🚀 go-pugleaf

Interesting this turned into a Sundog dialog. (which was also a good game
in it's day)  But, I think I remember Omnitrend's Universe and it was a
different game alltogether.  Came with a 3 ring binder and about 4 disks
Ran on the Apple II +.  It was pretty cool as I remember.  Amazing
documentation.

Dale 

Brian Johnson <b...@wolfenet.com> wrote in article
<326D78...@wolfenet.com>...
> Bruce F. Webster wrote:
> > 
> > Tom Harrigan wrote:
> > >
> > > It's amazing how great that game was compared to the flashy junk
that's
> > > been coming out lately.
> > >
> > > [Snipped]
> > >
> > > > : Actually, I think the game was called SunDog, which ran on the
Apple II,
> > > > : and was truly awesome for its time. Written by a guy named Bruce
Webster,
> > > >
> > > > The game was written by FTL Software, and I believe it debuted on
the
> > > > Atari ST.  It was one of the first games I bought fot it - it was
truly
> > > > awesome for the time.  Very much like Privateer - you traded,
explored
> > > > planets, got robbed ont he street, used teleporters, went to the
bank,
> > > > flew in space, hyperjumped, and had dogfights.  VERY cool.
> > 
> > Thanks for the kind words, one and all. After some 22 years of
> > software engineering and other activities, I still remain proudest of
> > SunDog: Frozen Legacy, and it means a lot that others still think
fondly
> > of it. :-)
> > 
> > A few additions, corrections, and trivia:
> > 
> > -- Wayne Holder was co-designer of the game and still (to my knowledge)
> >    runs FTL Games in San Diego.
> > 
> > -- SunDog first came out on the Apple II and was released at the West
> >    Coast Computer Faire in March, 1984. It was written in Apple Pascal
> >    (roughly 15,000 lines) and 6502 assembly (roughly 5000 lines). I
> >    did about 95% of the coding for version 1.0 and 90% for version
> >    2.0 (shipped October 1984). It came on a double-sided floppy (280KB
> >    storage) that you had to manually remove and flip over, and ran in
> >    64KB of RAM.
> > 
> > -- I wrote the graphics library from scratch; it supported multiple
> >    overlapping windows, drag-and-drop icons, and joystick control
> >    (we were heavily influenced by Apple's Lisa computer, the precursor
> >    to the Macintosh). I also developed tools for editing icons, fonts,
> >    and maps. I even wrote a p-code/6502 disassembler so that
> >    we could hack the p-code interpreter.
> > 
> > -- The Atari ST version--which had graphics and animation I could only
> >    dream about--was done by Doug Bell, Mike Newton, and Andy Jaros,
> > again
> >    with contributions from Wayne. It came out (I believe) in late 1985
> > or
> >    early 1986. FTL's big success, though, was DungeonMaster.
> > 
> > -- The subtitle (Frozen Legacy) was a play on words, referring both to
> >    the fact that you couldn't get clear title to your inherited
starship
> >    until you fulfilled your late uncle's contract and to the fact that
> >    fulfilling that contract involved finding and transporting
> > cryogenically
> >    stored colonists.
> > 
> > -- SunDog was to be a trilogy. The second game (SunDog: Old Scores to
> > Settle)
> >    was to deal with finding out why your uncle died and was advertised
> > in the
> >    game credits. The third game would deal with the political
> > ramifications of
> >    what you discovered.
> > 
> > -- SunDog wasn't the game we originally set out to develop. We started
> >    out doing the computer version of a solitare SF RPG called Star
> > Smuggler
> >    from DwarfStar Games (a division of Heritage USA). Two months into
> > the
> >    project, Heritage went into bankruptcy--before we had finalized the
> >    rights. So we had to throw out all that work and start from scratch
> >    with a brand new game design that wouldn't infringe on Star
Smuggler.
> > 
> > -- SunDog was actually set in the game universe of an SF RPG that I was
> >    developing before I started work at FTL Games and continued work on
> >    while at FTL. I had generated four sectors of systems, with names
for
> >    each system and tech levels, law levels, wealth levels, and names
for
> >    each planet. We used one of those sectors for SunDog and would have
> >    expanded to the others for the sequels. A few of the planet/system
> >    names were anagrams of company and personal names.
> > 
> > -- I left FTL Games in October of 1984, a week after SunDog 2.0 was
> > released.
> >    I was so burned out that I did not do professional software
> > development again
> >    until four years later, when I took a contract position at Apple
> > Computer.
> >    I was fortunate to be able to support myself with writing and
> > teaching in
> >    the meantime.
> > 
> > Probably more than y'all wanted to know, but there it is. I keep
> > swearing that
> > I'm going to do a modern version of SunDog someday, but I'm not sure if
> > that'll
> > happen. Ah, well...thanks again for the kind words.  ..bruce..
> > 
> > --------------------------------------
> > bruce f. webster | bweb...@bfwa.com |
> > Bruce F. Webster and Associates, Inc.|
> >     http://www.bfwa.com/~bwebster    |
> > --------------------------------------
> 
> Bruce,
> 
>  Wow thanks for the flash back..... I can honestly say that I have always
felt that 
> sundog was/is one of the best games I ever played. Too bad a sequal was
never made, I 
> spent many a late night on that game. I've been thinking that maybe its
because I am 
> getting older now but I rarely if ever stay up late playing games
anymore. Seems that 
> the flashier a game gets the less I play. Maybe someday you can put out
sundog 2 for the 
> Ibm... I would buy it. You could even update a few things on the first
sundog and 
> re-release it... I would still buy it. Battlecruiser 3000 is a game I was
hoping would 
> rekindle the ol' space fire like Sundog and the first wing-commander game

> did (wing-commander is another game that really hasnt got any better due
to added 
> graphics.) If you ever need any help and you decide to look into Sundog
2.... write me. 
> I am sure there are plenty of us semi-old timers in gaming that would
love to help out.
> 
> -Brian
>