUO had all but replaced it. The scripts aren't too hard to understand, they are all in C#. I probably couldn't do much from scratch, but I do like to modify scripts from the RunUO forums (theres a TON of them there, by the way). For spawning, you can use XMLspawner2, or Nerun's Distro (the quick and dirty way), but both are easy to use. You can also edit quests and such using the other XML series scripts available, like XMLquest.

If you ever wanted to start one, I'd help you the best I could.

[Tapewolf]

I have no online gaming stories to share 'cause I've never done it.  However, I posted these to the 'random screenshots' thread, and I think they belong here too, especially since Ultima has come into it.

Ultima 6, like most of the series, had a character creation mechanism based on a fortune-teller asking a series of questions to balance the virtues against each other until they've been whittled down to one.  As you answer the questions, the gypsy pours a different coloured potion into the mix, corresponding to the virtue.

I always end up serving Justice because that's what you end up with if your answers consist of killing people and taking their money.  But that's another story.

Anyway, my brother and I hacked the character creation system some years ago to change the questions from thought-provoking ethical dilemmas into inane questions about the colours themselves.  Here's a few:







One of my favourites was the one where we couldn't think of anything for that colour combination so I just used the original question.

In thy youth thou didst pledge to marry thy sweetheart.
Now thou art on a sacred quest in distant lands.  Thy sweetheart doth ask thee to keep thy vow.
Dost thou prefer: A) purple or B) white?

[Rowne]

Ser: If I do, I might just take you up on that.  If I do though, I might just poke around and try enlisting as a coder for an existing server, once I've figured out how RunUO's scripting works that is and I am very likely going to look into it.

Tape: As always, you amuse me with your game hacking shenanigans, which is why I like you.  That said, I think you'd enjoy tinkering with an Ultima Online server; you don't have to open it up to the public after all, you can just tinker in privacy and experiment with the provided code.

It's usually great fun.

As for the Ultima games, I was usually quite a terror in them too but I often ended up serving Compassion, I think.  This is because if a game World feels real enough to me, I tend to look out for and protect the characters.  If a game World doesn't feel all that real though, I tend to push its limits and exploit it fully (and I usually judge the realness by how much I notice the characters, this has no relation to how awesome the game World might be).  I never really found myself caring much about the Ultima VII characters, even though it was a brilliant World to play around in.

Gothic was another story though, I never could beat up Gorn, the game always made me feel awful whenever I tried.  Firstly because he acts like a furry/therian (one of the quests one runs for him is to get a scroll that would transmogrify him into a Wolf, so he could run with them for a bit) and secondly, if one actually does choose to beat him up, despite being a beefy man of beefyness, he whines like a little baby: What're you always picking on me for, anyway?  What'd I do?!  So I could never bring myself to steal Gorn's stuff.

All that said, nothing much else to add, 'ere.

I say, art thou still alive back there?  Might I use thine sword as a toothpick, wouldst thou object overly?  No?  Oh, good.

[Rowne]

Only a few days left to go before this thread is officially closed and someone is picked at random to receive a free game.  So if you want to ninja and get your name added to the list, now is a good time to do so.

The folks I have so far (and let me know if you were just posting and not interested in the game so I can remove your name from the list):

• Aridas Soulfire
  
• Seraline
  
• Tapewolf

And unless I've missed someone, that's it ...

Eesh, with only three entries, doing this the old fashioned way will be hard, I might just write a randomization script in Lua, Perl or somesuch.

[Aridas]

Or we can have a suckup contest, which i'd probably lose at considering how much time I spend NOT being on the forum... or a duel, or maybe.. we could see who plays the spoons the best? race over lava? quidditch?

[Rowne]

Though a funny post, you've already detailed precisely why I don't want to allow any of those things.

If I were to host a contest, it would remove the equity of the situation.  Here, everyone who enters has the same, equal chance of winning the game.  All they have to do is make a simple post, even a one-word post if they like and they're in.  They end up with the same chance as everyone else and that's regardless of talent or effort.

As you've said, you're not on all that often and if there were a contest, you'd likely end up losing out to someone who can post more frequently or someone might lose to someone who's more talented or ... et cetera, you get the picture by now.

Besides, I have too much respect for you people to expect you to do anything in exchange for this.  It's something I'm giving away freely, I'm no taskmaster and I won't ask you to lower or degrade yourselves in any way.  I know you weren't being serious but I just had to stress that, you know?

If there's a unanimous desire though for some kind of contest, I'll try and cook something up that won't be unfair to some minority or other.