17 Mar
2010
17 Mar
'10
4:16 a.m.
On 3/16/2010 10:59 PM, John Foust wrote:
I hope there's a significant fraction of software
developers who would
be tickled to hear their old stuff is still being appreciated. I suspect
many would be glad to give it away.
I have had great reactions from everyone I've contacted regarding their
old works -- in fact, I recommend people try it. Some examples:
- Neal White III and Rand E. Bohrer gave me some great
previously-unknown information about their work when I interviewed them
for an article ( http://www.mobygames.com/featured_article/feature,10/ ).
- Paul Carruthers was so tickled when I told him the true story that I
was able to complete all 100 designed levels of Archipelagos (levels
past 100 are seed-generated) that he sent me a free copy of Archipelagos
2000, released only in the UK.
- The person who did the PC port of Jumpman, when asked questions about
it for a reverse-engineering project (
http://www.oldskool.org/pc/jumpman ), was kind enough to send as much of
the original code as he could find to the project to help out.
- Mark Pelczarski of Pengiun Software/Polarware was kind enough to send
me the asm code for Graphics Magician when I was trying to write a util
to display graphics created by that program.
It's only the lawyers (who weren't even BORN when the original works
came out) that don't give two shits. In my experience, anyway.
Geez, I sound old. I'm not even 40 yet.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/