Coffeeshops , Kids and Kilrathis

[z30]

Dropped by my favorite coffeeshop right after work, grabbed a cinnamon roll and a hot cup, sat down opened my laptop and started privateering.

In less than 5 minutes, i kid you not, a kid who must have been less than six years old appeared out of nowhere and stayed glued right at my elbow as I fought my way through Kilrathi's to deliver my cargo to Palan (note : FireSkull, you did say easy profitable missions right?

And I sat there thinking "Kids, he'll be bored after a minute or two this generation is jaded by their Playstations and Gameboys - he'll be gone before long".

Wrong. He stayed there through the long fight, as I limped down to the planet, as I repaired and loaded up with goods. His mom must have called him away 2-3 times and just like a Dralthi raider, he kept coming right back to dog my elbow

Guys, you've got a real winner here. If it can hold this young generation of kids attention span that long then it's got something no amount of ultra-gorgeous graphics and endless flashbang explosions (typical of today's games) can match.

Take a bow, coffee's on me hehe

[hellcatv]

awesome

now moms will tremble with fear at the mention of the word "Vega Strike"
...uh... i mean

"Now coffee shop owners will smile with glee when a customer with Vega Strike walks in"

anyhow cool story!

[blue_paladin42]

Hehe, mabye we should have Vegastrike pathces, along with our rank lol. Mabye we will get discounts.










Just joking.
I think.

[Fireskull]

Hey, doing a cargo run to a inner system is one thing, going all the way to the border near palan, or at the retro "capitol" ( oxford ) is another I have done cargo runs for 30k where I didnt meet a single enemy ship.

Glad to hear about the kid

[Decoy]

Hahahaha, ive had the same experience. When im not working(i work from home) im generally playing games, last week i booted up ye old Priv, not even your new version, my little sister(who seems to make my house hers?) and 1/2 doz of her mates walked past and 3 of em suddenly appeared behind my shoulders and wouldnt move for about 20 minutes.... talk about unnerving :s

Oh and do you REALLY need the cash that bad for that cargo run? Easier to run contraband in colonised-space.

[blue_paladin42]

Well, I sometimes do cargo runs for the hell of it. I figure, if I'm gonna wander, might as well make some money . That kid sounds kinda like I did once. If I wasn't playing wing commander on ye olde 386, I was watching my dad do so. Or playing Commander keen. Or Silpheed. I ate, drank, and breathed those old games....It does me good to see that there are some people out there who can appreciate them. ^_^ \/

[Fireskull]

If you take a cargo run mission from the merchants guild, you will end up doing much more money with cargo than you ever could in normal runs, if you arent on a galaxy.

[www2]

Good sory and lol...
ther is not good than a 368 wits a Blach/Green or Back/Yello or a 468 wit a 16 coller screen and a gameboy with a 4 coller screen for play a game....

[klauss]

It's good to know there's still hope for today's youth

[blue_paladin42]

ther is not good than a 368 wits a Blach/Green or Back/Yello or a 468 wit a 16 coller screen and a gameboy with a 4 coller screen for play a game....

I hear that. I think. Those were the days. You guys should read some of the old computer magazines of those years. Its hilarious reading. "The brand new 386/16 computer, with more processing power and RAM than anyone could EVER need!" Good times.

[Elegnaim]

I was nine when I played Privateer for the first time, and by that point had a Gameboy...

[hurleybird]

Well, I sometimes do cargo runs for the hell of it. I figure, if I'm gonna wander, might as well make some money . That kid sounds kinda like I did once. If I wasn't playing wing commander on ye olde 386, I was watching my dad do so. Or playing Commander keen. Or Silpheed.

Wow, someone else who loved silpheed. I thought I was the only one.

[blue_paladin42]

LOL. So did I. I wonder if I can find it anywhere...

[Ge0rgy]

Its funny how people in PC-history always underestimated it.

In its beginnings some ppl. thought that it was just a trend that would not surive any longer than some weeks.
"no one would ever want to have such a grey cube in this home" or something *lol*
and some years later, someone well-known in this area of commerce said "no one would ever need more than 640kb of Memory in his PC"
Well, today even 640Megabyte is not that much at all. And when vista comes you will soon need 2GB *lol*

sometimes i look in some old magazines of the 80s. really funny.
today you can only emulate these systems, because the programs would never run on a machine of today. (way too fast)
Win98 had a bug over a long time, that it used a simple loop to waste some time at boot to give the Hardware and drivers time to initialize.
that was the reason why this version crashed on some K6-II - Processor these days because they were too fast in the loop-comand.

imagine that on a mordern 3.8GHZ-machine *lol*

640KB are nothing today any more. Even a empty file of MS-Word is nerarly that big.
thats left from the value of memory that "never anyone would need more" *lol*

so let us remember the old days where people would never have imagined where we are today!

greetings,
Ge0rgy

[blue_paladin42]

*Raises glass* To the old days!

[TimmyGT]

Yes and amen...my nephew is 8 and he cant get enuf of this game..it aint xbox.. nobody gets maimed and no kickboxers...har ya have to be patient enuf to learn the keybord commands..and by the way what ever happenned to ms combat sim 2004?...the folks have done a therough ( sp man that word looks bad) revamping job on ms2003...considering the open code..new everything...sheet i even played Maniac Mansion last night...vogons..good place to start looking

[Luengo]

BTW, for those of you who still enjoy playing old DOS games, there is a better solution than having an old computer with MS-DOS nearby. It's an emulator called DOSBox, and I am sure some of you already knew about it. Basically, it emulates a PC (complete with sound card and CD drive), and it works very well. You can even play the original Privateer in it!. But you will need a quite powerful computer. Just in case someone hasn't heard about it, here are some links:

Official homepage:

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net

AEP Emu CVS compile (last updated on 2005-10-16)

http://cvscompile.aep-emu.de/dosbox.htm

yhkwong's CVS compiles with experimental patches (Last updated on 2005-11-29)

http://ykhwong.x-y.net/page.htm

I recommend you to download the official version first (it's version 0.63) and then update it with the CVS binaries, because they solve many compatibility problems and add some interesting new features. The AEP CVS binaries are "vanilla" CVS binaries (i.e. compiled without experimental patches), and that's what i use.

Oh, I forgot, you can even run Windows 3.11 inside DOSBox as well! (it's nice being able to install Delphi 1.0 or some old version of Visual Basic or Office)

[TimmyGT]

yes..alot of the old stuff can still be played (ala Tex Murphy et al) via dos box and a few other tweaks that are game specific..heck i even got Grim Fandango to work...har.. off topic i suppose..but Vogons...it means very old games on on new systems is a good jump off pont..no need to complicate matters..its a rip..no hyper links...man if ur into it find it on ur own..but theres a workaround for most stuff.. if ur patient enuf to look for it..

[Nur-Ab-Sal]

It's an emulator called DOSBox

I know it. It is installed together with ScumVM.

Do you know if they have fixed the joystick issues? Privateer crashes in my dosbox if it tries to calibrate the joystick.

Merry Christmas!

Stephan