Classic MMOG Raised From the Dead by Past Players

Chromain writes "Back in 1996, the Seattle-based company Starwave created one of the first graphical MMOGs: Castle Infinity. Though it was well received by all who tried it, it quickly sank under bad marketing, extended downtime, and sloppy leadership. Now, nearly 8 years since disappearing off the map, the game has been (quite literally) rescued from a dumpster by a group of past players. It's available for free at their new website."

Comments

A note from one of the Architects.

[Chromain]

/., My name is Greg "Devil Dog" Kumparak, and I'm an Architect of Infinity. I hope I'm not doing the rest of the team a disservice by attempting to speak for them. I've been playing Castle Infinity since a very young age, and have volunteered on the game for quite a few years. Castle Infinity was developed around 1995/96 by Starwave. It grew a rather large fan base, which simply wasn't big enough to outweigh the cost of running it. After being transferred from company to company, it was eventually forgotten by all except for the original players. Sure, company after company brought it up for 2-3 months, but it was only a tease. Each and every time, Castle Infinity was closed down. The blow of signing on to see "Sorry, we're closing down until further notice" hit some of us quite a few times. That was until we realized that Castle Infinity had been thrown away. I do quite honestly mean thrown away. In a trash can. With a bit of good timing, and maybe a liiiiittle bit of fast driving, we got our hands on the server and a large portion of important data. (Thanks Kevin!) For the past few years, we've spent a large portion of our free time on rebuilding Castle Infinity. Months of server woes, countless bug fixes, and an unimaginable amount of stress on each and every member of the team.. and it's all lead up to this. We're up, we're running, and we're ready to dump as much cold water on our server as it takes to keep it from melting. Theres a lot of work to be done, but trust me - we're trying as hard as we can. We have quite a lot in the works. We're constantly working on ways to make Castle Infinity feel much more "modern", giving it features to make it compare to the MMOGgs of today's standard. Due to this, we're ALWAYS looking for a talented hand. Think you can help out in any way? Contact us. Don't worry, we're good people. With that, I welcome you. Welcome to the fruition of our noble quest. It's been a long, wild ride. Uncountable heartfelt thanks to all at Slashdot for running this story. Greg Kumparak Architect of Infinity

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[naesung]

A little cold water over here, Greg, please....

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[Falkentyne]

I think I found the link to the bio page for the makers of the game. http://www.weirdness-central.co.uk/gallery/2002/in dex.asp

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[Chromain]

*Laugh* Sorry, not us. The page just happens to have the words "Castle" and "Infinity" on it, with a few pictures of guys-that-could-possibly-be-dorky. Good guess, though!

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[Roland Piguepaille]

I suggest that you make your suggestions in a little less intimidating format next time. The name drop was rather unnecessary, if you were just going to emphasise the idea and put the person on an unreachable pedestal.

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[kdq]

I am the Keeper of the Keys to Infinity - that is, I officially run the joint. First, let me apologize for the down server - Apache stays up for about 45 seconds at a burst, and sometimes won't even start. We're working on it. Second, the old servers are dual P6-200's with 128MB of ECC RAM. They are 10 year-old HP machines, and if you want to pay for shipping or come pick them up, there are three of them. I've been spending the money for the last seven years to keep C8 alive because I believe it deserves a chance to be exposed to the public. Total donations from other sources just barely make four figures. I don't mind, as long as people are playing. Again I apologize for the inconvenience, but the dinosaurs thought they were under major attack from the monsters and panicked.

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[Chromain]

Erm - Rick Lambright designed Castle Infinity's server system. :-)

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[Ciaran_H]

He *did* use paragraphs. You can see he did when you view the source. He just forgot to use the "Plain Old Text" option so it would add
tags automatically.

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[joper90]

you sound like an ass. Hes a nobody.. i will contact him if i wish.. so what he if writes software, so do I and im busy too.

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[gstoddart]

Greg Kumparak Architect of Infinity

Oh, man. That's gotta be the coolest title ever. :-P

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[yack0]

Surely now is the time to solicit donations for the project to get a new server or two? All this slashdot traffic and all...

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[MBraynard]

Whatever dude. I'm going to his house to ask him about the article he wrote. If he's not there, I'll try to sit next to him at Church and ask him about it there. If that doesn't work, I'll go to the front desk of his office and ask the manager there if it's ok for me to go talk to him.

What do you think of that?

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[ded_guy]

I haven't had the chance to actually check it out yet (plan to when I get home from work), but I'd like to respond to one aspect of your post:

We're constantly working on ways to make Castle Infinity feel much more "modern", giving it features to make it compare to the MMOGgs of today's standard.

Please don't overdo it. Many "modern" games introduce overcomplexity for its own sake and lack a certain "fun factor" present in more simplistic and streamlined gameplay. There's a reason older games and retro gaming still have a strong fanbase (and it's not just because old games remind us of the bygone halcyon days of our youth).

Overly complex systems invariably lead to a neverending cycle of people taking advantage of an obscure imbalance in the system followed by nerfing which then leads to some other way of gaming the system and so on. Don't worry about having every bell and whistle. Keep a clear vision, keep it fun, and people will enjoy.

And allow me to chime in with a "me too" to thank you and the rest of the team for all the hard work.

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[Tekzel]

I bet this IS Rick Lambright (whoever that is) trying to make himself sound all important.

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[KamaDragon]

You can see he did when you view the source.

I don't even see the tags anymore. Just blonde, brunette, redhead...

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[joper90]

Yea, i like to use wisely use my 2 mins of free time a day.

So do you.. AC

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[RandomBitFlipper]

Now that position sounds like it has job security! Although the penalty for retiring early must be a b*tch.

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[MagicTom]

Support from the old-school players! I was in between fifth and sixth grade when Castle Infinity (We called it C8, not CI like most here) was released, and signed on as one of the first players. My name, then, was Magic Guy, and I am *amazed* that the only hit my account took when I logged back on after the servers were revived were the items missing. My scores, acheivements, everything else, was saved. I know I'm coming a little late, but it seems most of the crowd here is at a loss for what C8 is really about. This game was marketed toward kids in the late elementary school/early middle school years, and promoted good values, a safe environment, and most importantly, teamwork. An original aspect of the game is the player avatar, you're a SCHTICK (Simple Character Hueristic Technology Incorporating Cartoon Kinematics -- all from memory. God I loved that game) figure -- a character made up of head, torso, and leg sections, each totally disjunct. And the further you got in the game, the more you could collect and show off. The catch is, for many of these you would need somewhere between two or four players to maneuver watercraft, operate machinery, and trigger switches to get it. Players instantly made friends and learned much better communication skills than today's "Chat Speak" is teaching youngsters. Castle Infinity was and is a beautiful project, and I hope it goes on for other children to enjoy just as I did. I certainly hope more of the old-school players find this and pledge their support, because a noble cause such as this truly deserves it. Good work, Kevin, Devil Dog, and the rest of the crew! Magic Guy

Dumpster

[Anonymous Coward]

If only someone would rescue their webserver from the dumpster, so I could see what this is all about.

/. already?

[KingEomer]

Wow. How can they expect to host an MMORPG when the site is slashdotted in a few minutes?

Re:/. already?

[Anonymous Coward]

We're working hard...not hardly working. ^_^ Plus Vortico is a lot more powerful than Apache( The server we run the website on) I don't really think Chromain predicted the Slash Dot effect happening so fast. But log in, it is a pretty fun game. Especially if you're a fan of platformers.

Re:/. already?

[Chromain]

Actually - the game itself is INCREDIBLY well optimized and requires VERY little bandwidth per player.

Re:/. already?

[Anonymous Coward]

"it quickly sank under bad marketing, extended downtime, and sloppy leadership."

Slashdot has an excellent marketing plan:
1. Create a base of marauding users who can take down any site posted on the front page.
2. Sell subscriptions to users who would get 24 hours notice of front page stories.

My check is in the mail guys!

Re:/. already?

[ockegheim]

...as any MMORPG running in 1996 would want to be.

Nuked already

[Migraineman]

Zero comments and the linked site is toast. Perhaps "Castle Not-Quite-Infinity ..."

Re:Nuked already

[Phroon]

Castle Finite!

Re:Nuked already

[admiralh]

I like

Castle Not-Appearing-On-This-Server

Sadly, trash is where most MMOG's belong

[zhevek]

...that is, if you want any part of your life back ;)

Re:Sadly, trash is where most MMOG's belong

[aCapitalist]

Hmm...that seems to be the key to make MMOGs even more popular to the non crack monsters. I bought both EQ2 and WoW after christmas but now both are gone from my limited laptop hardrive.

What's the magical formula for MMOG developers where a player can get in for an hour, do something substantial and fun and then bail?

Re:Sadly, trash is where most MMOG's belong

[sleeper0]

they are called FPS games

Re:Sadly, trash is where most MMOG's belong

[aCapitalist]

Yeah, that's why HL2 and especially CounterStrike-Source is on the harddrive. Not really a MMOG though

Re:Sadly, trash is where most MMOG's belong

[KDR_11k]

I don't get what prevents an MMORPG form letting players do that as well.

Re:Sadly, trash is where most MMOG's belong

[Trigun]

Because a level one character sucks to do anything. You can perish under the attack of a garden slug. You have to build up your character to at least level 8 before you can venture outside of your little safety bubble.

If you could just hop in and have fun, then you might not come back. MMORPG's are like work, you have to show up every day and punch in, clock your hours, and punch out. Your innate ability means nothing. For instance, I fire up Enemy Territory, hop on a server, and proceed to wipe out the guys with 1000+ experience. Why? I'm good (The fact that I can afford a decent rig doesn't hurt either, but we won't coun t that right now). Now I fire up EQ, hop on as a level 1 ranger or something, and proceed to get my ass handed to me because I haven't put the necessary hours into levelling my character up. I can't just walk up to a level 50 fighter or whatever and try to duel him, no matter how good I am. I am limited by the game, and the rules of said game. That's why rpg's can put 60+hours of gameplay on the box, because there's no way in hell you can beat the game using a level 8 character. You have to get up to level 75 or some crazy shit.

And that's why there are few (if any) MMORPGs that you can just hop on and have fun. You can try the non-graphical versions that you can go and just talk to people without fear of garden slugs. It's called IRC.

Re:Sadly, trash is where most MMOG's belong

[UnknownSoldier]

Namely, Character Development and PHAT LOOT.

1) In a FPS your character is not persistent -- you don't level up between games, you don't get any more stats or skills. You don't have skills that are 'locked off' -- that is there are no level requirements preventing you from using character skills. Everyone has the same (in-game) ability and stats. We don't find Bob who can run faster, or jump higher on his own -- unless it was granted with a time-limited item.

2) How many item types does a FPS have? 10 - 20 counting all the various weapons, armor, ammo, vehicles.

Some RPG's, i.e. Diablo 2 are gear-dependent. Two high-level chars will perform and play COMPLETELY different if one is twinked out with all the high-end and unique gear, while the other will completely suck.

This range is almost nullified in FPS. i.e The guy with the Rocket Launcher has an advantage of more damage, but the guy with the shotgun has the advantage of faster fire -- and in the hands of skilled player it will and should be a toss-up for who will win, IF the weapons are "balanced."

With all that said, RPGs could definately be made more accessible.

Re:Sadly, trash is where most MMOG's belong

[KDR_11k]

I meant that I don't get why MMOs don't get designed in a way that you can just play for half an hour and log off again. That's a major shortcoming. I mean, yes, you can log in, kill one or two enemies and log out again but since few MMOs are fun without grouping that's just as pointless as watching the clock for half an hour.

Re:Sadly, trash is where most MMOG's belong

[nugneant]

And, um, the first time you played a FPS, your ass was handed to you time and time again as you screamed "Aimbot" in all caps. I know your type.

My point is that both games (EQ and CS) require time spent levelling up. CS doesn't charge you for your time spent learning (though the same argument could be made of the "first month free! each additional month $9.95-19.95"-priced MMORPGs), nor does it charge you later on to enjoy the benefits of all that time invested in building your reactions, etc.

I'm not an EQ player or fan, and frankly I find the trend of MMORPG blech to be yet another milestone in the complete, unfathomable, "is it brainwashed in or not" stupidity of the American public. "LET'S SPEND $100 TO COMBINE OUR CHATTING AND GAME PLAYING SKILLS AND PICK UP ROPES AND PLANKS AND MAGIC XP!!!" when the same effect can be had on stock-trading sites (not bona fide "day trading" mind you, just pissing around, buying and selling, watching your numbers go omg higher - there were a few webpages circa 1998 that had this), for free. Of course, you have to start flaming and/or trolling other players for the full effect.

Re:Sadly, trash is where most MMOG's belong

[hurfy]

Tried the orignal Asheron's Call ?

Almost as old as this one but that means years of content. Rarely need to group. New expansion anyday.

Hard to believe i have been playing the same game this whole century, hehe

Re:Sadly, trash is where most MMOG's belong

[KDR_11k]

An FPS will not limit your ability with some number that depends entirely on the time you spent on the game. If an expert FPS player were to open a new account with new stats he'd still kick everyone's ass, if an expert MMORPG player does the same he'd be level one and couldn't kill a roach without assistance. Any game requires time to gain the skill but with non-RPG games that skill is all you need. With MMOs you need both your skill and those numbers that accumulate during gameplay.

First Outage

[kgruscho]

Posting to slashdot is a poor way to avoid outages that killed it the first time.... /. before first post

..Wow

[Chromain]

As you can tell, that went ..not so well. Not only did our server just eat itself in less than 2 minutes, but I managed to forget all about line breaks. *Laugh*

Re:..Wow

[KingEomer]

Well, at least you have another good stress test. :P Just fix the problem and post a dupe in a couple of days(don't worry; it'll get posted), to make sure everything's working fine under high load.

Re:..Wow

[Chromain]

Thanks a ton for the light hearted message, managed to make me smile after about 10 minutes of not being able to think anything outside of "Crap. Crap. Crap."

Re:..Wow

[slashdotnickname]

I see Netscape now has some competion in the d'oh department.

Re:..Wow

[OverlordQ]

Coral is your friend?

Re:..Wow

[fsterman]

Posting a working Coral link is usually useless as it doesn't have a chance to cache it. Posting a link to Coral is _totally_ useless.

Re:..Wow

[Jane_Dozey]

I *do* like your nice little message though!

"Whoa. Okay. We are being Slashdotted. And our server is getting owned. You can register for free and download the game here. Please try not to use the rest of the site too much for now."

Re:0 Comments

[FamineMonk]

No Coral Cache, No google Cache, not even a mirrordot page. Now thats a Slashdotting.

Looks like...

[futuresheep]

It's time for MORE extended downtime!

Re:Looks like...

[BlackMesaLabs]

In Soviet Russia, downtime extends YOU!

Someone call the fire department

[darkonc]

We're up, we're running, and we're ready to dump as much cold water on our server as it takes to keep it from melting.

I figure that a fire hose is the only thing that's gonna keep that server from melting down now that it's on Slashdot's front page.

Classic games that you can never find again

[AEton]

Twelve years ago the landscape of the Internet was totally different. We had Clevnet, and that could get us anywhere!

BBS games were before my time (or I just missed out on the craze), but I was a big fan of single-person text adventures before they were Interactive Fiction. I was especially fond of a couple of adventure games on some pay-per-minute service, Compuserve or Prodigy maybe. One in particular stands out because it involved a vampire (Dracula?) and it was designed to be incrementally solvable. It's where I learned the maze mapping skills that came so handy in Adventure later (even though it came out earlier).

Does anyone else remember this vampire-themed adventure game that was available on some early ISP? Even a name would be a start...

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[bowloframen]

Hey! Anybody remember that thing? You know, it came with that something, and then you'd press that button, and then it would do that thing? And it came in this package with the squiggly in the back? I don't quite remember the name... something with an S or a T or a C maybe... or maybe not. I remember I bought it at this store... you remember that store? It was off the freeway on the number 3, next to that furniture place? Yeah, so if anybody remembers, please enlighten me.

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[Roland Piguepaille]

Prodigy had a really crummy maze game called MadMaze that I played with my dad when I was about 10.

But that's probably not what you're thinking of.

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[Anonymous Coward]

It was off the freeway on the number 3, next to that furniture place?

You mean Nybbles and Bytes by the Tacoma mall. The name is called Star Command.

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[jred]

Was it Castlevania?

Dunno, I never played it, but it sounds like it might be right...

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[nizcolas]

You may be talking about this:

http://www.wurb.com/if/game/267

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[audacity242]

I absolutely loved MadMaze, and periodically have searched online to see if I could find it again.

I remember getting pretty dang far and then all of a sudden my maps didn't fit together right and I never made it past this one point. Oh, how I loved and hated that game.

-Jenn

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[AEton]

It wasn't the Scott Adams game. I played through it just now to check.

The game I distinctly remember had a bat, a maze, and a pool of blood, and it was I think at least a little more verbose than Adams's "The Count".

Thanks a lot, though!

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[indifferent children]

I don't recall any vampires, but around 1983 ('84? userid: 74736,622 ) I used to play "Black Dragon" on Compuserve. The only other Compuserve game that I remember seeing back then was "Folle de Roi" (sp?????) which I think was a Hammurabi clone. The Black Dragon tee-shirt was very cool (but only lasted about 10 years.)

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[idonthack]

1. Castlevania was on the NES, not the computer.
2. Castlevania wasn't distributed on any ISP
3. Castlevania was a side-scroller, and thus had no mazes
4. Castlevania was not text-based.

No, probably not.

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[elrous0]

I remember I bought it at this store... you remember that store? It was off the freeway on the number 3, next to that furniture place?

Was that the store with that sign out front?

-Eric

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[afedaken]

I had a PC version of Castlevania. Ran pretty good. But you're right on the other three counts.

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[anonymo]

To my knowledge the very 1st (semi)graphic strategy game was "The Ancient Art of War" on a 5,5" floppy.
It had a simple but brilliant structure: archers shot down knights easily, knights killed barbarians brutally, and barbarians strangled archers fast. Villages gave food, fortresses gave new soldiers after some time. Moving meant that your troups got more tired the faster they marched - still missing in strategy games! And they needed troups left in villages to keep the support lines.
A few more simple rules that made it a kind of chess.
I wish there was a similar bit more modern multiplayer strategy game for human and AI players... any tips?

It took 9 hours to win the last and hardest campaign the very first time:-) There was no "save" option so it was about to win or win :) Letr on I found several useful bugs e.g joining a large but tired troup into a small but fit troup gave one large, fit and healthy group. Detaching into a small reservist troup staying in the village and a large group to attack the enemy than retreating back in a hurry to join the reservists made a way to win in very hard home-made maps :-)
Another trick was attacking a castle with several smaller units of archers that made the enemy busy thus letting in a large barbarian and knight group into the fortress this way shorted the enemy after I retreated with the small archer troups :-) Etc.

The floppy was copy-protected so I was have to find a fitting drive to my new 386 with SIPP memory a few year later. I was have to find a utility to slow down the box because the game became so fast it was impossible to give my commands in time :-)
There was an other game from Brotherbound, "The Ancient Art of War at Sea" but I couldn't buy it anywhere :-(
I'm afraid I don't even have the floppy of AAoW either :-/

There were some really innovative games in the early years of computer gaming when the game's ideas made it worth to buy and play.
Too many modern games are hiding the stupid rules and primitive structure behind fancy graphics and adrenalin kicks.
Of course most of the old games were junk too, but some games were diamonds...

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[elhaf]

Yeah, I used to have AAoWaS, it was cool. They had the concept of battling ships from a distance with broadsides, then when they got up close you could try to board and do man-to-man battles on the decks. One thing I never mastered was managing time properly. They had a time dial that let you speed up and slow down time, but the computer wouldn't care what setting you were on, it played just as well. So I would end up running past the important parts of battles sometimes and losing horribly.

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[elhaf]

Apparently these games are avaiable for download as abandonware: http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/abandonware/pc /strategy_games/games_a/ancient_art_of_war_the.htm l I don't know how reliable this site is.

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[ArsonSmith]

yea and one of the letters was burnt out for like a week.

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[ArsonSmith]

I got an aa lib version of Castlevania from my ISP, but again it didn't have any Mazes so guess that's not it either.

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[surprise_audit]

I remember Collosal Cave Adventure, but not the other thing. I drew out a set of maps for it by reading the travel table in the (Fortran!) source. I could run around the whole cave system and steal everything before the pirate showed up...

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[nz17]

Dude, you're thinking of a Dreamcast.

Re:Classic games that you can never find again

[anonymo]

Thank you for the link :-) The site want to get payed in advance for something I don't know if it's legal and working or not. I bookmarked the URL but hesitating to pay...
The time factor worked well in the Ancient Art of War. Except it was too fast on a i386.

Parent ... but a bit easier to read

[IamLarryboy]

/., My name is Greg "Devil Dog" Kumparak, and I'm an Architect of Infinity. I hope I'm not doing the rest of the team a disservice by attempting to speak for them.

I've been playing Castle Infinity since a very young age, and have volunteered on the game for quite a few years. Castle Infinity was developed around 1995/96 by Starwave. It grew a rather large fan base, which simply wasn't big enough to outweigh the cost of running it. After being transferred from company to company, it was eventually forgotten by all except for the original players.

Sure, company after company brought it up for 2-3 months, but it was only a tease. Each and every time, Castle Infinity was closed down. The blow of signing on to see "Sorry, we're closing down until further notice" hit some of us quite a few times. That was until we realized that Castle Infinity had been thrown away. I do quite honestly mean thrown away. In a trash can.

With a bit of good timing, and maybe a liiiiittle bit of fast driving, we got our hands on the server and a large portion of important data. (Thanks Kevin!) For the past few years, we've spent a large portion of our free time on rebuilding Castle Infinity. Months of server woes, countless bug fixes, and an unimaginable amount of stress on each and every member of the team.. and it's all lead up to this.

We're up, we're running, and we're ready to dump as much cold water on our server as it takes to keep it from melting. Theres a lot of work to be done, but trust me - we're trying as hard as we can. We have quite a lot in the works. We're constantly working on ways to make Castle Infinity feel much more "modern", giving it features to make it compare to the MMOGgs of today's standard.

Due to this, we're ALWAYS looking for a talented hand. Think you can help out in any way? Contact us. Don't worry, we're good people. With that, I welcome you. Welcome to the fruition of our noble quest. It's been a long, wild ride.

Uncountable heartfelt thanks to all at Slashdot for running this story.

Greg Kumparak
Architect of Infinity

Re:Parent ... but a bit easier to read

[aCapitalist]

Thank you for the easy-reading.

Re:Parent ... but a bit easier to read

[Chromain]

Many thanks IamLarryBoy. As i mentioned a bit further down, I managed to forget line breaks under the stress of "AHHHHH THE SERVER JUST LIT THE CAT ON FIRE."

Well.

[Chromain]

The server got a bit hot - we dumped ice cold water on it. Unfortunately no one told us that water on a server isn't actually a good thing. Yeah. Thats what happened. *cough*.

Anyways, I have good news! There IS a direct link to the download. Unfortunately, the only way to register is on the website itself. So. If you managed to register but didnt get to the download in time, head on over to:

http://www.mediamerlin.com/castle/C8/C8Install/C8S etup.exe

On that note - the site is currently up, it's .. just kinda limping. And as I typed that, it went back down. We're gonna throw up a static page with a link directly to the registration and download pages.

My apologies for the mess. If you're interested, please bookmark the link - we're workin hard here.

Re:Well.

[Solder Fumes]

Why would I bother to register and download without knowing anything about the game?

Re:Well.

[Deliveranc3]

Bittorrent... dude Figure it out!

Re:Well.

[biryokumaru]

Wait... it doesn't natively run on Linux!?!?!

/me downloads it anyways

Re:Well.

[jred]

You'd be surprised by how many ppl don't have any clue, or think it'd be too hard to do. I emailed the guys who did the Star Wars Chopper video and recommended BT. There were half a dozen mentions on their site that they kept blowing up all of their donated bandwidth. He wrote back with a bunch of questions, and I sent him a brief explanation & a couple of URLs.

And remember, these guys are stuck on a game that's 10 years old. They aren't necessarily keeping up with the times :)

Re:Well.

[Chromain]

*Laugh* Fortunately, as the high amount of new people who have managed to slip in tonight through the flames can prove, our download link is fine. It's hosted on a REALLY nice pipe on a seperate server. Sadly, to certain specifics involved with the database itself and the reliance on interconnectivity between the game and the site, we can't host the website on that incredible server. So, we've just gotta ironclad it as well as we can, and hope for the best. Apparently, "ironclad" meant "jello soft" tonight.

Re:Well.

[Deliveranc3]

Solution.
public/www/castleinfinity/index.html.torrent.

Re:0 Comments

[brainboyz]

Yup, I saw the front page, no comments and then made the rounds. I'm seriously bummed that it died that quickly. I mean, I realize the old one ran well on a P1 system, but I figured they'd have sense enough to upgrade since then.

What is this?

[Roland Piguepaille]

Well ... I can't get to the page, and all I can find about it on the web are vague descriptions which describe it as a child's game that involves dinosaurs.

"Monsters have invaded Castle Infinity, and it's up to you and your new dinosaur friends to keep them at bay. Kids can play the game with their friends over the Internet."

Is this the game?

Uh ... I was sortof hoping it was going to be an RPG, like Yserbius, or something. Anyone have details? Am I totally off base here?

Re:What is this?

[Chromain]

Indeed - it is largely a childs game at heart, though the actual fan base seems to be older than originally intended. Too "old" for this type of game? No worries! Show your kids - they'll love it.

Re:Recommended minimum hardware requirement.

[Nipok Nek]

It's less about hardware and more about configuration. Even Google has been brought down by a Slashdotting (it was an https: page for something.) If you are feeding a small text file on your front page, you can survive a lot. If you have lots of database lookups, forget it.

Nipok Nek

Easy reading

[aCapitalist]

That got me thinking about easy reading an the human mind. It's not the sentence, or really a logical paragraph split, but it seems to be almost a pure visual limit where after x number of words we have problems comprehending.

Re:Easy reading

[MBraynard]

ACtually, if everything you read was in that format, you would adjust pretty quickly.

GOOGLE CACHE

[Anonymous Coward]

http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:g67FaBUao30J: www.castleinfinity.com/+castle+infinity&hl=en&star t=1

Re:Recommended minimum hardware requirement.

[DarkAvZ]

I'm not sure, perhaps something like this?

The Links are down

[ApKa]

oops !!! the links mentioned here seem to be down.

Just rescued?

[rincebrain]

My friend introduced me to this game several months ago.

They've been playing it on and off with few problems connecting for years.

I think the tenses in the story are a bit off...

Re:Just rescued?

[Chromain]

Mentioned it in my totally broken first post, but we've been working in stealth mode for quite some time on this. We're about to finish up on one of our first "major" patches, and with the relaunch of our new website, we decided to consider this our "Grand reopening!". "Grand" obviously has a different definition somewhere.

The "Who are we" page.

[darkonc]

I managed to get one response. Here it is..
Who are we? Well, for one thing, we're a public-benefit, not-for-profit, California corporation. We're also all volunteers who were originally players, and who love Castle Infinity and want to see it fulfill its potential. We range in age from 15 to 53, and spend minutes to hours a day working on Castle Infinity.

Kevin Quitt ... In putative charge is Rev. Kevin D. Quitt, who came into his position of Benevolent Dictator by virtue of the fact that he went dumpster diving when Castle Infinity's creators (Starwave) decided there was No Commercial Potential for the game, and threw out the baby with the bath (servers and all). He is the game's and the corporation's administrator, but besides that, he designs some algorithms and codes some of the utilities we use.

John Cantu joined the Castle Infinity staff in 2000 and does assorted administrative tasks. (Have you ever noticed you can't hack connect.dat? That's because he did it first.) Outside C8, John is working towards his B.S. in Computer Information Science with a goal of becoming a systems/network administrator, and currently works as an analyst for a multinational media information company.

David Estes
David Estes is possibly insane due to being a mad scientist
David Estes is glad that this intruder chose to invade his wheat field
David Estes is well known throughout the community for his soccer talents
David Estes is the new assistant provost for teaching
David Estes is president of the lutheran child and family services of illinois
David Estes is one of the owners of pacific northwest distributing

Greg Kumparak's been around Castle Infinity longer than he wishes to disclose. He started playing around the same time he began sporting a Power Rangers lunch box. Greg is responsible for the majority of the new art (including this site) and likes to brand himself as "Lead Level Design" when discussing Castle Infinity with others. Children simultaneously adore and fear him.
He still carries around a Power Rangers lunch box.

Edward Marks, unlike the other architects, never had a chance to play Castle Infinity when it was still operated by Starwave. He began playing in 2000 and joined the architect team in 2002. His original job was as an artist, but Greg has taken over most of his former responsibilities. Now he is responsible for the organization and use of original Starwave material (a lot of it was left on those abandoned hard drives) and has created several body parts, items, levels, and ideas. Outside of the game, he attends Thomas Jefferson School, with Andy, but will soon graduate and enroll full time in Stanford University in California.

Andy Matuschak joined the Castle Infinity team in 2001 as a client programmer (he likes to refer to himself as the "Lead Programmer"), but he's served in various capacities since then. His largest projects for the game include the site you're reading now (which he coded), the Infrared update system, the currency system, and the HUD. On a day to day basis, Andy is responsible for new features in the client, web site updates, and most of the levels that require code. Outside of the game, he attends Thomas Jefferson School in St. Louis, MO (graduating in 2006) and spends much of what time remains working with the Open Sword Group on open-source Mac software.

© Castle Infinity, Inc. 1996-2005 (( -- but I hope they don't mind me posting this here. ))

Re:The "Who are we" page.

[Chromain]

Not at all - in fact, we appreciate it. Let people know we're not some faceless corporation or any other cliche group-to-hate.

Re:The "Who are we" page.

[darkonc]

Thanks. Smetimes it's easier to get forgiveness than permission. If that failed, I would have had to point out that I'm too poor to be worth suing.

wow

[Anonymous Coward]

hacked together
slashed,

a true hack and slash rpg

typical...

[Anonymous Coward]

>>You have encountered a Slashdotting!
>evade
>>You cannot evade.
>evade!!!
>>You cannot evade.
>exit

geek@computer> nethack

Re:typical...

[braindigitalis]

> It is quiet. You are likely to be eaten by a slashdotter. >> Go east > You have been eaten by a grue. errrr, slashdotter.

To the CI architect

[unkokue]

Since you guys are about the game experience rather than money, does this mean some kind of meaningful PvP is in store for downloaders of your game?

Re:To the CI architect

[Chromain]

Possibly in the future, but not in the traditional sense. The idea of player attacking player doesnt exactly flow with the game's concept. But other forms of challenge would work quite well.

Interesting

[Omnieiunium]

You sooo need to take pictures of this! I would really be interested in seeing what a slashdot effect can do to a computer. Actually I just want to see a computer on fire.

Anyway, any clues as to when the server could possibily be up? This looks interesting..

Re:Interesting

[mikael]

Server after a slashdotting

And they were able to recover the data off the hard disk drives.

Full story here

Re:Recommended minimum hardware requirement.

[Tokerat]

So what is the recommended minimum hardware requirement for a site to be able to withstand slashdotting anyway?

It's gotta be a Beowulf cluster of something...

Title should be changed to...

[ImaLamer]

Classic MMOG Server Razed From Slashdot by Future Players

Re:How old is this guy?

[Chromain]

A bit off in your math, though close. I'm actually 17, and I'm in no way "the guy" who rescued Castle Infinity. I'm part of a team of guys who each had a huge part in the process, ages ranging from 16-50. On that note, Agism is lame.

Illegal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't .. er, removing items from peoples trash stealing?

And on that note, do they have the 'right' to use the game code?

Re:Illegal?

[eclectro]

Actually not. Once you throw it away, you're throwing it to the birds.

The problem is more how it was thrown away. If the dumpster was located on private property, then that's tresspassing. Public property - that's a different matter entirely. Laws vary from state to state on this. But you do not see much enforcement anyway, as it's trash.

I imagine that there are different laws for each state that prohibit people from climbing into dumpsters for safety reasons..

So much as the code goes, I searched and could not find information about the status of code ownership/trademarks or current license. I do note that a non-profit was started for the sake of preserving the game.

As an aside, I think this exemplifies why current copyright law is too long, and favors those who have deep pockets for lobbyists to protect a "few" things, while literally everything else goes to the trash.

Re:Illegal?

[Chromain]

We were in fact given permission to "retrieve"(Read: Dumpster dive for) the server and do whatever we please with it. The ownership/trademark issue is one we've dealth with for the past few years, and is a large part of the reason we're just now trying to get a foot up in the world. And by the way, I absolutely agree with you on how copyright is currently handled. It's a bit absurd.

Re:Illegal?

[oncebitten]

IANAL, but IP doesn't relate to physical media. It's more abstract.

GPL it, and see what happens :) If there's a non-profit (with presumably no assets), it would be an interesting case, and the corporation has nothing to lose.

Re:Illegal?

[patio11]

*Nothing* will happen unless the corporation decides to put some money on the line and sue, and it can't be a "friendly" suit either just to create a precedent, as those generally should be bounced out of court. Of course, should you GPL it and then, for whatever ungodly reason, someone steals the code from you and rereleases it closed-source, and you try to enforce the GPL on them, they'll attempt to claim that you had no legal right to GPL it. But realistically, lawsuits don't happen when there isn't actual cash money on the line, and there is no cash on the line anywhere in this scenario.

Re:Illegal?

[eclectro]

Besides, prior owners have no real motivation to bring charges at this point.

You said it - at this point - until some lawyer looking for lunch goes through those papers from the storage unit and sees that these guys are getting popular again. Then he, like other scumbuckets that came before, file a lawsuit to claim ownership of everything.

Even if the code was GPLed, judges eyes glass over when you mention "copyright".

I don't know what has been done to settle it, but verbal assurances are worth the paper that they are written on.

Re:Illegal?

[CowbertPrime]

So have you been able to trace the current rights holder of the game and get their IP released or what?

Re:Illegal?

[Dusabre]

Still covered by copyright...

Civil + criminal liability if Starwave wants to get nasty...

BUT They throw it away will be a good defence to stave off the liability - but it won't get copyright transferred to the non-profit. Starwave could get an injunction stopping usage even if it couldn't get them punished straight off (but violating the injunction would result in punishment)

Re:Illegal?

[rthrush]

This is not a totally new happening for mmog's. Myself and others have been running an old mmog called subspace, it has since been reverse engineered and new protocals incorporated to stop cheating. The poeple who own the game show no real interest in it. It has since been renamed to continuum. There are several zones and servers. here are just a few.

trench wars
t3 the gauntlet
extreme games

and there are more and anyone with a t1 or better can run a server.

search google for continuum and subspace, you'll find a bunch of stuff.

Mecbot+
Server Coordinator
t3g.org

Re:Illegal?

[Dachannien]

In my city, they recently passed an ordinance explicitly giving people permission to take appliances, furniture, and other large items from off the treelawn when other people were throwing them out. You still can't root around through their garbage for thrown out mail, documents, etc., but you can take the big stuff that isn't bagged or boxed up.

Re:Illegal?

[Toloran]

This is the second game that I know of that this has happened to. An old game called subspace was a pay to play game but they couldn't make enough money to support it. Because of that they just turned it over to the fans and they made it a free game. It is now called continnum and has 1000s of people playing it all the time.

Re:Illegal?

[Bazzible]

I remember something from law class about items in the trash are no longer that persons property. They are not trespassing when the item is in the trash. I didn't do much of a search on google but this is the first hit that came up. http://www.paghat.com/dumpster.html I personally would put it in the category of salvaging. No comment on the right to use the game code issue.

Quick Question (offtopic)

[Achoi77]

Kudos for the hardwork! I hope the /.ing goes ok, as I'm unable to check your site out, to which I'll do tomorrow. But anyways, my quick question was:

What kind of server hardware were they throwing out? And where can I get some!?? :-)

I'm only asking because I find it - well - wasteful that some company would literally throw away a complete server whole like that. Was it low end? Or was it just too old? Do you guys still run the same exact hardware, or did you guys upgrade to newer stuff? And if you guys upgraded, can I have the handmedowns?? ;-)

Thanks in advance!

Re:Quick Question (offtopic)

[Chromain]

Unfortunately, this is one of the topic's i'm not incredibly well informed about. On that note, and for that same reason, this entire post could be completely wrong. If that's the case, please ignore it and hit me with a stick or something. The main reason we needed the server was for the server/db software that (luckily) was on the hard disc itself. The rest of the server was either trashed, far too out of date to use, or just over all crud. We have upgraded from that server, which actually required quite a bit of work. The software/db stuff that is required for the interconnectivity of the game and the website is rather hateful, and required some INCREDIBLY specific stuff. Of course, we got around all that eventualy. Sadly, the software still hates us. Basically, our hardware rocks - its the software side that's killin us. (And to answer your other question - sorry, to my knowledge we've already given away or tossed any server hardware we didnt need. The original server would be very outdated by now, though.)

Re:Quick Question (offtopic)

[ndwyer]

Yeah...the original servers were high-end (for the time) P6-200s. On which we estimated about 5000 players would comfortably run. The server side software is complicated. Rick Lambright, who is honestly one of the smartest people I've ever met, built a system that did all the stuff you'd expect from an MMOG, but he did it before there were any examples to learn from. Unfortunately, our goals never explicitly included making the software run for anyone else, so I'm not surprised it has taken some work to port it. I was one of the original client-side programmers at Starwave. We put an awful lot of ourselves into Castle Infinity and it was heartbreaking to see how badly Starwave managed/marketed it. It's really nice to see new people taking the system over and keeping it running. Congratulations on keeping the game online and bringing it back to people's attention. nathan

Re:Quick Question (offtopic)

[ndwyer]

Yeah...the original servers were high-end (for the time) P6-200s. On which we estimated about 5000 players would comfortably run.

The server side software is complicated. Rick Lambright, who is honestly one of the smartest people I've ever met, built a system that did all the stuff you'd expect from an MMOG, but he did it before there were any examples to learn from. Unfortunately, our goals never explicitly included making the software run for anyone else, so I'm not surprised it has taken some work to port it.

I was one of the original client-side programmers at Starwave. We put an awful lot of ourselves into Castle Infinity and it was heartbreaking to see how badly Starwave managed/marketed it. It's really nice to see new people taking the system over and keeping it running.

Congratulations on keeping the game online and bringing it back to people's attention.

nathan

Re:How old is this guy?

[jred]

No, *very* young is under 20. *Young* is 20-45. That way I have 10+ years to be young.

Re:0 Comments

[Chromain]

Heh. Oh - we've definitely upgraded. The server is actually quite nice. The software required to run some of the database related stuff is the real problem, and is what we're working on right now.

since the article is still unavailable...

[bnitsua]

I think this raises interesting questions about abandonware...
what's the legality of taking over a project that was aborted? even though the company who owned it literally trashed the project, don't they still own some sort of rights to it?
if it became popular, could they do anything, since they bought the rights from Starwave... or does throwing it in the trash forfeit those rights?

Re:since the article is still unavailable...

[kfg]

. . .does throwing it in the trash forfeit those rights?

No.

KFG

Re:since the article is still unavailable...

[Roland Piguepaille]

. . .does throwing it in the trash forfeit those rights?

Yes.

Roland Piguepaill

Re:since the article is still unavailable...

[jcuervo]

Maybe.

Re:since the article is still unavailable...

[The Famous Brett Wat]

To the extent that physical artefacts were recovered from the trash, there's no question of theft here. I recall reading about a case a while back in which the police obtained evidence without a warrant by taking it from someone's trash, and the court ruled that as non-infringing. Some reporters retaliated by raiding the trash of some high-profile public servants associated with the area, and reporting on it. Sauce for the goose... gotta love it.

Anyhow, what you're asking about is the copyright, no doubt. We've had some succinct answers offered in this thread already, and I'll have to back the "maybe" on this. If it went to court, the arguments would be pretty interesting! Can you throw a copyright in the trash? I don't think the law specifies, and I don't think the courts have ever ruled on it. Interesting concept, though. If I were the lawyering type, I'd want to argue that the copyright was trashed, unless there is some evidence to suggest that the work was retained, or the copyright sold. My argument would be that the material entered the public domain due to abandonment -- although I'd find out what the accepted Latin phrase for that is, to underscore my lawyerhood.

How about, "if a copyright owner abandons all physical embodiments of the work, and has not entrusted the preservation of that work to another party, then, ceterus paribus, the copyright has also been abandoned." (Latin included only for show.)

Re:since the article is still unavailable...

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Abandonware is a way for us "pirates" to feel better about what we do.

It doesn't matter that the company doesn't sell the product or support it any longer.

Re:since the article is still unavailable...

[KillerBob]

Not strictly speaking true. Reputable AW sites (such as HOTU and Abandonia) will post a title, and inform the vendor that it's up. If the vendor complains, the title is taken down. If the vendor doesn't complain, then the product can be considered abandonware, and freely distributable.

Also, when a company no longer exists, and nobody bought the copyrights, their product becomes public domain. An awful lot of abandonware titles actually come from studios that went belly-up. In these cases, since there's no longer anybody who can make a claim to the copyright, the product in question becomes public domain.

The difference between Abandonware and Warez comes in whether the product is still within its natural saleable life. Only the vendor can make that decision, and when the vendor comes to that conclusion, there's two things they can do: they can either abandon the title, or they can release it for free download (like Rockstar Games has done with some of their material). As long as they think they can still sell it, it's not abandonware.

Re:since the article is still unavailable...

[GauteL]

Since a couple of the other answers are simply "yes" (wrong) and "no" (correct), I thought I'd post a response as well.

Just because you abandon a product does NOT mean you give up any of your copyright to the code.

Unless explicitly released under a non-commercial license after abandonment, you have NO RIGHTS to distribute it. Yes folks, it means abandonware is illegal, and no, there is no excuse for thinking it is legal. All computer games is afaik new enough that copyright has not expired.

The whole notion of abandonware being legal is just wishful thinking, nothing else.

However, just because it is illegal, doesn't mean that distributing it morally wrong, or that anyone will go after it.

Personally I think it is perfectly morally acceptable and distributing it is just a risk assessment everyone should do, about whether you will be held accountable for it or not.

Just remember:
Just because something feels morally acceptable does not mean it is legal.

Re:since the article is still unavailable...

[argStyopa]

I'm sure it only matters if they are successful, in which case a circling cloud of patent attorneys will descend on them to pick them clean.

It will go into court, and the judge will decide against all common sense that "throwing it into the garbage" does not revoke one's title to original work. Then he'll go on an extended vacation paid for by the RIAA/MPAA while the case chugs through into the appeals process.

The creative and hardworking crew will have the EFF join them as well as vocal but useless moral support from the thousands of fans and supporters on /. Eventually however, the grinding cost of litigation will be too much, these guys will decide they its simply not worth throwing their lives away and mortgaging their homes for this game, and it will pass back into the original owner's possession.

They may make a desultory effort to wring some money from it, but once the lawyers no longer smell chum in the water, they will decide to circle elsewhere, and the case will be settled out of court.

The game itself may stumble on for a few weeks or months, until the original owners really decide that it's too much work for a cobbled-together piece of code, and they will put it back into the drawer (or the dumpster) where it will sit, unused, unappreciated, like a piece of toxic waste that nobody dares touch.

Me, cynical? Nah.

Re:since the article is still unavailable...

[merlin_jim]

even though the company who owned it literally trashed the project, don't they still own some sort of rights to it?

Well that all depends... do you think that ideas have intrinsic value? Well of course, that's obvious. But in terms of copyright law, not so much. You definitely can't copyright an idea that exists solely in your mind (though you could patent it). You definitely can copyright a finished product based on an idea. In between is a grey area...

Oh and just to add my $0.02 and risk getting modded redundant, if you throw something away it immediately becomes public domain. As long as its not trespassing to retrieve it, you can do so. This includes outside dumpsters, trash cans, and loose bags / items at a designated municipal pickup location. (i.e. curbside)

Now tying this back to the idea of code ownership; if you throw out your only copy of the source code, do you still own it? And if not is it public domain? Or does it belong to the first entrepeneur to rescue it from the dumpster? Of course, in this case, public domain doesn't have quite the same meaning that it does in the coding world; items in dumpsters can be owned by everyone at once, but only until one person claims it.

This really points out the problems with our current property laws; they are all geared towards protecting the rights of individuals who own physical things; bits are free (well except for a trickle of electricity) and can be perfectly copied any number of times. It is this property of cheap and easy duplication that makes some of the assumptions made when writing property laws just absurd when applied to the new medium.

Ever heard possession is nine tenths of the law? Now how the hell does that apply when anyone in the world can possess for free (assuming someone else is offering the bits for free)... Now that's not a legal principle, but rather a simplification of many legal principles, but as IANAL it was the best example I could come up with.

Bottom line: our government needs to stop treating bits like pieces of furniture. And no, pretending a collection of bits is like a book isn't a better solution. Ideas are valuable. There should be laws that protect the ownership of those ideas. Some would argue that this is what patents are for.

Patents are supposed to turn ideas into something that the legal system can treat like physical property. But two things get in the way of that. Firstly, there is a huge barrier of entry. Not only does your idea have to show some intrinsic merit, value, and novelty but the burden of the work of patenting something falls on the "inventor". If I had enough money to patent every halfway decent piece of code that comes out of my brain, well I wouldn't need to because I'd have enough money to hire teams of lawyers to protect my ideas just as well.

The second issue with patents and bits is the ease of duplication. Before software, you could steal a patent but all you'd get is a set of plans to build something. To make a profit off of that you still had to build a factory and make tools and hire people and get raw materials and put finished products in stores and advertise that its available.

Now with software you don't have to do any of that. You can take the implementation of the idea itself and duplicate it for a small investment of time and a little bit of bandwidth. And thanks to viral marketing and micropayment systems, you can do business online without having to setup a huge (and therefore noticeable) presence.

So here we have a system designed to protect ideas, but to enroll in the system can cost a significant portion of the implementation cost, and once enrolled you have to continuously patrol every nook and cranny in the entire world looking for offenders and still KNOW that someone could slip a little business in the cracks where you'd never notice anyways.

There's gotta be a better way.

Re:since the article is still unavailable...

[yack0]

The general legality of dumpster diving is that if there is no local law or ordinance prohibiting it, it's legal.

IANAL
YMMV

But I did find all the personnel records from a company I used to work for in a dumpster. :)

Re:since the article is still unavailable...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I recall reading about a case a while back in which the police obtained evidence without a warrant by taking it from someone's trash, and the court ruled that as non-infringing.

Admissible.

I hear the Supremes have ruled that if you throw out a document intact the police can retreive it and use it against you, but if you shred it they can not use the reassembled pieces against you as evidence in court. The distinction is over whether you have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" of the document's contents.

Mandatory disclamer: IANAL.

speaking of which...

[keith_nt4]

On this subject anybody else remember Meridian 59? I have such fond memories of it. Especially playing it 5 days at a time on the slow "free servers". And waiting for it to load over my 28.8k modem and parallel port zip drive. Is this game at all comparable to Meridian? Also, what don't they just provide the client via bit torrent? Isn't this what it's there for?

Re:speaking of which...

[ReeceTarbert]

Currently part of the games package offered by Skotos.

Here's the actual link to Meridian 59".

Re:speaking of which...

[akirmse]

Yes, my brother and I started the original Meridian 59. It was bought from 3DO by two of the developers and is still running here. The original 2.5D software renderer has been upgraded to 3D hardware in the intervening years.

Yserbius

[Nasarius]

Yay, someone else remembers Yserbius and Twinion! I have the boxed single-player versions of both games, but half the fun was the multiplayer.

Re:0 Comments

[Sappharad]

Archive.org has it, despite not being the most up to date. It appears to be a game targeted to children ages 8 to 14, so... slashdot probably isn't the best audience to advertise this game to. But the story behind how it came to be was a nice read.

Re:You can never go back..

[audacity242]

Obsolete video technology does not make a game crappy.

The vast majority of today's games suck, it's just that most people haven't realized it 'cause they're shiny and new.

-Jenn

A similar fate

[hobotron]

Was one of Redmoon. (http://www.redmoon.co.kr/ Korean version) An english server lasted for at least 5 years, but due to mismanagement, ingame and secuirty, the server software was "obtained", and now countless old players can download it and set up their own, or play on one of the many private servers, I have first hand knowledge of these events because I was a Redmoon player for a long time, I've followed it from the US version, to the Singapore company that bought it, to its home right now as a player created/tinkered operation.

Sure some of the things done to obtain the software were ethically questionable, but when you really love a game a lot, its hard to see it completely given up on. A lot of this love comes across with the development team that ressurected castleinfinity. It wasnt the first MMORPG that was resurected, and it wont be the last, as long as you have a deep emotional tie with a game (bordering on adiction, believe me, I know) you cant just let it go.

Thanks for bringing back some memories that were close to me with this story.

Re:A similar fate

[Chromain]

Thanks for that post, hobotron. It was actually a really nice read, and it's great to know me and the rest of the guys arn't alone in our sort of addiction:-P

Re:Slashdot Hosting

[audacity242]

I've seen slashdot down a couple times. And each time I nearly had a panic attack.

-Jenn

Watertight...

[spiff42]

Perhaps their webserver wasn't all watertight when they attempted to pour enough water on it to keep it from melting.

/Spiff

bah i used so much graph paper

[Roland Piguepaille]

There's a web-based remake you can play if you have Internet Explorer:

http://pages.prodigy.net/rdbrownmsb/MadMaze2/

Yeah eventually the maps started to sort of "overlap" as though certain parts were on top of each other. It was enough of a headache to begin with, that's where I quit as well.

Re:[OT] /. already?

[rzebram]

And drugs! Surprise, fear and drugs!

didn't they run the espn website?

[eamonman]

It seems only a brief time ago it was

espn.starwave.com

or was that a completely different seattle startup company?

Re:didn't they run the espn website?

[Chainsaw76]

Same company.

"Four-year-old Starwave has made a name for itself by co-developing the ESPN SportsZone Web site, as well as sites for the NFL and the NBA. Previously, the company also developed CD-ROM titles, but that line of business was abandoned after sales of its critically acclaimed four titles fell short of expectations."

From: http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/1997/05 /26/story6.html

Re:didn't they run the espn website?

[nintendo_is_a_cereal]

And they did a rather haphazard job of running it and employing moderators. Of course now it's even worse.

Re:didn't they run the espn website?

[WankersRevenge]

Yeah ... Starwave was bought by ESPN and later converted to ESPN.com. A lot of the .com management are old starwave folk. A few years back, they moved the entire operation from Seattle to Bristol. Under the hood, quite a bit of services still point to a starwave domain. The only reason I know this is because I work for them. Great group of people.

I don't supppose...

[ladadadada]

Was there ever a Mac version of Castle Infinity made ? Macs weren't nearly so popular back then and even if there had been one made it would only run in Classic mode.

What are the chances of a version being ported to Mac OS X ?

Re:I don't supppose...

[Chromain]

:-/ Sadly, chances are slim to none. We tried it once, and it didnt exactly go over so well. On that note, it CAN run under Mac OS X.. under VPC. Just.. without sound. But it's better than nothing! Buuuut - if you like it enough without sound, you could pick up a computer at the flea market for 10 dollars with enough power to run this game:-)

Re:I don't supppose...

[m50d]

How about a compile against winelib? Then people could port bits of it to "native" linux if they wanted to, and even if no-one bothered it would be a bit easier to play under linux than just wine.

Re:I don't supppose...

[fries]

If you are permitting the download to go for free, would you ever consider permitting the source to go for free (as in Free Software)?

Doom went this route, and, well, it is runable on any os because volunteers have made it work on just about anything. Same could happen to your project!

Re:I don't supppose...

[idonthack]

They might not have the source - they bought the clients, and the server software was already installed on the server they pulled from the trash.

I really hope they have backups, so when the hard drive crashes they can bring it back.

Re:I don't supppose...

[fries]

Hmm, well, thanks for at least considering it.

I presume there is, according to your thoughts, NO viable model for an `open, un-hackable' protocol and/or client/server interaction for MMOG's?

Just curious.

Deadly Nights?

[elliam]

http://www.filelibrary.com/Contents/DOS/5/15.html

Re:Deadly Nights?

[AEton]

Afraid not - I'm certain it was a single-player adventure game of the IF variety.

Downloaded Deadly Nights & perused the readme and documentation just to be sure, but none of it is familiar.

Thanks for suggesting it, though!

Re:How old is this guy?

[Chromain]

*laugh!* True enough. Oddly, the dictionary definition of agism defines it in relation to prejudice against the elderly. A bit off. But I know what you mean:-P

Re:How old is this guy?

[Oopsz]

All the time; most legal proceedings of age discrimination are filed by people who believe they were unfairly treated (most often, unfairly dismissed from a job) for being too old, not too young.

Re:Recommended minimum hardware requirement.

[patio11]

Serve your website from a Windows machine. 80% of slashdot will refuse to read it out of spite. Presto, Slashdot effect averted. As an alternate to the Windows machine, post something supportive of the RIAA -- then you won't even need a server to handle all the people who won't be visiting the page you don't really have.

HOTU

[Emperor BMA]

You may want to talk to the guys at http://www.the-underdogs.org/, forgotten gems of gaming are their specialty and you might get some advertisement. That is, after the slashdotting wears off... -_-;

MMOG

[j]

Obviously "Massive" has been redefined in the past decade.

Re:MMOG

[kdq]

Disney owns Starwave, which registered the trademarks. Disney doesn't really even know it owns the trademarks. I couldn't even get them to look into donating them to our non-profit, because it would cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars to do the research required and there was nobody at Disney who had the authority to authorize the expenditure.

Since you guys are already owning my network, if you're interested, you can check out www.quitt.net where there is a detailed explanation of what all went on.

So I'm not really concerned about a lawsuit. Besides, because of conspicuous public usage of the trademarks, those marks are no longer valid. My dream is for the game to pay for its upkeep and development (artists and musicians generally want to be paid).

Re:Recommended minimum hardware requirement.

[Zinob]

On the other hand will 5-10% of the Slashdoters (depending on time of day when it is posted) (D)DOS the server without spending much time reading the article or even clicking the link, just because they feel thats the right thing to do .

I like your style

[KlaymenDK]

I read a couple of pages on your site (sorry), and I must say I like your style, tongue-in-cheek as it is. I'll definitely return later to view a screenshot or two.

I hawe to ask: any plans to make this into a cross-platform thing? Otherwise I'd be stuck on my work computer, and I'd much rather run it on my own hardware.

Re:I like your style

[NeuroBoy]

I found some old screenshots if anyone is interested, maybe Chromain can tell us if there any major graphical departures...

Re:I like your style

[mrchaotica]

They say elsewhere that since the game is so old, you can probably run it emulated or spend $10 on an old PC for it...

Re:I like your style

[Chromain]

Actually, very little has changed, graphically. We're trying to keep with that same feeling, as we *want* this to feel unique. The game has a sense of class which we believe is generated largely by it's graphic style. Of course, the 3d fan boys will come in and go "wtf 2d side scroller l4me". But they're not our target audience anyways. We don't necessarily need the hardcore gamers. We want a community, we want friendships to be made, and we want to make an environment that a reasonable amount of people will use that doesnt include rampant gunfire and flame wars. (Not that FPS's arn't absolutely wonderful. Its just nice to have something different to go back to.) Thanks for posting those screenshots.

Re:0 Comments

[m50d]

It appears to be a game targeted to children ages 8 to 14, so... slashdot probably isn't the best audience

You're new here, aren't you?

Re:[OT] /. already?

[jcuervo]

And Goatse.

Surprise, fear, drugs, and Goatse.

Re:How old is this guy?

[fbjon]

No, *very* young is slashdot id# > 800000.

Young is perhaps id > 400K. 200K-500K is getting warm (ranges overlap somewhat), 100K-250K is medium rare, 50K-120K is experienced, 20K-50K is on the brink of ultimate geekhood, and < 20K is ye olde bearded type.

But hey, look on the bright side: you have some impressive hair cultivation to look forward to!

-RMS by proxy.

(yes, of course I'm kidding)

Re:You can never go back..

[stuffisgood]

True...Most modern games do suck. But so does this...

The original promo video

[YA_Python_dev]

The original promo video. 9.1 MB, realplayer (works fine with mplayer), funny.

Re:The original promo video

[electrichamster]

Although I really want to have a bash at this, that video really *really* hurt my brain.
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING????

As an aside, anyone got this running in wine/cedega yet?

Re:How old is this guy?

[NighthawkFoo]

I'm the old bearded type? I guess I'll have to go get a rocking chair and sit out on my front porch and complain about the weather.

Re:You can never go back..

[nmk]

A majority of yesterdays games sucked as well. Its just that people tend to remember the good ones. I suspect that the same will be true of current games.

Re:You can never go back..

[KDR_11k]

No, your standards have merely risen. Honestly, try comparing one of the old games and shut off nostalgia or "well, for its time..." logic and compare those old games to a good modern one (no point in comparing them to utter crap). You will usually find major improvvements that you'll find make the game much more playable. For RTSes stuff like queues, multiselection and even unit behaviour, for RPGs comprehendable interfaces and stats, etc. Many games have a better save and "respawn" logic nowadays, often you're not thrown back to the start of the dungeon if you die somewhere in it. Controls have become more precise, visibility has improved, puzzles are less erratric, dialogue is more expressive, levels less repetitive (unless you're comparing to Halo) and often gameplay more varied (what passed for fourty hours of entertainment back then would count as stupid grind or repetition nowadays).
Oh, and games have become longer on average. most games simply relied on the fact that you had to start over when you lost your last life.

Most old games would never hold up to modern expectations, even if graphics and such were not a factor. They often relied on novelty to get the player. Crap such as Space Invaders or Tempest is held in high regard.

And don't get me started on the games that weren't considered good even back then, the cheap dev costs allowed for a whole lot more of those to be thrown at the market. What passes for bad these days can often still be enjoyed though it won't be on par with the greatest titles.

Though, of course, you said the "vast majority" sucks which would just be a rephrasing of Sturgeon's Law and applied even back then. The "vast majority" can be disregarded because noone likes, buys or plays those games.

How can you claim copyright on this?

[Rogerborg]

Seriously. You can claim rights on your additions, but you've laid claim to the whole thing. Did you re-write it from scratch, server, client, graphics, sound, videos, everything?

Re:How can you claim copyright on this?

[HTH NE1]

Probably the same way the cops can rummage through your garbage outside your home for evidence without a warrant: that which is discarded in the trash you have relinquished your rights.

IANAL nor would I want to have to fund a defense.

Re:How can you claim copyright on this?

[Rogerborg]

Property right is not copyright. You can own a copy of a book without having the rights to make more copies, or for that matter to claim to others that you own all the rights in that book.

Re:How can you claim copyright on this?

[HTH NE1]

But then that's the difference between finding a previously published book in the trash and finding the original unpublished manuscript, or to take it back to the topic at hand, having a discarded copy of the software and having a discarded copy of its source code.

It would come down to good faith. A reasonable person would see throwing away the source code, runtime environment, and hardware as divesting oneself of the rights to the property as allowing its destruction would deprive even the supposed retainer of the rights of the very rights he seeks to deny to others.

If IP in the trash stays in the trash, then that would certainly be an unconstitutional extension of copyright to infinity by denying it to the public domain.

If any act would deprive all of humanity access to the work, including the rights holder, those rights should be forfeit to the public domain.

Alas, while I think my position is morally sound, section 104A - Copyright in restored works, effectively allows creators to retain copyright over works restored by others, and moral rights in copyright in the UK has similar provisions.

However, it does suggest that until the work is restored, it is in the public domain. Once the work is restored, rights apparently go back to the original destroyer of the work as "if it had never entered the public domain in the United States."

Unless I'm misunderstanding what they mean by "restored" in that section. Is it work restoration or copyright restoration?

Re:How old is this guy?

[Deternal]

hey, I'm not medium rare, it's damn hot here so I'm pretty sure I'm well done by now!

Re:wow

[RaffiRai]

I think you meant:

Hacked Together
True Hack And Slash R.P.G.
Don't You Love, Haiku?

Re:You can never go back..

[macshome]

Hey now, Tempest rocks. So do any number of other early games, although I'm not much of a Space Invaders fan.

The main games played in my MAME collection are Tempest and Joust. They are simple, precise, and fun.

Re:Recommended minimum hardware requirement.

[Timberwolf0122]

Has anyone considered writing a P2P webserver? The pages are stored on multiple boxes and are fetched via a bit-torrent-esk protocal.
Admittedly dymanic content such as ASP/perl would be tricky however it would reduce server load.

Bah! no linux version?

[nacks1]

and no mac version either. I guess I shouldn't complain since it is free, but maybe someone will do a port some day.

First MMOG

[Geekbot]

It always cracks me up when I see this "first MMOG". I remember using Q-Link (AOL predecessor) when I was so young on my C-64. At one point they developed a game where you could walk around this island and collect stuff and chat using avatars. You could see other peoples avatars and they would walk around. It would be something of a conquest to run around and see who could find the most junk. They ended up ruining by having a bunch of mods that abused people for fun.

But that's just my own experience. Look at all the MUDs and such. I think the massive in MMOG is somewhat relative. There have been MMOG's for a long time in my opinion.

Re:First MMOG

[fwarren]

You are refering to "Club Carbie"

I should be awared geek points for knowing this tidbit....never mind, I am already posting on slashdot.

Re:First MMOG

[MikeBabcock]

Many of us played MOOs and MUDs and games like TradeWars even for years. There was a great planet-conquering game too where you would have a province for your local BBS with groups of players forming small governments and you'd launch attacks against other provinces (BBSs) in town and stuff.

Great fun.

Re:First MMOG

[azrolator]

I loved Tradewars. It was expensive for me (my parents) back in the days of BBS. I lived in a small town and everything was long distance for us. But i still logged on every day at least just for that game. I still MUD too. Not as many people play on the one I do as when i started but there are still some of us die-hards around.

Re:How old is this guy?

[hoover]

So would a 4-digit id mean anything special? ;-)

good work on resurrecting the game, folks. It'll be interesting to watch the story unfold now that it has a dedicated, passionate crew running the show.

All the best, hoover

Abandonware

[jrboatright]

you would -think- that was true, and it is certainly reasonable, but it is simply not how the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act left things.

There is no such thing as a corporation which has no "heirs". At a minimum, if the corporation is dissolved, the debtors (in the case of a bankruptcy) and the stockholders have on-going rights in any intellectual property that existed unless the board of the corporation EXPLICITLY turned the companies intellectual property over to the public domain.

Or, under some circumstances the copyright reverts to the employees who did the work.

You may _consider_ the title abandonware and freely distributable, but that does not mean that it is _legally_ so.

This is why Project Gutenberg has such trouble scanning anything written after 1924. There are a gazillion photographs, magazine articles and so forth where the author can not be found, the PUBLISHER doesn't exist, no one knows if "Mark Trail" was a pseudonym or not, and finding him or her is impossible, but by golly, if we PUBLISHED that photo and made any money out of it, his or her GRANDSON might come after us.

Samething with software. Your position (abandoned) is one the Library of Congress recently asked for comments about. I hope you submitted one.

Re:Abandonware

[mrchaotica]

Samething with software. Your position (abandoned) is one the Library of Congress recently asked for comments about. I hope you submitted one.

Got a link?

Re:Abandonware

[jrboatright]

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/14/12 21237&tid=103&tid=123&tid=17

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/28/21 4213&tid=192

http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2005/70fr3739.html

Saddly, the deadline was on or before 5 p.m. EST on March 25, 2005

I have seen nothing since about their thoughts from the comments they recieved.

Re:Abandonware

[jrboatright]

sorry, missed one. They have now posted the results of their request for comment, tho no conclusions. http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/index.htm l also, you might check out http://www.orphanworks.org/

Re:Abandonware

[Rogerborg]

> unless the board of the corporation EXPLICITLY turned the companies intellectual property over to the public domain.

How? There's no way to uncreate copyright. Saying "This work is in the public domain" is - at best - a vague indication that the work is licensed liberally and explicitely in perpetuity. It's a sort-of license that's wide open to challenge by the new owners, who would be able to go after everyone who has a copy.

You'd be better assigning the rights to a body that you trust to perform and protect liberal licensing of the work.

What about the Legality?

[ahsile]

What if the company who tossed this in the dumpster comes and says they want it back? Did they ever give up their rights?

Re:What about the Legality?

[kdq]

A representative of the company that had the rights to it gave me permission to take the servers away instead of them being thrown out. It's really mine.

Disney owns the trademarks, but those have been invalidated through conspicuous public use.

Anyone Remember Faazuul from Galacticomm?

[Mr. Maestro]

There was a company out of South Florida called Galacticomm. They ran a game called Faazuul or Freezuul or something like that. Anyways, it had a max of 16 players and it was all text based. You had to put together objects to make new stuff and so on... This was WAY ahead of it's time. Around the mid to late 1980's. I can remember setting my computer to auto-dial to try and connect. That or call someone who I KNEW was playing and have the call-waiting signal disconnect their modem!

Re:Anyone Remember Faazuul from Galacticomm?

[Gondola]

Playable versions of the original "MUD" were available as early as 1979, mainframes only. Multiplayer mainframe Zork was created even earlier. I remember playing multiplayer Zork on a Dartmouth university mainframe back in the early 80's.

In 1980, MUD1 was online on the internet.

Compuserve was first able to put Islands of Kesmai up as a commercial offering in 1984.

In 1985, Galacticomm's MajorBBS and Compuserve's British Legends were both available.

The BBS software that Galacticomm wrote was called MajorBBS, and I used to help run a BBS, and customize some of the programming and configuration for it. (Borland C with DOS Extender on a 286!)

What made Galacticomm unique was their invention the Galactibox, which was a large computer case with 16 ISA slots that connected to a PC via an interface card -- of which you could have multiple. This allowed BBS operators to put together the hardware to run 16-64 modem lines much cheaper than, say, Compuserve.

I used to help run a MajorBBS in Michigan called SOLARIS until the con-man that owned it skipped town and left all of the hardware, so my then girlfriend and I decided to run it out of our home. We were always in the red over the phone bill, so we eventually closed it down.

Here's an interesting timeline to check out if you're interested: http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/mudtimeline.h tml

Re:How old is this guy?

[alc6379]

Some of us 800000'er's smell kind of rare... does that count?

Re:Bah! no linux version?

[Fwoggus]

The game is old enough that it would probably play fine via an emulator. Something to try if you have time on your hands.

Re:How old is this guy?

[yack0]

What's that sonny? You gotta speak up for us 4-digit fogeys... "SPEAK INTO THE TUBE SONNY!" ;)

I want to be an Architect of Infinity!

[gweedoz]

My name is Greg "Devil Dog" Kumparak, and I'm an Architect of Infinity.

Wow! Architect of Infinity... that is what I want MY next job title to be. That would rock. Now... what exactly does an architect of infinity do?

Re:I want to be an Architect of Infinity!

[zippthorne]

Draw a line. Put arrows on both ends. You're done. Go have a beer.

Re:I want to be an Architect of Infinity!

[Chromain]

We mostly eat muffins, make small indian artifact replicas, and act important.

Re:the editors destroy small websites for profit

[MBraynard]

Aren't you guys affiliated with the GNAA.org?

Now if only........

[ShyGuy91284]

The game could have gotten this much attention back before it went down..... But then again, it's now free, so Starwave's loss is our gain.

Re:How old is this guy?

[lawpoop]

I know agism is lame, but I'm impressed with teenagers ( no offense) who manage to do more with their life than I've done to the present point. I've got 10 years on you, and I'm starting to feel like a geezer who hasn't amounted to much. It has to do with guys like you involved in projects like this ;)

Re:You can never go back..

[Loraque]

The vast majority of today's games suck, it's just that most people haven't realized it 'cause they're shiny and new.

Exactly. There have been few good games in the last several years. Plenty of pretty ones, but if it only holds your interest for a few months, then it was NOT a good game.

Not sure if it is funny, or sad, that if a game holds interest for a few months, it is considered good by today's players?

Re:You can never go back..

[Cylix]

I still love Joust to this day...

One of the simple facts of the new systems are side scrollers are gone.

PS specifically has regulations regarding how games should be and the closest you can get to a side scroller is a long off back drop. The one exception I know of is the arcade classics.

I don't know if XBOX has any such restrictions, but they probably do.

Re:You can never go back..

[beanlover]

I would add Defender to the list. There was another game like Defender that was really good but I can't remember the name of it.

Tempest was one of the greatest.

B

Re:How old is this guy?

[Drey]

You got to talk slow and into my good ear. No, my *other* good ear! Damn whippersnappers ... and stay off my lawn!

Re:How old is this guy?

[Naikrovek]

old bearded type? fah!

When I got my ID i actually twiddled my thumbs for two hours wondering what to choose as a nickname. what would my ID be if I had not? hehe.

Re:You can never go back..

[Anonymous Coward]

No, your standards have merely risen. Honestly, try comparing one of the old games and shut off nostalgia or "well, for its time..." logic and compare those old games to a good modern one (no point in comparing them to utter crap). You will usually find major improvvements that you'll find make the game much more playable. For RTSes stuff like queues, multiselection and even unit behaviour, for RPGs comprehendable interfaces and stats, etc. Many games have a better save and "respawn" logic nowadays, often you're not thrown back to the start of the dungeon if you die somewhere in it. Controls have become more precise, visibility has improved, puzzles are less erratric, dialogue is more expressive, levels less repetitive (unless you're comparing to Halo) and often gameplay more varied (what passed for fourty hours of entertainment back then would count as stupid grind or repetition nowadays).

Don't be so quick with generalizations, my dad and I used to play the original Starflight (four colors, when was the last time a game fully used the available color pallet?) in the eighties. I played and it's sequel it off and on since. The graphics get the job done, even today (although I have the upgraded EGA version 16 colors and it still uses them all). If you aren't familiar with Starflight, Starcon II was very similar in overall goals and some mechanics (though the fictional settings are rather different). The big differences are that in Starflight; you only have one ship (though you can still upgrade it through bought or found technologies), you can select and train crew members, and lastly exploration and diplomacy are more important than combat to winning the game (though there can be quite a bit of ship to ship combat).

Oh, and games have become longer on average. most games simply relied on the fact that you had to start over when you lost your last life.

Maybe with arcade type games. However, it has taken almost twenty years for the games to get as long as Starflight was. And the story was more than just long, it was rather engaging too.

Though, of course, you said the "vast majority" sucks which would just be a rephrasing of Sturgeon's Law and applied even back then. The "vast majority" can be disregarded because noone likes, buys or plays those games.

Sturgeon's Law is called a law because there is validity in it. 90% of everything is crap, but the other 10% is what will be remembered for long after it was made. There are few older games that stand the test of time, but some do. Those are the reasons people make programs like DosBox and the like

Re:How old is this guy?

[Lovesquid]

In Korea, only old people complain about agism.

Re:You can never go back..

[whopis]

Stargate is the game of which you are thinking. It was a sequel to Defender. Same basic idea, a few new enemies, and a few new controls (I can't remember what the new controls were though)

Habitat closer to first.

[Spazmania]

First off, good for them. That was a remarkable rescue.

I do have a small bone to pick, though. Castle Infinity is not "one of the first" by a decade or so.

The first graphical MMOG I know of was Habitat from 1987. Yes, that's 1987 not 1997. Habitat was built by a partnership between Lucasfilm Games Division (now LucasArts) and Quantum Computer Corp (now America Online). It ran on a Commodore 64. Though usable at 300 bps, you really needed 1200 bps to do more than poke around.

Habitat didn't make it out of the beta test in the US because it used an indecent amount of server hardware. Quantum needed the hardware for the beta version of AOL. Habitat's bastard stepchild did make it to release, though: Club Caribe. In 1988 it had tens of thousands of players and supported upwards of 1000 at once.

Lucas later released a standalone game using the Habitat engine. You may have played it: Maniac Mansion.

Re:Habitat closer to first.

[BurntHombre]

Island of Kesmai, a graphical MMORPG, went live in 1984 (and lasted, in various iterations, up through 2001).

Re:Habitat closer to first.

[Spazmania]

Found at: http://www.gamegrene.com/node/30

A semi-grapical RPG called Island of Kesmai [...] used characters to draw the map, although a front-end was available that replaced that with real graphics, that is once graphics were available on the machines that could connect.

In other words, not a native graphical MMOG. Legends of Kesmai which followed it was graphical, but that didn't come until later.

Re:Habitat closer to first.

[BurntHombre]

Ah, I didn't realize the bar had been raised to include only native graphical MMOs. Noted, but I'm not sure why it makes a difference.

At any rate, Kesmai's Air Warrior likely still predates Habitat, at least by a few months.

Re:Habitat closer to first.

[Spazmania]

Actually, they started building Habitat in 1985, and the beta test started in 1986 wrapping up in 1987. I misremembered the dates: http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html

Air Warrior began its testing in 1986 as well and was released in 1987. That puts them in about the same time frame. There is an excellent timeline in http://www.gatecentral.com/shared_docs/Timeline1.h tml

The problem is that Air Warrior could only have 41 planes in each instance of the game. (http://www.atarimagazines.com/startv3n2/kesmaiwar rior.html) Multiplayer? Yes. Wicked cool? Absolutely. Ahead of its time? Without a doubt. Massively multiplayer? No.

Habitat was massively multiplayer at a time where other games were figuring out how to be online at all.

Re:Habitat closer to first.

[rtwrecks]

I looked at Habit extensively before starting Castle Infinity. --Russell

Torrent your exe.

[Maxo-Texas]

You could save a lot of bandwidth if you use torrent for distributing your startup code and your patches.

I did tech support for Castle Infinity..

[AbyssLeaper]

Man, this brings back memories. Way back in 1995/96, the company I worked for was doing support Starwave products. Besides Castle Infinity and ESPN SportsZone, Starwave did multimedia CD's. Sting, Clint Eastwood and The Muppets were the ones that I supported.

Now, the company I worked for was a call center that did outsourcing for Starwave on the Customer Service and Tech Support side. They took me to do training on Castle Infinity. I spent a full day sitting at a Dev's desk playing on their test system. That was it. I was a bit nervous about having to take support calls.

There wasn't a Knowledge Base, and when the system launched I expected a deluge of problems. Launch day happened, and I sat at my desk. No calls, nothing. It went like this for weeks. I received more support calls on their other products than on Castle Infinity.

In retrospect, I think two things happened. The client was stable and ran an almost all systems. Also, I don't think anyone knew about the game. I left the company not long after CI sent live, and later heard about Starwave selling their assets to Go.com, and later Disney Interactive.

Get Demo of CI here

[bigwavejas]

You can download a demo of Castle Infinity here:

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_download.asp ?fid=1422&fileidx=1

Re:Get Demo of CI here

[kdq]

The demo server is no longer running, I doubt the demo will work.

Re:How old is this guy?

[RiotNrrd]

Jeez I'm old...

What about the game rules?

[halleluja]

Remember the ten rules of castle?

• No swearing or dirty language.
• Don't tease, be mean to, or threaten anyone.

Back in the old days this was ok, but nowadays I need intimidation skills to bugger down those experienced youngsters.

I hope they don't get sued and have the game taken

[gmezero]

Just because they rescued all of the I.P. from a dumpster does not give them copyright ownership to the game. I sure hope they have some form of transfer of ownership agreement with the last owner of the game, otherwise when/if the make this successful that companay can come back, take the game and sue them for damages.

Re:How old is this guy?

[Acy James Stapp]

Heh? Back in my day, we had to submit our slashdot replies on punch cards two weeks in advance! In the snow, both ways!

Re:How old is this guy?

[d474]

That was a funny thread! OMG. Where are the moderators + Funny!!!?

Re:How old is this guy?

[saihung]

Of course, the weather we get now isn't hardly like the weather we used to get here in 1998. It's nice, mind you, but it's not REAL weather.

How old is this guy?

[Richard Phillips]

You youngsters and your newfangled rocking chairs! In my day they didn't rock! We were lucky to even have chairs!

(Translated from middle engish)

Re:How old is this guy?

[Grey Ninja]

could be that old people are just cranky old bastards out to make a quick buck at someone else's expense, while young people are actually willing to work as well. ;)

Anyone Remember Dark Sun Online?

[knight37]

That was my favorite of the pre-UO MMO's. It was up on TEN (Total Entertainment Network) and well worth the price of admission. I wish someone would put up a new DSO server.

Re:You can never go back..

[Musteval]

I too remember Castle Infinity with deep sadness. Then again, at the time I was also an ardent fanboy of such classics as Reader Rabbit and Mario Teaches Typing.

Re:How old is this guy?

[jimm]

Gee, thanks for calling me "olde". No beard, though. Oh, well---my two small girls keep me feeling young. I've got them calling me a "computer geek".

This isnt news...

[Ceirren]

This is a blatant ad for the game-- it has nothing to do with some people "raising the game from the dead." Recently on the penny-arcade.com forums, someone (who registered 1 minute before posting) posted a huge article advertising this game in the games/technology forum. It was instantly locked by a moderator... Im not sure how many other forums they are doing this on... But seriously, this isn't news. Its just an ad. Im not sure why the slashdot mods would put this up, but it isnt right.

Re:This isnt news...

[Chromain]

The forums were a stress test of sorts. We needed to get a few players other than ourselves in to help us stress test the game itself. Indeed - that was I who posted the article on PA. The reason /. posted this is because we're in no way in this for the money - we're here to let people have fun. We worked hard to get this game back up in this condition, and I believe the editors can see this. Please take a step back and realize that while it is advertising, it is in no way inappropriate or shameful for us to have this link here - We're a good group of guys who spend all of our time trying to make the internet a bit more friendly. Slashdot's editors chose to help us out, for which I can't thank them enough. I hope the fact that I took the time you read and respond to your post is enough to prove that we're not just whoring the game about.

Re:How old is this guy?

[jwest]

Damn. You mean if I'd gone ahead and registered instead of lurking all those months, I could have been an old bearded type?

Oh well.

(shrugs, goes back to writing COBOL on the mainframe)

Re:How old is this guy?

[fbjon]

I guess you can consider yourself a olde bearded type in waiting. The limits move upwards all the time, see. Actually, I wonder when users will start dropping off the low end of the list due to extreme old age or plain death? Will slashdot survive that long?

Setup mirror

[Sedennial]

http://ftp.techline.com/corwin/castleinfinity/C8Se tup.exe A mirror of the setup file is here

Re:How old is this guy?

[EulerX07]

But then again, you have to account some deviation for people who've read slashdot for several years before even starting up an account.

Re:How old is this guy?

[mcoletti]

Punched cards? Feh. Try punched tape, sonny.

Review with pictures on another site

[MMHere]

Perfect for those of you that need instant gratification!

Here is a review on another site that is not presently slashdotted. You can read about the game and see several screen snapshots.

That's probly all you'll get until the CI server stops being melted.

Re:Review with pictures on another site

[Chromain]

Thanks for posting that review. It's a few years out of date, so quite a lot has changed. New technology has been added, and quite a lot of features. The game can handle more than ever. The screenshots are accurate though:-)

legality of dumpster diving in Oregon

[j1m 5n0w]

I recall reading about a case a while back in which the police obtained evidence without a warrant by taking it from someone's trash, and the court ruled that as non-infringing. Some reporters retaliated by raiding the trash of some high-profile public servants associated with the area, and reporting on it. Sauce for the goose... gotta love it.

Yeah, that happened in Oregon. Here's the article.

Re:You can never go back..

[Chromain]

Oh man, wait until you see our next smash hit - Mario Teaches Online Etiquette. IT WILL BE A BLOCKBUSTER. (Not really, by the way. Please don't sue us, nintendo.)

Ah yes, I remember my first hacked MUD

[zardo]

Reminds me of this mud I had a good time with, me and a friend gained access to their mud server and added a line of code to the login script that allowed us to log in as anybody with the password "letmein". So we logged in as familiar faces for a day or so terrorizing people, deleting commands and what not until it got boring, they recompiled their code countless times but never had any backups made, and nobody ever thought to look at the login script I guess, so I logged in a year later when they had hundreds of users on and did the same thing only this time the terror lasted a few days. They probably had backups at the time but they all had this one line of code in them. I think the mud went to shit after that.

Ah, those were the days. Sorry, "Realms of Chaos".

Re:How old is this guy?

[flibble]

Aww, I always knew I should've registered when I first came here...

Re:How old is this guy?

[schon]

wazzat? Speak into my hearing tube! :o)

Re:How old is this guy?

[Wintermute__]

Kids these days... Can't understand a word they're sayin'!

Hmphh.

Re:How old is this guy?

[Wintermute__]

Brink of ultimate geekhood? Crap! Missed it by *that much*...

Oh, nevermind, you wouldn't understand. Whippersnapper.

One word...

[rarity]

NetHack.

Re:Bah! no linux version?

[kdq]

Disabling sound allows for good play under wine and SoftPC on the Mac.

Re:How old is this guy?

[Sanat]

Back in the early days we were not in a hurry to get an UID... most of us were anonymous and wanted to stay that way... but as the Slashdot system evolved it become apparent that having an UID was the shade of the future.

Systems Analyst in 1962. Now that is old!

Re:How old is this guy?

[Boronx]

If it wasn't for the internet we'd never know about all this stuff and it would be easy for guys like us to feel good about our meager accomplishments.

It would be more interesting if it were..

[Dextre]

Past MMOG Players Raised From the Dead

Re:How old is this guy?

[fbjon]

Whoa! That is certainly more respectable than any old id!

Re:I hope they don't get sued...

[HTH NE1]

You bring an interesting question. If the sole copy of a copyrighted work is thrown away by being placed in a trash recepticle on public land, is it as free to anyone taking it as any other discarded property?

One can certainly divest oneself of a copyright prior to its expiration by transfer to another party or to the public domain. Throwing the work away should certainly qualify.

Re:I hope they don't get sued...

[gmezero]

So you're to tell me that if Steven King writes a book and throws it in the trash after he's finished with it. I can pluck it out of the trash and claim it's mine?

Re:I hope they don't get sued...

[HTH NE1]

You wouldn't claim it as your work any more than you'd claim a discarded Tonka truck as manufactured by you, but I don't see why you couldn't publish it as what it is: a discarded work of Steven King.

But I think you'd get more interest if it were a book by Stephen King. ;)

Re:I hope they don't get sued...

[rtwrecks]

Actually, as I understand it. The current folks have some kind of permission to use it as a non-profit venture. More power to 'em!

Re:How old is this guy?

[aztracker1]

hmm.. what about on the icq # scale? imo = 999999 is pretty old, = 99999 is in the early days, the before time, before aim, msn, yahoo im, etc... used to have like 4????.. but changed isp's and couldn't remember my password, couldn't get my password sent.. :(

It's not at all hard to understand

[Rogerborg]

There is no provision in Title 17 for abandonment. None. There is no need for the apocryphal reasonable person to decide this, because there is no ambiguity to be decided. The rights remain with the creator. You might as well argue that dead tree authors lose their rights if they agree to having remaindered copies pulped.

Re:You can never go back..

[beanlover]

YES!! Stargate.

I sucked at both equally...but I pumped in the quarters just the same.

Thanks for the memory jog.

B