1st edition was quirky and complex, but it had a vitality, a newness because of, not in spite of, its rough edges. Anything was possible and generally could happen in a campaign. Yeah a number of game rules were crap, but most people I knew simply ignored what they thought were bad rules and focused on having an adventure/fun.
(If you want to play 1st edition I would suggest getting the PHB, the DMG, the first MM, and maybe Unearthed Arcana. You don't need the second MM, the Deites book or the others unless you are going to have a long-term campaign.)
I also like the 3rd edition because it is flexible while still managing to hang together, rules-wise. I like being able to have a player-friendly system that is consistent enough to make my life as a DM easier. D&D 3rd edition also has the distinction of breathing much needed life back into the entire pen-n-paper via the d20 system (whether it is your cup of grog or not).
2nd edition AD&D blanded down AD&D in the name of consistency. While some of the changes were nice, it just didn't work for me. The 2nd edition was what lost my interest in pen-n-paper RPGs.:-/ Luckily the 3rd edition got me interested again...
Maybe for the way *you* use them, but not when you've got a dozen monitoring web pages sitting in tabs that remain in a fixed order. I don't *need* to read the title of the page, because its function is associated with its location (you know, the same principle Apple espouses with its single standardised menu bar). To say tabs as demonstrated elsewhere tabs are completely unacceptable" is patently false when I, and others, use them in such a way every hour of every day.
Obviously for you, tabs are essential. The main question is really: are you a normal user of tabs? That is, do people generally open a fixed set/fixed order of tabs most of the time or do they have open a random set of tabs (say, using the tabs to load stuff in the background while they continue to read their current page)?
My thought is that it is the latter, not the former, but I could be wrong. I'd be interested to see what other people say about their usage.
Personally, I'm glad to see both browsers. I want choices and having Safari and Chimera gives me the best of both worlds. That's cool.:)
Because they've known ever since Win95 that hardware advances (Mooore's Law) will save them. They get a bigger back for their buck by putting something mediocre _now_ to grab market share and letting the hardware boost them than waiting longer to release something good.
Basically, until Moore's law winds down they won't have any incentive to put out an initial product that is great.:-/
"These people are just ingenious," says John Romero, co-creator of Doom and Quake. "They have figured out all the weird little bitty tricks in the code that we didn't even know about."
From what Romero said it looks like people have studied the code enough to learn how to use the _existing_ code in new ways. (Jedi code tricks, anyone;-)) They aren't finding unknown API/function calls.
This isn't surprising. It usually takes a fresh-to-the-code mind to see new functionality because as a programmer you tend to view code as only applying to the problem you want solved. Also, modders spend more time with the code that the original programmers who probably have moved o to a new project.
All in all this is a Good Thing (tm). Hats off to those companies that make their old source code available/work with the mod community and to the people in the mod community who work hard at extending the life of the older games.:-D
How many folks remember that phrase? Some of you younger people might not recall it, but I'm of a generation that does. The memory of _bad_ money is long, *very* long. The greenback (US Dollar) means something because its stability was a consequence of the worthless Continental. No one wanted to repeat that mistake again.
So, yeah, I do think that brand awareness plays a part in US currency. The current green-colored bills mean something to people. It is peoples' belief in a currency that is what sustains it. If the average US citizen starts viewing the NextGen bills as 'Monopoly' money or funny money it will be doomed at a currency.
The Fed knows this so they'll work long and hard to try to convince people that the bills are 'ok'. They have the recent redesign going for them, I think. People have a fresh memory of a change so possible resistance to another change might work.
Oh, on the counterfeiting reason for the change, I find it interesting that in past years the reason the Fed gave for not introducing color was that it was supposedly *easier* to counterfeit color bills. People looked at the color and not the denomination, whereas with ours people checked that actual bill. (Also, printing up some bills on your printer won't work. Greenbacks are cloth, not paper, and won't literally feel right.)
Finally, as far as the problem with checking the denominations go, just do what I do: perform an insertion sort.;-) I sort my bills front to back, smallest to largest denomination. I can just as quickly check the denominations I have as I could looking at the colors. Since I never carry more that $20 - $30 in my wallet my search time is effective nil.:-D (Yeah, yeah, it is anal method, but at least I don't have to think about the various bills in my wallet.)
Lots of times, the city the post office has you in isn't the city you actually live in, but it will get to you all the same, because the Post Office can't assign multiple municipalities to a single zip code.
ZIP codes are based on Post Office locations. Thus a particular ZIP code can be assigned to multiple municipalities.
I used to have to deal with this problem when 'geocoding' addresses for a mapping program that dealt with Real Estate locations. You simply can not be sure in all cases that a ZIP code maps to a particular city or county.
First off, I've given you the courtesy of assuming you are capable of making up your own mind. I'd appreciate it if you would extend me the same courtesy.
Secondly, my main quibble with your original comment is that a non-standard definition of theft isn't a good idea. Like it or not, the full legal definition is what we need to use when we go to talk to our congresscritters. We have to use it their way in order to effectively influence them to change things to something better.
Refusing to acknowledge this situation (that is, the way the law defines things) is self-defeating.
:chuckle: A dictionary definition debate? Damn, I sometimes wish/. was more like Usenet where you could have extended discussions instead of simple commentary. This is fun.:)
Well, to get back to your point, let me quote from my Barron's Legal Guides Law Dictionary on property:
:begin quote:
*PROPERTY*: "every species of valuable right or interest that is subject to _ownership_, has exchangeable value, or adds to one's wealth or _estate_." [snip citation numbers] "Property" describes one's exclusive right to possess, use, and dispose of a thing, [snip more citation numbers] as well as the object, benefit, or perogative which constitutes the subject matter of that right. [snip even more citation numbers]
:end quote:
The definition goes on to links to the definitions for _common property_, _incorporeal property_, _intangible property_, _personal property_, _public property_, and _tangible property_.
So, by this legal definition, music would most certainly be property.
If music wasn't property, then things like stock certificates or, say, GPLed software wouldn't be property. Thus, $BIG_COMPANY could use GPLed stuff in their closed source software without it being stealing.:-( That I *do not* want to see. I'd rather move the law back towards something more sane than the current situation.
As a programmer, I want the law to protect the stuff I create and the freedom to choose how to distribute my creations. Because of that, it behooves me to respect other people's creations and methods of distributions otherwise who is going to respect my efforts?
Re:Are you a legal man, or a moral man?
on
Live from Iran, Film88
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Morals are purely personal and can be revised at a moments notice to suit the individual. Arguing morals can be a fun thing to do, but in the end each side can quite correctly state they are moral based on their own personal code. Thus putting forth a moral argument about this matter is a mug's game.
Whether it is a good thing, well, that depends. Sharing with an 11 year old a method of creating poisonous liquids is *NOT* a good thing. Much of what we deem good is situationally dependant.
As far as US law goes, check out The 'No Electronic Theft' Act. It looks like the law considers this theft now.
Also, the legal definition you quoted is correct, but not complete. You used the definition for larceny, but missed the ones for robbery, burglary, and piracy. It helps if you bring all the information to the table so that people can make up their own minds.
Finally, just to give a more useful definition, I'll quote from *the source* for the English language and leave you with the appropriate Oxford English Dictionary's definition of stealing (theft being the "act of stealing"): "take (another's property) illegally or without right or permission, esp. in secret".
Personally I think the existing copyright system in the US is out of whack. I'd prefer one of the older systems, such as 26 years for a copyright with a renewal of 26 years going automatically to the original authors/musicians/etc. Let 'works for hire' run a flat 50 years. Let the copyrights tilt back towards a more reasonably balance between creators/copyright holders and the public at large.
"A good friend of mine was the first emergency physician on the scene at the Hyatt and performed the triage. He was recently interviewed by the BBC for a documentary about the Hyatt. They supplied footage to the BBC, but no...they don't have any reason to supply footage to random people."
I didn't mean to indicate that J. Random should be able to walk in and look at the evidence. I was thinking of an article I had read a couple of years ago about a different documentary being done on these types of disasters and the fact that no one wanted to help out the researchers.
I'm not surprised they cooperated with the BBC because the BBC's reputation is very, very high and they aren't likely to show it widely in the US.
"Like it or not, it's unconstitutional to force people to incriminate themselves."
Very true. However, I wasn't saying that we should set up star (Starr?;-)) chambers to force people to talk. If I came across that way, my apologies. What I meant was let's not hide the *facts*. The particulars of who is or isn't to blame is/was a matter for the legal system. The facts of the event should be readily available for legitimate researchers, though.
I live near KC and I remember when the skywalks collapsed. As the story unfolded after the tragedy, it became readily apparent that everyone just assumed everyone else was doing what they thought they should be doing or that their shortcuts were fine with everyone else.:-( Communication and checking up on how things are actually progressing versus the plans can be a real matter of life or death.
Next time as a programmer you bitch about checking up on QA (assuming you are lucky to have a QA department) or on the users, just remember that your mistakes very rarely kill people. You've got it _easy_.
Also, on a side note, the local KC TV news organizations try hard to prevent people from getting to their archives of what happened. They don't want to present Kansas City in a "bad light". This is also very stupid. If we can't easily learn from our mistakes we are going to make more of them. 'Protecting' KC's reputation just makes Kansas Citians look more retarded than the screwup that was Hyatt Regency Skywalks.:sigh: Yeah, mistakes were made, so let's own up to them and learn something so we don't do it again.
I had the Diamond Monster Fusion version of the Banshee. For single layer textures the Banshee could be faster than the V2. Why? Because while the Banshee only had one texture unit compared to the two on the V2, the Banshee's texture unit was clocked higher.
Check out Anandtech's review of the Monster Fusion at http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=935 for more information.
Don't take everything in the article as gospel. For example, the article talks about the Voodoo3 as 3dfx's first 2D/3D card -- "at last, 3Dfx had an integrated 2-D/3-D card!", but mentions the Banshee prior to that (which was a 2D/3D card).
Read the article for the point that 3dfx had the market and then went about losing a number of gambles. While that was going on nVidia got lucky and proceeded to execute a _deliverable_ plan like clockwork.
when the story I submitted was rejected -- 2002-04-22 14:56:33 Unix is truly the dark side (articles,humor) (rejected) -- and posted all in the same day.
I'm off to chmod 666 some files and increase the minions of the dark side.;-)
Am I the only one that thinks this mod is just butt-ugly because of the PC case? I mean, if this was in an old, unworking arcade console it would be snazzy and something you would want in your living room. How many of us living in places other than a dorm room would really want a PC case next to their TV?
Utility is useful, no doubt about that, but let's have some more style please.
Do you have anything that definitively states the Wasteland copyright was sold? Knowing EA's King Log tendencies, EA is still sitting on the property (just as they do with The Bard's Tale, another Interplay creation), doing nothing with it.
Or were you speaking about the original Castle Wolfenstein?
I think you are confusing Wasteland with the story CGW printed about Castle Wolfenstein and the process CGW claimed id went through to be able to release Wolfenstein3D.
My original Wasteland disks state "Copyright 1986, 1987, 1988 Interplay Productions, Inc. and Alan Pavish", and Wasteland was distributed by EA. Unless Alan Pavish is dead and his estate is in legal limbo a sequel _could_ be done. All you would need to do is to get EA and Interplay to agree to it (obviously not a small matter, but not as convoluted as your scenario would have it).
Oh and the bit about MS and QDos is wrong - its an innacurate and aprocyphal bit of information that has made its way around the web for years - MS bought out a company called Seattle Computer Products (it was really a one man band) when IBM contracted them to provide a DOS - they paid $50,000 for it and employed the guy as well - they didn't buy exclusive rights - they bought the company thus they had all rights as anyone who buys a company does-MS has done enought factual things wong without making stuff up.
Unfortunately, you're the one that is incorrect. Check out this link -- http://www.patersontech.com/Dos/Micronews/paterson 04_10_98.htm -- for the correct story. As it is an interview with Tim Paterson about creating QDOS I think we can take it as gospel.;-)
Also, given that Seattle Computer Products _sued_ Microsoft in 1986, I don't see how Microsoft could have bought out the company in 1980...
Re:I thought cool at first....
on
Ultima Revived
·
· Score: 1
>> I guess even non-comercial hobbiests can sell out;-)
To give you a serious answer:-P, they are using this project as a vehicle to build the skills and get the attention for possible jobs in the PC game industry. Like it or not, that means experience with DirectX to most employers.
Ultima II is a game that most people seem to forget. It, like Ultima 1 is a GCA-graphics (read: 3 colour + black) game BUT unlike Ultima II, Ultima 1 was remade in the early 1990s for EGA so thus has the same graphics quality as Ultima III, leaving Ultima II to look the old, unexciting game of the lot.
Actually, it is Ultima II and Ultima III that are the CGA games. In fact, both are so old they use PC-DOS 1.x File Control Blocks instead of the more modern (PC-DOS 2.x+;-)) file handles. You can find fan-created upgrades that add a number of fixes -- EGA graphics, exit key, frame limiter, galaxy patch for Ultima II, and MIDI sound for Ultima III -- at http://exodus.voyd.net/.
Oh, the Ultima 1 remake was done in 1986, not the early '90s.
Nostalgia: On
But, yeah, Ultima II is the forgotten Ultima generally. Unless you are like me and played it for hours and days on your Apple ][ when it first came out, it is just too hard to see why it was so exciting.
Since a lot of people haven't figured out that you shouldn't shoot your own team mates,:-/ I wish that when a team mate killed you _they_ went to limbo and you respawned right away. Or just let you respawn without any wait time.
As it is, the single player game should be awesome.
> but the fact is someone with as much gaming clout and previous success as Garriott shouldn't have that hard a time finding investors
After U8 and U9, I don't think Garriott has that much clout. The gaming industry seems to have paralleled Hollywood, in that you are only as good as your last project.
Oh, and I thing RG *has* learned that small companies can't go it alone. Just look at what happened to Looking Glass. Even id paired up with Activision for distribution reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
I like AD&D 1st edition and D&D 3rd edition. ;-)
:-/ Luckily the 3rd edition got me interested again...
1st edition was quirky and complex, but it had a vitality, a newness because of, not in spite of, its rough edges. Anything was possible and generally could happen in a campaign. Yeah a number of game rules were crap, but most people I knew simply ignored what they thought were bad rules and focused on having an adventure/fun.
(If you want to play 1st edition I would suggest getting the PHB, the DMG, the first MM, and maybe Unearthed Arcana. You don't need the second MM, the Deites book or the others unless you are going to have a long-term campaign.)
I also like the 3rd edition because it is flexible while still managing to hang together, rules-wise. I like being able to have a player-friendly system that is consistent enough to make my life as a DM easier. D&D 3rd edition also has the distinction of breathing much needed life back into the entire pen-n-paper via the d20 system (whether it is your cup of grog or not).
2nd edition AD&D blanded down AD&D in the name of consistency. While some of the changes were nice, it just didn't work for me. The 2nd edition was what lost my interest in pen-n-paper RPGs.
Maybe for the way *you* use them, but not when you've got a dozen monitoring web pages sitting in tabs that remain in a fixed order. I don't *need* to read the title of the page, because its function is associated with its location (you know, the same principle Apple espouses with its single standardised menu bar). To say tabs as demonstrated elsewhere tabs are completely unacceptable" is patently false when I, and others, use them in such a way every hour of every day.
:)
Obviously for you, tabs are essential. The main question is really: are you a normal user of tabs? That is, do people generally open a fixed set/fixed order of tabs most of the time or do they have open a random set of tabs (say, using the tabs to load stuff in the background while they continue to read their current page)?
My thought is that it is the latter, not the former, but I could be wrong. I'd be interested to see what other people say about their usage.
Personally, I'm glad to see both browsers. I want choices and having Safari and Chimera gives me the best of both worlds. That's cool.
Because they've known ever since Win95 that hardware advances (Mooore's Law) will save them. They get a bigger back for their buck by putting something mediocre _now_ to grab market share and letting the hardware boost them than waiting longer to release something good.
:-/
Basically, until Moore's law winds down they won't have any incentive to put out an initial product that is great.
Does this mean you are changing your review style (http://www.gamerspress.com/dspreviews.php?id=391 for example) for something a bit less "vapid, chauvenistic, and annoying"? ;-)
"These people are just ingenious," says John Romero, co-creator of Doom and Quake. "They have figured out all the weird little bitty tricks in the code that we didn't even know about."
;-)) They aren't finding unknown API/function calls.
:-D
From what Romero said it looks like people have studied the code enough to learn how to use the _existing_ code in new ways. (Jedi code tricks, anyone
This isn't surprising. It usually takes a fresh-to-the-code mind to see new functionality because as a programmer you tend to view code as only applying to the problem you want solved. Also, modders spend more time with the code that the original programmers who probably have moved o to a new project.
All in all this is a Good Thing (tm). Hats off to those companies that make their old source code available/work with the mod community and to the people in the mod community who work hard at extending the life of the older games.
How many folks remember that phrase? Some of you younger people might not recall it, but I'm of a generation that does. The memory of _bad_ money is long, *very* long. The greenback (US Dollar) means something because its stability was a consequence of the worthless Continental. No one wanted to repeat that mistake again.
;-) I sort my bills front to back, smallest to largest denomination. I can just as quickly check the denominations I have as I could looking at the colors. Since I never carry more that $20 - $30 in my wallet my search time is effective nil. :-D (Yeah, yeah, it is anal method, but at least I don't have to think about the various bills in my wallet.)
So, yeah, I do think that brand awareness plays a part in US currency. The current green-colored bills mean something to people. It is peoples' belief in a currency that is what sustains it. If the average US citizen starts viewing the NextGen bills as 'Monopoly' money or funny money it will be doomed at a currency.
The Fed knows this so they'll work long and hard to try to convince people that the bills are 'ok'. They have the recent redesign going for them, I think. People have a fresh memory of a change so possible resistance to another change might work.
Oh, on the counterfeiting reason for the change, I find it interesting that in past years the reason the Fed gave for not introducing color was that it was supposedly *easier* to counterfeit color bills. People looked at the color and not the denomination, whereas with ours people checked that actual bill. (Also, printing up some bills on your printer won't work. Greenbacks are cloth, not paper, and won't literally feel right.)
Finally, as far as the problem with checking the denominations go, just do what I do: perform an insertion sort.
Lots of times, the city the post office has you in isn't the city you actually live in, but it will get to you all the same, because the Post Office can't assign multiple municipalities to a single zip code.
ZIP codes are based on Post Office locations. Thus a particular ZIP code can be assigned to multiple municipalities.
I used to have to deal with this problem when 'geocoding' addresses for a mapping program that dealt with Real Estate locations. You simply can not be sure in all cases that a ZIP code maps to a particular city or county.
First off, I've given you the courtesy of assuming you are capable of making up your own mind. I'd appreciate it if you would extend me the same courtesy.
Secondly, my main quibble with your original comment is that a non-standard definition of theft isn't a good idea. Like it or not, the full legal definition is what we need to use when we go to talk to our congresscritters. We have to use it their way in order to effectively influence them to change things to something better.
Refusing to acknowledge this situation (that is, the way the law defines things) is self-defeating.
Well, to get back to your point, let me quote from my Barron's Legal Guides Law Dictionary on property:
:begin quote:
*PROPERTY*: "every species of valuable right or interest that is subject to _ownership_, has exchangeable value, or adds to one's wealth or _estate_." [snip citation numbers] "Property" describes one's exclusive right to possess, use, and dispose of a thing, [snip more citation numbers] as well as the object, benefit, or perogative which constitutes the subject matter of that right. [snip even more citation numbers]
:end quote:
The definition goes on to links to the definitions for _common property_, _incorporeal property_, _intangible property_, _personal property_, _public property_, and _tangible property_.
So, by this legal definition, music would most certainly be property.
If music wasn't property, then things like stock certificates or, say, GPLed software wouldn't be property. Thus, $BIG_COMPANY could use GPLed stuff in their closed source software without it being stealing.
As a programmer, I want the law to protect the stuff I create and the freedom to choose how to distribute my creations. Because of that, it behooves me to respect other people's creations and methods of distributions otherwise who is going to respect my efforts?
Morals are purely personal and can be revised at a moments notice to suit the individual. Arguing morals can be a fun thing to do, but in the end each side can quite correctly state they are moral based on their own personal code. Thus putting forth a moral argument about this matter is a mug's game.
Whether it is a good thing, well, that depends. Sharing with an 11 year old a method of creating poisonous liquids is *NOT* a good thing. Much of what we deem good is situationally dependant.
As far as US law goes, check out The 'No Electronic Theft' Act. It looks like the law considers this theft now.
Also, the legal definition you quoted is correct, but not complete. You used the definition for larceny, but missed the ones for robbery, burglary, and piracy. It helps if you bring all the information to the table so that people can make up their own minds.
Finally, just to give a more useful definition, I'll quote from *the source* for the English language and leave you with the appropriate Oxford English Dictionary's definition of stealing (theft being the "act of stealing"): "take (another's property) illegally or without right or permission, esp. in secret".
Personally I think the existing copyright system in the US is out of whack. I'd prefer one of the older systems, such as 26 years for a copyright with a renewal of 26 years going automatically to the original authors/musicians/etc. Let 'works for hire' run a flat 50 years. Let the copyrights tilt back towards a more reasonably balance between creators/copyright holders and the public at large.
"A good friend of mine was the first emergency physician on the scene at the Hyatt and performed the triage. He was recently interviewed by the BBC for a documentary about the Hyatt. They supplied footage to the BBC, but no...they don't have any reason to supply footage to random people."
I didn't mean to indicate that J. Random should be able to walk in and look at the evidence. I was thinking of an article I had read a couple of years ago about a different documentary being done on these types of disasters and the fact that no one wanted to help out the researchers.
I'm not surprised they cooperated with the BBC because the BBC's reputation is very, very high and they aren't likely to show it widely in the US.
"Like it or not, it's unconstitutional to force people to incriminate themselves."
;-)) chambers to force people to talk. If I came across that way, my apologies. What I meant was let's not hide the *facts*. The particulars of who is or isn't to blame is/was a matter for the legal system. The facts of the event should be readily available for legitimate researchers, though.
Very true. However, I wasn't saying that we should set up star (Starr?
I live near KC and I remember when the skywalks collapsed. As the story unfolded after the tragedy, it became readily apparent that everyone just assumed everyone else was doing what they thought they should be doing or that their shortcuts were fine with everyone else. :-( Communication and checking up on how things are actually progressing versus the plans can be a real matter of life or death.
:sigh: Yeah, mistakes were made, so let's own up to them and learn something so we don't do it again.
Next time as a programmer you bitch about checking up on QA (assuming you are lucky to have a QA department) or on the users, just remember that your mistakes very rarely kill people. You've got it _easy_.
Also, on a side note, the local KC TV news organizations try hard to prevent people from getting to their archives of what happened. They don't want to present Kansas City in a "bad light". This is also very stupid. If we can't easily learn from our mistakes we are going to make more of them. 'Protecting' KC's reputation just makes Kansas Citians look more retarded than the screwup that was Hyatt Regency Skywalks.
I had the Diamond Monster Fusion version of the Banshee. For single layer textures the Banshee could be faster than the V2. Why? Because while the Banshee only had one texture unit compared to the two on the V2, the Banshee's texture unit was clocked higher.
Check out Anandtech's review of the Monster Fusion at http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=935 for more information.
Don't take everything in the article as gospel. For example, the article talks about the Voodoo3 as 3dfx's first 2D/3D card -- "at last, 3Dfx had an integrated 2-D/3-D card!", but mentions the Banshee prior to that (which was a 2D/3D card).
Read the article for the point that 3dfx had the market and then went about losing a number of gambles. While that was going on nVidia got lucky and proceeded to execute a _deliverable_ plan like clockwork.
when the story I submitted was rejected -- 2002-04-22 14:56:33 Unix is truly the dark side (articles,humor) (rejected) -- and posted all in the same day.
;-)
I'm off to chmod 666 some files and increase the minions of the dark side.
-=:Begin magic /. incantation:=-
/. incantation:=-
;-)
I'll probably be modded down for this...
-=:End magic
Am I the only one that thinks this mod is just butt-ugly because of the PC case? I mean, if this was in an old, unworking arcade console it would be snazzy and something you would want in your living room. How many of us living in places other than a dorm room would really want a PC case next to their TV?
Utility is useful, no doubt about that, but let's have some more style please.
Is anyone else amused by the fact that the maximize window button on Keramik is the same symbol as the eject button on your VCR? :-D
Do you have anything that definitively states the Wasteland copyright was sold? Knowing EA's King Log tendencies, EA is still sitting on the property (just as they do with The Bard's Tale, another Interplay creation), doing nothing with it.
Or were you speaking about the original Castle Wolfenstein?
I think you are confusing Wasteland with the story CGW printed about Castle Wolfenstein and the process CGW claimed id went through to be able to release Wolfenstein3D.
My original Wasteland disks state "Copyright 1986, 1987, 1988 Interplay Productions, Inc. and Alan Pavish", and Wasteland was distributed by EA. Unless Alan Pavish is dead and his estate is in legal limbo a sequel _could_ be done. All you would need to do is to get EA and Interplay to agree to it (obviously not a small matter, but not as convoluted as your scenario would have it).
Oh and the bit about MS and QDos is wrong - its an innacurate and aprocyphal bit of information that has made its way around the web for years - MS bought out a company called Seattle Computer Products (it was really a one man band) when IBM contracted them to provide a DOS - they paid $50,000 for it and employed the guy as well - they didn't buy exclusive rights - they bought the company thus they had all rights as anyone who buys a company does-MS has done enought factual things wong without making stuff up.
Unfortunately, you're the one that is incorrect. Check out this link -- http://www.patersontech.com/Dos/Micronews/paterson 04_10_98.htm -- for the correct story. As it is an interview with Tim Paterson about creating QDOS I think we can take it as gospel. ;-)
Also, given that Seattle Computer Products _sued_ Microsoft in 1986, I don't see how Microsoft could have bought out the company in 1980...
>> I guess even non-comercial hobbiests can sell out ;-)
:-P, they are using this project as a vehicle to build the skills and get the attention for possible jobs in the PC game industry. Like it or not, that means experience with DirectX to most employers.
To give you a serious answer
Ultima II is a game that most people seem to forget. It, like Ultima 1 is a GCA-graphics (read: 3 colour + black) game BUT unlike Ultima II, Ultima 1 was remade in the early 1990s for EGA so thus has the same graphics quality as Ultima III, leaving Ultima II to look the old, unexciting game of the lot.
Actually, it is Ultima II and Ultima III that are the CGA games. In fact, both are so old they use PC-DOS 1.x File Control Blocks instead of the more modern (PC-DOS 2.x+ ;-)) file handles. You can find fan-created upgrades that add a number of fixes -- EGA graphics, exit key, frame limiter, galaxy patch for Ultima II, and MIDI sound for Ultima III -- at http://exodus.voyd.net/ .
Oh, the Ultima 1 remake was done in 1986, not the early '90s.
Nostalgia: On
But, yeah, Ultima II is the forgotten Ultima generally. Unless you are like me and played it for hours and days on your Apple ][ when it first came out, it is just too hard to see why it was so exciting.
Nostalgia: Off
Since a lot of people haven't figured out that you shouldn't shoot your own team mates, :-/ I wish that when a team mate killed you _they_ went to limbo and you respawned right away. Or just let you respawn without any wait time.
As it is, the single player game should be awesome.
> but the fact is someone with as much gaming clout and previous success as Garriott shouldn't have that hard a time finding investors
After U8 and U9, I don't think Garriott has that much clout. The gaming industry seems to have paralleled Hollywood, in that you are only as good as your last project.
Oh, and I thing RG *has* learned that small companies can't go it alone. Just look at what happened to Looking Glass. Even id paired up with Activision for distribution reasons.