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It's a fan site which got a mention in the Salon article and got linked by some posters here..

http://www.eidolons-inn.de/mule/muledown.htm

I was just curious cause I originally made the ringtune they have on there.. also used it for ages myself, not that anyone ever recognised it either.

For great M.U.L.E. theme remixes, check out the MP3 collection at:

http://www.eidolons-inn.de/mule/muledown.htm

They even have an all vocal arrangement: http://eidolon.dnsalias.net/mulefiles/MayBeBop_Mul e.zip

The M.U.L.E. scene is alive and well, even now many years after its release. Ah planet IRATA (which was Atari spelled backwards).

While there is no GameSpy planetmule.com website for M.U.L.E, I strongly recommend World of M.U.L.E as the best starting point.

The Strategies is insightful, giving the designer's own ways of beating their enemies.

For the diehards, there is screenshots of the long-lost sequels: namely the Deluxe Amiga version, as well as "Son of M.U.L.E." which Dani discontinued because of EA's desire to add guns and bombs to her creation.

Finally, is Dani's email letter to the site shortly before her death.

A brilliant creator, I wish she was still around making great works.

The M.U.L.E. scene is alive and well, even now many years after its release. Ah planet IRATA (which was Atari spelled backwards).

While there is no GameSpy planetmule.com website for M.U.L.E, I strongly recommend World of M.U.L.E as the best starting point.

The Strategies is insightful, giving the designer's own ways of beating their enemies.

For the diehards, there is screenshots of the long-lost sequels: namely the Deluxe Amiga version, as well as "Son of M.U.L.E." which Dani discontinued because of EA's desire to add guns and bombs to her creation.

Finally, is Dani's email letter to the site shortly before her death.

A brilliant creator, I wish she was still around making great works.

The M.U.L.E. scene is alive and well, even now many years after its release. Ah planet IRATA (which was Atari spelled backwards).

While there is no GameSpy planetmule.com website for M.U.L.E, I strongly recommend World of M.U.L.E as the best starting point.

The Strategies is insightful, giving the designer's own ways of beating their enemies.

For the diehards, there is screenshots of the long-lost sequels: namely the Deluxe Amiga version, as well as "Son of M.U.L.E." which Dani discontinued because of EA's desire to add guns and bombs to her creation.

Finally, is Dani's email letter to the site shortly before her death.

A brilliant creator, I wish she was still around making great works.

The M.U.L.E. scene is alive and well, even now many years after its release. Ah planet IRATA (which was Atari spelled backwards).

While there is no GameSpy planetmule.com website for M.U.L.E, I strongly recommend World of M.U.L.E as the best starting point.

The Strategies is insightful, giving the designer's own ways of beating their enemies.

For the diehards, there is screenshots of the long-lost sequels: namely the Deluxe Amiga version, as well as "Son of M.U.L.E." which Dani discontinued because of EA's desire to add guns and bombs to her creation.

Finally, is Dani's email letter to the site shortly before her death.

A brilliant creator, I wish she was still around making great works.

PC games, what about the great titles for Commodore 64 and Atari 800, back in the day?

My favorite old game was M.U.L.E. for C=64. Great gameplay (including one-to-four-player mode!) plus an infectious SID soundtrack.

A close second was the Sentinel, a pretty damn spooky strategy game with interesting polygon grafix.

Or "Elite," a 3D graphix game along the lines of "Space Trader."

Electronic auctions? Can't the guys who wrote M.U.L.E. claim prior art?

For example, back when MYST clones were all the rage, every adventure game had at least one critic's quote on their ad saying "better than MYST!". Same for DOOM clones or, more recently, Civilization clones.

Oh, and for what it's worth, Dani Bunten said in an interview just prior to his/her death that he/she had pitched a remake of M.U.L.E. to EA for the modern systems of the day, but when EA insisted that there be some sort of weapons in the game (M.U.L.E.'s with frikkin' laser beams attached to their heads!) Bunten balked and the idea was abandoned.

Oh, and this isn't the first attempt to (re)make M.U.L.E. for the PC, this page has a metric ton of them.

While I've often dreamed of an update to M.U.L.E. (or Archon), I question whether simply updating the graphics and adding new cutscenes can really enhance the excellent gameplay. M.U.L.E.'s gameplay was such that the random events every turn could throw off the balance of the game just enough to give any player the opportunity to take the lead within a couple turns (there were only 12 turns in the game, each representing a month). There's nothing quite like making the richest players pay over $200 per unit of food because they're starving. Besides that, it had arcade and strategic elements (try figuring out which plot of land you're going to grab at the beginning of each turn can be somewhat stressful) along with a certain 8-bit charm that probably won't translate very well to the modern PC.

I'll definitely grab the demo, but that's only if EA doesn't sue them out of existence first...

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi

First of all - M.U.L.E. is one of the best games in history, just like NetHack or Civilization.

You can find few clones in the net - but it's for DOS or Windows. I couldn't find any clone which will run in Linux. I thought about writing SDL clone myself, but this is a lot of work (the hardest parts for me is AI and drawing sprites) - and I am not sure if arcade parts should be still in game.

Do you know any Open Source M.U.L.E. project I could join?

To find information about game, and clones list enter page:
World of M.U.L.E

Here is a link to a page that lists multiple clones, including the open source one.

LEGAL - DMCA

There have been a few comments here that seem to seriously misconstrue what the DMCA is capable of, so let's review that then take a look at reverse-engineering case history.

"Ella the Cat" fished for ideas on what the Microsoft team might have done to keep unauthorized software off their box, then worried about DMCA implications. "Chakat" suggested that circumventing MS's only-signed-discs-may-apply code could be a DMCA violation.

I won't quote it all, but here's chapter 12 of the US Code. 1201(b) is what Dmitry's been charged under. It only prohibits devices that circumvent methods that "effectively protects a right of a copyright owner."

In this case, Microsoft can claim copyright on the BIOS in the Xbox. Suppose that we remove the MS-BIOS and replace it with one that'll boot anything (L-BIOS). We've circumvented a measure that prevented running unauthorized games, but that authorization or lack of has no legal weight behind it. Microsoft must enforce it themselves by creating strong measures.

We have to be careful that L-BIOS doesn't allow booting copies of games or we will run afoul of the DMCA.

LEGAL - Reverse Engineering

The Emulation FAQ AppendixB Appendix C provides a good background. Also see CASE SUMMARIES OF COMPUTER COPYRIGHT CASES and Overreaching Provisions in Software License Agreements by Michael Liberman.

The two cases that I think are most apropos are Sega v. Accolade and Sony v. Connectix. Accolade tried to create Genesis-compatible games. Connectix tried to emulate the Playstation. Both cases were about copyrights on games that were disassembled in order to figure out how the game machine worked. The odd thing to me is that disassembling the code and creating a work that used the ideas contained therin was no problem. What Sony & Sega attacked on was making a copy of the ROM into a computer's memory to do the disassembling. The courts found (post-DMCA in the Sony case) that the copying was fair use to gain access to the ideas. Copyright only applies to the expression of those ideas in the object code of the ROM.

Disassembling MS-BIOS to figure out how to talk to the memory, USB and hard disk controllers and create L-BIOS is perfectly legal. It's important to avoid copying MS-BIOS code directly and a clean room would be a good idea (the disassemblers send specs to the L-BIOS authors who never see the actual code), but it seems that Connectix did not employ clean room techniques and got away with it.

TECHNICAL

The Xbox System Software Overview says in part:

The ROM [...] will provide the following [...] services: FAT32 file system, UDFS file system, Copy-protection support, Certificate/signature validation

Supported media are CD, DVD, CD-RW, or DVD-R. There is no CD-R support.

Power Up- When the user turns on the console, the system software is decompressed out of read-only memory (ROM) into random access memory (RAM). Once in RAM, the system software initializes the hardware[....]

Media Detection- Upon power up [...] If it determines that the media [in the DVD drive] is a game, it loads the game into RAM, checks the signature of the game to verify that it is an authentic copy, then starts playing the game.

-

So it appears that MS-BIOS will only boot signed (presumably using strong encryption) DVDs. There are, of course, two answers to this:

1) Replace the MS-BIOS with a more pleasant L-BIOS that'll boot anything and perhaps boot off the hard drive instead of the DVD. Loading "real" games sounds pretty hairy and I'd rather not figure out how to do that, so you won't be able to play them anymore. I'm envisioning replacing the Flash ROM (I have access to a nice Nikon binocular microscope and a Metcal soldering iron for working on surface mount parts), but there are a couple of alternatives: a) piggy-back on a 2nd ROM containing L-BIOS except for chip-select which is hooked to a switch or b) use the JTAG port to reprogram the part in-circuit (only possible with some mfg.'s parts).

2) Figure out how to sign our own discs. This is a good excuse for me to get a DVD recorder. I'm concerned that this method is fewer steps away from a "mod chip" that plays duplicated games.

-

Well, that's what I've found out. I'm interested because it sounds like it'll be sort of hard. If we need to hook up a logic analyzer & watch MS's code do its thing I can handle that. I think getting Linux up & running, talking to keyboards & mice over USB & doing TCP/IP over the ethernet port shouldn't be too bad. Getting basic graphics (VGA emulation) up shouldn't be bad, but I make no promises that we'll be able to use the nVidia 3d. I'm thinking a server is a lot more likely than a nuevo-Indrema/TuxBox.

Worst case scenario is that the chipset itself has encryption hardware built-in and it must be unlocked by the CPU before it will enable access to RAM or peripherals. I doubt they had enough time to do something that clever.

By the way, you can reach me at morganw@yahoo.com (posting preferences not workin' for me)

LEGAL - DMCA

There have been a few comments here that seem to seriously misconstrue what the DMCA is capable of, so let's review that then take a look at reverse-engineering case history.

"Ella the Cat" fished for ideas on what the Microsoft team might have done to keep unauthorized software off their box, then worried about DMCA implications. "Chakat" suggested that circumventing MS's only-signed-discs-may-apply code could be a DMCA violation.

I won't quote it all, but here's chapter 12 of the US Code. 1201(b) is what Dmitry's been charged under. It only prohibits devices that circumvent methods that "effectively protects a right of a copyright owner."

In this case, Microsoft can claim copyright on the BIOS in the Xbox. Suppose that we remove the MS-BIOS and replace it with one that'll boot anything (L-BIOS). We've circumvented a measure that prevented running unauthorized games, but that authorization or lack of has no legal weight behind it. Microsoft must enforce it themselves by creating strong measures.

We have to be careful that L-BIOS doesn't allow booting copies of games or we will run afoul of the DMCA.

LEGAL - Reverse Engineering

The Emulation FAQ AppendixB Appendix C provides a good background. Also see CASE SUMMARIES OF COMPUTER COPYRIGHT CASES and Overreaching Provisions in Software License Agreements by Michael Liberman.

The two cases that I think are most apropos are Sega v. Accolade and Sony v. Connectix. Accolade tried to create Genesis-compatible games. Connectix tried to emulate the Playstation. Both cases were about copyrights on games that were disassembled in order to figure out how the game machine worked. The odd thing to me is that disassembling the code and creating a work that used the ideas contained therin was no problem. What Sony & Sega attacked on was making a copy of the ROM into a computer's memory to do the disassembling. The courts found (post-DMCA in the Sony case) that the copying was fair use to gain access to the ideas. Copyright only applies to the expression of those ideas in the object code of the ROM.

Disassembling MS-BIOS to figure out how to talk to the memory, USB and hard disk controllers and create L-BIOS is perfectly legal. It's important to avoid copying MS-BIOS code directly and a clean room would be a good idea (the disassemblers send specs to the L-BIOS authors who never see the actual code), but it seems that Connectix did not employ clean room techniques and got away with it.

TECHNICAL

The Xbox System Software Overview says in part:

The ROM [...] will provide the following [...] services: FAT32 file system, UDFS file system, Copy-protection support, Certificate/signature validation

Supported media are CD, DVD, CD-RW, or DVD-R. There is no CD-R support.

Power Up- When the user turns on the console, the system software is decompressed out of read-only memory (ROM) into random access memory (RAM). Once in RAM, the system software initializes the hardware[....]

Media Detection- Upon power up [...] If it determines that the media [in the DVD drive] is a game, it loads the game into RAM, checks the signature of the game to verify that it is an authentic copy, then starts playing the game.

-

So it appears that MS-BIOS will only boot signed (presumably using strong encryption) DVDs. There are, of course, two answers to this:

1) Replace the MS-BIOS with a more pleasant L-BIOS that'll boot anything and perhaps boot off the hard drive instead of the DVD. Loading "real" games sounds pretty hairy and I'd rather not figure out how to do that, so you won't be able to play them anymore. I'm envisioning replacing the Flash ROM (I have access to a nice Nikon binocular microscope and a Metcal soldering iron for working on surface mount parts), but there are a couple of alternatives: a) piggy-back on a 2nd ROM containing L-BIOS except for chip-select which is hooked to a switch or b) use the JTAG port to reprogram the part in-circuit (only possible with some mfg.'s parts).

2) Figure out how to sign our own discs. This is a good excuse for me to get a DVD recorder. I'm concerned that this method is fewer steps away from a "mod chip" that plays duplicated games.

-

Well, that's what I've found out. I'm interested because it sounds like it'll be sort of hard. If we need to hook up a logic analyzer & watch MS's code do its thing I can handle that. I think getting Linux up & running, talking to keyboards & mice over USB & doing TCP/IP over the ethernet port shouldn't be too bad. Getting basic graphics (VGA emulation) up shouldn't be bad, but I make no promises that we'll be able to use the nVidia 3d. I'm thinking a server is a lot more likely than a nuevo-Indrema/TuxBox.

Worst case scenario is that the chipset itself has encryption hardware built-in and it must be unlocked by the CPU before it will enable access to RAM or peripherals. I doubt they had enough time to do something that clever.

By the way, you can reach me at morganw@yahoo.com (posting preferences not workin' for me)

Zork isn't written in C, it's written in Z-Code. Before the invention of the "Z-machine" and consequently Z-Code, Zork's father, dungeon, was written in Fortran.
Just downloaded it from www.funet.fi, c sources that is.

Activision was nearly dead a few years back, considering changing their name and doing business packages. That's what stunned me, was seeing them still doing computer games. I'd been through their offices in Mountain View, back in 1985, when David Crane was still developing Little Computer People. (now we call these things virii)


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Catch the Wumpus!
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