--- Sean Duffy <jiffy_spiffy--yahoo.com> wrote:
> One more thing to add. There have been alot of
> people
> who have put alot of time into figuring out alot fo
> the variables in various AR systems. Scouring some
> of
> the older posts might take a little while but doing
> so
> would probably be worth it.

Agreed. I've spent a lot of time looking through old
posts for useful little bits and pieces. One thing I'd
like to try and do with my port is try to collect
together some of the information about how the
original games worked and data formats and so on.
There's some quite detailed stuff on the Internet for
the Ultima games for example and it would be nice to
have something similar for the AR games, though I
suppose this can spoil the games for some people if
they know too much.

> Someone also had put the city and dungeon up on the
> net in Flash (was just the map so you could walk
> around it) Dunno if thats still up there as i no
> longer have a link, nor do i remember who was
> working
> on it, but like most of the AR projects they seemed
> to
> have alot of steam and updates early and then not
> get
> finished. Did the Palm port ever get finished?

In my case I find myself taking a break for a month or
two then coming back and adding in some more bits with
renewed interest. It's tricky to do for numerous
reasons firstly I have work and family commitments so
I'm lucky to get 1 hour a day or so to work on
something like this. I sometimes think it would be
more sensible to work on something original of my own.
A good port is achievable just look at the various
Ultima ports such as the Exult engine.

There are also gaps in the knowledge we have about how
the original games work - in some cases you can try to
emulate the behaviour of the original in other cases
it would be nice for the port to use very similar
internal mechanics. Then there's the issue of
understanding the structure of the data for maps,
monsters and objects (some of which is available some
of which isn't) and using the authentic data.

> I still hold out hope Phillip Price will finish the
> project he is/was working on or get another company
> intrested in resurecting AR

I think it's been quite a while since he's posted
about the project. Hopefully we'll still see a new
official version of AR though.

Guilherme

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