Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Fri, 8 Aug 2003 01:41:49 -0400
From:      John De Boskey <jwd@freebsd.org>
To:        Greg Lewis <glewis@freebsd.org>
Cc:        David Grabiner <grabiner@wcnet.org>
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: ports/games Makefile ports/games/moria
Message-ID:  <20030808054149.GA31360@BSDWins.Com>
In-Reply-To: <200308070426.h774QZmi036356@repoman.freebsd.org>
References:  <200308070426.h774QZmi036356@repoman.freebsd.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
----- Greg Lewis's Original Message -----
> glewis      2003/08/06 21:26:35 PDT
> 
>   FreeBSD ports repository
> 
>   Modified files:
>     games                Makefile 
>   Added files:
>     games/moria          Makefile distinfo pkg-descr pkg-plist 
>     games/moria/files    patch-source::config.h patch-source::io.c 
>                          patch-source::signals.c 
>                          patch-unix::Makefile 
>   Log:
>   . Add a port of moria.  For those too young to have played moria:
>   
>   The game of moria is a single player dungeon simulation.  A player
>   may choose from a number of races and classes when creating a
>   character, and then `run' that character over a period of days,
>   weeks, even months, attempting to win the game by defeating the
>   Balrog which lurks in the deeper levels.
>   
>   The player will begin his adventure on the town level where he may
>   acquire supplies, weapons, armor, and magical devices by bartering
>   with various shop owners. After preparing for his adventure, the
>   player can descend into the dungeons of moria where fantastic
>   adventures await his coming!
>   
>   WWW: http://www-math.bgsu.edu/~grabine/moria.html

This game brings back some very old, ancient memories. 

I downloaded the tarball and extracted it to look at the copyright
information and was a bit disappointed. As to why...

Back in '85/'86 my roommate and I did, to the best of my memory, the
very first port of the orignal VMS code, version 4.51p, to the IBM PC,
originally under DOS 2.0. This port used the same Pascal code, except
that the data arrays had to be converted to assembler and all accessed
via long pointers.  The IBM PC Pascal compiler was used running on
an IBM PC/XT. I seem to remember a full compile/link took about 3 hours.. 

The binary and associated code were released on BITNET in '87.  We also
did a mass C-code conversion on an IBM PS/2 running ISC UNIX in '88. I
simply do not remember how much of that made it onto the network. The
C-code version is sitting on diskettes and will take awhile, and luck,
to pull off.

It took me a few hours, but I dragged the old systems out of the basement
(no sarcastic comments please :-) and got them working enough find some
of it:

http://www.freebsd.org/~jwd/moria.tgz

contains the moria.exe executable. If you can find a system and boot it
under DOS 3.3 (www.bootdisk.com) or similar, you should be able to start
the game up and see the original copyright messages. One of the features
of this particular version was the addition of color support on EGA/VGA
monitors.  It still seems to play quite well.

http://www.freebsd.org/~jwd/moriasrc.tgz

contains all the pascal, assembly, data, and batch files.

Memories, and a tidbit of history.

-John



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20030808054149.GA31360>