Classics for free

[Fugi]

reply: 200 :p

[sanctified Veteran]

reply: 200 :p

dont spam the forum like that ok, did I make myself clear?

[Steven]

I've said it before, I'll say it again:

Even though it may be considered a classic by now and even though it IS freeware, AA is not covered by the scope of this thread, said scope being "previously commercial games gone freeware / open source".

The keyword here is "previously commercial". AA was never released commercially (though it will be soon enough, I've heard). So it will most likely never be listed in this thread.

Hope that clears things up a bit. Again. :D

Version 1.2 is a classic. Nobody said you had to play the latest. :D :rofl:

[XavierHyde]

Version 1.2 is a classic. Nobody said you had to play the latest. :D :rofl:

I'll say it this once, and hope I won't have to repeat myself *again*:

While being a classic and freeware, AA is NOT a previously commercial/shareware game gone freeware, and as such will not be listed in this thread. :sleep:

Please stay on topic from now on. :angry:

[Steven]

I'll say it this once, and hope I won't have to repeat myself *again*:

While being a classic and freeware, AA is NOT a previously commercial/shareware game gone freeware, and as such will not be listed in this thread. :sleep:

Please stay on topic from now on. :angry:

That don't make no sense at all!.

You can't be satisfied with a good free game.. I dunno what else you can be satisfied with. pffffffft picky picky! :s

[sanctified Veteran]

That don't make no sense at all!.

You can't be satisfied with a good free game.. I dunno what else you can be satisfied with. pffffffft picky picky! :s

that makes sense since this thread is trying to recolect games that were previosuly commercial but now they are freeware, AA has always been freeware and everyone know that so its offtopic here

[XavierHyde]

That don't make no sense at all!.

You can't be satisfied with a good free game.. I dunno what else you can be satisfied with. pffffffft picky picky! :s

First and foremost: don't use no double negatives! :laugh:

What part of *PREVIOUSLY* *COMMERCIAL* don't you understand? :crazy:

I DO agree that AA is a very polished game, and I have nothing against it. But it's NOT previously commercial and so does NOT fall within the scope of this thread. Try and UNDERSTAND that!

If you had read this thread from a reasonaly early point, you would know that this is about reviving out-of-print commercial games with the cooperation of the developers / publishers, and if a game has not been released commercially and then been made freeware, it's of no interest to this thread. End of discussion. I'm trying to do the gaming community a favour here, by bringing back the treasures of days long gone in a playable form for today's geeks. As hardly anyone who has not been living in a box for the past few years would be oblivious to AA by now, mentioning it in this thread only causes confusion since it does not match the topic of the thread! :angry:

<note to mods>

I could really use some help from a mod to explain this to that troll^H^H^H^H^H gentleman...

</note to mods>

[Leo Natan]

^ **** your sig ******!

Do you have anything against my signature??

[Steven]

,Apr 27 2004, 04:00] that makes sense since this thread is trying to recolect games that were previosuly commercial but now they are freeware, AA has always been freeware and everyone know that so its offtopic here

Thats quite unfair, since AA is freeware and always has been and has to continue to be since the US Government can't legally collect money for the software.

It's clear the thread title says "Classics For Free" and it'll never be "Vapourware" more or less. Thats basically what this thread is about.

But i'll leave now. .tootles. :p

[Bud]

I'm wondering if anyone is interested in finding out if we can get the original Masters of Orion game made available along with some of the old school SSI Gold Box AD&D games. I really miss those games.

[XavierHyde]

Thats quite unfair, since AA is freeware and always has been and has to continue to be since the US Government can't legally collect money for the software.

It's clear the thread title says "Classics For Free" and it'll never be "Vapourware" more or less. Thats basically what this thread is about.

But i'll leave now. .tootles. :p

Well, there's a difference between the title of the thread (which had to be short'n'sweet) and the actual SCOPE of the thread, described in detail in the top post. (And this thread is NOT about vapourware, though I do attempt to get some vapourware games released as well).

I'm wondering if anyone is interested in finding out if we can get the original Masters of Orion game made available along with some of the old school SSI Gold Box AD&D games. I really miss those games.

Well... I've been doing some inquiries into the status of SSI and have to say that even with the help of people who worked for SSI, I've failed to trace all the relevant rights. So in all likelyhood we will never see the Gold Box games available legally again. I know they supposedly have all of them over at The Underdogs (link not provided, read the top post as to reasons why). Be wary of popup drive-by-installers, though.

As for Masters of Orion, that one's owned (or rather, 0wned) by Infogrames, who also 0wns (in the fullest sense of the word) Atari. Given Infogrames' adamant attitude against any form of freeware and open-source, I'd say we're out of luck. I've attempted to contact them on several occasions regarding many different games that have been assimilated into the Infogrames collective (notice how I won't call them by their name of choice, "Atari"). I have yet to recieve any answer whatsoever. We can only hope this SourceForge project (which is an original game and not a port) will shape up to be as good as MOO.

Edit: after checking my notes, SSI was sold to Mindscape, which was sold to The Learning Company, which merged with Broderbund, which was sold to Mattel and the sold on to its current owner Riverdeep... so as you can see tracing rights and getting all the right permissions might be... well... difficult. I'll give it one more go, though. :wacko:

Edited April 28, 2004 by cappuchok

[XavierHyde]

FYI: Broderbund informed me that SSI is now owned by UBISoft, and checking with UBI they DO list Pool of Radiance as one of their titles, so I guess it checks out. I've sent them a mail. Now I'll wait and see if they reply... :sleep:

[Bud]

FYI: Broderbund informed me that SSI is now owned by UBISoft, and checking with UBI they DO list Pool of Radiance as one of their titles, so I guess it checks out. I've sent them a mail. Now I'll wait and see if they reply... :sleep:

THX for doing that. I forgot that SSI was part of UBI now and if I would of remembered I would have put it in my post.

Next time I think of a few games I'll try my best to find out more info on where the developers are currently at.

[Behold! My Pants]

anyone else remember that great game, Rocket Jockey? Well, i don't know if its free, but that was a great game. It doesn't work on XP, so i had to install a 8GB harddrive with win 98, and that's the only thing on it. but oh boy, was it worth it.

[drprotos]

old and nice classic game

[XavierHyde]

anyone else remember that great game, Rocket Jockey? Well, i don't know if its free, but that was a great game. It doesn't work on XP, so i had to install a 8GB harddrive with win 98, and that's the only thing on it. but oh boy, was it worth it.

No, Rocket Jockey isn't freeware. However, it can still be bought here.

[XavierHyde]

Well, finally a contact inside Codemasters (and thus Sensible Software) has been found. And I had to look no further than this forum! It would seem miker_CLO is our local friendly Codemasters rep, and he's confirmed that they've been looking into releasing some classics as freeware, though with tight schedules they've sort of not gotten around to actually doing something about it.

In other news, Tribes 1 and 2 have been released as freeware - great news for all online FPS gamers. The top post has been updated with this news.

[EugeneE3RD]

Ken Silverman (creator of the Build Tool used in Duke Nukem 3D) has released his game called Ken's Labyrinth which was sold as shareware by Epic MegaGames during the early 1990's. Ken's site with downloads of Ken's Labyrinth are at http://advsys.net/ken/klab.htm

Rick Saada has released the shareware game called Castle Of The Winds which was sold as shareware by Epic MegaGames as freeware & the download is at http://www.exmsft.com/~ricks/

[XavierHyde]

Ken Silverman (creator of the Build Tool used in Duke Nukem 3D) has released his game called Ken's Labyrinth which was sold as shareware by Epic MegaGames during the early 1990's. Ken's site with downloads of Ken's Labyrinth are at http://advsys.net/ken/klab.htm

Rick Saada has released the shareware game called Castle Of The Winds which was sold as shareware by Epic MegaGames as freeware & the download is at http://www.exmsft.com/~ricks/

Thanks, added to top post.

[sanctified Veteran]

Ken Silverman (creator of the Build Tool used in Duke Nukem 3D) has released his game called Ken's Labyrinth which was sold as shareware by Epic MegaGames during the early 1990's. Ken's site with downloads of Ken's Labyrinth are at http://advsys.net/ken/klab.htm

Rick Saada has released the shareware game called Castle Of The Winds which was sold as shareware by Epic MegaGames as freeware & the download is at http://www.exmsft.com/~ricks/

thanks, great first post.

[fiath]

Hi,

Nice initiative you have here! :)

Just a couple of minor queries...

Factor 5 has initiated relations with CAPS and have used CAPS' dumping tools to back up several of their old and some unreleased titles. With the upcoming E3, Factor 5 has a lot to do besides preserving their oldies but they are definitely making an effort.

Where did this information come from? Factor 5?

According to CAPS representatives, all protections used by Team17 are also supported so should Martyn Brown and the others go ahead and release some nice freebies after the release of Worms 3, they will most likely be able to use CAPS images to ensure compatibility and restorability.

The first sentance makes me assume you got this information from CAPS, but I guess the bit about Martyn Brown actually came from Martyn Brown?

Thanks for any info...

[XavierHyde]

Hi,

Nice initiative you have here! :)

Just a couple of minor queries...

Where did this information come from? Factor 5?

The first sentance makes me assume you got this information from CAPS, but I guess the bit about Martyn Brown actually came from Martyn Brown?

Thanks for any info...

Thanks! :D

As for the first question: the info about Factor 5 working with CAPS came from a CAPS representative. I forgot who. I'll see if I can make contact with them again (been a while) and get some more information and possibly a contact within Factor 5 to confirm this. If not, I'll change the info accordingly.

On the second question, yes, I got the info from CAPS. I've also talked with Martyn Brown, though, and he's said that Team17 will be looking into releasing more classics for free, through other sites to begin with (Dream17 and Back2Roots have been selected so far and have some games to offer in at least the classic ADF format).

[EugeneE3RD]

Sleepless Software Inc. released their shareware platform game called Inner Worlds several years ago as shareware. You can read about this at the download page at http://www.sleepless.com/iw/download.html & you can read about the game at http://www.sleepless.com/iw/ . Unfortuntly, the company has taken the downloads down because it was generating too much traffic (I downloaded this game almost 4 yrs. ago from their site & it is a very fun game). Well, don't fear, Gamehippo has this game on their FTP server. Just goto http://gamehippo.com/search/search_title_1...a46c28a64.shtml & click on the link which says download & follow the instructions.

Megazeux was released several years ago under the GNU GPL. Megazeux is a shareware game creation system similar to ZZT with several features such as the ability to use digital sounds & mod files. The source code to Megazeux was released under the GNU GPL several years ago. Source & binaries are located at http://megazeux.sourceforge.net/ . You can get games written using Megazeux at http://digitalmzx.net/ & http://www.zeuxworld.com/ . Games are not self loading, they must be run thru Megazeux.

[EugeneE3RD]

3D Realms have released several games as freeware. 3D Realms has released 2 old Apogee text adventure games called Beyond the Titanic & Supernova as freeware. They have also released the source code to the 3D game called Rise of the Triad. Beyond The Titanic, Supernova & the source code to Rise Of The Triad are located at http://www.3drealms.com/downloads.html .

Ben Marty released his shareware game called TechnoVenture as freeware. The game went freeware almost 3 yrs. ago & you can download this freeware game & level editor from http://members.tcq.net/benmarty/TechnoVenture.html .

The author of the game called Warpath-classic has released his shareware game as freeware & you can download the game from http://www.synthetic-reality.com/warpath.htm .

Metropolis Software released their point & click shareware adventure game called Teen Agent as freeware. The game can be downloaded from http://www.metropolis-software.com/downloa...een-english.exe & you can read about the game at http://gamehippo.com/search/search_title_1...878f9c355.shtml

Polorware formally know as Penguin software has released their old games for free. You can get the Apple II, C-64 & PC versions at http://www.magictree.com/polarware/compadv.htm

The author who runs Adept Software released 3 of his shareware games as freeware. The games are Jetpack, Squarez Deluxe & God Of Thunder. You can download these games from http://www.adeptsoftware.com/classics/ .

Game Crafters released their shareware game called The Adventures of

Maddog Williams in the Dungeons of Duridian several years ago as freeware (I downloaded & played this game about 4+ yrs. ago & it is a fun game). You can download the game from http://www.gamecrafters.com/gamecrafters/maddog/ .

[XavierHyde]

Thanks for the nice round-up of games, EugeneE3RD.

One note though: 3DRealms releasing the source code of Rise of the Triad might be a little misleading. Yes, they've released the source, but only to the engine itself. The game data files must still be retrieved from a commercial copy of the game. The same goes for Duke Nukem 3D which also had its source released by 3DRealms (and is listed in the top post).

As for the rest, a very nice collection! Thanks again!