[Ohrrpgce] More sleuthing into the first OHR release

[Ralph Versteegen]

On 12 May 2017 at 17:39, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On 12 May 2017 at 16:22, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com> wrote:
>
>> 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.
>>
>
> Oh, interesting. I had a look on archive.org (in the beta version they
> have a keyword search you can use to find all websites on a topic, but it
> still missin
>
Err, it's still missing nearly all individual sites for OHR games. And I
couldn't find any old verge forums (which would have been very unlikely to
have been archived anyway)

> But you mean late 1997/early 1998. The 20th anniversary of the first
> release is still some time away. The 20th anniversary of the start of the
> OHR was most of a year ago.
>
>
>> I don't think sample.rpg and npc_tag.rpg existed in the first release,
>> just wander.rpg
>>
>
> In that case I'm inclined to guesstimate a release date of early Jan 1998
> or Dec 1997.
>
>
>> 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.
>>
>
> But those files were touched within a month or two of the release, and I
> thought there might have been a link, althogh you've almost certainly
> forgotten that now.
>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>
> In that case, might as well use Nov 6 1997, the Wandering Hamster demo,
> which can still be downloaded and played. It wasn't the first release of
> WH, though.
>
>
>>
>> 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.)
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>
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>>
>
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