Re: What difficultly level do you play one?

On Tue, 16 Jul 2024 15:10:06 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07
<candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> wrote:
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Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 18:23 this Sunday (GMT):

On Sat, 13 Jul 2024 14:09:31 -0400, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:
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On Sat, 13 Jul 2024 16:30:07 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07
<candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> wrote:
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Interesting, I'm surprised there's still programs available for that.

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Heh. :) There is probably software out there to fill any and every
niche.

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You just gotta find it; that's the real trick.
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But with nearly 8 billion computer* users, for every problem you've
ever faced, there's likely 10,000 users who had a similar issue... and
at least one of them is gonna be nuts enough to program a solution.
And most people crazy enough to put in that much effort are going to
put it out on the Internet somewhere, either for profit, bragging
rights, or just out of sheer niceness.
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I remembering randomly trawling through various FTP and app-hosting
websites, just because inevitably I'd stumble a utility that solved an
issue I barely even recognized I'd had up to that point. I'd download
it for free, and then use it once every two or three years when the
issue reared its head.

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I'm sure nowadays the best place to look would be github.
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But -getting back to the topic on hand- third-party mapping programs
for computer RPGs have existed for a long time, although they were a
lot less ease-of-use back then. Largely because most games ran on DOS,
and DOS was a single-process program, so you couldn't (easily) run a
helper app and the game at the same time. But even from the earliest
days there were a variety of hacks and apps to help the lost
adventurer.

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I kinda figured :P were you intended to print it out?

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From what I recall (it's been a long time and I never really used any
of the programs), the utils generally fell into one of three types
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    a) create a template for you to print and fill out
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    b) ran a program that you could fill out on the computer -but
       not while the game was running! You'd have to jump in and
       out of the game. Or I guess maybe you were just supposed to
       make the maps by hand and then transfer them over to the
       app? But at least in the end you'd have less messy maps
       than if you did it by hand ;-). Usually let you print
       out the final product.
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    c) read the data files of the game and recreated the maps
       from there (which you could then print out). These were
       the best but were very rare.
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Only very much later did you have mapping programs that ran
/concurrently/ with the games. It was hard to do, after all. DOS was
so basic, that every game was essentially an operating system of its
own, and you'd essentially have to hack the GameOS to get your app to
work in tandem.
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And given how resource strapped computers were, and how optimized
games were, squeezing in a tool like that was something only the very
best programmers could do.
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At least until Windows rolled around, and multitasking became a thing.
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>
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Of course, there were other applets too: save-game/character editors,
trainers, tools to manipulate the game-data, etc. Generally, I
discovered all these tools /long after/ I stopped playing the games in
question but it was amazing how many were available.
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But finding them in the first place... that was always the problem.
We're spoiled by Google.