David Ferris
#2274
I zipped up my old Seapower computer-assist program from circa 1990 and put
it up on the ArmourSoft web site for free download. It includes a short
instruction file (not particularly useful, but better than nothing), a
handful of scenarios, and source code. You'll need something like Turbo
Basic or Quick Basic to recompile it, although I think you might be able to
get it to work under QBasic with a few tweaks.
Looking at it more closely, it's not "pure" Seapower II/III as I remembered
it. It's mostly Seapower II, with a few touches from Seapower III and a few
other games and a few original bits here and there. I think the environment
module is mostly inspired from Seekrieg 4, since I can't remember anything
that detailed about weather in Seapower.
Those of you who've seen some of my other projects will probably note that
this program is a lot more advanced than my Fire When Ready project and not
quite as advanced as my program based on TFG's Battlewagon, and certainly
not as polished or comprehensive as SB3. Not coincidentally, I wrote the
Seapower program a few months after FWR and a few months before the
Battlewagon project.
This program went through quite a few name changes over the years.
Originally the working title was "Big Boat Wars", which didn't last very
long for obvious reasons. Among other things it was known variously as
"shipBase" and "shipBase I", and is now known as "Seabase I" just to really
confuse things.
You can download the whole thing from the ArmourSoft web page:
While you're there, if you haven't seen it yet, check out the D-CATR page
at:
http://users.aol.com/dcn20c/dcatr.htm
Seabase I is a 1990-vintage DOS program, so it's appropriately ugly and
ancient-looking. Should work on just about all PC-compatible systems though,
since IIRC I wrote it on a 286 with MS-DOS 5.0. Note that there's no mouse
support, to give you an idea how old this program is.
Interestingly, the program has an abritrary limit of 80 ships per game. A
lot more than that would fit in memory, but that's all I could fit on the
screen at one time. A few months later I figured out how to program
scrolling menus!
As always, I'm interested in comments about this project. Since it's pretty
ancient I'm not planning on doing any changes to it (other than bug fixes),
but I thought it'd be interesting to throw out for conversation. It's
obviously not as powerful as some other systems, manual and computer-assist,
but ya can't beat the price.
DLF
"Lawrence E. A. Lee" <Lawrence_E._A._Lee@xxxxxx.xxxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxx.xx.xxx
#2281
From his earlier posts it would seem that Dave has attempted to
contact the owner of copyright for this material. The people he found
either show no interest or wished to remain anonymous.
Anyhow, the thing Dave would have to worry about is if the copyright
owners came after him. This would seem to be a remote possibility.
Dave may be putting himself in harm's way but it would not seem to be a clear
and present danger.
Copyright usually lasts for a good long time...for artwork, photography etc it
is usually death plus 50 years...not sure but published material maybe somewhat
shorter?? Anyone know for sure.
Lawrence
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: [NavWarGames] Re: Seapower program now online
Author: NavWarGames@... at MTMETM04
Date: 3/29/1999 2:25 PM
From: "Lou Coatney" <elcoat@...>
Umm ... Do you have/need copyright permission to do this, Dave?
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
We are proud as punch of our new web site!
http://www.onelist.com
Onelist: The leading provider of free email community services
David Ferris
#2282
Lawrence Lee writes:
Dave may be putting himself in harm's way but it would not seem to be a
clear
and present danger.
I'm in the clear for the Seabase I program. However, if I wanted to release
my old Shipbase II program, I'd need permission from Steve Cole and/or Task
Force Games, who own the rights to the old boardgame Battlewagon, upon which
SB2 is based. Given TFG's and Cole's reputations for being dead-set against
any computer-assist versions of Star Fleet Battles, I'm not even going to
bother asking them about the rights to Battlewagon, but then again I don't
think I've ever gotten any requests from anybody to see SB2. I get lots of
requests for SB1 though.
For that matter, the playtest version of Shipbase IV is partly based on Age
of Iron, so in order to release that I'd have to talk to Leo Walsh (which
I'll probably do anyway, since I'll probably see him at Cold Wars in a
couple of weeks) or rewrite that section of code.
Copyright usually lasts for a good long time...for artwork, photography etc
it
is usually death plus 50 years...not sure but published material maybe
somewhat
shorter?? Anyone know for sure.
My wife is a lawyer, and she doesn't even want to touch that one. Copyright
law is normally very complex, but it gets really dicey when we start talking
about computer-assist programs based on non-computer works. Just by nature
of the change between media, the original work gets changed so much just by
the act of becoming computerized that it's hard to figure out how much, if
any, is covered by copyright. I know that game mechanics cannot be
copyrighted (they can be patented, but that's another topic entirely). Last
time I sent in a computer program to be registered for trademark and
copyright to the government office I got back this big packet of information
that explained, among other things, that certain aspects of game stuff just
aren't covered under copyright. You can copyright certain phrases, for
instance, and you can copyright specific lines of program code but you can't
copyright ideas or what a program actually does. The "look and feel"
lawsuits of a few years ago only made the situation more confusing. Eh.
DLF
Lou Coatney
#2283
Umm ... Are we talking about ShipBase[n] or (AlNavCo's) *Seapower*
rules, here?
Lou
Coatney, ElCoat@...
626 Western Ave.
Macomb, IL 61455 USA
309-836-1447 (but I cannot afford to return long-distance calls)
http://members.Tripod.com/~LCoat (Free "1st Alamein" lunch-hour
boardgame and cardstock model ship( plan)s--of USS MONITOR and
SAMUEL B. BUTLER Destroyer Escort--to print off, assemble and
play ... with.)
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
