Old Video Games

[Exception Collection]

Are you suggesting that I pay for LSL? I don't think so.

Are you suggesting that you shouldn't? It's a game that you remember fondly enough to want to play/replay now - if it were a physical toy, would you just grab one off the shelf someplace, or would you buy it?

Yes, I'm aware it's a false equivalency to a point, but the fact of the matter is that they spend money boxing games up and distributing them - even if you don't use the boxed versio directly, you're still relying on the patches etc they will have produced to make them work on Win7. They're professionals, same as we are. How would you like it if someone took your drawings/concepts and copied them freely without paying (or paying via advertising)?

Note: I'm specifically talking about things that aren't abandonware. If it's been abandoned since I saw the discs, that's different - I consider those to be far closer to fair game.

 

[Kephart P.E.]

Actually this happens to my designs ALL THE TIME.

I make drawings and calcs, they get distributed then some plant engineer picks them up, dusts them off and uses my design, often incorrectly but still.

Are you suggesting that I pay for LSL? I don't think so.

Are you suggesting that you shouldn't? It's a game that you remember fondly enough to want to play/replay now - if it were a physical toy, would you just grab one off the shelf someplace, or would you buy it?

Yes, I'm aware it's a false equivalency to a point, but the fact of the matter is that they spend money boxing games up and distributing them - even if you don't use the boxed versio directly, you're still relying on the patches etc they will have produced to make them work on Win7. They're professionals, same as we are. How would you like it if someone took your drawings/concepts and copied them freely without paying (or paying via advertising)?

Note: I'm specifically talking about things that aren't abandonware. If it's been abandoned since I saw the discs, that's different - I consider those to be far closer to fair game.

 

[MGX]

I think we've all been burned by that before.

 

[envirotex]

I just saw some thing that I did about 10 years ago posted on the web in a presentation as a teaching tool...

A little annoying, but whatever...it was a government project, and they paid me to do it, so it belongs to them (us?)...

 

[Dexman PE PMP]

I think we've all been burned by that before.

Nope. But then again, I haven't ever stamped anything...

 

[Exception Collection]

I think we've all been burned by that before.

I know I have. Well, not personally and directly as an engineer, but as a designer on a project.

Contractor hired us to design a building. We designed it, provided the calcs and markups needed for the building.

6 months later - after the new building became effective - we got a call from the jurisdiction. Turned out he'd crossed out the address, written a new one in, and submitted them as a mirrored version of the house, a block away. Only reason we got a call was the code change; it was the UBC -> IBC change, so there were significant differences in code.

The Engineer of Record was livid. He called up the contractor and tore him a new one, ending with "and if I ever find out you did this again, not only will I sue you for copyright infringement (some drawings were included) I will also report you to the state engineering board as having practiced engineering by modifying drawings!"

Oddly enough, we kept the contractor's business for a while. He never did that again, as far as we know. And since then, we're careful to ensure that every sheet of the drawings and calculations all include at least a partial address, as well as make sure all the pages in a calc package are numbered & organized properly.

That last actually caused us more issues once - We'd faxed them to the client, the fax didn't catch the hand-numbering very well, and it'd fallen off the fax machine... After it was submitted I had to go down and verify all the pages were numbered right, after there was confusion about "OK, for the beam calc on page x" and page x was a ELF calculation.

 

[Master slacker]

Who spilled your milk? This is an old video game thread. Sheesh.

 

[willsee]

I downloaded the original GTA

So awesome

 

[Master slacker]

Before my old desk top crashed, I had GTA2. That was awesomeness from above.

 

[csb]

I played through the first three Tomb Raiders.

 

[Master slacker]

I used to play this sim game where I took plans from a group, mirrored it, and made them my own. I made money hand over fist until I took it a step too far and was caught. I didn't get the high score on that go around and I didn't have any more quarters to give the machine.

 

[MGX]

One of my old time favorites is N.A.R.C..

The '80s level of violence against drugs is terrific. Thankfully Williams re-released it on PS2 in a compilation with Total Carnage which is worth the price of admission alone.

 

[Dexman PE PMP]

Carmegeddon. It was an awesomely bad game that I couldnt stop playing.

 

[Flyer_PE]

Carmegeddon. It was an awesomely bad game that I couldnt stop playing.

I forgot all about that one. It was a blast back in the day.

 

[Dexman PE PMP]

Along those lines, I forgot about Twisted Metal and TM Black.

 

[Exception Collection]

Along those lines, I forgot about Twisted Metal and TM Black.

Trying to remember the name of it... Smash TV? Something like that. Not exactly the same thing, but a far cry from my usual game.

These days, if I really feel like running around shooting things, I play an FPS - Battlefield 2, usually.

 

[Master slacker]

For smashing, you can't go wrong with Rampage.

 

[csb]

We used to play Roadwar 2000 on the AppleIIgs. I remember winning the game and it would play Hail to the Chief. Man, 2000 seemed like a long way in the future back then...now it seems like a long time ago.

We also played Alien Mind a lot. We got stuck on one of the passwords...which are now all available online.