Pix's Origin Adventures

Something I’ve noticed as I play through all these games is that I’m taking more and more screenshots. I’m far too lazy to take notes and I’ve started using screenshots as an alternative way of doing this. This habit has taken new extremes with about 70 screenshots for this space rogue post. To rub this in most of these screenshots just show the conversation text from the game. They are less than exciting therefore but I could just dump them all on here and you would get an idea of the storyline (which isn’t that far off what I’m going to do). I will annotate them a bit.To start off I finished upgrading my ship with another couple of trading runs. At this point it was time to set out and actually try to complete the game.
My first mission is to take an artifact to a government official as a ‘gift’.

This is easily done.

I return to Sir Eid and he gives me some sort of stealth device. I guess this reduces attacks by pirates but its hard to say if it made a difference.

In the bar I bump into an alien trader. He offers to trade in information. I try a few keywords and when I ask about the manchi (the race who attacked my ship in the intro) he offers to give me the information in trade for something valuable. The only thing I have is the malir artifact which he accepts straight off and a get a good few pages of info + some coordinates for the homeworld which will no doubt come in handy some time.

In another system there is a huge military carrer ship which I dock at.

There isn’t that much to do here but breaking through a locked door and searching around I get hold a transmutation coil which must be useful somewhere.

Sure enough one of the remote systems has a scientist on it looking for the coil. He is working on a warp drive which would mean we didn’t need to use the malir gates to travel between systems. I can’t get the warp drive yet but he does give me a null damper which stops me taking damage in worm holes.

One of the travellers in a bar gave me some hints about nsb’s which can be used to keep people sane apparently. I go off to the base to try and get them. There is an extremely fast moving monster on this base though, which I manage to trap between a couple of bins. I find an NSB at the other side of the base and just about manage to make it back to my ship.

 This took a good few attempts I should point out, and after every death in this game you are dumped back to DOS and have to restart and reload. I’m really glad I’m using a hacked version here so I don’t have to look up the word in the manual to get past the copy protection.

One of the stations, has a man called Gut on it who I can’t get to see until I’ve commited an act of piracy (i.e. beating up another merchant). Gut is the leader of a pirate group who’s name escapes me for now. I set out to beat up a merchant but mistakenly go for a military titan craft (oops). It goes down anyway without that much trouble but it does take a lot of shots. I eventually get the idea and beat up a tanker instead. When it gets weak, it surrenders and I nick the cargo.

I get through to see Gut now, but he doesn’t have much to say.

I run into a robot who wants me to go after his girlfriend robot. I realise now writing this that I got sidetracked and never did this mission so its obviously not crucial to the game. What sidetracked me is that my rating finally went from pesky to fierce which means that the duchess will finally talk to me.

This is where the games main plot really starts. Apparently my ships last owner was trying to uncover a conspiracy to start a war with the manchi. I have to track him down. I ran into a mad guy on one of the stations earlier and guess its him.

I can’t get much sense out of him and know I want to inject the nsb. It takes a while to figure to type nsb as a conversation option but it works anyway. I say the mission codeword and he spills the beans.

While I’m out this way, I get another mission to track down someones wife who has apparently joined Vilanies cult.

I have to go to the other side of the galaxy to get to this guys wife so I stop off to see the duchess on the way but she has disappeared after an assassination attempt.

I also pop in to see Gut. He comes up with a plan to steal back the Manchi egg but first off I want to get Omas his wife back.

Omas’s wife doesn’t want to go however.

Omas doesn’t take it so well but he does give me his psionic shield which should protect me while I get the egg.

A quick flight across the galaxy later, I land on the station. There is no visual clue to it but the guards are allegedly distracted despite all been stood around in their usual positions. However, when I try to get to the egg and Vilanie calls the guards they don’t come and I’m free to pick the lock at the back of the room and steal the egg.

Now I have the egg, Gut tells me to seek out the warp drive.

I fly off to talk to the professor and he agrees to try his warp drive out on my ship and send me to the manchi homeworld.

I’m warped into the Manchi system and make my way to the homeworld. I was expecting to be bombarded by hostile aliens at this point.

But this vulture at the homeworld is the only one I see and I polish him off in no time.

I just have to fly into the alien planet now and the final cutscene starts.

I enjoyed this game and got quite drawn into it, enough to want to finish it last night rather than updating this blog. It could have been a lot better, I’m aware of all the components that are missing from it which I would expect from a space trading game but this was 5 years before Privateer came out so I probably expect too much. I would have expected missions to go and destory a particular target and the like, new ships to purchase and a bigger universe to explore. Despite this I reckon I enjoyed playing this more than any other game since 2400AD. Partly, this is just because it was a bit of a change from the usual RPG’s I’ve been playing, but the storyline is well delivered also.

The last few games, I’ve played have been a lot more visually impressive and its about this point in time for me that PC gaming was just coming into its own. Soundcards were about to get widely accepted and every Origin game from this point on has soundcard support (Sierra had already been using them for a while). VGA was also about to take off and was a huge leap forward. All Origins games from hereon also have MCGA/VGA support, although Windwalker reverts back to 16 color some of the time and is kind of a transitional title.

Next: Windwalker

This is another game I’ve never so much as started up before, let alone completed. I’d always had the idea it was a Chris Roberts game but he wasn’t even involved. It actually by Paul Neurath who went on to found Looking Glass Studios who created Ultima Underworld (probably my favorite game of all time). Warren Spector was also involved who went on to produce some great games.

The game itself is a space sim combined with RPG. Its very much in the mould of Autoduel with driving replaced with flying. Think of a primitive version of Privateer and you won’t be far off.

The plot of the game is simple enough. You are an employee on a merchant vessel, a year into your career when you come across an abandoned scout spaceship called the Jolly Roger. While you go over to salvage the vehicle the merchant ship is blown up by a squad of evil aliens leaving you on your own with the scout ship. The game doesn’t give you a clear aim as such beyond learning why the merchant ship was destroyed.

The storyline is told in one of the games manuals but is also recovered in the games intro. There is a little animation but this is told with small static graphics as seems to be standard for Origin games around this period.

On loading the game this is what you see. The space flight is rendered in full 3D but is very primitive. Bear in mind this game was made for 8088 PC’s though.

The ship has a navigation computer which uses the usual tile graphics. I can pick a location and the ship will autopilot to it one square at a time.

I head for the nearest starbase which looks as above. The 3D really is basic here. The space station is 3 polygons! It runs smoothly enough though which is more important. I fly into the white bit in the middle to dock.

One of the games, I’ve got coming up will be Wing Commander. That came out just 1 year after this – if you ever wondered what the fuss about the graphics in that game were a quick play of Space Rogue and you’ll realise what an improvement it was.

When you dock your ship is checked for contraband and its confiscated if you have any and don’t have fake docking id.

Once on the space station, the game plays like another tileset RPG. Doors open smoothly which I’ve not seen before but theres not much new here. The stations are pretty small and easy to explore. You seem to get your standard shops to fix your ship, buy new parts, buy cargo etc.  Before I can buy anything I have to get a pilots license though.

There is a bar in each station and they all have an arcade game in them which you can play for money if you want. Its a pretty slow way to make cash so I’ve left it alone so far.

I do run into a guy who will give me a pilots license. A quick pop quiz later and I’m fully qualified. I start the game with 1500 credits. I buy a full set of cargo pods, some armor and a load of cargo then set off.

There are 8 star systems in the game, all of which I know already from the games map. Each system is 32×32. To get between systems you have to fly down these giant tubes called Malir gates which then warp you to the next system.

When you enter these worm holes you have to fly through each one manually. This is just going through a load of rings and not too hard as long as you go at a slowish speed. The spaceships conserve a lot of momemtum and any high speed manoevers mean you keep sliding in the old direction.

On the next space station, I run into a duchess who will give me some work but not until I’m much more experienced. I’ll return later.

I establish a standard trade route between deneb and the free traders station shown above. This nets me quite a bit of money and they are in neighboring systems so its pretty quick.

The free traders station looks pretty much like the last once I’m on it but there is nowhere to buy ship parts. There is also some sort of pirate boss here but he won’t talk to me until I destroy a merchant vessel. I’ll try that later but right now I just want to upgrade my ship and carry on trading.

I run into a wasp fighter which attacks me. The combat turns out to be very basic and easy. I just turn towards it and fire a lot. It takes a lot of hits but I have got the games worst laser. I can buy missles as well but I’m avoiding them as they cost money. For killing the ship I get a meagre 64 credits bounty. For one of these trade runs I can make as much as 1500-2000 credits in each direction so killing ships seems like a poor way to make money.

Back on the next station, I get give a mission by a student in a bar who wants to know what would happen if I insult a particular species.

I fly off the the station where I can find this species of alien. This does look quite different as its based on an asteroid.

Suprisingly the alien takes it quite well. I fly back to the student and she gives me a Malir artifact. I’ve no idea what use this is but I’m sure it will come in handy.

At the end of my first session, I’ve very nearly got all the maximum upgrades on my ship. I’m just missing an ECM and I haven’t bought any missles yet. The game looks to be pretty short, if this is anything to go on. I’ve speeded this up a lot by not buying anything except the best equipment so I don’t waste my money. I’ll finish upgrading next time then go off looking for missions.

The universe of the game is also quite small really with only the 8 systems. After the likes of Elite which was truly epic on a 32K machine no less you kind of expect this sort of game to be bigger. Theres still a lot of game for a single floppy disk I guess so I shouldn’t complain. The game is enjoyable so far, the 3D spaceflight isn’t bad (once you get over the graphics) and the added RPG elements work well enough. The technology really limits the 3D though. To do a decent full-3D flightsim you really needed more power. X-Wing would be the first I can think of and that needed a 386 to run at all and a 486 to run well. Considering this runs on an 8088 its not bad at all.