tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post8886802709444428309..comments2024-03-28T08:17:48.059-04:00Comments on The CRPG Addict: Game 467: Dungeons and Dragons (1980)CRPG Addicthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-33516007252854488982022-09-24T02:57:43.923-04:002022-09-24T02:57:43.923-04:00I'm not familiar with the Ohio Scientific comp...I'm not familiar with the Ohio Scientific computers, but the Commodore 64 VIC chip's random waveform generator was sometimes used as hardware random number generator. You could imagine that some emulators might not appreciate that a simple register read may not be so simple after all... I wonder if Ohio Scientific programmers might have used a similar trick that might be underappreciated in the emulator?Rangeroushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05384980667033682190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-69738136769772119622022-09-20T11:08:45.333-04:002022-09-20T11:08:45.333-04:00You know, the "C" in "The CRPG Addi...You know, the "C" in "The CRPG Addict" could also stand for "calculator"...Tipihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11416637333851125884noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-47170038596139119792022-09-20T11:06:04.834-04:002022-09-20T11:06:04.834-04:00There's also an obvious phallus there. Other c...There's also an obvious phallus there. Other curious choices include all those battle tanks and artillery pieces. I don't know if that says something about the character designer or not.Tipihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11416637333851125884noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-82793597397665308062022-09-20T10:49:56.018-04:002022-09-20T10:49:56.018-04:00"Glad we got to the bottom of this. It was su..."Glad we got to the bottom of this. It was such a cornerstone argument in Chet’s entry."<br /><br />ALWP.Tipihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11416637333851125884noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-88432780126779701842022-09-03T17:04:21.003-04:002022-09-03T17:04:21.003-04:00Thanks for the background, Teegan. It does make th...Thanks for the background, Teegan. It does make the game sound a bit more interesting. Equally interesting is this material on Donald Brown's earlier game, which I'll append to my <i>Eamon</i> entry.CRPG Addicthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-4435835887238561372022-09-02T13:47:12.660-04:002022-09-02T13:47:12.660-04:00The game defines his own random function using a r...The game defines his own random function using a random seed generated with BASIC RND function, but sometimes, depending on how are generated the random numbers by the BASIC RND function (which memory location it uses, etc.), the emulators give not so random results.Exploradorrpghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17491422055928443184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-34727535633038669242022-09-02T11:15:32.097-04:002022-09-02T11:15:32.097-04:00I wonder if the identical character stats are due ...I wonder if the identical character stats are due to a poorly initialized random number generator Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-43276852889317244332022-09-02T03:06:59.242-04:002022-09-02T03:06:59.242-04:00I've finished the game and it has some differe...I've finished the game and it has some differences with Eamon adventure (a time limit, a one level but bigger map, a rope to cross a chasm...), but it's basically the same game (even with followers you can give orders and items).<br /><br />It's not an rpg, just a text adventure with combats instead of puzzles. You don't improve any attributes, and you get a score at the end.<br /><br />I think this game could be the seed of Eamon, as it has all the elements but the attributes improvement and treasure hunting.Exploradorrpghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17491422055928443184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-73416937074060799652022-09-02T02:34:20.037-04:002022-09-02T02:34:20.037-04:00Thank you very much! I've downloaded it.
The ...Thank you very much! I've downloaded it.<br /><br />The game turned out to be a stand alone version of his Eamon adventure Death Star, predating the adventure I guess, and maybe Eamon itself.Exploradorrpghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17491422055928443184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-44970301218881547962022-09-01T21:48:15.150-04:002022-09-01T21:48:15.150-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.LanHawkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11073207178889909708noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-63177740118313963782022-09-01T03:51:37.442-04:002022-09-01T03:51:37.442-04:00If you have a Mac and you like recovering lost gam...If you have a Mac and you like recovering lost games, I have found one that is preserved in a format that needs to be converted with a Mac to be playable. The author of the game is Donald Brown (Eamon author) and the game is titled "Role-Playing Starwars" (presumably a crpg).<br /><br />Donal Brown's Eamon games were distributed through the Denver Apple Pi club (an Apple II users gruop). He mentions this in the Recreational Computing article where the game was publicited for the first time. Well, this club had a software library, and they traded disks with Washington Apple Pi club. The Washington Apple Pi journal was the newsletter of this last users group, and in their August 1980 issue, they talk about Eamon and his author, "Donald Brown of Role-Playing Starwars fame". They had both games in their library, from the Denver Apple Pi club. In an earlier issue the "lost" game is listed as part of Volume 6 of his library (a games volume). And this disk is preserved here:<br /><br />https://archive.org/details/Antoine_Applesauce_Vignau<br /><br />The problem is that it is in a2r format, a format that can't be used with an emulator before converting it first to woz format with Applesauce app, which only runs on MacOS... and I don't have a Mac (and my PC is too old for that type of emulation). I don't know how it works, but it is possible the simple conversion is not sufficient (I'm no expert in Applesauce).<br />Exploradorrpghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17491422055928443184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-56795875310742924412022-09-01T00:55:14.509-04:002022-09-01T00:55:14.509-04:00Thanks for understanding! And, honestly, the game ...Thanks for understanding! And, honestly, the game had a sort of mysterious vibe, with a neat post-apocalyptic framing story. There's something there, especially for the childhood version of me, but it is just very much your average Mac shareware coffee break game masquerading as something deeper. It's a bit of a simplistic slog, but it's, to use a somewhat inapplicable descriptor, kind of adorable for what it is. It just screams "classic Mac shareware" warts and all.Teeganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11883945434429016309noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-34199890759586798952022-09-01T00:12:00.020-04:002022-09-01T00:12:00.020-04:00@arthurdawg, and this would be about $60 in todays...@arthurdawg, and this would be about $60 in todays dollars. Can you imagine paying that much for this gem!Futilehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14444427580693555652noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-70112278060215337822022-08-31T19:28:03.187-04:002022-08-31T19:28:03.187-04:00It's great to know that even in the late 70s p...It's great to know that even in the late 70s people had the foresight to create a character most certainly designed to represent breasts.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-38306599275740471602022-08-31T17:44:55.248-04:002022-08-31T17:44:55.248-04:00Great story, and as a fellow game archaeologist I ...Great story, and as a fellow game archaeologist I absolutely feel you. Just this year I unearthed an old shareware game I thought lost, and even though it's not that great, it feels amazing to finally find it. JarlFrankhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08139422412722665286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-3874348155318093622022-08-31T12:06:15.241-04:002022-08-31T12:06:15.241-04:00The dreaded wrights. They're ghosts in a flyin...The dreaded wrights. They're ghosts in a flying machine.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-6054232506210742412022-08-31T10:00:18.974-04:002022-08-31T10:00:18.974-04:00There are also a few offerings for the HP-48 (stil...There are also a few offerings for the HP-48 (still my calculator of choice) here - https://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/games/ - although none of them seem to date from earlier than the late 1990s.AlphabeticalAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-12265269882535540862022-08-31T03:55:05.303-04:002022-08-31T03:55:05.303-04:00Here is an RPG for the HP-41 programmable calculat...Here is an RPG for the HP-41 programmable calculator (I don't know the release date, but I think the author is too young to be from the 80's, so I didn't even try to play it):<br /><br />http://alsoftiphone.com/i41CXplus/Programs/DUNGEON-41CX.READMEExploradorrpghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17491422055928443184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-21133730123900211382022-08-30T23:55:37.377-04:002022-08-30T23:55:37.377-04:00As an aside, I looked at your upcoming game list, ...As an aside, I looked at your upcoming game list, and noticed that Mechanical Anarchy is on deck. <br /><br />As I am the internet person responsible for rescuing Mechanical Anarchy from an obscure Mac software disk and posting it on the Macintosh Garden for everyone's (dis)pleasure, I want to, in advance, apologize for the misery it will inflict upon you! It was, for a very short time, a game that fascinated me at the age of eight. I was obsessed at the time with playing as many random and weird shareware games I could get my hands on regardless of quality, even games apparently quickly tossed together using the SuperCard software authoring suite, a commercial variant of Apple's HyperCard (something I later discovered perusing through the game's resources).<br /><br />Anyway, I had mentioned it before in an earlier comment: I had lost my only copy of the game, which was only available on a MacAddict shareware game sampler CD, and it never made it to the internet proper. In the intervening years, the game had grown to an almost mythical level in my head. I remembered features, as an older person, that never existed in the game; I remembered depth that was never there originally. I scoured the internet for my childhood game, year after year, long after I had left Macs for PCs, and only finally found it a couple years ago after stripping random software CDs archived on archive.org of their contents. <br /><br />Disappointingly, the game is quite shallow, and not at all worth anything beyond a brief (the battle system is basic nonsense) but it is the culmination of a lifelong obsession to find a long lost fragment of my childhood, so there's some worth in the background tale, if not the game itself which boils down to completing a series of tasks before you gain too many experience levels and the enemies (who scale with you) become far too strong for you to continue. <br /><br />Anyway, i hope my context gives you a little more than the game itself delivers. Thanks for everything you do, Chet, your blog is a wonderful trip through nostalgia.Teeganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11883945434429016309noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-39930200817446649512022-08-30T23:29:04.483-04:002022-08-30T23:29:04.483-04:00Gosh, at this point, what obscure game platform is...Gosh, at this point, what obscure game platform is next? TI-83+ graphing calculators?<br /><br />I guess I'm only half joking, because I've played some RPGs released on graphing calculators, all of them terrible (except for a mind-blowingly competent port of Ultima V for the TI-89).Teegannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-5471333823631520932022-08-30T19:09:40.214-04:002022-08-30T19:09:40.214-04:00In any case, it is misapplied in this game, since ...In any case, it is misapplied in this game, since it applies twice the monster's level bonus on its attacks (once when calculating the ATL and once on the roll)... it's normal that the game is so difficult (the character only gets his level bonus once per attack roll).<br /><br />If it weren't for that bug or feature, the monster's ATL would be exactly THAC0, the necessary 20-sided die result to hit a character with 0 AC.Exploradorrpghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17491422055928443184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-37090623822127515362022-08-30T18:40:59.098-04:002022-08-30T18:40:59.098-04:00Never mind. Just checked and found it was introduc...Never mind. Just checked and found it was introduced in 1979, though it was streamlined in the mid-80s.100FloorsOfFrightshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07625564667909827929noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-61568565327970892242022-08-30T18:39:11.487-04:002022-08-30T18:39:11.487-04:00I don't think D&D used the term 'THAC0...I don't think D&D used the term 'THAC0' until the mid-1980s. Prior to that they used 'attack matrices,' which followed the same mathematical principle but required you to cross-reference half a dozen charts, so it took about 20 minutes to figure out if you'd hit anything. People complain about THAC0 now, but they forget how much simpler it was than what it replaced.100FloorsOfFrightshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07625564667909827929noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-56557086605044263642022-08-30T14:38:57.796-04:002022-08-30T14:38:57.796-04:00It pretty much is THAC0 but I don’t think there’s ...It pretty much is THAC0 but I don’t think there’s anything in official D&D of the time which acronyms to ATL, making me think the abbreviation and what it stands for was invented by someone else.Imbannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-57906826091769676512022-08-30T06:09:05.552-04:002022-08-30T06:09:05.552-04:00In the early days, they got *really* creative nami...In the early days, they got *really* creative naming their games, is what I'm getting out of this ;)BESTIEunlmtnoreply@blogger.com