Re: Bolo up on Asimov and a mystery post found?

[BLuRry <brendan.robert@gmail.com>]

Thanks for finding this ]HR!  And I also have to say to the poster, thanks Dumbass!  :-D

-B

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 8:15:27 PM UTC-5, Hot Rod wrote:
> So I noticed there's this 'unaltered' version of Bolo sitting in the /incoming directory of Asimov (so can't get to it yet), which prompted some poking around online about the game itself.  That led to finding this curious posting here:
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> http://pastebin.com/nnBz0hyN
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> which I'll copy below for convenience.  I've no idea what the pastebin.com website is, or who posted the message, but since the message seems to be intended as a 'hidden' crack screen, and the poster evidently frequents csa2, perhaps they'd like to know it was 'found'.  :)
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> Now if that Bolo image would move out of /incoming, perhaps we can look into doing something about that reboot...
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> ]HR
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>  ################# PSEUDO HIDDEN CRACK SCREEN FOR A PSEUDO CRACKED WARE ########################
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> I always hated it when crackers would overwrite authors names, software companies & companies on Apple II warez.  Most early games for the Apple II fell victim to this. I thought that Mr. Krak Man and Mr. Xerox created almost every piece of software I copied. Don't get me wrong.  I did purchase a lot of games when I was a kid, but no where near the amount that I downloaded.  (Side note... most every single game that I got as a gift when I was a kid that I DIDN'T ask for was a total TURD... I'm looking at you Apventure to Atlantis) Anyway... it wasn't till a few years later with that crackers started creating loader screens and leaving the original game untouched.  Great preloading crack screens from Black Bag, MPG, Hot Rod (keep up the great work archiving for comp.sys.apple2 and post more of your own source code!)
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> One of my all time favorite games for the Apple II was Bolo and I could never figure out who programmed it.  Had I been able to find a copy of it when I was a teen vs. an old man I would have gladly saved my pennies and paid for it.  But alas... downloading it from my favorite BBS was the only way to go.   Well years later I happen to run across a MINT copy still in it's original packaging consisting of a single card stock 4 color print offset front & back, and B&W offset print for pages 3-7.  The documentation is up on Asimov.
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> On first boot up I realize that I have never seen Elvyn Software before.   So here it is 30+ years after being released in it's original form.  The only thing different between this and what's on the original disk is the goofy RWTS was removed via Super IOB.  I've played the game for about an hour and there is a reboot I keep getting during the demo.  I checked out the other copies floating around Asimov and notice the reboot at the same spot in the demo also so... thus the reason I'm calling this a PSEUDO CRACKED WARE. OK... Maybe not a bad crack... the ORIGINAL disk, this crack & all the other cracks floating around on ASIMOV all reboot at the same spot.  My original intention was to post up an untouched version of the game on Asimov so here you have it.   No way I'll be able to debug machine code and figure out whats going on with this weird reboot... thats for someone much smarter than I and with a lot more time on their hands and I.  I never was a real cracker... This crack was done with the help of SUPER IOB and the Synergistic Software controller.  All I did was flip disks in and out of my old machine. 
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> I wish more games which were altered could be released unaltered as the author and the publishing company had intended. 
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> If you're interested and I guess you are since you're still reading this there is an amazingly accurate port of the game to PC Dos located here 
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> https://github.com/begoon/bolo 
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> and you can watch a video of it being played here. 
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> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcqygeYP4qs  
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> Also for all you SciFi geeks check out http://amzn.to/ThV3vP which is the book that the video game is based around.
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> ]DUMBASS