[Ohrrpgce] More sleuthing into the first OHR release

[James Paige]

I think the first release would have been a custom.zip uploaded to some
location under http://www.cyberverse.com/~spam/ which was my site before
the hamsterrepublic.com domain was ever registered. It probably happened in
late 1996, or early 1997 and it would have been announced in an off-topic
thread on the forums for the Verge RPG maker.

I don't think sample.rpg and npc_tag.rpg existed in the first release, just
wander.rpg

I know the BAM format pre-dates the ohrrpgce, and was first used for Bob
the Hamster VGA... that was probably 1994 or 1995? I Think notate was from
then too, so timestamps on notate-related files probably aren't helpful.

I know development definitely started in 1996, in the summer after I
graduated from high school. I know I didn't upload it for a while, and I
think I uploaded wh_demo.zip a few months before uploading custom, but I
really don't remember for sure.

If I had to pick an arbitrary birth-day for the ohrrpgce, I would estimate
that the 20th anniversary already happened at least a few months ago.

However, but brain is well known to be fuzzy, and I think that a better and
more satisfying birthday would probably be whatever first release we
actually still have hard evidence of, even if it isn't the actual first.

On Thu, May 11, 2017 at 8:35 PM, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I haven't any new information, but am still trying to figure out when the
> first release was. The 20th anniversary is coming up and maybe we should
> pick a nominal point (period?) at which to celebrate. :)  There was a WH
> demo on Nov 6 1997, so it was after that.
>
> I noticed that in the earliest source backup the zz_486.bat file, which
> packages wh_demo.zip and custom.zip, has a timestamp of Jan 26  1998. I'm
> guessing that this timestamp corresponds to a release, unless it's after
> the first release and James was adding some new files. It includes
> sample.rpg and npc_tag.rpg; would the first release have included those?
> When was the HOWTO written? Also, cleanup.bat, to move files into import/
> if the unzip didn't preserve folders, has a Jan 14 timestamp. The oldest
> surviving .rpg file is April 30th.
>
> Other timestamps which might be relevant:
>      1246  11-26-1997 17:06   IMPORT/DECOLD.BAM
>     73980  11-27-1997 07:00   IMPORT/NOTATE.EXE
>     30588  12-18-1997 20:19   IMPORT/PLAYBAM.EXE
>     33414  01-15-1998 14:53   IMPORT/TEMPLATE.NOT
>
> Also, in an old custom.zip:
>      1543  07-07-1996 12:47   ohrrpgce.mas
> The Timeline article says OHRRPGCE development started in 1996.
>
>
> (Relatedly, I haven't spliced those two additional old backups of the OHR
> source into the git log yet but will. This time I might use git-replace
> instead of rewriting history.)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ohrrpgce mailing list
> ohrrpgce at lists.motherhamster.org
> http://lists.motherhamster.org/listinfo.cgi/ohrrpgce-motherhamster.org
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.motherhamster.org/pipermail/ohrrpgce-motherhamster.org/attachments/20170511/02fd92e0/attachment.htm>