Ethical Companies – The Blog

And no, that’s not the Scott Adams who created “Dilbert” (not that there’s anything wrong with Dilbert).  If you’re old enough you will remember so called “adventure” games on computer.  The adventure game consisted of an text interface where you entered commands in text to advance in the game to the end.  The first of these games was called simply “Adventure” or “Colossal Cave” and was written for the DEC PDP-10 mainframe computer back in 1976:

Adventure games were very popular in the 1980’s and one of the most well known developers of adventure titles was Scott Adams of Adventure International for the home computers of the era: TRS-80, Apple 2, Commodore Pet, Commodore VIC 20 and Commodore 64 (and probably some other formats as well !) Some were a little more technically advanced and even featured rudimentary graphics, most noticeably the Spider Man and Hulk titles on the Commodore 64. These are the games Adventure International released:

• Adventureland (1978)
• Pirate Adventure (1978–1979)
• Secret Mission (1979)
• Voodoo Castle (In collaboration with Alexis Adams) (1980)
• The Count (1981)
• Strange Odyssey (1981)
• Mystery Fun House (1981)
• Pyramid of Doom (In collaboration with Alvin Files) (1981)
• Ghost Town (1981)
• Savage Island, Part I (1982)
• Savage Island, Part II (In collaboration with Russ Wetmore) (1982)
• Golden Voyage (In collaboration with William Demas) (1982)
• Sorcerer of Claymorgue Castle (1982)
• Return to Pirate’s Isle (Exclusively for TI-99/4A systems) (1983)
• Questprobe series:
• Questprobe #1: The Hulk (1984)
• Questprobe #2: Spiderman (1984)
• Questprobe #3: The Fantastic Four (1984)
• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (in collaboration with Phillip Case) (1984)
• Return to Pirate’s Island 2 (August 2000)

The Count was the first one I played, on the Commodore VIC 20.  I later played most of the titles shown above and completed many of them.  I was pleased today to discover the games were now, not only free to download, but available in a Windows version !  What a blast from the past, I might finally complete Sorcerer of Claymorgue Castle after 25 years !  You can get the Windows download from the Scott Adams Great Adventure website.

Steve

PS if you never got out of the first room in the Hulk (a lot of people didn’t), you need to “bite lip” !

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Back in the distant eons of time (and oh yes it was a long time ago, I had more hair etc) I was a big fan of the Commodore 64 (C64) computer (as were many other people, to date it is still the single best selling computer of all time.)  On of the main reasons the C64 was so popular was its advanced graphics and sound chips (for the time.)  The sound chip (aka SID chip)  in particular is considered to be the best chip of the era and was streets ahead of any of the competitor’s offerings.  The sound that can be achieved from a bog standard C64 SID is quite amazing for its time:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=c64+sid+collection&search_type=&aq=f

Many C64 “musicians” went to work on later formats and are responsible for mainstream music as well as video game soundtracks, names such as Rob Hubbard and Jeroen Tel. Amazingly the C64 still has dedicated “fans” and every year some of these fans meet up at demo parties and compete to produce the best graphics, sound etc. Over the years the sound technology on the C64 has been tweaked a number of times and a lot of very stunning sounds have been produced, however, until a new routine called “Vicious SID” came along ….

Much as I like the C64 I don’t have anything to do with it these days and haven’t used one since about 1996 or so (possibly earlier) so I don’t tend to look up any C64 related news on the internet at all. However, I recently came across the Vicious SID article on http://c64music.blogspot.com/:

A team of supertalented coders have managed to break the limits of C64 sound once again.

The Human Coding Machine from Germany and SounDemoN from Finland, have managed to create a music routine that allows you to have:

- 4 channels of 8-bit samplerate, digi playback
- 2 channels of SID synth sound
- You can filter both SID channels AND SAMPLES!

Ok, this is technogeekery to most of us, just take a listen. Bear in mind this is output direct from a C64, a 1982 computer ! Ok it sounds very C64 style and 1980’s but it’s pretty amazing stuff. There’s more here:

http://www.scs-trc.net/x08/music/vicious_sid_mp3.zip

Simply amazing considering the age of the computer.

Steve

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How we all break the law every day.

“Millions of people who declare themselves innocent law abiding citizens actually commit around seven crimes a week.

The most common offences are speeding, texting or talking while driving, dropping litter, downloading music illegally or riding bicycles on the pavement. Other daily crimes include eating or drinking while driving, parking on pavements or not wearing a seatbelt.

More than a third of people are not at all bothered by the fact they are breaking the law, with 58 per cent of those saying the crimes are minor.

Another 20 per cent don’t see them as being illegal because everyone else does it as well.”

Only 7 ?  I suppose the most common law broken is that of speeding.  This of course is understandable as many speed limits are entirely random and/or inappropriate and many view speed cameras as draconian enforcement designed to leverage as much cash as possible from the motoring public as possible.

However, what I find interesting is illegal “downloading.”  This is an old debate which has been going on for a long long time.  As long ago as the early 1980’s (possibly earlier) computer software was regularly “cracked*” and distributed around the world via bulletin board systems (aka boards or BBS’es.)  This was very prevalent on the Commodore 64 computer system and there were a number of established “boards” in the United States with names like Warez Galore (Seattle), Candyland (Nashville), Prowl’s Place (Brooklyn) and Foreplay (not sure where in the USA.)  It wasn’t too big a deal to the gaming industry as modem speeds at this time weren’t really “up to it” when it came to mass distribution.  Commodore 64 modems could only achieve maximum speeds of 2400 baud, with 300 or 1200 being the most common modem speeds.  To put this into perspective Ultima V on the Commodre 64 took around 10 to 11 hours to upload in 1988 via modem, I’ve just tried a download on my Virgin 50mbit connection of the exact same game over the internet; it was too quick for me to actually time it, seconds literally.

As time has gone on modem speeds have increased and the internet has become accessed by more and more of the populace.  Illegal downloading is almost inevitable, software/movie/music companies seem to have as many problems combating this now as they did in 1980s and 1990s, little has changed.  However, I would like to point out a couple of things out which don’t occur to many of these companies; not to defend the the “criminals”, but just to make these points clear:

1. Some “products” can no longer be purchased.  Consider the downloadable (legally) SNES games you can download to your Nintendo Wii to play.  This is great if you want a title Nintendo has made “available” such as Legend Of Zelda A Link To The Past (the only SNES game currently installed on my Wii) but not so hot if you want a less mainstream title which hasn’t been “released” for download to your Wii.  There’s thousands of games out there on vintage systems you simply can’t buy any more and if you want to replay those games of your misspent youth you’re stuffed, unless you can download a “copy.”  My point being, the download, whilst illegal, doesn’t actually equate to a financial loss to the game’s publisher.  And it’s not just games, there’s a lot of films/TV series etc which simply haven’t been released on DVD (and in some cases not even on VHS), but you can download them if you know where to look ….
2. If someone wasn’t able to download a film/MP3/game they wanted would they buy it anyway ?  In other words does the download equate to a financial loss to the publisher ?  I suspect that in the majority of cases people who download new films (let’s say the current hit Avatar for example) wouldn’t pay to see the film if they couldn’t download it, they simply wouldn’t watch it.

Why do I make these 2 points ?  Because it annoys me when companies make statements like “we lose £15 trillion a year due to illegal downloads”, but I don’t think they take these factors into consideration.  It’s hard for today’s digital generation to see downloading as a crime and it’s become commonplace.

Steve

* Cracked – When a game has been “cracked” it simply means the protection has been removed and the game put into a form which is easily duplicated due to the lack of protection.  In the case of software this is by modification of the software code and the “check it’s not a copy” parts stripped out.  In the 1980s cracking involved removing the software protection and transferring the game to disk in unprotected form which easily be uploaded/downloaded.  Cracking goes back to pre Commodore 64 times but the Commodore 64 is the machine where cracking literally “exploded.”

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Following on from yesterday’s post about emulation here’s part #2 discussing emulation of 16 bit computer systems. You know the ones I mean: The Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST, amongst others.

Years ago when Amiga was first released there was a lot of debate about whether to buy the Atari ST or the Commodore Amiga; it was the Commodore 64 vs Sinclair Spectrum battle all over again …. Commodore’s offering was the first multi tasking offering on the market and technically a superior machine to the Atari offering with superior graphics and sound. Many Commodore 64 owners took to the Amiga like a duck takes to water and the Amiga saw some excellent game and demo offerings.

Amiga emulation has always proved a bit “tricky” on the PC as the system comprised of several custom chips and it uses a fair bit of processing power to emulate it well on PC. The main emulator for running your old Amiga software is WinUAE (Windows Ultimate Amiga Emulator.) It’s a bit of a bitch nuisance to set up and get running smoothly though, but you should get it going in 10 minutes. You may need find to a copy of the Amiga BIOS and operating system, a Google search will help you with this.

The best Amiga games ? Well, in my opinion:

• Defender Of The Crown – One of the original games for Amiga and a superb title. Take over feudal England and restore the monarchy. You don’t even need an emulator for this one, you can play the Flash version online right here.
• Lemmings – Oh come on, you know this game surely ? Classic Amiga puzzle platform game.
• The Secret Of Monkey Island – Classic point ‘n’ click game, shows up on PC as well.
• Frontier Elite 2 – Remember Elite from yesterday’s article on the Commodore 64 ? Well this is more of the same, better graphics etc.
• Populous – Superb God game.

And for some reason there’s quite a few pinball games on Amiga. Not surprising I guess as the Amiga had the power to do the format justice, C64 pinball games had been pretty dire.

And what of the Atari ST ?  Personally I liked the ST.  Ok, it wasn’t an Amiga (rumours were around for ages that there would be an emulator for ST on Amiga so you could play all ST software on your Amiga, it never happened) but it was still a nice system.  The operating system was Digital Research’s GEM, not dissimilar to the Amiga Workbench but not as “pretty” or as advanced. The best emulator seems to be STeem Engine which you can get from the Little Green Desktop website. The Atari ST had much the same games as the Commodore Amiga as well as the superb Goldrunner, an excellent shoot ‘em up. You can see STeem Engine running Frontier Elite 2 here:

You’ll find other emulators for 16 bit systems such as the Acorn Archimedes here.

More emulation posts to come.

Steve

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Emulators on Wikipedia.

“An emulator in computer sciences duplicates (provides an emulation of) the functions of one system using a different system, so that the second system behaves like (and appears to be) the first system. This focus on exact reproduction of external behavior is in contrast to some other forms of computer simulation, which can concern an abstract model of the system being simulated.”

Ok, that’s accurate but somewhat “dry.”  Basically emulation allows you to use software for one system on another system.  For example you can run Windows software on Linux or Macintosh or ….  More interestingly you can play old games from non PC systems on your PC.  This ranges from the 8 bit systems of the 1980’s through the 16 bit glory of the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga to consoles such as the Sega Dreamcast and Sony Playstation 2.

I discovered computer emulation about 1995 or so with the C64 emulator C64S.  Whilst it wasn’t stunningly compatible and didn’t run all C64 games on your PC it did work on a 386 PC under MS-DOS.  The Commodore 64 was a massively popular home computer and there are thousands (I mean that, it’s not an exaggeration) of games available for it and they are not too hard to find on the internet with the use of Google.  Your verdict on C64 games may of course vary but for me these are some of the classics:

• Elite. Heck, who hasn’t heard of this one ?  It started life on the BBC Micro B, and was also ported/written for:  Sinclair Spectrum, Acorn Electron, Commodore 128, various other BBC models, Acorn Archimedes, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore Plus4, Amstrad CPC, MSX, Apple 2, 2 PC versions and even a port for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console.
• Ultima IV. A classic computer RPG and for me one of the greatest RPGs ever.  Again converted for several systems including the C64, Commodore Amiga and Atari ST.  Don’t think it made it to any of the other 8 bit systems, as it was very large on 4 disks so may have been out of the reach of many 8 bits which were tape drive orientated.  Might have been available on the Apple 2 ?
• Paradroid. Superb game where you run around a spaceship as a robot destroying all the rogue robots to regain control of the ship.  A little crude graphically now, but heck what a game considering it was under 40k in length !  C64 only, although a new version called Paradroid ‘90 later appeared on the 16 bits.
• Impossible Mission. You might have seen this in the last year or so turn up on the Nintendo DS; yes it’s the same game.  Was released on various 8 bit systems, including the Sega Master System and the NES if I recall correctly.
• Sanxion. Superb shoot ‘em up and one of the pioneers of the genre.  Also the game which brought Rob Hubbard to fame for the music which he wrote for the game.  Converted to Sinclair Spectrum but the music soundtrack was “destroyed” in the process as the Commodore 64 was streets ahead musically over the Spectrum.
• Hypersports. A joystick thrashing game.  I played this one ….  A lot.  The skeet shooting was my favourite bit.  Also ported to several other 8 bits.
• Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Classic command line text adventure.  How many hours have been wasted trying to get the babel fish on this game ?  Shows up on various platforms, not very processor intensive so easily written, even for low end 8 bits.

I could go on for hours ….  As you can probably tell I was a big Commodore 64 fan.  Here’s the Commodore 64 emulator running Elite right on my Vista desktop:

Vice also emulates the Commodore VIC20, Commodore PET and various other 8 bit Commodore platforms. You can download it here.  Vice is free, there are other C64 emulators but this is the one to pick in my opinion.

So what of the other platforms ?  Well there are emulators available for:

• Sinclair Spectrum (various models.) Don’t know much about them, was never a big Spectrum fan. World Of Spectrum is an extensive resource detailing Spectrum emulation and also the Sinclair QL (a computer I know virtually nothing about.) Games to look out for are: Elite, Jet Set Willy, Manic Miner, Head Over Heels and Atic Atac.
• BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. Never owned either of these (didn’t use one at school either like a lot of people did.) BeebEm seems to be the favoured emulator for BBC, and Elkulator for the Acorn Electron. Again, look out for Elite, and also Chuckie Egg.

This link will help you find emulators for MSX, Atari 8 bit, and pretty much any 8 bit computer system you can think of ….

Once you’ve got your emulator running, turn to Google to find the games …. Most of the 8 bit era games are pretty easy to find. If you can’t find what you’re looking for just drop us a line and if I can point you in the right direction I will !

Happy emulating !  I’ll be writing some more entries on emulation over the next few days.

Steve

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The Age Of Love – Behind Blue Eyes

I’ve been reading the Behind Blue Eyes blog on and off recently and found his comments on the 1980’s interesting as I have been considering the 1980’s myself for a number of reasons.  It is often said that we look at the past through rose tinted spectacles and that our recollection of the past is tainted by only remembering the “good stuff” and forgetting the bad.  Is this true ?

Myself I left school in summer 1981 largely unsure of what I wanted to do but with some notion of becoming a star chef (God knows where I got that idea from) and immediately got a job at a local (well localish) restaurant and started attending college on day release to get City and Guilds 706/1 and 706/2 (these qualifications are considered to be somewhat “rare” now and have been replaced with NVQs.)  College was pretty good what I recall of it and the tutors Chef Oliver (not Jamie lol !) and Chef Salsano were nice people to work under.  My boss at work was, however, a different story.  An Austrian by birth he had come to the United Kingdom and started up a restaurant and was quite definitely the most irritating and obnoxious boss I have EVER had the misfortune to work for.  He was also a miser and I was very poorly paid, even by “school leaver” standards and had to work up to 55 or so hours a week with no “overtime” pay.  Whilst I don’t deny the job gave me some valuable experience this is not the way life was meant to be so my important years of 16 to 19 were essentially ruined by poor wages, a bad boss and absolutely no social life due to the working hours.

Things got largely worse work wise after some changes, and I rapidly came to the conclusion that the catering industry was not for me.  I can cook, and I consider myself to be quite a good cook but it’s not my idea of a career.  Only those who end up on the TV or set up their own premises can make big money and even now catering is still is a poorly paid and largely disregarded profession.  We’re not all Gordon Ramsey or Jamie Oliver after all.

I ended up in the transport industry next.  I’ve been a courier, a next day delivery driver (DHL style but not DHL), an HGV driver, a despatch rider and even an international air courier.  Again not much scope for a “career” but better pay than catering and it is possible to get by.  Work wise that about sums it up for the 1980’s, although there’s other bits and pieces.

What about the “Age Of Love” part ?  Well ….  Let me see, there was …. Err, not a lot of that going about.  I was never a very confident teenager and health issues (I had had a lot of health problems when I was young with asthma and recurring bronchitis etc which I fortunately “grew out of”) had left me a nervous lad with little self confidence.  I couldn’t say “boo” to a goose, as the expression goes, so “love” was largely off the menu.  My first experience was ok, but my first girlfriend was less than pleasant and her treatment of me little short of disgraceful.  Funnily though I have stuck her name into Google and Facebook once or twice, as I am convinced that she probably now has 6 children, and lives in a council sink estate, maybe that’s just wishful thinking  A little bit of “revenge” mentality ?

Not surprisingly I was uninterested in politics, but it was of course an era of major change.  The Warsaw Pact was disbanded and the Soviet Union ceased “hostilities” (if you can call them that) with the Western world, essentially ending the Cold War.  The real change though was the change in economics.  The Margaret Thatcher/Ronald Reagan era was essentially a revival of capitalism and laissez faire economics (free market economics), the downside of which we are now feeling.

So have I anything positive to recall about the 1980’s ?  Err ….  Well there’s always the music.  Like any 16 year old lad I was into music, and Top Of The Tops was something I looked forward to every week (I worked Thursday nights so used to ask my mum to record it which she didn’t always manage to do) when I got home Saturday night after a long day in the kitchen.  Tainted Love by Soft Cell was number 1 when I left school and remains a firm favourite song for me.  Then there was Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Modern Romance, Michael Jackson and the greatest of them all ….  Frankie Goes To Hollywood.  Born out of what was called “Boystown” disco (Divine was another example) genre, to me Frankie was explosive.  Relax was great, Two Tribes even better, and I even discovered a taste for ballads with The Power Of Love.  God I wanted a Frankie Says Relax t-shirt as well, but I never got one ….  To anyone who has never listened to Frankie: if you’re going to experience the 1980’s then Frankie is what it’s all about (to me at least), they are the musical symbol of the 1980’s era.  I know some will disagree with me (doubtless Russ and Richard) but I still don’t think 1980’s music comes any better.

TV and film wise I don’t recall much of the 1980’s due to the antisocial hours I was working.  I do recall finding Private Schultz and Blott On The Landscape rather humorous though.  As for the films, well this is the era that gave use Back To The Future and Indiana Jones, seriously good stuff …

The only other memorable aspect of the 1980’s was the boom in computers.  The Commodore VIC20 and 64, and miscelllaneous arcade games exploded onto the world and we were awash with Pacman, Defender in the arcades and superb computer games such as Fort Apocalypse.  So the era gave me a grounding in computers, valuable experience for the future.

So all in all a pretty naff era.  What about the 1990’s ?  Well that’s another story, and I might reflect on that at some later point.

Steve

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