Matrix Games Forums

Posted: **Mon Jun 14, 2004 7:50 pm**

Crockys 39 years of age

Posted: **Mon Jun 14, 2004 8:05 pm**

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: kaleun
Also Red storm rising in C24.

Ahhh... "Red Storm Rising"... the very first game I created tool for editing (using straight machine language) on my Commodore 64 (I was not happy with how they gave stats to tanks and I rectified it and used better and more realistic values - I still have the printouts of how I did that somewhere)...

Those were the days of youth in 1980's... [8D]

Leo "Apollo11"

P.S.
My best game on C64 was, of course, "Elite" - I played it for days, weeks, months and years but finally I realized that there was no "infinite" universe in it and wanted to see all goodies so I made (again machine language program) tool for altering savegame stats (the "Elite" had nice checksum routine that disallowed such activities but all was possible if you were persistent). And now (shame on me) I am IT professional but have, unfortunately, totally neglected my programming skills in past 20 years... [;)]

1980's.... kind of a "Golden Age" for computer based wargaming. Primative graphics, next to no memory or disk storage so games had to be cleverly written to fit and the gameplay had to be great as there was no eye candy to sell them at all. But what truely made that era great, was it was easy to get/hack into the source code of any game (be it AppleSoft Basic on Apple II's or the machine code on C64's, etc) and the game code was usually small enough you could get your hands around it. With a fairly minimal set of basic programming skills you could find the code block of parts of the game you didn't like and "fix" to suit your ideas!

My first stab at "fixing" games were GG's old SSI fare for Apple IIc's. You booted to the game disk then hit some magical keyboard combination and it would dump you to a ProDos prompt with the game code fully loaded. YOu find the area you wanted to "fix", fix it, save it to the disk (or a copy) and then reboot and run your "fixed" version! My very first effort in that area was adding a lot new AI code to old NA '86. Went on to modify some other SSI games of that era and write a couple of entirely new ones that I never bothered to attempt to publish, just played them myself.

Posted: **Mon Jun 14, 2004 9:31 pm**

36. Cut my teeth on Tactics II at 10 then moved on to Squad Leader (Pre ASL) then to Star Fleet Battles (Played on the convention tournament circut in the mid-late 80's).

Started on the computer with The Perfect General, Pac War, and The Lost Admilral. Finally got hooked on the Steel Panters Series, which I still play while waiting for Witp.

Posted: **Mon Jun 14, 2004 9:34 pm**

Anyone remeber playing the great grand daddy of the game we await...Flat Top?

Posted: **Mon Jun 14, 2004 9:49 pm**

[font="Times New Roman"][/font]

After looking over all the posts, not feeling so dam old anymore (53), the postings have given me the impression of looking like a preorder Medicare listing.

Should have known, old time war gamers, kind of remains me of Sci Fi junkies!!!!!!!!!!!, which I am one.

Posted: **Tue Jun 15, 2004 12:44 am**

ORIGINAL: madflava13

I finally am biting the bullet and admitting I'm one of the youngsters around here... 24 years old. (But I'm in Law School and it's aging me rapidly)

Mad, you're just a pup. And if you think law school's aging you, just wait . . .

Posted: **Tue Jun 15, 2004 1:00 am**

I went thirty this year and I fell in love with wargaming with titles like "Panzergrenadier", "Shilo", "Second Front" or "NATO Commander"

Ahhh... "Red Storm Rising"... the very first game I created tool for editing (using straight machine language) on my Commodore 64 (I was not happy with how they gave stats to tanks and I rectified it and used better and more realistic values - I still have the printouts of how I did that somewhere)...

Those were the days of youth in 1980's...

Not to be a smartass, but could it be that you mean the SSI title "Red Lightning"? Red Storm Rising was a very nice subsim which I played for weeks in my school holidays

Posted: **Tue Jun 15, 2004 2:06 am**

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

Let's all date ourselves. Who all remembers "Hunt the Wumpus" ?

OMG, I may have to "pants" you.

I now remember buying two volumes of "Basic Computer Games", by David H. Ahl (and still have one of them.) A buddy of mine tried to sell the code for a buck an inch.

Posted: **Tue Jun 15, 2004 3:10 am**

age....36

First computer was a C64, first strategy game "carriers at war".

Posted: **Tue Jun 15, 2004 5:10 am**

33, I can remember starting off with Infocom games Zork,Enchanter,Planetfall ...etc, on the C-64 that damn floppy drive 5040 i think it was not sure, external unit had to be cleaned alot. First wargame was Talonsofts West and East Front.

Posted: **Tue Jun 15, 2004 5:59 am**

Hey Nikademus, I just ordered from Shrapnel games a new version of M.U.L.E. It is called SPACE H.O.R.S.E. now but it plays exactly the same. I spent so much time in college playing MULE I ended up staying an extra year just to finish my classes I missed from staying up all night with my roommate playing the game.

BTW: I am 35 and my first wargame was TACTICS II that I found at a game store. It looked like it had been on display for 20 years when I bought it in 1976 at age 8. (Had over 10,000 army men before that from age 3)
First computer wargame I remember playing was Bismark for the Apple II.

Posted: **Tue Jun 15, 2004 6:53 am**

Be 38 in July..

first computer games? uh.. a really bad Star trek sim on the TRS-80 !!!

I played an AH table top game with paper counters.. Can't remember the name, but I got tired of certain features and Xerox'd the counters and cut and pasted them to cardboard to make MORE Carriers!! LOL! campaing editors even in the paper days!

And I played lots and lots of risk.. we had special rules for me and a couple budies.. we robbed 8 "Battleships games" you know, the flip up plastic game where you cal out cords and gets hit? we cut off the pegs on the bottom.. and used the ship models on the Risk board. And we robbed 4 Forrestal class "Model" kits of their air wings and used the mini planes on the board as well... our Risk games with modded rules eventually turning into a huge table top game using the same rules with armor minatures.. we needed lives in the early 80's.. badly.. but at least we didnt have 80's HAIR!!! Those game wen't on for weeks some times.

Posted: **Tue Jun 15, 2004 7:01 am**

be 24 in November

first wargames played:
DDAY
Steel Panthers I
The Operational Art of War

Posted: **Tue Jun 15, 2004 7:38 am**

30, and first game was KAMPFGRUPPE for C64 if i remember correctly[&:]

Posted: **Tue Jun 15, 2004 7:53 am**

arrr yes 44 years young been ,i live a day more plane ran out of fuel today but safe landing!{got some good pics}
dont remember when i was not playing wargames or with planes model now real ones.

Posted: **Tue Jun 15, 2004 8:44 am**

Biological age: 30, extract the root for my mental age...
Inherited a bunch of wargames when I got a used Commodore 64 about 16 years ago, including well-known classics like Blue Max, Ace of Aces, Silent Service, Destroyer, Steel Thunder, Kampfgruppe, Guadalcanal, and my favorite - Crusade in Europe. Got so hooked on gaming that my Mom finally took the box with the floppy discs away from me. Anticipating such a move, I already had stored copies of my favorite games at a safe place... [:D]

Posted: **Tue Jun 15, 2004 9:20 am**

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

1980's.... kind of a "Golden Age" for computer based wargaming. Primative graphics, next to no memory or disk storage so games had to be cleverly written to fit and the gameplay had to be great as there was no eye candy to sell them at all. But what truely made that era great, was it was easy to get/hack into the source code of any game (be it AppleSoft Basic on Apple II's or the machine code on C64's, etc) and the game code was usually small enough you could get your hands around it. With a fairly minimal set of basic programming skills you could find the code block of parts of the game you didn't like and "fix" to suit your ideas!

My first stab at "fixing" games were GG's old SSI fare for Apple IIc's. You booted to the game disk then hit some magical keyboard combination and it would dump you to a ProDos prompt with the game code fully loaded. YOu find the area you wanted to "fix", fix it, save it to the disk (or a copy) and then reboot and run your "fixed" version! My very first effort in that area was adding a lot new AI code to old NA '86. Went on to modify some other SSI games of that era and write a couple of entirely new ones that I never bothered to attempt to publish, just played them myself.

How true...

And at that time the whole memory capacity for computer was so small that programs were written as good as humanly possible and _ONLY_ in assembler (machine language)!

The "Elite" was fantastic program (in my computer history I spend the most time with "Elite" on my C64 when I was kid and that was unsurpassed - UV in current day is on second place) that took whole ZX Spectrum and/or C64 memory...

Ahh... those were the days... [8D]

Leo "Apollo11"

Posted: **Tue Jun 15, 2004 9:25 am**

ORIGINAL: sprior

ORIGINAL: Lex Talionis

I had the ZX also, then the Spectrum 48k, before getting a newer Spectrum 128k +3 (+3 denoted floppy drive) . My favourite game was "Arnhem". Wasted away my 11-16 years playing that game [:D].

Hey I had those too - remember Vulcan too, and Laser Squad?

Now 43, been playing board games since 18 and still doing it. First board game evr played against a real human was Richtofen's War in the IFF room of HMS Galatea in 1979... Most recently played Downtown

Hey there "sprior"

Unfortunately I don't remember Vulcan or Laser Squad[&:], but my brothers and I had over 100 Spectrum games. Commando, Dambusters, Gauntlet, Op Wolf, and Op Thunderbolt are the ones that spring to mind.

But for me "Arnhem" was the daddy of them all[&o][&o][&o][&o][&o][&o]. From looking at the "Highway To The Reich" site, HTTR seems to be based on the Spectrum "Arnhem" original! Been meaning to get that game.

I too had Richtofen's War, used to play it against my brother. It was definitely a duel to the death

, after the first days combat you'd be lucky if you had any British Scouts or Two-seaters left to fly missions the next day[:(]. Bloody April 1917 was definitely BLOODY!

Lex

Posted: **Tue Jun 15, 2004 11:50 am**

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

Let's all date ourselves. Who all remembers "Hunt the Wumpus" ?

Oh, geez, I played that on the mainframe at work along with Adventure before pcs were popular. Later we had Star Trek and lots of people complained that they couldn't use the terminals for work from noon to 1 o'clock because so many people were playing Star Trek on them. The systems programmers were told to erase all games from the mainframe. What a sad day - until I discovered they were only renamed not erased.[:D]

Posted: **Tue Jun 15, 2004 12:32 pm**

Zork,Enchanter,Planetfall ...

LOL - we called them typing tutors [:D]

I swear to this day, Infocom taught me how to type fast! [:D]

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