

Play Sierra On-Line games in your browser (with added multiplayer) - jeff18
http://sarien.net/

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pierrefar
From the about page: "I sincerely hope that Activision Blizzard can appreciate
this tribute to these game franchises (as their original creators such as Al
Lowe do), and not ask me to close down the site due to copyright issues."

I hope so too, but somehow I think his wish is not going to be granted...

~~~
patio11
All of these games are being actively sold by the people who, you know,
actually purchased the right to sell them.

[http://www.amazon.com/VIVENDI-JEUX-
PC-72465-Collection/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/VIVENDI-JEUX-
PC-72465-Collection/dp/B000AYFPKG)

There is no "I really liked this when I was younger!" exception to copyright.

~~~
btilly
True. But historically things entered the public domain within people's lives,
which amounted to the same thing.

Under the laws before Disney began rewriting them, the copyright on many of my
childhood nostalgia items would be expired, or close to it. Until 1909 the law
was a 14 year period with an optional 14 year extension. Until 1976 the law
was a 28 year copyright, with an optional 28 year extension.

Since 1976 the requirement in the US Constitution that copyright be "for
limited terms" has been circumvented. Literally _nothing_ new has entered the
public domain, and much has been _removed_ from it. I'm 40. Until last year
there was literally nothing that had entered the public domain in my lifetime
that had not been removed from it. Somewhere between now and 1923 I fully
expect everything that has reentered the public domain in my lifetime to be
removed from the public domain again.

People no longer have the experience of things entering the public domain.
People have lost track of the understanding that there is supposed to be such
a thing, let alone why it is important. I'm firmly in the minority that is
both aware and thinks that it is a travesty.

~~~
jeff18
The fact that copyright used to last for N years in 1909 is irrelevant.
Whether or not a law used to exist should not determine whether or not a law
should exist, for obvious reasons (slavery, universal suffrage, mandatory
military service, etc.).

It would be cool to explain explicitly why things should go in the public
domain after X years instead of N years.

~~~
btilly
There needs to be a judgment call about the explicit rule to have. That said,
I think we have made the wrong tradeoff.

The principle embodied in the US Constitution is that the purpose of
intellectual property is to maximize the development of the common public
domain that we can all benefit from. Therefore copyright should have a long
enough horizon to provide a sufficient incentive to encourage innovation, but
should not be longer than that.

What fraction of the economic value of the average copyrightable work is
captured in the first 30 years of its term? Most of it. In the first 70 years
of its work? I saw an estimate of over 99% of it in one of the amicus briefs
in the _Eldred_ case. Therefore the real difference between current copyright
law and perpetual ownership is less than 1% of possible value. That extra 1%
is not material to people's decisions about whether to create new works, and
therefore increasing the term of copyright further should lose compared to the
economic value of having more material enter the public domain. (After the
case was lost I saw Lessig mention that one of his mistakes was not pushing
this line of economic argument more strongly.)

Anyways, given how the court ruled, this is a moral argument regarding future
copyright laws and not a legal argument based on which one could overturn
further bad laws.

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Gormo
For those interested in indulging in some Sierra nostalgia:

SierraGamers (<http://www.sierragamers.com>) is a lively forum maintained by
Ken Williams, original founder of Sierra.

Quest Studios (<http://www.queststudios.com>) is a great site dedicated to the
music of classic Sierra games, and also has a pretty good forum.

ImagiNation Revival (<http://innrevival.googlepages.com>) is a
reimplementation of the ImagiNation service, which can be used with the
original INN client (under DosBox with the serial port mapped to telnet).

And since this is Hacker News, The Ultimate AGI & SCI Web Site
(<http://agisci.classicgaming.gamespy.com>) is a site dedicated to reverse
engineering the old Sierra game engines. It's relatively old, but contains,
among other things, IDEs for developing games that run under Sierra's AGI and
SCI interpreters.

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jmtame
Ultima would be a good game to multiplay. Black Gate in particular.

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cedsav
I still remember having to look into a French-English dictionary to find the
right word for 'spacesuit'...

Old games are like legos, less sophistication = more imagination.

~~~
modoc
I HATE how hard it is to find Legos that aren't just part of a kit that builds
ONE thing and has step by step instructions.

My nephew has several of these, but I think they're such a waste compared to
the old days where you had a bucket of blocks, and you built whatever you
wanted. I also have fond memories of Capsela, Constructs, and old Erector
Sets.

~~~
rkowalick
The buckets of basic blocks can still be found in quite a lot of places. Sam's
Club, Walmart, etc. around where I live still stock pretty sizable buckets.

~~~
modoc
Good to know. Mostly I've just been hitting Toys R Us and similar places and
haven't found any basic blocks available there. I'll look harder:)

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rikthevik
A noble effort, but I had huge stability problems. Saving and loading are
really cumbersome and in those games you'll be doing both of those a lot. :(

~~~
_phred
Heck yeah, this reminds me why Space Quest's subtitle should be, "you're gonna
die." There are so many horrible ways to die in the SQ games...

Unfortunately, it appears that inventory disappears on restore from saved
game, and there's also a lot that can be learned from the interpreter's
command completion menu. A galaxy away from playing SQ1 on 5 1/4" floppies,
but still: bravo! A noble effort, and I'm looking forward to playing with this
some more.

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bravura
Every time I type "inventory", I end up at the home screen in Leisure Suit
Larry.

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javery
No Quest for Glory (aka Hero's Quest) :(

~~~
timwiseman
I was a huge fan of that entire series (though 4 was kind of buggy).

It is hard to find games in that same vein anymore. Planescape:Torment and
KOTOR came close, but even those are several years old now.

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Gormo
Torment is definitely in my top 5 games of all time. Hard to believe it's been
out for ten years.

If you haven't played it, I highly recommend "Arcanum: Of Steamworks and
Magick Obscura", developed by Troika and published by Sierra in 2001. It's
very similar in depth and mechanics to Torment, Fallout, and the other Black
Isle RPGs.

~~~
timwiseman
Thanks. I'll look around for it. Anything more recent in that vein?

