Lost Treasures of Infocom I for MS-DOS floppy version (not..

G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Hi, all,

An avid IF fan recently had some questions for me about the menu
front-end that apparently shipped with LTOI 1 on DOS floppy (not on the
CD-ROM version). Since I bought the Amiga floppy version of LTOI I,
back in the day, I've never seen this particular program. Is there
anyone here who has it that could answer a few questions about this
supposed menu front end?

Thanks,

-ethan

P.S. - there's something about a rubber hose and someone named 'Zoe',
if that rings any bells.

P.P.S - no, really... that's what he said. I'm not making that part up.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

<ethan.dicks@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1122929109.416971.103550@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Hi, all,
>
> An avid IF fan recently had some questions for me about the menu
> front-end that apparently shipped with LTOI 1 on DOS floppy (not on the
> CD-ROM version). Since I bought the Amiga floppy version of LTOI I,
> back in the day, I've never seen this particular program. Is there
> anyone here who has it that could answer a few questions about this
> supposed menu front end?
>
> Thanks,
>
> -ethan
>
> P.S. - there's something about a rubber hose and someone named 'Zoe',
> if that rings any bells.
>
> P.P.S - no, really... that's what he said. I'm not making that part up.
>

I have a copy of this. I'll be happy to answer any questions, such as they
may be. The front end consists of just a paragraph of text and then a
listing of the games, though, nothing earth-shattering.

Andy
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Blue Event Horizon wrote:
> ><ethan.dicks@gmail.com> wrote in message
> >news:1122929109.416971.103550@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> >> An avid IF fan recently had some questions for me about the menu
> >> front-end that apparently shipped with LTOI 1 on DOS floppy

> I'm pretty sure I have all the literature
> that came in the box with the disks if any questions need this as a
> reference and Andy can't find all the booklets and whatever.

Thanks, but I don't think what I'm after is in the literature. I am
looking for some rather detailed information about the menu binary
itself.

> Oh, this isn't about the front end but I seem to recall that when some
> of the Zork games ended they jumped you immmediately into the next
> game so quickly it was hard to see the last message of the game and be
> sure you had won and completed it.

Right... that's a known "bug" (feature limitation really) of certain
interpreters. There's even a test in terpetude or some other
interpreter exerciser to look for text printed right before a 'quit'
opcode.

One can extract just the game data files and use a modern interpreter
that doesn't suffer from that problem.

> Think Zoe and the rubber hose was just part of the intro where you
> chose which game to play but might have come up during the
> installation procedure also.

It's the game-choose program that I'm interested in.

> Believe two booklets came in the LTOI 1
> box and one had some information not on the disks that you would need
> to know to properly play and win some of the games; an early
> antipiracy measure.

Right... it goes back to the original packaging. I have all the books,
as well as each game in individual boxes. I'm not worried about the
games themselves, or even the PC interpreters. I'm interested
specifically about the tiny program that allows one to select which
game one is about to play. The version of LTOI I have is the one for
AmigaDOS on 3.5" floppy, and does not have a game selection program.
I've just learned about the one for the DOS floppy distribution and
want to poke at the selector program.

Thanks,

-ethan
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

On Mon, 01 Aug 2005 23:29:36 GMT, "Andy M" <andym789@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>
><ethan.dicks@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:1122929109.416971.103550@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>> Hi, all,
>>
>> An avid IF fan recently had some questions for me about the menu
>> front-end that apparently shipped with LTOI 1 on DOS floppy (not on the
>> CD-ROM version). Since I bought the Amiga floppy version of LTOI I,
>> back in the day, I've never seen this particular program. Is there
>> anyone here who has it that could answer a few questions about this
>> supposed menu front end?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> -ethan
>>
>> P.S. - there's something about a rubber hose and someone named 'Zoe',
>> if that rings any bells.
>>
>> P.P.S - no, really... that's what he said. I'm not making that part up.
>>
>
>I have a copy of this. I'll be happy to answer any questions, such as they
>may be. The front end consists of just a paragraph of text and then a
>listing of the games, though, nothing earth-shattering.
>
>Andy
>
I have it also. The main thing I remember offhand besides what Andy
said is that when I went from DOS 5.1 (or whatever) to DOS 6.22 I have
to use SetVer to install because the installation didn't recognize
6.22 and told me I had to upgrade my DOS version so what I really had
to do was fool it into thinking I had an older DOS version than I
did. Not certain whether I can install this on my current computer
but remember being able to get it installed on oneusing SE98; might
have been one of several programs I had to uninstall because they
caused instabilities and crashes though. If Andy can answer your
questions that actually require having the program installed I'd
rather leave this to him. I'm pretty sure I have all the literature
that came in the box with the disks if any questions need this as a
reference and Andy can't find all the booklets and whatever.

Oh, this isn't about the front end but I seem to recall that when some
of the Zork games ended they jumped you immmediately into the next
game so quickly it was hard to see the last message of the game and be
sure you had won and completed it. Or maybe I'm thinking of the
Masterpieces CD-ROM. Yup, Andy is probably your better information
source for multiple reasons. <sheepish grin>


Think Zoe and the rubber hose was just part of the intro where you
chose which game to play but might have come up during the
installation procedure also. Believe two booklets came in the LTOI 1
box and one had some information not on the disks that you would need
to know to properly play and win some of the games; an early
antipiracy measure.

Cheers,

BEH
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Blue Event Horizon wrote:

[snip]

> I have it also. The main thing I remember offhand besides what Andy
> said is that when I went from DOS 5.1 (or whatever) to DOS 6.22 I have
> to use SetVer to install because the installation didn't recognize
> 6.22 and told me I had to upgrade my DOS version so what I really had
> to do was fool it into thinking I had an older DOS version than I
> did. Not certain whether I can install this on my current computer
> but remember being able to get it installed on oneusing SE98; might
> have been one of several programs I had to uninstall because they
> caused instabilities and crashes though. If Andy can answer your
> questions that actually require having the program installed I'd
> rather leave this to him. I'm pretty sure I have all the literature
> that came in the box with the disks if any questions need this as a
> reference and Andy can't find all the booklets and whatever.

[snip]

I always remind people that they can use DOSBox to emulate previous
ms-dos systems so that they can run several very old games in modern
pcs. The program is located at:
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

Here's something about the program itself:

* DOSBox 0.63 has been downloaded 1.000.000 times!
* Josch has ported DOSBox 0.63 to OS/2.
* Scott of Jaeger Technologies has informed us of a new frontend
for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

This is in fact a lifesaver program to run those old games :) Try it and
enjoy it :)

Kind Regards,
RootShell

(PS: im in no away related to this project, i just think that it's
really usefull)

--
RootShell, Lisbon, Portugal, Europe, Earth ;)
To protect against spam, the address in the "From:" header is not valid.
In any case, you should reply to the group so that everyone can benefit.
If you must send me a private email, use -> RootShell AT netcabo DOT pt
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

> I always remind people that they can use DOSBox to emulate previous ms-dos
> systems so that they can run several very old games in modern pcs. The
> program is located at: http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

Does it have good CPU slowdown capabilities? I've never found a program
that could reliably emulate old CPU clocks in the 1-20 MHz range.

Andy
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

DosBox performs emulation not virtualization of the processor which
means that yes it can emulate very slow speeds...in fact that's the
common complaint....that it isn't fast enough. (Only for 1995+ games
tho) Anything before 1995 should play fine on 400Mhz+ machines.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Andy M wrote:
>>I always remind people that they can use DOSBox to emulate previous ms-dos
>>systems so that they can run several very old games in modern pcs. The
>>program is located at: http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1
>
>
> Does it have good CPU slowdown capabilities? I've never found a program
> that could reliably emulate old CPU clocks in the 1-20 MHz range.
>
> Andy
>
>

I think that only trying you can get the best answer :)

But for slowing down CPU i think theres also SlowMo? or something like that.

Kind Regards,
RootShell

--
RootShell, Lisbon, Portugal, Europe, Earth ;)
To protect against spam, the address in the "From:" header is not valid.
In any case, you should reply to the group so that everyone can benefit.
If you must send me a private email, use -> RootShell AT netcabo DOT pt