Deep In The Heart Of Texas – Part 1

Here are some scans that have been a seriously long time coming. 7 years ago, I uploaded Part 2 of PC Zone’s article on their trip to the Origin offices but I’ve been unable to see the first part until today when Ian sent through his photos of PC Zone Issue 10 (January 1994). I’ll be uploading the full issue shortly but I’m pulling out a few Origin articles for the site first. This part mainly concentrates on the forthcoming Ultima 8 and Wings Of Glory (going by the name Warbirds at the time). There is also a nice photo of the Origin offices which has got me wondering if anyone still has that sign from the front wall…

Art D’s Batch Adventures

It’s time at last to get around to the first post of 2017. I’d like to say I’ll be posting more regularly this year but realistically that is unlikely to happen. When I do get round to it, there are still old games to play so lets start with a handful of Origin games I forgot about when I was originally blogging through them all.

Probably the most significant Easter eggs ever to make their way into Origin products were 3 text adventure games hidden away in the files for Privateer, Privateer – Righteous Fire and Wings Of Glory. These were all created by Arthur DiBianca, a coder at Origin during the 90’s.

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To find these hidden games, you need to search through the files for each game and look for the one starting with tab. The filename is actually reversed and in this case should be advent.bat, so it simply needs renaming and copying into an otherwise empty directory.

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You then type advent setup to start, except I discovered at this point that with all this batch file trickery going on, DOS ran out of environment space.

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To fix this, you just need to edit your config.sys file and reboot. The relevant line is shell=c:\dos\command.com /P /E:1024. This maxes out the environment space in DOS and will fix the errors running these games.

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Running the setup generates a load of little batch files for all the commands in the game. These text adventures play entirely from a tweaked command prompt so there is a look.bat and n, s, e and w.bat files, etc. Each command in the game is actually a call to run the relevant batch file.

These files pass along their calls to the main advent script which does the heavy lifting. If you supply a second word, i.e. look lamp, then lamp is passed as a parameter into the batch file. Presumably all the variables for the game are stored in the DOS environment. It’s kind of ingenious really and shows how much you can do with batch scripting. I would imagine it’s not the most practical language for the job but it clearly works.

Of course with the whole game being played from a DOS prompt, you don’t want to be typing any unwarranted DOS commands while playing this (other than dir which gives a verb list).

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Having spent a while getting it running, the first game took all of a couple of minutes to beat. I won’t give away too much but it essentially revolves around learning a few magic words to teleport around the world. There isn’t a plot to describe in any of these games, it’s along the lines of Zork with somewhat random locations and puzzles to conquer. At the end of the game, I’m rewarded with a magic word to carry into the next game which was included with Righteous Fire.

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The second and third game are substantially larger with maybe 10-20 locations each and a good deal more puzzles. That isn’t to say they will last more than 5 minutes a piece but they did make me think. I’m glad to say there was no resorting to that staple of text adventures, large mazes with identical locations. Did anyone ever actually enjoy those things?

I can’t say I’m any the wiser having got to the end of these as to what exactly is going on. There is some mention of a crowned man apparently obsessed with breadsticks. This has to be Lord British but don’t ask me where the breadstick interest comes from.

Unfathomable as they may be, all 3 games are a fun little diversion and if you want to try them out without using the original files, they can be played through a browser at https://archive.org/details/wcadvent

Wings Of Glory Review – PC Format

This is a review of Wings Of Glory from the February 1995 PC Format. It gets a decent reception but the reviewers prefer Dawn Patrol which I can’t comment on as it isn’t a game I’ve ever tried:-

Wings Of Glory Review - PC Format Page 1 Wings Of Glory Review - PC Format Page 2

While the site is less than busy, I’ve decided to change my web host after finding an option that is the same price for 2 years as I’m currently paying for 2 months. It sounds a little too good to be true in all honesty but I’ll give it a go and I can always move back. There will no doubt be some teething troubles and/or downtime when I start to make the switch.

UPDATE – The move appears to have gone smoothly enough with the only trouble being my slow upload speed. The database and wordpress installation are copied over and working. All that’s left is transferring all the images and files which is going to take a while.

PC Format Origin Collector's Series

This is a 32 page pullout from the September 1994 PC Format. It’s the first entry in their collector’s series which featured companies like Microprose, Lucasarts & Gremlin. Since it’s on here, it goes without saying that this first volume is entirely on Origin:-

PC Format Collector's Series - Origin

It includes a brief history of the company, interviews with Richard Garriott and Chris Roberts, previews of coming games (with Warren Spector interviews) and a look back at the Ultima and Wing Commander series. There is so much misinformation in the Ultima history that it beggars belief but there is plenty of good content in here otherwise. According to the Ultima 8 article, at this time Garriott saw the Avatar as being separated from the human plane and more of a supernatural being in Ultima 9 and already had an Ultima 10 plot ready to go.