Privateer Remake Complete

flyboy writes "In a similar vein to the remakes of the Origin's Ultima series games reported in 2001 and 2004 a group of Wing Commander fans has remade Wing Commander: Privateer. Unlike the Ultima remakes, the Privateer remake is finished at version 1.0 with 3d graphics and the whole storyline. For the new kids on the block, WC:Privateer was a much loved trading game similar to the more venerable Elite, which appears also to be in the process of a remake. As a linux fan I was most happy with the remake's use of GPL 3d engine software and release of Linux, Macintosh and Windows versions. See Screenshots here."

Comments

Drool!

[Anonymous Coward]

Best space-sim EVER!

Re:Drool!

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely the best -- Who can forget the start sequence with the asteroid field and the pirates...

The main characters attitude was great too. -- They took the generation-X mantra, threw it into a character and sent them out to the new frontier

I never got the chance to play privateer-2. Any chance they will do the same with that? It seemed to have some really finickity hardware requirements from what I recall.

Re:Drool!

[dunkelfalke]

sorry, but privateer 2 sucked badly.

Re:Drool!

[strider44]

I liked it - it had a good clear interface and nice gameplay and a decent storyline with good cutscenes. However my favourite is the expansion pack for privateer. I can't remember that it was called, I only remember rc (I think that's its initials). Anyway for me it came with privateer. It was good.

Re:Drool!

[Txiasaeia]

Righteous Fire. Very interesting expansion pack, but bloody difficult IIRC.

Re:Drool!

[OblvnDrgn]

Righteous Fire

"I can't believe someone my Steltek gun!"

Re:Drool!

[graysonburrows]

The game actually has righteous fire apparently I've yet to beat the original campaign...but apparently if you land on Jolson after you get the gun.... some thievery occurs

Re:Drool!

[dunkelfalke]

yes, i loved privateer and righteous fire, too.

but i wrote about privateer 2 - the half interactive movie game. that one sucked. i have bought it because i loved privateer 1 so much but unfortunately it was crap.

Re:Drool!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't say Priv 2 was crap, but it was misleading to call it Privateer 2, it had nothing to do with the original privateer and in fact had NOTHING to do with the Wing Commander Universe at all. Furthermore it was quite a bit grittier IMHO, but also a lot harder to make a profit in.

It'd kinda be like uhmm, The Phantom menace if it didn't have references to the first 3 movies :)

Re:Drool!

[Gorath99]

That's (of course) a matter of opinion. I actually quite liked Privateer 2. It had a lot of atmosphere and was just a lot of fun to play in a simple point and shoot way.

Perhaps you're mostly disappointed that it wasn't more like the original Privateer?

Re:Drool!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I've found the final plot mission in the first story more difficult than any mission in the second story. You know, in Righteous Fire, there were those shield regenerators, gun boosters etc. available, that made things distinctly easier.

Though I definitely had more experience when I played RF than when I played the original Privateer...

Escape Velocity?

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks a lot like Ambrosia Software's Escape Velocity series. I had a lot of fun playing those on my Macs a few years back.

(oh, and FP ;P)

Re:Escape Velocity?

[moonbender]

Note that Escape Velocity was released for Windows last year. I loved it on the Mac, and on Windows I even paid for it... Although IMO the final scenario (Nova) isn't anywhere near as good as the second (Override) or some of the total conversion add-ons available - probably because Nova is fairly linear. Fortunately, Override was ported to Windows, as well, and is available as a free add-on.

Re:Escape Velocity?

[Admiral Ackbar 8]

Not really, having played all the Escape Velocities and the original Privateer, this remake should look nothing like EV. EV is two dimensional top down, whereas in Privateer (original at least), you sit in the cockpit of your ship and fly with a joystick in a full 3D environment. The screenshots of the remake seem to be 3D like the first one.

Re:Escape Velocity?

[mahdi13]

The original Privateer was sprite based like all the other Wing Commander games, this remake is 3D rendered

Re:Escape Velocity?

[worst_name_ever]

Back in the day when I was just starting to write what later became Escape Velocity, I didn't have a PC, but I did see Privateer at the store and thought it sounded really cool. So, there wasn't really any direct influence, although the phenomenon of parallel evolution applies to open-ended space action/RPG hybrids just like any other game type - certain ideas are just universally fun, so you'll see them crop up repeatedly in different games. Sometimes they cross media types, as evidenced by when I first saw Firefly and said "hey, this is like EV: The Series!" ;)

Now that I am leet enough to have both MacOS and Windows machines, I should probably download this remake and check it out. It sure looks like fun.

mcb

Re:Escape Velocity?

[Alarash]

While we are off-topic, you might want to check out recently released Star Wolves, a very good Tactical/Space Opera/RPG (what's not RPG these days?). It may not have the same freedom feeling you get with Escape Velocity, but it's pretty cool.

Re:Escape Velocity?

[kidgenius]

I will say that I loved playing EV back on my old performa. I am thinking about getting a mac mini just so I can play the EV series. Too bad there are not linux ports of the old version. (I know i could play the new Nova under WINE if I really wanted to)

Re:Escape Velocity?

[Admiral Ackbar 8]

I see what you mean. I was referring to how you are in the cockpit in Privateer, whereas in EV you are above the ship and "space" is a 2-dimensional plane.

Re:Escape Velocity?

[Y-Crate]

There is a PC port of Nova and the earlier games have been ported to the new engine. Happy (plasma) trails!

Re:Escape Velocity?

[kidgenius]

I haven't found any information on Ambrosia's site about the older ones being ported over. Do you have any links?

Re:Escape Velocity?

[Lord_Dweomer]

But....but....thats not how you're supposed to react! Where are the lawsuits, and the FUD spreading?!?!?!

Re:Escape Velocity?

[artemis67]

EV was a great game, I spent many hours playing it.

As far as influences go, though, EV always seemed to me to be a direct descendent of that old BBS game, TradeWars 2002. Without the online aspect, of course. But there were a lot of similarlities in the commerce part of the game.

Re:Escape Velocity?

[worst_name_ever]

I admit that I did play a ton of TradeWars when I was in highschool, and some of the inspiration for EV came from saying "gee, wouldn't it be cool if you could actuall see what was going on here?" so there was definitely some influence, at least in a general sense!

Re:Escape Velocity?

[Yosho]

Interestingly enough, my first exposure to EV was with EV:N a bit over a year ago, shortly after I got my first Mac; my first impression of the game was, "Wow, this is a lot like Privateer." ;-) It was also the first piece of shareware I've registered in years.

Re:Escape Velocity?

[TC (WC)]

The original Privateer was sprite based like all the other Wing Commander games, this remake is 3D rendered

What? WC1, 2, Academy, and Privateer were sprite based. All the other Wing Commander games used 3d engines.

Re:Escape Velocity?

[mahdi13]

Sorry, let me reword that for you

All the good Wing Commander games were sprite based :)

Re:Escape Velocity?

[moonbender]

Apart from the Win ports already mentioned by myself and other, you can play Escape Velocity on an emulated Mac in x86. I did that before they got around to porting it. You need Basilisk II (680x0 emu), a copy of a Mac ROM and a copy of Mac OS 7/8 - the latter is freely available on the Apple website, IIRC. Anyway, guides to the whole emulating thing are available. But then again these days it's probably much easier to run the whole thing in Wine.

Re:Escape Velocity?

[Squirrel Killer]

First off, thank you, EV is, if not my favorite game of all time, easily in the top three.

Back in the day when I was just starting to write what later became Escape Velocity, I didn't have a PC, but I did see Privateer at the store and thought it sounded really cool.

Necessity is the mother of invention. That reminds me of a text-based C-64 game I wrote based on what I had read of Elite (but was too poor to buy to play it for myself), and another game that got about 3/4 written based on what I had read about Hack and Larn (neither of which was available for the C-64). Hrm... I'm sure I've got that disk around here somewhere, maybe I should finish it up...

great

[Anonymous Coward]

this was one of my all time favorites back in the day.

now just gimme x-com on linux

Re:great

[Baal Sebub]

which one?

Re:great

[porter235]

Check out UFO2000, a multiplayer xcom game that will run on linux! As well, you could always play the original using dosbox.

Re:great

[rbarreira]

Great sig, congratulations :D

Re:great

[Snaller]

Tsk tsk.

Re:great

[Baal Sebub]

I think I got modded funny just for the sig.
Maybe I should get an insightful one.

Re:great

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably crashes less often than the original, too. It'd be difficult to do otherwise.

Man.

[WarlockD]

Already slashdotted, and its not even the first Post yet.

Any reviews so far?

I've tried all 3

[Closest2God]

I've played all 3 - the Mac, Linux, and Win32 version. I hate to say this, but the Linux version simply isn't up to snuff. The graphics are choppy and blocky, making the game unplayable. The Win32 version, on the other hand, is a joy to play. So go out and enjoy this game, but have a Windows partition around to enjoy it on. -Steve

Re:I've tried all 3

[mahdi13]

As the last poster said, are you using good 3d drivers for your card or are you on an ATI and using the kernels DRI drivers??

I've been playing the pre-1.0 release on Linux and have not seen what you described at all.

Re:I've tried all 3

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried the linux version, and wine with the windows version

Wine sure likes the windows version--except it won't play music for some reason...SFX go ok--so it's fine as I'm bumping to 9 inch nails!!

Eine kleine Qvuakemusik

Re:I've tried all 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that all three versions are compiled from the same source there's no reason why the Linux version should be any different to the Windows version. Either you're using crappy hardware on your Linux machine, or there's a problem somewhere else in your system; to wit, non-accelerated OpenGL libraries.

On the other hand, you're probably Trolling.

Re:I've tried all 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, don't blame DRI. The DRI drivers are good 3D drivers. True I use the latest CVS and have texture compression enabled, but anyway I can play Enemy Territory at 90 FPS -- max for refresh rate. UT2004 run nearly pefect too.

Re:I've tried all 3

[Lussarn]

I tried it in Linux and I don't know what you mean, I cranked everything up and to me it's as smooth as it should be. Don't know how to benchmark but from the looks it's constant over 70fps (Can't see any higer :).

Do you use accelerated 3d drivers?

Re:I've tried all 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey guys,
take a look at his other posts.

This was a troll. Mods, moderate accordingly.

Re:I've tried all 3

[dAzED1]

I have an ATI card on my laptop, and only recently bothered to try to play a 3d game. It was absolutely terrible - "choppy" doesn't begin to describe it. I'd move the mouse, and the pointer on the screen would move 30 seconds later. This was with the remade xcom as reported recently here.

Do you know off-hand what I might have done wrong? I don't generally play games, so I had never noticed it.

Re:I've tried all 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know off-hand what I might have done wrong?

Yes, I do. You tried to get an ATI product to work with Linux.

Sorry! Hope you have better luck with your next purchase.

Re:I've tried all 3

[SquadBoy]

What drivers do you have?

Re:I've tried all 3

[MamiyaOtaru]

It was developed on Linux, if there was something wrong with it, t would likely have been noticed

Re:I've tried all 3

[darilon]

Almost guaranteed you have the default DRI drivers from your distribution running. These are fine for 2D but use software rendering for 3D. In order to unleash the 3D hardware power, you need to download and install the proprietary linux drivers from ATI's web site. I have had mixed results with these drivers in the past. Some times they install and work fine and other times they do... strange things and I have to start over again. Read the directions carefully and follow them. Then draw pentagrams and burn tallow candles and mutter latin incantations and hope for the best.

I have them running fine on this box. The only problem I have now is that they refuse to work with the Doom3 Linux native binary (sigh).

Re:I've tried all 3

[Anonymous Coward]

You description is absolutely accurate and also the main reason why Linux is not being globally adopted as the desktop OS. Most people don't have the wherewithal to make Linux work if the first attempt fails.

Re:I've tried all 3

[mahdi13]

Most people don't realize that the same problem exists in Windows either. Generic Windows display drivers barely work and games are impossible to play (let alone more then 256 colors) without getting the correct driver from the manufacture.

Just because the PC came preinstalled with the correct drivers and settings, it doesn't mean it worked that way without someone having to do something

Generic DRI drivers might not be the best, but they are light years better then Generic Windows Drivers...

Re:I've tried all 3

[Anonymous Coward]

htf do you install it? I downloaded the bz2.run, ran it, finally figured out to use --keep, ran it again, saw the directory, went into it and there are no instructions how to run it on Linux. The one suggestion I found doesn't work because some files aren't present.

Re:I've tried all 3

[Suddenly_Dead]

The DRI, last I looked, do not do 3D hardware acceleration well or at all with the R300 chips and up. Or such.

I've tried them, and they did nothing with 3d games on my 9800 Pro, I had to download the proprietary ATI drivers.

Privateer remake complete?

[Rahga]

I thought Digital Anvil release "Freelancer" about 2 years ago...

Re:Privateer remake complete?

[gl4ss]

too bad Freelancer didn't get it right. sucked badly, just a point enemies and click excersise.

Re:Privateer remake complete?

[Zorilla]

Hey, I at least liked it better than X-Wing's remake: Descent Freespace.

Re:Privateer remake complete?

[Anonymous Coward]

Freelancer was a great game. A it fell a little short on depth, and the ending... GAH! It seemed that they just decided "Hey! We have sunk enough money into this. Let's just end it here."

I could have play'd another 10 missions and perhaps bought another 2 ships. Then I would have been happier. At least I didn't buy it.

(BTW, THANK YOU to the dev team who made this possible! I have been wanting to play this game ever since I upgraded to XP (even installed DOS on an old box just to play it again...).

Cheers!
--Xapp

Re:Privateer remake complete?

[Txiasaeia]

Get the Evolutions mod then - more ships, more weapons, the addition of different types of equipment (can't remember off-hand but they help with shield recharging, weapons recharging, heck, even additional armour!) and - the best part - heavier ships move *slower*! It takes longer to move a cargo train around than it does a little fighter. Amazing!

Re:Privateer remake complete?

[Anonymous Coward]

Freespace wasn't all that much. Freespace 2 was one of the best games ever. Shame that Volition doesn't seem to care about wrapping up the plot with a Freespace 3. Seems to me any game involving a joystick is pretty much dead -- I bought my gaming PC sans stick and haven't needed one yet...

Re:Privateer remake complete?

[Silverlancer]

Nah, EVE Online had it. Those who were around during the age of Elite call it Elite Online--its everything Elite and Privateer tried to be, online, with over 50,000 players on one server (12,800 on at once is the record) in a ruthless, space-based Machiavellian world of politics, crime, scandals, and alliances...

Re:Privateer remake complete?

[qa'lth]

It's not that they don't CARE, it's that they CAN'T.
Interplay own[s|ed] the rights to the FreeSpace franchise, and they decided to pull FreeSpace2 from shelves and not allow Volition to work on FS3.

And now, Interplay is gone, so there's little hope of a FS3 coming to pass.

Re:Privateer remake complete?

[CaptnMArk]

For me, games that require a joystick suck.

I liked the way Wing Commander used the mouse and there is nothing better. (Freelancer while nothing special and too arcadish at least did this well).

It's the like playing a FPS with the game console controller instead of the keyboard and mouse.

The way some games -- like freespace use the mouse to simulate the joystick is tolerable but inferior. It works for slow action, but in a real dogfight you end up repositioning the mouse too much.

Re:Privateer remake complete?

[TheKidWho]

And the nerf bat of doom!

Re:Privateer remake complete?

[XenoRyet]

There's a difference. If there were such a thing as a space fighter, you would fly it using a stick type control. Comparing to an FPS isn't really relivant, since there is no input device for your own body. The point of having a joystick for a space sims is to increase realism. Using a mouse takes you out of the game too much.

Re:Privateer remake complete?

[Sj0]

Or...you could...I dunno....try this Open Source remake of privateer....seeing as it's here and all. :P /me shrugs

I dunno.

Re:Privateer remake complete?

[zerokey93]

"there is no input device for your own body"
huhhuhhuh.
I would tend to disagree ;)

I agree that the mouse takes you out of the game. I don't like one hand mouse and one hand keyboard.
(Granted, the Nostromo Speedpad n52 eliminates that, but I use mine more for Photoshop, music and video work).

I picked up Freelancer when it first came out and was so dissappointed by the lack of joystick support. Upon reading various message boards, I discovered viscious arguments about joystick/mouse gaming. I would say the game was -fun-, but I want fun AND realism.

I'm a joystick gamer; space combat sims being my lasting love (I suck at air flight - the whole gravity, fall down go boom thing - except for the original Gunship by Microprose). With my Saitek X45 and a good space combat sim, I'm in some semblance of gamer heaven. I NEVER have to touch the keyboard when playing.

Granted, any control system is completely arbitrary. They are designs that suited whatever team that designed them, and thus became the norm in that particular arena. A joystick feels natural to me for flight because it's what I was raised with, with regard to space/flight sims. A mouse does NOT feel natural to me.

Ultimately, what I want is a complete seperation of ship control and viewport control. I'm going to try Freelook soon and try to configure that to control view only (only in a game that allows smooth and continuous view changes)

But now I'm babbling :)

Re:Privateer remake complete?

[Anonymous Coward]

Games that require a joystick suck? Yeah, and games that require a 3D graphics card suck, too! Get real, a 3D game without a proper card looks much worse, and the control you can have with a joystick is not equaled by a mouse or keyboard, in certain cases. You want one example? Flight simulators. Hell, not only a joystick, pedals are great, too, and often give an edge to those who don't have them, not to mention those who lack a 3rd axis entirely. An ace with a keyboard will get shot down by an intermediate with a joystick, the precision and response speed are just too different. Space sims are often flight sims without gravity (most people don't know how big a difference that is, though), a joystick makes a huge difference. Unless you're flying something like enterprise, it'd be weird to fly that with a joystick...

Re:Privateer remake complete?

[tim256]

I thought Freelancer was fun the first time through. However, it was a bit simplistic and the static economy sucked.

Re:Privateer remake complete?

[Silverlancer]

I see you play EVE Online ;) So true, so true... Combat--CCP Nerf Bat hits for 128485929385 points of damage.

Obvious joke

[RyoSaeba]

Guess there's an opportunity to make money by supplying many servers to cope with /. load!
New business plan:
* post a privateer story on /.
* wait for servers to melt on the load
* come in your ship filled with additional hardware
* PROFIT!

Re:Obvious joke

[gl4ss]

though, it's on sf.net. coming nicely at 270kb/s+

Re:Obvious joke

[Sneeka2]

I can't believe you're posting on /. and forgot the most important step:

- ???

Re:Obvious joke

[zootm]

But oh no! They've countered with Bittorrent! More traffic makes it work better!

Re:Obvious joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Arrgh spare us your atrocious treacly J-pop sig. My eyes are melting...

SourceForge Screenshots

[MankyD]

They link to a Source Forge Gallery of screenshots. They also warn that there are spoilers in the gallery.

Re:SourceForge Screenshots

[digidave]

"They also warn that there are spoilers in the gallery."

Yeah... It's only been twelve years since the original game was released. I wouldn't want to ruin everything.

P.S. don't tell me what happened in Super Bowl XXVII. I taped it and haven't had a chance to watch it yet.

Re:SourceForge Screenshots

[Ubergrendle]

P.S. don't tell me what happened in Super Bowl XXVII. I taped it and haven't had a chance to watch it yet.

You'd better hurry... shelf life for Betamax is only ~ 10 years before the picture degrades.

Re:SourceForge Screenshots

[haagmm]

Who used Beta Max in 1993? i thought VHS killed it long before that. btw i have bad news about the Bills for you.

Re:SourceForge Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be imagining it. Looks like any generic 101 key keyboard. It doesn't even have Amiga keys on it.

Re:SourceForge Screenshots

[Deusy]

Just because the original was released twelve years ago doesn't mean everybody played it. I know your sarcasm was an attempt to be funny but not everybody watches or plays something when it comes out, especially if they were just a youngster when it was originally released.

What if you wanted to watch a movie that was released a decade ago? Would you be pissed if somebody gave away the twist in conversation with you just because it was that old.

Re:SourceForge Screenshots

[NinjaFarmer]

I actually own the original game, but I have never beaten it due to the fact that it is pretty incompatable with newer systems.

Re:SourceForge Screenshots

[docflan]

Darth Vader is Luke's father. Now stuff it.

Re:SourceForge Screenshots

[Reducer2001]

No... That's not true... That's impossible!!!!

Re:SourceForge Screenshots

[docflan]

Look into your heart. You know it to be true.

Re:SourceForge Screenshots

[Scooter]

Wow! A ship with a PC, 2 cash registers and a mixing desk in the cockpit! :P It's a wonder he can see where he's going with all that stuff piled on the dash.

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/gallery/vegastri ke_mod/pirate_ejection

Re:SourceForge Screenshots

[Picass0]

I found this more interesting -
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/gallery/vegat rek

Re:SourceForge Screenshots

[Cat_Byte]

Yeah that would be what I used to call the "cow" ship you start with. better ships have more visibility, speed, weapons, etc. you can turn off the cockpit in this version (I've been playing it a few months) but its pretty much cheating since that was the biggest reason to do your first upgrade.

Re:SourceForge Screenshots

[Drooling Iguana]

Rosebud is a sled!

Re:SourceForge Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone who knows his classics...

Re:SourceForge Screenshots

[Clock Nova]

...and the chick in "The Crying Game" is a dude.

OT but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is one of the Ultima remakes of which they speak. One of the best games ever made.

Re:OT but...

[halivar]

Exult deserves kudos. They took the best RPG ever made, and perfected it.

Torrent for the game

[MjDelves]

http://www.filerush.com/download.php?target=privat eer1.0.exe

Re:Torrent for the game

[MjDelves]

That should be without the space in "privateer": http://www.filerush.com/download.php?target=privat eer1.0.exe

Re:Torrent for the game

[moonbender]

You must be new around here. ;) (Slashdot puts a space in long "words" to prevent them from messing with the layout.) Linkfied.

Re:Torrent for the game

[MjDelves]

Oh I didn't know that. Well it doesn't seem to make any difference anyway.

Re:Torrent for the game

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, you know, rather than linking to the download pages already given in the story, we could link to the torrent files themselves:

Windows
Mac
Linux

Re:Torrent for the game

[Saeger]

And if slashdot would use CSS, they could simply put each comment in it's own div block that auto-scrolled the overflow (horizontally).

Re:Torrent for the game

[Anonymous Coward]

That would require putting effort into slashcode though, and we can't have that. It's not like anyone draws a check over at OSTG to do any actual WORK on slashdot. phpBB has absolutely kicked slashcode's ass featurewise now, and I don't just mean the stupid smilies. it's just shameful, really.

Re:Torrent for the game

[Anonymous Coward]

Does phpBB have threads?

Re:Torrent for the game

[Anonymous Coward]

put each comment in it's own div block

"its".

Re:Torrent for the game

[captwheeler]

periods go inside the quotes

Re:Torrent for the game

[Buran]

You could write a patch, couldn't you, and submit it to the slashcode project?

Re:Torrent for the game

[drinkypoo]

I seem to recall that when this came up the first time it was proclaimed that you would have to rewrite practically the whole bloody thing to use CSS throughout, and no one actually responsible for maintaining was interested in using CSS any other way. Further, they were not interested in doing it themselves. Maybe that last has changed or something, but I doubt the rest has. It would be a good thing for everyone, because it would dramatically reduce bandwidth usage.

Re:Torrent for the game

[Buran]

Ah. Too bad... it would really benefit. Lots of other content managers out there, too, that are decent. We can hope, can't we?

But then, reducing bandwidth usage would be rather ironic for slashdot, eh?

Re:Torrent for the game

[Eideewt]

I believe that depends on what flavor of English you use.

Re:Torrent for the game

[captwheeler]

sometimes the grammar nazi's make me want to snipe back :(

I believe that depends on what flavor of English you use.

Wikipedia says...

The American convention is for sentence punctuation to be included inside the quotation marks, even if the punctuation is not part of the quoted sentence, while the British style is to have the punctuation outside the quotation marks for small quoted phrases:

Someone shouted 'Shut up!'. (British)
Someone shouted "Shut up!" (American)

Re:Torrent for the game

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, did you actually read what you just posted?

Remake BioForge

[SunPin]

I know it will confuse people who think BioForge is the open source biology organization but the game came first from Origin.

This site has siezed being. It has gone ...

[Qbertino]

.. to see it's maker. It is an ex-site.

Mirrors anyone?

Re:This site has siezed being. It has gone ...

[Psiren]

[My english is better than most other people's german, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]

You probably meant ceased, not seized. Seized is when you grab hold of something. Ceased is when something ceases to be. Hope that's polite enough :)

Re:This site has siezed being. It has gone ...

[bobintetley]

MirrorDot as usual.

Re:This site has siezed being. It has gone ...

[jbash]

The site is slashdotted. Here is Google's cache of it.

Re:This site has siezed being. It has gone ...

[gl4ss]

if you want the thing.. grab it here
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wcuniverse/priv ateer1.0.exe?download

Re:This site has siezed being. It has gone ...

[Qbertino]

Actually it would have to go this way:

"It's not 'pinin'! It's passed on! This site is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet it's maker! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn't hadn't posted it on slashdot it wouldn't be pushing up the daisies! It's metabolic processes are now 'istory! It's off the twig! It's kicked the bucket, It's shuffled off it's mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-SITE!!"

But thanks for the correction anyway. A freudian slide I guess. :-))

Re:This site has siezed being. It has gone ...

[fforw]

But thanks for the correction anyway. A freudian slide I guess. :-))

Der englische Ausdruck für eine Freudsche Fehlleistung ist "freudian slip".

(Hoffe das war auch höflich genug =)

Re:This site has siezed being. It has gone ...

[Anonymous Coward]

gone to meet it's maker
It's metabolic processes

"its".

Use an apostrophe when contracting "it is" or "it has". E.g., "It is off the twig! It has kicked the bucket," --> "It's off the twig! It's kicked the bucket" is correct. Do not use an apostrophe when using it as a posessive. E.g., "gone to meet the maker of it" --> "gone to meet its maker". A fairly easy way to determine which to use is to try substituting "it is" or "it has". If the meaning of the sentence hasn't changed, then it's (it is) OK to contract it to "it's"; otherwise, use "its". E.g., "gone to meet it is maker" doesn't make sense, so you should not use an apostrophe.

Note that this peculiarity applies only to pronouns ("its big mouth", "his own private Hell", etc.). It does not apply to regular nouns (e.g., "Larry's computer", "the dog's bone", "my country's idiotic homocidal president", etc.). This special case is probably why "it's" is misused so often.

Re:This site has siezed being. It has gone ...

[dogmatixpsych]

So is the site excited?

TASTE RIGHTEOUS FIRE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Die by the very weapons you adore!

Re:TASTE RIGHTEOUS FIRE!

[Anonymous Coward]

FEEL OUR WRATH

Re:TASTE RIGHTEOUS FIRE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are you that flies so good? Are you insane?

Re:TASTE RIGHTEOUS FIRE!

[REggert]

YOU CANNOT DEFEAT THE DRAK'HAI!

I know, wrong game, but same series. :-)

Re:TASTE RIGHTEOUS FIRE!

[p_trekkie]

"You're about to suck void, buddy."

They actually managed to keep the voices from the original in the remake! I've been trying to find a way to play my original copy for months.... but now, I don't need to.... Congrats to whoever put together this thing.

Re:TASTE RIGHTEOUS FIRE!

[Eideewt]

"Has the god of man forsaken us?"

Re:TASTE RIGHTEOUS FIRE!

[eggmit]

No, it's just got a load of cargo in the hold and a load of bills to pay at home.

mp3 of the Privateer intro ... good times

Re:TASTE RIGHTEOUS FIRE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the quote goes

"Can it be? Has the God of Man abandoned us?"

...ah, nostalgia...

I saw this on freshmeat

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw this on freshmeat yesterday and tried it out. I run Fedora Core, and the Linux installer worked out perfectly.
My favorite part has to be the flight dynamics which I believe they measured from the original game itself and applied to the vega strike engine.

It's great to be able to fly around with the tarsus again after all these years!

--Maniak

Re: Here's downloads on mirrors

[Anonymous Coward]

Just download it and try it yourself :)

Privateer for Windows:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wcuni verse/priv ateer1.0.exe?download

Privateer for Linux:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wcunive rse/priv ateer1.0.bz2.run?download

Privateer for OSX:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wcunivers e/priv ateer1.0.dmg?download

Did you have...

[cnelzie]

...the proper 3D Drivers installed for your video card or is the Linux version of the game just that sloppy?

I have noticed that I tend to get better FPS and smoother performance with same version releases of commercial Windows and Linux games, like Quake 3, when running Linux as opposed to running Windows.

Actually...

[WWWWolf]

...there have been "finished" Ultima remakes. two complete Ultima IV remakes for Neverwinter Nights, even. Ultima III was remade for Game Boy Color. And Akalabeth has been known to be remade by programmers on their lunch hours. That's not to even count engine remake projects like exult or xu4...

Of course, uncompleted ones vastly outnumber the completed ones =)

Re:Actually...

[kaszeta]

Ultima III was remade for Game Boy Color.

And MacOS, see Lairware's site.

Re:Actually...

[snuf23]

Can you provide links? I looked around but couldn't tell what was actually done... just seemed like a bunch of in development stuff.
BTW, I'm not sure that "remade" is the proper term for the GBA version. It was a port, just as Ultima: Exodus (without the three) was a port to the Nintendo Entertainment System. They were professional sanctioned ports not fan remakes.

Re:Actually...

[WWWWolf]

Dino's page has links to most of the remakes out there. The ones marked "completed" are the ones I was speaking of.

And the Ultima III GBC port - not in Dino's list due to the fact that it's being rebuilt and all - wasn't in any way commissioned by Origin/EA, and is in no way related to FCI, PonyCanyon, or any of those companies who were responsible for Ultima console ports. It's a non-commercial, freely downloadable fan remake. You can find the source code there too.

Re:Actually...

[snuf23]

Cool thanks for the information.
Wow, I didn't realize there was a homebrew for Ultima on the GC. Nice.

a look back

[ps2wayne]

for some reason the game just makes me think back to the good ol days of videogaming

Vega Strike....

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like it's actually a mod of another freeware open-source game called "Vega Strike" that has a similar structure...

Re:Vega Strike....

[Deusy]

It is a Vega Strike mod, hence the link to VS (as the GPL engine) in the /. article.

What the article doesn't really mention is that the Privateer Remake development crew is mostly Vega Strike developers. I believe Privateer is one of the games that inspires the VS developers, although VS itself is a very different game universe. Once the VS engine was in a position to make a Privateer Remake possible then they poured a lot of effort into making it.

I look forward to future releases that should continue to improve upon the graphics 'ported' from the original Privateer and bring the remake further up to date.

Re:Vega Strike....

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed VS was born AS a Priv remake, then it was decided that it should stand alone and the Priv remake ocntinued as a side project.

(yeah, I helped)

One thing I didn't like

[WormholeFiend]

was that the original game was pretty linear...

Was there any attempt to fix this flaw or was the game pretty much kept as is, except for the graphics?

Re:One thing I didn't like

[acidrain69]

The STORY was linear, but you were free to move around. There wasn't much to do other than trading though.

It is pretty much a graphical version of the old BBS door, tradewars. Except single play. And non-ASCII.

Re:One thing I didn't like

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there is a new plot. Basically this is Privateer + Righteous Fire + an addon which was never released -- think Wing Commander/Secret Missions/Secret Missions 2.

Also, we will expand Priv to work with the whole Wing Commander Universe.

Re:One thing I didn't like

[drinkypoo]

Ever play that microsoft-published game, wossname... Freelancer? Really linear story, but you can fly all over the place. There's some really interesting stuff out there too, and the game is fairly complex though of course only a tiny bit as complicated as it could be. There are interlinked relationships that cause your actions to have consequences, and the whole thing is pretty darned neat in general.

Re:One thing I didn't like

[vollmerk]

Bah! there was a lot more than just trading, my fav. pasttime was being a pirate then going bounty hunting for bounty hunters :D. Either that or you can get jobs killing pirates, running escourts missions.. Trading is what you do when you're a sissy and can't afford to buy the big guns!

Re:One thing I didn't like

[vranash]

Any chance of Capship/large cargo ship support being added in future versions of the Privateer mod? When the game first came out I'd been given the mistaken impression it was going to allow me to have a freighter and then buy dozens of fighters for defense kinda like Trade Wars only in Pseudo 3d... it ended up making it up for me in gameplay and plot, but I'd always hoped for a Wing Commander game to come along and allow that (Armada got close, but you couldn't do enough with your Capship :x)

According to wcnews.com they have a trademark song

[Anonymous Coward]

This song is apparently supposed to celebrate their release

ftp://ftp.wcnews.com/files/mods/privremakereleas em usic.mp3

I certainly don't remember this from the original privateer.... sounds like something like a cross between the hunt for red october theme and a funeral march

I wonder what it significates for this project other than the (now dead) smouldering pile of junk that is their server.

Re: Here's downloads on mirrors

[moonbender]

180MB. I think that must be the biggest thing I ever downloaded from SF.

Right on!

[acidrain69]

Great game!

Was I the only one who confused that scene at the beginning with the armless guy where you were trying to help him and he attacks you?

It SOUNDS like your character is saying "I have no wish to ARM you!" when you beat him with his own arm.

(For those who don't know, your character is trying to tell him "I have no wish to harm you", because this armless greak jumps out and starts kicking you)

Re:Right on!

[Anonymous Coward]

His name was Caynan or something...

The Armless Guy also says:
"If you've come for the fork, you'll be sorely disapointed!"

Ring any bells? :)

BitTorrent Download Links

[doublem]

Bittorrent for the Windows Version

Bittoreent for Linux Version

Bittorent for MAC Version

Use the torrent, and make MY download faster! MWHAHAHAHAHA!

Bittorrent link to filerush for all three versions

[kirt]

windows right up top... links for others below. http://www.filerush.com/download.php?target=privat eer1.0.exe

Re:Remake Crusader

[Jainith]

Remake the Crusader games....

quite possibly 2 of the best games ever.

Jainith

I wonder if it has...

[Kippesoep]

...any of the (sort-of) FMV sequences found in the original game, such as the introduction sequence. That'd be a pleasant surprise. The screenshots certainly look very promising. I really loved playing Privateer (even if I completely suck at any game I play -- I even managed to lose at tic-tac-toe), never got around to playing the sequel, though.

Re:I wonder if it has...

[Politburo]

I even managed to lose at tic-tac-toe

That's because the only winning move is not to play.

Re:I wonder if it has...

[Kippesoep]

WOPR learned that tic-tac-toe always ended in a draw and it was impossible to win. I actually lose!

copyright?

[Ubergrendle]

I wonder how the current owners of Origin Systems Inc, or Chris Roberts, feel about this open source work.

Personally I would feel honoured and accept the compliment that my work is being resurrected ~10 years hence for people to enjoy, but I can't speak for them. How is this handled in the open source community?

Re:copyright?

[Sycraft-fu]

Depends, they might get around it by requiring the orignal game to play. I've seen that more than once, people reimplement the engine, and what data that needs updating (like 3D graphics) but all other data is left orignal and thus you have to have the game. Doomsday, a Doom engine, is this way. You can override most included content with your own so you can add new music, 3d models for enemies, etc, but to play the oringal game you still need the orignal WADs.

Not sure in this case since their server is suffering from /. burnination, but that's one way to go. Also developers some times release their projects into the public domain, though that is quite rare.

Re:copyright?

[Natchswing]

Well, since it looks like most of the other linked Ultima projects have been cancelled due to being denied legal rights, I would assume the answer is, "not very happy."

Re:copyright?

[tji]

In general, that's not the way most owners feel about people using their work without paying royalties (and rightly so..).

I just wonder why the people doing this excellent project did not put a bit of a twist on the concept to make it their own. Why not set it in the same universe as Privateer, but with a unique story line?

They would be on much better ground with a derivative work then with a complete copy.

Re:copyright?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be surprised, there are extra story elements and more will be added in the future.

(I helped a bit making the game ^-^ )

Re:copyright?

[cnj]

Bah!

While I agree that it'd be cool to have new storylines, I'm sure a lot of new things will come with time.

As it is, Privateer is one of two* games that force me to keep dosbox and large ISO images around... the other being Syndicate. The awesome Ultima remakes fixed my need for carrying Ultima CDs around. System Shock is the only other game I'm currently running in emulation (and the tsshp project on sf migh address that).

So ... anybody doing anything with the Syndicate series?

(Oh, and an Armada remake would be cool, but once the Privateer remake has multiplayer support I won't care so much).

Re:copyright?

[snuf23]

That's kind of hard to say. Seeing as Richard Garriot is no longer with Origin and has lost the rights to the franchise (Ultima) to Electronic Arts, he probably would be honored at this point.
Especially seeing as how EA has all but killed off Ultima, first by exerting pressure to change the game style (see Ultima 8's arcade jumping) and then rushing an unfinished Ultima to release (Ultima 9). Lastly, the one remaining Ultima product is Ultima Online which has seen two seperate updated versions killed as well.
Go EA!

Re:copyright?

[Kadmos]

Origin don't exist anymore, they were officially swallowed by EA last year(?). Origin was sold to EA in 1992(?), somewhere after Ultima 7 PII and before ULtima 8 IIRC.

And while we are on the topic Freelancer (Microsoft) is such an obvious knock off of Privateer and Origin didn't do anything then... Freelancer is a decent game, but Privateer wins because of the nostalgia factor :-)

Barren Realms Elite?

[ruxxell]

Next, I propse someone make a full 3-D rendition of TRADE WARS and BARREN REALMS ELITE. Maybe even Solar Realms Elite. woot!

now that would be the bomb, huh?

Re:Barren Realms Elite?

[JoshRosenbaum]

LOL, those games ruled. :) I miss the ol' BBS days.

Re:Barren Realms Elite?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can play the MMORPG version of BRE and Mehul's Falcon's Honor at www.swirve.com. They are called Utopia and Earth 2025, respectivley.

Re:Barren Realms Elite?

[REggert]

The problem with Trade Wars was that it basically required Trade Wars Helper in order to have any chance of success, as well as playing the game every single day without fail.

Re:Barren Realms Elite?

[WoTG]

Not once you buy 32676 fighters to defend your planet! =) Then you could take a few days off of TW without problems!
Or was it 32675?
I know... one of the later releases of TW upped the variable type...

Re:Barren Realms Elite?

[cens0r]

what about the bug that let you put that many fighers on a scout marauder?

Re:Barren Realms Elite?

[WoTG]

Hmm... I never knew about that one. That would have been nice with the 2.0 attack multiplier. Argh, I clearly spent too many of my early teenage years on BRE, TW, and LORD if I can remember that!

Re:Barren Realms Elite?

[cens0r]

yep... you were unstopable... i think the bug was that you could transfer more fighters from your planet to the ship than you could buy for it... I also think that there was another bug that if you tried to buy fighters and you had more than the max they got taken away.

Re:Barren Realms Elite?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, only if you played on the hard core competition games. If you were on the more casual servers that had some reasonable turn/time limits, it was quite easy to stay competitive in a pickup game.

Re:Barren Realms Elite?

[ghztew]

Man I loved that game.. getting your colony up and running then plotting with your BBS to take down your rivals bbs.. awesome.

.torrent

[spikedvodka]

ahh... they joys of slashdot... for once, instead of a slashdotting making things go slower, it makes things go wicked fast...

more peers downloading the torrent, more places to serve from

Re:torret

[zootm]

There's torrent links in the article (on the names of the formats).

Re:torret

[moonbender]

http://www.bittorrent.com/

You're welcome. On a sidenote: the official BT homepage has a new look! When did that happen. I figured the site with Bram Cohen's photo prominently placed (upper left edge, was it?) would last forever...

On a more serious note, the actual torrents are linked to elsewhere in this story's comments. There are also downloads on SF.net which might be faster.

Re:Remake Crusader

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I loved both of them. It's a shame the exult people haven't got it working.

Personally I enjoyed listening to the celebration

[graysonburrows]

They apparently uploaded some celebration music according to wcnews.com ftp://ftp.wcnews.com/files/mods/privremakereleasem usic.mp3/ I found it a somewhat interesting cross between something from hunt for the red october and a slow sad "the server has died" sort of march. Very interesting stuff--I wonder if they use it in the game.

Re:Remake Crusader

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoops. Apparently, Crusader used a modified Ultima 8 engine, so it's a Pentagram issue, but I found an interesting screenshot on the Pentagram sourceforge site.
http://pentagram.sourceforge.net/images/screenshot s/noremorse.png

Urkh

[offline]

I hate to say it, but other than a bit of glitz in the combat (The shields look about like they did for WC3, which is a step up on Privateer, at least) this game looks like crap.

I'm not sure how they can characterize this as 1.0, all things considered. I mean, I get graphics corruption just on the launch screen, not to mention the apparent non-function of the game start menu (is there one? I didn't see one, I just randomly hit keys after the last loaded image until something happened)

I loved the original game, and I suspect that if this one were cleaned up a bit, it'd be as good, but right now it's fricken 'orrible.

Re:Urkh

[JMandingo]

Agreed. I noticed that many of the animations are missing, such as the hands coming up for handshaking and the ship dealer waving his arms. The PDA thingy is non-existant. And the little tram pulling the luggage across the base floor was clunky. Since this new version just rips the graphics from the old game for the bases, why not make it complete for nostalgia's sake?

Re:Urkh

[Anonymous Coward]

you jackasses. priv-remake represents a lot a work for a lot of people. Before you go rip on it, why don't you shove a blunt instrument as far up your ass as possible.

Re:Urkh

[KD5YPT]

No it doesn't.

But nor should we bash them about it. Version 1.0 in software (at least in free softwareds) means the core code themselves, not necessarily the graphics, are relatively bug-free. It is still a work in progress, give them time will ya?

P.S. My idea, if you didn't pay for it, help in it, you have no right to bitch about problems.

Re:Urkh

[Anonymous Coward]

priv-remake represents a lot a work for a lot of immature children.
Fixed!

Re:Urkh

[Anonymous Coward]

P.S. My idea, if you didn't pay for it, help in it, you have no right to bitch about problems.

Spoken by someone not living in the real world.

For example, there are tons of things you can do in this world that you a liable for. For example, if you open a playground, for free, for anyone, you are still liable is someone gets hurt playing on it.

It is my opinion that you either release quality software or don't release at all. This should have been labeled a beta, plain and simple.

Re:According to wcnews.com they have a trademark s

[Anonymous Coward]

That has to do with the new plotline :) You're about right on the money about Hunt for Red October.

ebuild

[CaptainPinko]

no ebuild apparently. I'm assuming some will get to that in not too long.

As one of the original programmers

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd have to say I'm honored.

Re:Personally I enjoyed listening to the celebrati

[Txiasaeia]

Linked without the slash so that people can actually download it.

tradewars

[dAzED1]

TW2000 was one of my favorite games back in the day...is this just a gui version of it? I never played the original game this is a remake of.

Re:tradewars

[WoTG]

Nope. Privateer was a flight-sim game with trading and mercenary jobs for income sources for PC's (I dunno about Macs). Never "online". It was from about the same time period though. Great game.

Actual stats tracking the slashdot effect

[psyklopz]

Their site has a link to a tracker, which is showing some interesting stuff regarding what is happening to the site because of the slashdotting.

Look here.

Looks like slashdot viewers really do use FireFox the most. But looks like they're also using Win XP the most (view the 'System Tracking' section).

Re:Actual stats tracking the slashdot effect

[MamiyaOtaru]

the tracker stats are mesmerizing. Firefox 1.x was barely behind IE 6.0 before this broke. Hopefully the tracker doesn't get slashdotted

Re:Actual stats tracking the slashdot effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats 'cause we're all at work.

Re:Actual stats tracking the slashdot effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. For all the good press Linux gets around here, only 17% are actually running it.

I love remakes

[Lord Kano]

I can't wait for the Carrier Command remake to be released.

LK

Re:I love remakes

[fitten]

HOLY CRAP! I was just talking about Carrier Command to a friend at lunch. I, too, loved playing it on my AtariST. I will bookmark that site... thanks!

Re:I love remakes

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Hostile Waters AKA Antaeus Rising in the U.S. - the most criminally underrated game ever in my humble opinion...

Try Vega Strike too

[Lonewolf666]

Apparently, this is the "privateer mod" for Vega Strike, which is a good game in its own right. The recent 0.4.3 release shows quite an improvement in artwork, and is certainly worth a try.

I'm a little confused...

[truesaer]

This just replicates the original game? Are the graphics improved or anything? I've been planning to play this using DOSBox and a download from an abandonware site...what does the remake add, other than the ability for new story lines to be developed?

Re:I'm a little confused...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it means it runs natively, instead of through the often-imperfect emulation of DosBOX or the like. That's the main reason I play OpenTTD instead of running the original Transport Tycoon game in an emulator - because the remake duplicates the original perfectly, and runs far better than the original does.

And second, it offers room for improvement. Right now, it might not offer much more than the original. But there's nothing stopping someone from updating the graphics to take advantage of modern hardware, or to add new elements to the story.

Re:I'm a little confused...

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the screen shots. The ships and rendered using 3d models, not 2d sprites like the original. This means the graphics are as good as your videocard. Of course, this just exagerates the shittyness of the rest of the graphics, which are 2d sprites.

I can't believe the intrest in this thing

[Sycraft-fu]

I'm seeding at 1MiB/sec and counting up. Man, lots o' download for an old game remake.

"hidden" stuff on privateer home page

[Keruo]

see source code of the page to read the "hidden" (tho looks like old obsolete information) elements
present atleast on faq page

Amazing!

[Chris Daniel]

I used to play this game all the time. I had no idea this was out there. New, effective time-wasting method :-D!

Sincere thanks

[ianscot]

That first EV was the game that started me actually registering shareware. Thanks, man. It was a pleasure.

(Coincidentally, I'm a little bit of a birder, and always identified with kestrels. That was the touch that put it over the top -- all your pirate kestrels, taking down a friend whose game I was overhearing in a shared apartment. Anyone who programs a kick-butt kestrel into something has my vote.)

Shameless plug

[operagost]

Since Elite was mentioned:

Back in the late 80s, Elite was cloned for VMS systems and called "Galactic Trader". If you liked the trading and smuggling in Elite but didn't care for the chunky graphics or taking twenty minutes to land, GT is for you. You just need a halfway decent telnet application with VT100 graphics support.

Re:copyright? - New revenue from old game

[evought]

They do, in fact, require the original game to play the remake. The original game provides all of the data files (ship stats, plotlines, etc.). The remake just provides a modern engine to run it.

To my knowledge, it cannot violate copyright because they do not copy anything; they extend. If anything, the existence of the remake provides a revenue stream for a 12 year-old game that does not run anymore on most PCs. The 'classic' compilations of many of these old games can still be bought in many game stores. All a game producer needs to do to cash in is press a few CDs of the original game with no new development costs. Can't argue with that.

What games like this do sometimes run afoul of is *trademark*. By using 'Wing Commander: Privateer" in the game materials, they could arguably violate the original trademark, but 1) there is a world of difference in saying "this game *is* Privateer", and this game is "an add-on for Privateer, which, btw is a registered trademark of ...". There is no way to market an add-on product without referencing the original trademark and this is usually considered fair game (think about an application for Microsoft Windows(tm)). 2) EA (or whoever currently owns the rights) would be insane to not grant the remake a license to use the trademark since they are making money off of it.

Notwithstanding, both law and corporations have been known to be irrational.

Realism?

[the_skywise]

Not necessarily. A properly implemented mouse interface could work just as well. It wouldn't be the SAME as having a joystick, but it would be a matter of using the mouse to its full potential instead of "point and click".

(IE, using the keyboard for direction and mouse for thrust in that direction.)

Re:According to wcnews.com they have a trademark s

[Anonymous Coward]

"Significates" is not a word.
Perhaps you meant "signifies."
http://www.m-w.com is our friend.

benchmark

[MamiyaOtaru]

You can edit one of the cockpit .cpt files and uncomment the fps entry to get fps displayed.

thanks for the pointer!

[MarcoAtWork]

I loved the game on my old Atari ST...

Other games I wish somebody would 'update' for modern PCs are

- Midwinter (Atari ST)
- Stunt Car Racer (Atari ST)
- Powerdrome (Atari ST, not the nerfed Amiga version)
- The original X-wing (PC)
- Ultima Underworld 1 & 2 (PC, I think somebody is working on them)

Re:thanks for the pointer!

[Lord Kano]

I loved Carrier Command originally on my Mac Plus. 9 inch screen with one bit greyscale graphic.

I loved the amiga version.

I also loved the DOS version. I still fire up the DOS game via DOSBOX. Damn, I love that game.

LK

Settings?

[Lord_Dweomer]

I just installed it, and its asking me to set some things in the settings. Can someone explain the graphics options and the base options please? I hate when game makers put in all these options, and then tell you absolutely nothing about what they do so you're left wondering what the hell they mean.

Re:Settings?

[graysonburrows]

Leave the defaults--they're proper for your computer unless you're advanced enough to understand them. The defaults are carefully tested. also the manual gives detailed descriptions if it goes slow, lower the rez and the detail level

elite 4 = uber dead

[Anonymous Coward]

im surpised no one hasn't noticed that the elite 4 page hasn't been updated in well forver. ive been an elite fan forever. maybe some reasearch before posting articles? oh wait, this is slashdot.

This is a mod to the Vega Strike Project

[ducomputergeek]

This game is actually a Mod based around the http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/ Vegastrike game engine. Vega Strike is completely opensource creation of a Privateer like game. The graphics engine is actually quite advance even if some of its other features are still lagging behind.

MegaWars III?

[fitten]

Anybody out there know anyone doing a port of MegaWars III (from CompuServe days)?

Escape Velocity and Override on Windows:

[Y-Crate]

Click here and then scroll down to "win evnova classic" and "win evnova override".

Just please register. You get 3 games for the price of one and Ambrosia really deserves all of the money they can get.

Space Rogue

[Anonymous Coward]

Would be a nice remake if anyone remembers it. The First Spacesim/Trading game i can remember.(Bughunt arcade game in the bars was mucho fun)

Also made by Origin i think shortly after Moebius.

Anybody tried on MacOS X ?

[Liquid Len]

I've been trying it several times, playing around with the options, to no avail. The dang thing won't run on my 600MHz-384MB iBook. Well, it runs, but it is as slow as hell.
I guess it's back to Nehack for me, then...

been a long 6 years

[DMJC-L]

I've been working on this for almost 6 years with the main coder. We both wanted to do a privateer remake. The original speech is in the game... figured out that running privateer in dosbox let's you raw dump the wav audio, took us ages to get the sound out. works tho :D the work is not yet finished! there will be an expansion to the privateer mod coming that will add the whole wing commander universe... over 500 star systems.

Derivative works and SKUs

[tepples]

To my knowledge, it cannot violate copyright because they do not copy anything; they extend.

Unauthorized derivative works violate copyright as well, unless they fall under the narrow "fair use" exemptions of 17 USC sections 107 through 122.

All a game producer needs to do to cash in is press a few CDs of the original game with no new development costs. Can't argue with that.

Yes they can argue with that. Pressing a few copies of an older title would require maintaining another SKU (stock-keeping unit), with all the warehousing overhead, and it would compete with the newer titles that the company is trying to sell.

Re:Derivative works and SKUs

[DrCode]

Claiming "fair use" might work in this case, because I'm pretty sure the original Privateer won't run on any version of Windows past ME.

Re:Derivative works and SKUs

[Anonymous Coward]

Most if not all wing commanger titles used a memory management scheme that wouldn't work in win 95+ anyways, dos 6.22 was really the last usible OS for the games (I loved Wing Commander Armada too)

Re:Derivative works and SKUs

[evought]

Unauthorized derivative works violate copyright as well, unless they fall under the narrow "fair use" exemptions of 17 USC sections 107 through 122.

Different kind of extend. They do not actually ship any part of Privateer. They only ship something which can be used with Privateer. If you write a book and I ship a bookmark with original art inspired by the book and meant to be used with the book, there is no derivative work and there is no copyright because there is no copy.

Yes they can argue with that. Pressing a few copies of an older title would require maintaining another SKU (stock-keeping unit), with all the warehousing overhead, and it would compete with the newer titles that the company is trying to sell.

Against the same cost plus R&D, plus market risk for a new product?! You have to be kidding. An ancient product still generating revenue is any software seller's dream, especially since they do not even have to support the new engine. Very few new games ever even break even.

Re:Derivative works and SKUs

[tepples]

Different kind of extend. They do not actually ship any part of Privateer. They only ship something which can be used with Privateer.

However, this work is useful only when combined with Privateer, a copyrighted work. Using Privateer with this work creates a derivative work of Privateer on the end user's computer. Based on past court decisions, it seems that combining computer programs and audiovisual works is more likely to result in a derivative work than the case of a bookmark inserted in a copyrighted book. Distributing a work without a substantial non-infringing use is possibly a contributory infringement. Therefore, unless the developers can afford to finance a legal defense under section 107 or 117, can we be sure that the product has a substantial non-infringing use?

Against the same cost plus R&D, plus market risk for a new product?! You have to be kidding.

Two words: Vault Disney. Tell me where I can pick up a new DVD of Pinocchio or Song of the South, and I'll believe you.

Re:Derivative works and SKUs

[evought]

However, this work is useful only when combined with Privateer, a copyrighted work. Using Privateer with this work creates a derivative work of Privateer on the end user's computer. Based on past court decisions, it seems that combining computer programs and audiovisual works is more likely to result in a derivative work than the case of a bookmark inserted in a copyrighted book. Distributing a work without a substantial non-infringing use is possibly a contributory infringement. Therefore, unless the developers can afford to finance a legal defense under section 107 or 117, can we be sure that the product has a substantial non-infringing use?

I still do not see that it has a substantial infringing use. Does a Windows application infringe Microsoft's copyright just because it can only be used with Windows? How about a binary *patch* to Windows (say, a security enhancement)? In neither case is anything copied and in neither case is the author distributing a derivative work.

In both cases, the thing which exists after installation might qualify as a derivative work, but the purchaser of the software (license) is entitled to create such, as long as they do not distribute the derivative. If someone installed Privateer, installed the 'remake', then distributed the whole, that's where things get hairy. That is why the authors bend over backwards to not even discuss the possibilty of downloading any part of Privateer

The other place people frequently get into trouble is when the "add-on" actually includes parts of the original by accident, such as linking to libraries (thus GPL vs. LGPL). Header or constant inclusion has been fair game so far as raw facts have no 'creative expression' and are therefore not copyrightable. This is a current legal climate which can change, however, and has come close to several times with various proposed laws about copyrighting databases (e.g. phonebooks).

Two words: Vault Disney. Tell me where I can pick up a new DVD of Pinocchio or Song of the South, and I'll believe you.

Bad example. Making a Pinocchio DVD involves actually copying the work. A better example would be, for instance, a tape-deck adapter for a CD-player which allows you to use a copyrighted work in a context where it was not designed to be used.

As a long time software developer and several times business owner, myself, I would be thrilled with the prospect of 'write once, revenue forever' and there is nothing technically illegal about what these folks are doing. In fact, look at the way that Id has hugely capitalized on the hobby programming crowd. That being said, once again: being sued is not always about whether any law is actually being broken (witness SCOG vs. IBM) and corporations are not always rational, but that is true no matter what you do.

Fanastic remake

[incabulos]

I first discovered this project about 2 weeks ago when the linux build was at v0.9, while searching for Linux ports of Elite. It must be one of the best free software games currently available on Linux.

I loved the original ( though I never got past one the early campaign missions because combat was nearly unwinnable without a joystick ) and have found the remake to be excellent.

The Linux 1.0 release which I downloaded via bittorrent here yesterday has fixed many of the small niggling issues I had with 0.9, and the gameplay has been greatly improved.. there are many more ships in game now, huge dogfights you can participate in or watch from the sidelines, and you can buy new types of ship that were not available in the original.

estimated remaining download time on DSL.

[Anonymous Coward]

1day, 8hours, 42 mins. I think I wait until tomorrow.

Re:estimated remaining download time on DSL.

[Anonymous Coward]

Use the torrent.

I wonder how hard it would be...

[leonbrooks]

...to find one of the people involved and get it open sourced - or at least partly so?

Re:I wonder how hard it would be...

[fayk]

The source -is- released for Freespace 1 and 2, I believe.

Not sure what the licensing terms are, if any.

Silent Service

[Anonymous Coward]

What we really need is a remake of the original Silent Service. Updated graphics and the option to play it on a modern CPU is all I need...the gameplay is superb as it is. Best submarine simulator EVER!

Data extraction is not as simple as it sounds.

[ace123]

I was the person that got all of the animations out of the game, and I can say that it is not as easy as it sounds. I had to go manually through all the sprites using the Dos program, WcNav, pick out the sprites for each base, and manually position them (actually I think that two sprites out of about 1500 in the file had position info in the file, but the rest were hard-coded into the game binaries.) Also, you needed a screenshot with the correct Palette for each file to avoid having to look it up in the TRE, which was virtually impossible in a 70MB file.
This could take hours for each base.

The bars were even harder to do, since many frames were out of order, and I had to position and resize them.

The graphics that made it in (all of the independent bases except for the Pirate base, as I had no saved game there.) should be complete.

The luggage tram was the second animation I did, so I think maybe it had one size problem.

There are some animations that I didn't have time to do, such as the hands and faces. The faces/hands were in the same format, but were offset, and making the animations would require a lot more hours of work to make an extractor program/script for.

No data extraction is easy.

Interfaces like the PDA weren't worth doing, since the Computer was part of the engine, and redesigning it again wouldn't help very much. Don't forget that this is a remake, not an exact copy. If you want everything to be *exactly* the same, including using older graphics, then go ahead and run the original Privateer.

Some of these extra animations may be planned for another release, but don't count on it since I'm using all of my little free time doing networking for VS (and Priv of course).

Re:Data extraction is not as simple as it sounds.

[JMandingo]

I was being overly critical, and I apologize. I would have to list Privateer as my favorite game of all time - I played the original game completely front-to-back twice, plus much random exploring after the plot was finished, plus the righteous fire expansion pack. Hence my immediate nitpicking - Privateer is permanently burned into my brain, and any differences stood out immediately to me. This wont be true for the majority of your users. I will play your remake through front-to-back as well, and from what I have played so far I am sure it is going to be quite enjoyable.

Thank you for the informative reply and for your work on the remake.

That's no big deal

[mlylecarlin]

Pssh. This is no big deal. Did you hear some guys remade Tetris?

Classic Geek Gaming Is Where It's At

[Enderandrew]

That's why I play a text-based RPG more than I do any of the 3D craptacular RPGs that have come out as of late. http://enderandrew.com/lotgd/

Audiovisual works

[tepples]

Does a Windows application infringe Microsoft's copyright just because it can only be used with Windows?

No. Microsoft has licensed the Win32 import libraries for public use and redistribution as part of compiled programs. On the other hand, Microsoft has not done so for, say, the XDK.

How about a binary *patch* to Windows (say, a security enhancement)?

Under at least DJB's interpretation, this would possibly fall under 17 USC 117, a narrow provision that applies only to computer programs and not to audiovisual works. Video games such as Privateer are often registered with the U.S. Copyright Office as audiovisual works instead of or in addition to registration as a computer program. In fact, even installing a PC game other than as directed by the EULA might violate copyright, as the backup exemption of 17 USC 117 doesn't apply to audiovisual works.

Bad example. Making a Pinocchio DVD involves actually copying the work.

This example only referred to the decision by EA to keep Privateer out of print, as making a new CD of Privateer involves actually copying the work. EA keeps its old titles such as Privateer out of print for the same reason Disney keeps its old titles out of print.

A better example would be, for instance, a tape-deck adapter for a CD-player which allows you to use a copyrighted work in a context where it was not designed to be used.

A tape-deck adapter for a CD player works entirely in the analog streaming domain, with no reproduction in a tangible medium (unlike copies to hard drives). It's a technicality, but the law is an ass.

I would be thrilled with the prospect of 'write once, revenue forever'

So I take it you supported the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, right?

Re:Audiovisual works

[evought]

How about a binary *patch* to Windows (say, a security enhancement)?

Under at least DJB's interpretation, this would possibly fall under 17 USC 117, a narrow provision that applies only to computer programs and not to audiovisual works. Video games such as Privateer are often registered with the U.S. Copyright Office as audiovisual works instead of or in addition to registration as a computer program. In fact, even installing a PC game other than as directed by the EULA might violate copyright, as the backup exemption of 17 USC 117 doesn't apply to audiovisual works.

I would have to strongly disagree with that interpretation. I am not a lawyer, but I have been in IT for quite a while and been advised by them. There have been a number of distributions of software enhancements which have existed only in patch form specifically to protect them from status as derivative works. Various enhancements to UNIX spring to mind where the licensees could not distribute enhancements, but they could distribute patches which were essentially 'instructions for enhancing your own copy'. I have never heard of this practice being successfully challenged in court, even where the free enhancement competes with a competing non-free enhancement. Successfully stomped out using anti-competitive practices, yes, but stopped in court, no. I have seen this kind of patch distribution being practiced in very large companies under advice of very well-paid lawyers.

It would be the same sort of thing where, if I (legally) had a copy of your program and added a subroutine to it. I could not distribute the derivative without honoring your copyright. I could, however, remove my subroutine, excise all traces of your work, and distribute the subroutine, or add it to a different product, legally, because I wrote it, not you. If I distribute (just) the subroutine with a note that tells someone how to add it to your product, it is still not covered by your copyright. If you try to distribute your work with my subroutine included, you must honor *my* copyright for the derivative work. This has been tested in court.

There is no magic contagion of copyright. Even in the case of GPL taint, the problem arises when the parts are distributed together and the breach can always be cured by separating them. This is also, BTW, why many non-GPL programs which use GPL libraries use dynamic-linking (although, this has been touchy, since, apparently, certain systems libraries were not sufficiently 'dynamic' in the past). The derivative work is created by the end user, not the distributor.

... I would be thrilled with the prospect of 'write once, revenue forever'

So I take it you supported the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, right?

Actually, I am a copyright ultraconservative. I want to see it revert to the original constitutional terms because the current regime is destructive to society as a whole.

From the narrow persective of the Privateer enhancement, however, there is little economic downside to supporting an active fan community, and, again, as Id has demonstrated, much upside. In fact, Id has demonstrated that they can continue to capitalize even while releasing the source code to their older games, so apparently, long copyright terms are not even necessary.

The thing is with games being such a high-risk publication (what is the figure, only 1 in 10 break even?), once you figure out what your userbase wants and is willing to pay for, why, for the love of small furry things, would you not take their money? Sure, start new franchises every so often just to diversify, but drive the fan frenzy on the existing games for all it's worth. Ship an enhancement (say a new story line) for the new Privateer engine for cripes sake.

The CTO of Loki gave a talk at a Linux Con a while back talking about software companies and open source. The big thing, according to him is "What is

Re:Audiovisual works

[tepples]

I would have to strongly disagree with that interpretation.

And then you go on to describe how you agree with it. DJB says he interprets 17 USC 117 as permitting the distribution and application of patches separate from a given program. There must have been some miscommunicationthere; no harm, no foul.

However, section 117 applies only to computer programs. Every example you gave is one of a computer program. Privateer is a video game, and video games are computer programs, but video games are also audiovisual works, like movies. Audiovisual works do not have a direct counterpart to section 117, except perhaps through a distant interpretation of the catch-all section 107.

The thing is with games being such a high-risk publication (what is the figure, only 1 in 10 break even?), once you figure out what your userbase wants and is willing to pay for, why, for the love of small furry things, would you not take their money?

Likewise, the thing is with feature films being such a high-risk publication (what is the figure, only 1 in 10 break even?), once you figure out what your userbase wants and is willing to pay for, why, for the love of small furry things, would you not take their money? Explain Disney's sales moratoriums (in the case of Pinocchio) and flat-out refusals to bring titles out on home video in any manner whatsoever (in the case of Song of the South), and you will have explained the Privateer situation.

A game company's valueable product is content: plot, sound, graphics, cut-scenes, etc.

Having an updated version of Privateer competes with the content of newer EA titles.

Bottom line: EA owns the copyright and can do whatever the flying-mother-buttsex it wants with the franchise, even if it is shooting itself in the foot long-term. Short of several billion dollars to buy 51 percent of the company, there's no way you can force EA to end the sales moratorium. As long as copyright owners keep funding the re-election campaigns for members of the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government who continue to appoint Supreme Court justices who utterly disregard the constitutional justification for the copyright system ("To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"), there ain't jack feces anybody can do about it.