2024 Note on Registrations

Dark · 2012-01-27 16:35:12

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Back in the distant mists of time, in a time when heman and skeletor were stil beating each other up, when Optimus prime was stil alive, ---- in that mystic age known as the 1980's, there was a gaming system called Eamon.

for those who aren't familiar, Eamon was a set of textual roelplaying games originally for the apple II computer, ---- similar in some ways to interactive fiction but with far more emphasis on statistical combat and finding loot. One really interesting thing was that you could take the same character through multiple adventures, improving his/her stats as the game progressed, returning to base at the main hall of free adventurers to buy better weapons and stat improvements before embarking on another mission.

Eamon deluxe was an attempt to port the thing to port the adventures into a windows (or at least dos), friendly format, where you could run your character through many of the old adventures. The main problem however with Eamon deluxe as it stands, is that not a few shenanigans had to be gone through to get the thing to cooperate with screen readers, ---- up until now!

The developer Frank black however, is in process of writing an all new version of Eamon deluxe which includes a complete Vi compatibility mode, with easy menues all using numbers, and text suteable to be read by your screen readers' review curser as any other console window application, it even has textual descriptions of some of the very few in game title graphics. He's currently looking for beta testers to remove bugs before the final release, so if you fancy getting into those fantasy dungeons early, drop him a mail on eamondeluxe at g mail dot com to have him send you a beata copy.

The only bad news is, that because! the eamon games are old dos titles run through basic, they cannot be run on a windows 7 system, so you'll need either windows xp or a windows virtual environment to run them.

If however you've got the where withall to run the games, they're deffinately worth a try, stil more so with the nw improvements.

more of the classic eamon adventures are being converted into deluxe format, and there are even some original Eamon deluxe only adventure to play as well, so there should be plenty of dungeon diving to keep people busy.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

dan_c · 2012-01-28 19:16:43

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that's a shame really, especially as 64 bit systems are the future of computers apparently.
How do you rate emon dark?
only i'm considering trying to find a virtual environment to play it on, however before doing so i want to know if its worth the hastle.
I might do it anyway though, as I'm a huge rpg fan

Dark · 2012-01-28 20:55:09

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It is unfortunate. The problem is they are very old games afterall written in apple basic. most people running windows 7 won't have a problem with Eamon deluxe, because the sighted version comes with dosbox which it runs through, but unfortunately this just won't work for screen readers.

As to Eamon, well I rather enjoy the games.
Some have rather rough edges in places, but even the ones that are fairly standard I find to be quite fun.

essentially they work like interactive fiction with room descriptions and objects, however there are far fewer verbs, just use, get, open, close, eat, drink and wear, making puzzles very much easier than bog standard interactive fiction (and to my mind far less frustrating), indeed mostly you just need to examine objects.

the combat system is minimal but certainly enough to have fun with, especially when you've got various companions at your side, and also counting some of the spells you can use.

One particular fact I like is that you carry over the same character from adventure to adventure, so even if it's just a go into a dungeon and loot stuff type scenario, the loot means something sinse you get back to the main hall of the guild of free Adventurers and can sell it for various upgrades or custom weapons.

Obviously, the adventures themselves vary in quality betwene who writes them, going from extremely good to terrible, but most oof the ones I played, even the symple ones I enjoyed.

As to 64 bit computers being the future, well as I've said before, for me, i don't give a flying monkey's behind what "the future" says, it's what I personally want to do with a computer.

thus far in fact, I've only seen one thing I'd want windows 7 for and that was Airik the clerric, indeed I believe there are more things I want to do with a compter that this so called future 64 bit malarchy would prevent! so I won't be upgrading until I can find a better reason, and even when my current machine goes caput, I will probably be looking into a virtual environment myself.

it's just a shame that there isn't an accessible way to run dosbox, sinse that is what most people are using to get around this 64 bit thing.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

brad · 2012-01-30 08:52:54

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hi.
yep i'm still runnign xp and have a vister laptop but don't use it a lot.
i prefore xp and windows seven is ok but still xp is better i think.

I'm gone for real :)

Dark · 2012-01-30 10:50:20

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In that case you won't have a problem running Eamon, it runs fine on xp.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

queenslight · 2012-01-30 11:12:02

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Greetings!

Long Long ago, in a place not too far from here, I posted the below link to some gamers' group that has to do with a particular accessible gaming magazine, regarding the steps on how to get Win Vista and later systems to play nicely with Eamon Deluxe:

http://www.mydigitallife.info/workaroun … ows-vista/

. I'd recommend choosing option 2 that is outlined there.
By the way, that link doesn't display itself fully, unless you copy it from the context menu/open the page. Its a long one!
Keep in mind, although the solution in that article in the above link is recommended by Microsoft, its quite a risky solution none the less.

For those running Win 7 Pro or newer, you do have the free Win XP VM that Microsofts' made available:

https://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/

. And of course, its the "32" bit version of XP only. As Microsoft says in the FAQ for Windows XP Mode, this virtual XP was aimed at business people, not consumers.
I really hope though, that IE 6 isn't the version that comes with it still.

Good luck!

Dark · 2012-01-30 11:47:12

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Hi trenton.

I'd be interested to know if the windows xp virtual machine from microsoft can in fact run 16 bit dos applications. If so, that is a perfect way around the problem. I always assumed setting up a virtual environment was a pain in the rear, ---- pluss required a new copy of windows xp to install, but if it is a downloadable option from microsoft it might be easier than expected.

Perhaps someone with win 7 pro could try this and let us know if it works?

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

tward · 2012-01-30 12:05:52

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Dark, yes it does. Basically, the Windows XP virtual machine from Microsoft is a 32-bit version of Windows XP that gets installed inside Windows 7 Pro to run older apps and games. It runs a bit slow because it requires a boatload of system requirements to run decently, but the upshot is it will run older 16-bit and 32-bit applications. The downside of this solution is that you require
Windows 7 Pro to run it which does not come preinstalled with most new computers which means you have to buy an upgrade to get it.

The reason I use a cheaper solution like VMPlayer instead is because I already own a Windows XP disc with SP3 preinstalled. I just install the shareware copy of VMPlayer and install Windows XP since I have a disc. If I didn't have an XP install disc then upgrading to Pro would probably be the cheaper solution.

Although, the one advantage of using VMPlayer instead of Microsoft's XP virtual machine is the ability to run multiple operating systems concurrently. For example, my laptop has Windows 7 as the host operating system, but I could have Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux installed as guest operating systems through VMPlayer. Allowing me to play and develop games for more than one OS. So there are multiple ways to do this, and it need not be a big pain.

Sincerely,
Thomas Ward
USA Games Interactive
http://www.usagamesinteractive.com

Dark · 2012-01-30 14:24:05

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Well Tom, that's fair enough to know, but bare in mind I don't think most people will have an xp install disk.

When I finally need to upgrade to a windows 7 machine myself, I'll probably go that route.

It is however very good to know that Eamon deluxe, fallthru, and other applications won't be utterly unworkable.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

tward · 2012-01-30 15:43:58

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Well, do keep in mind its only the 64-bit version of Windows 7 that doesn't have 16-bit backwards compatibility with older Dos applications. The 32-bit version of Windows 7 which I am running on a couple of different laptops here actually run old Dos games and apps just fine.

I think Microsoft added the XP virtual machine option to Windows 7 because after Vista came out, especially the 64-bit version, they took a lot of heat from end users because it broke compatibility with lots of older software and games. Businesses, in particular, were upset because they had upgraded to Windows Vista only to discover most of their older applications no longer ran on the new OS. Therefore Microsoft had to do some damage control, and released Windows 7 before Vista was little more than three years old.
So we can hope Microsoft has learned a lesson from all this, and thanks to the Windows XP virtual machine newer releases like Windows 8, which is suppose to be released this year, will continue to offer us a way to play accessible games written for the Dos platform.

Sincerely,
Thomas Ward
USA Games Interactive
http://www.usagamesinteractive.com

Dark · 2012-01-30 17:57:33

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Well I'm glad there is indeed a way around this, it'd be sad to miss out on games like fallthru etc just because Microsoft wants us all to buy their big flashy computers instead. This is especially good for Eamon, sinse the developer is doing so much work with access options in the games, discriptions of ascii graphics, completely rewritten menues etc, and there are a great many Eamon games to play, pluss an editer to create more.

Even only counting those games that the developer has converted to Eamon deluxe format from original apple Ii eamon, that stil is over 170 games to play, some of which are truly staggering.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

tward · 2012-01-31 11:45:12

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Yeah, I hear you there. Aeman is one of the best text adventure/RP)G games of all time. I wasn't aware it was up to 170 games now, but that's quite a lot of game play that would be lost if we couldn't access it on newer computers.

I know for myself personally I'm going through slight withdrawl because Piledriver doesn't work on my Windows 7 64-bit laptop without virtualization. I can't wait until I get my own wrestling game done, because I liked Piledriver, and have had a lot of fun playing as Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage,Ultimate Warrior, and several other super stars from the 80's and 90's. Although, my wrestling game is a bit better in that I'm adding a bunch of newer super stars to the database, including divas, and I'll have several more wrestling moves, attacks, and holds. still, it burns my bacon to have to run the game through a virtual machine rather than just firing it up in the Windows command prompt.

Sincerely,
Thomas Ward
USA Games Interactive
http://www.usagamesinteractive.com

Dark · 2012-01-31 17:43:23

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Hi.

well actually there are now 253 eamon adventures, with another 20 or so random ones from other sources.

the plan is to eventually have all of those available to play in Eamon deluxe, pluss some original Eamon deluxe adventures too. thus far, Frank black the creator of Eamon deluxe has converted about 180 of those to Eamon deluxe format, and is in the process of making a few upgrades to Vi compatibility mode. when the current version of Eamon deluxe is finished, he's apparently going to get on and convert the other 95 or so.

I'm also hoping that the editer will let me right some Eamon games too, sinse as I've said, i've alwas wanted to write a text rpg game and if the editer is user friendly enough i might well be able to.

Being as I'm beta testing the game, I get to play the adventures as Vi access changes are made, and I'm also writing new reviews for them.

I've just finished thror's ring, an adventure set in the mines of Moria from lotr, which was absolutely awsome and really showed me why i enjoy these sorts of games.

Eamon for me is even better than standard if, sinse it has loot and combat like an rpg game, and enough artifact manipulation commands to allow some puzzles, locked doors and the like, but not so many as to be ridiculous or lead you to guess the verb type of situations that are found in If.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

youtube · 2012-02-08 03:30:15

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I like win 7 but it support little game so i only use Win XP

buy spice online
NYC drug rehab

dan_c · 2012-02-08 19:25:03

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hmmm... i've just been able to run world of legends fine on my laptop, i think i'll try out piledriver again and if that works, get onto the emon delux guy.

Dark · 2012-02-24 12:59:07

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Last I heard it was 64 bit windows 7 that had the problem with console windows dos stuff, and for which you needed virtual machine. if you've got the 32 bit windows 7 it might well be okay.

If you want to try eamon deluxe though, I recommend you E-mail the developer and ask him for one of the new beta versions with the screen reader compatibility mode, propper column size of the display etc, sinse they are far better than the old version, both for access and more generally.

I actually hope the developer of Eamon deluxe is okay, I've not heard from him for a while, hopefully the full version will be out before too long.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

blindncool · 2012-04-06 13:24:44

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I have news everyone! I found an interpreter, from the IF Archive that will compile and run for linux and sigwin. It will play the Apple II versions of aemon games! If you're interested, It's in if-archive/interpreters-multi. The source is in a tar archive and you can compile it.

Hope this helps,
blindncool.

“Can we be casual in the work of God — casual when the house is on fire, and people are in danger of being burned?” — Duncan Campbell
“There are four things that we ought to do with the Word of God – admit it as the Word of God, commit it to our hearts and minds, submit to it, and transmit it to the world.” — William Wilberforce

Dark · 2012-04-06 13:55:31

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Blindncool, perhaps you could mail Frank black on eamondeluxe at g mail dot com and let him know about this interpreter so that he could write up details about it for the main Eamon adventurer's guild site which can be Found here and hosts all the existing old Eamon adventures.

Of course, the bad news for Vi users is that the only accessible version of the main hall is the original text one, which misses out on several of the bennifits that later graphical versions had, ---- such as traners you can pay with treasure you earn on adventures to increase your stats, a Casino to gamble your money, and a special smith who will make custom weapons for you.

All of these and more are accessible in Eamon deluxe Vi mode (indeed Eamon deluxe is revamping the hole Eamon system and adding a lot of fixes to many adventures), though I'm not sure if Eamon deluxe will run on Lynux.

Either way, I'm sure the adventurer's guild site would be interested to know about it.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

blindncool · 2012-04-07 09:25:14

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Well I might just do that. What totally sucks is I will never! be able to play aemon deluxe because well I use win 7 64-bit. But hopefully if I come into some money, or indeed a 32-bit Win XP VM there might be a change.

“Can we be casual in the work of God — casual when the house is on fire, and people are in danger of being burned?” — Duncan Campbell
“There are four things that we ought to do with the Word of God – admit it as the Word of God, commit it to our hearts and minds, submit to it, and transmit it to the world.” — William Wilberforce

Dark · 2012-04-07 13:23:16

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Actually vm options do exist, see trentan's above post about the microsoft xp vm that will run on windows 7.

There are so many games in Eamon deluxe, not to mention other console window dos type stuff like world of legends, drone or fallthru, plus any audiogames that don't cooperate with 64 bit windows 7, that it'd certainly be worth it.

i have heard that windows 8 will fix the compatibility problem with 16 bit applications as well, which will certainly help.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

blindncool · 2012-04-07 14:59:50

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The only problem is what I've heard about win 8, is that it will be completely! different. For example, we'll have to say goodbye to lists in menus, goodbye to our simple menu bars and well you know. It seems as microsoft is so sick of menus and the way things are in win 7 and XP that they are completely rewriting the OS.

“Can we be casual in the work of God — casual when the house is on fire, and people are in danger of being burned?” — Duncan Campbell
“There are four things that we ought to do with the Word of God – admit it as the Word of God, commit it to our hearts and minds, submit to it, and transmit it to the world.” — William Wilberforce

queenslight · 2012-04-07 20:30:30

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best to wait and get the "RC" version, and try it in a VM. The Win 8 RC wil come out sometime in June of this year.

blindncool · 2012-04-07 21:30:02

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That's an idea. Thanks for the date. I'll be looking forward to it.

“Can we be casual in the work of God — casual when the house is on fire, and people are in danger of being burned?” — Duncan Campbell
“There are four things that we ought to do with the Word of God – admit it as the Word of God, commit it to our hearts and minds, submit to it, and transmit it to the world.” — William Wilberforce

Dark · 2012-04-08 07:00:14

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Well as to win 8 unfortunately it's the fashion now with interfaces, that they become crowded and put lots of stuff on screen at once for an overview and are thus more difficult to access. This is one reason i've not got win 7 myself yet and if I did would probably do my best to make it look like win xp, but we'll have to see what happens.

As to Eamon though, I would advise investing in the vm to play it, though i do know Frank is working hard with compatibility for the games, and looking into ways to even make the dosbox version accessible thus negating the need for a vm, though he's not had any joy with that thus far.

Actually the access stuff he's been doing with Eamon is great. completely rewriting menues to use numbers and handy lists, putting in text descriptions of graphics, the other day he even asked me what punctuation was best for screen readers to work with.

I've rarely seen a developer so dedicated on the access front, which is yet another reason I'd highly recommend Eamon deluxe, even if you do need a vm to play it.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

blindncool · 2012-04-08 21:37:15

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Well I'm looking for VMWare at the moment. The only problem is getting a Win XP VM usable out of the box, unless you use Narator, which I'll probably have to do until I can install NVDA on it.

“Can we be casual in the work of God — casual when the house is on fire, and people are in danger of being burned?” — Duncan Campbell
“There are four things that we ought to do with the Word of God – admit it as the Word of God, commit it to our hearts and minds, submit to it, and transmit it to the world.” — William Wilberforce

2024 Note on Registrations

The Eamon has landed, almost! (Page 1 of 2)

Posts: 1 to 25 of 29

#1 Topic by Dark 2012-01-27 16:35:12

#2 Reply by dan_c 2012-01-28 19:16:43

#3 Reply by Dark 2012-01-28 20:55:09

#4 Reply by brad 2012-01-30 08:52:54

#5 Reply by Dark 2012-01-30 10:50:20

#6 Reply by queenslight 2012-01-30 11:12:02 (edited by queenslight 2012-01-30 11:16:02)

#7 Reply by Dark 2012-01-30 11:47:12

#8 Reply by tward 2012-01-30 12:05:52

#9 Reply by Dark 2012-01-30 14:24:05

#10 Reply by tward 2012-01-30 15:43:58

#11 Reply by Dark 2012-01-30 17:57:33

#12 Reply by tward 2012-01-31 11:45:12

#13 Reply by Dark 2012-01-31 17:43:23

#14 Reply by youtube 2012-02-08 03:30:15 (edited by youtube 2012-02-11 05:41:51)

#15 Reply by dan_c 2012-02-08 19:25:03

#16 Reply by Dark 2012-02-24 12:59:07

#17 Reply by blindncool 2012-04-06 13:24:44

#18 Reply by Dark 2012-04-06 13:55:31

#19 Reply by blindncool 2012-04-07 09:25:14

#20 Reply by Dark 2012-04-07 13:23:16

#21 Reply by blindncool 2012-04-07 14:59:50

#22 Reply by queenslight 2012-04-07 20:30:30

#23 Reply by blindncool 2012-04-07 21:30:02

#24 Reply by Dark 2012-04-08 07:00:14

#25 Reply by blindncool 2012-04-08 21:37:15

Posts: 1 to 25 of 29