The War Engine

[jars_u]

Trying to locate someone with a copy of The War Engine that they would be willing to trade/sell me since it is no longer in print.

I also own a copy of Armies of Armageddon: WDK 2K that was originally sold by Boku on battlefront.com before it was available for sale at shrapnelgames.com and recall but can not locate some patches for that original game that upgraded I want to say from version 1.0 to 2.1. If anyone has in their personal archives or knows where I could locate those I would appreciate it. Thanks.

[tuivel]

I'm in the same boat as you but i got good news! I just received word from Michael Cooney (the chief developer of the war enige) that the game will be re-released shortly by Matrix Games on their website. And it will be a free download :-)

[jars_u]

Hi there, I was also able to discover the same from contacting sales at Matrix when someone else had told me Boku is now partnered with them. Was a good little piece of news and free makes it even better! I've been checking their website weekly - nothing yet but I'd love to get a PBEM game going with you once it gets released. Shoot me an email and let me know.

[Xrati]

Yea, I still have my disks from Circa 7000! It's the original version of WE and AoA. It's good to hear that Mike is still putting work into his game.

[jars_u]

Cool, and here I thought my copy of AoA from 1999 was the "original." Kind of got anxious waiting for the newer TWE to be re-released and installed and played a game last night - still one of my favorite games. What is the original release date on Circa 7000 and was it a Windows or DOS game? I don't know if Mike is still working on this game or not but I would certainly be interested if he did.

[Xrati]

It's DOS based game. I remember it from the early 90's. I'll have to find the info on it to be sure. It doesn't run at all on the newer machines as the program controlled all the I/O functions. I do know that I was running it on my PII 333! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Injured.gif but originally was used on my 486 before that one. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif When I get time, I will look for the manual and disks.

[jars_u]

Don't make any special effort on my account but would be curious to know. Always kind of nice I think to see the history/evolution of a game the way http://www.malfador.com/ has the old Space Empires up as an example. That might be something worth putting up as right now http://www.bokustrategygames.com/ has nothing. If you ever really got the notion you could probably play Circa 7000 in DOS mode on a Win95/98 virtual machine - I've had some limited success with that in conjunction with http://www.hpaa.com/moslo/ although I suppose http://www.dosbox.com/ might be a better solution for games but have not yet tried that.

[capnq]

Floppy disks that old aren't likely to still have the data intact. When I was trying to install old games to run in DOSBox on my system, only one of about five disks that I tried produced a working install.

[Xrati]

I burned backups on CD. I'll have to look for that disk to, but I know it's around here somewhere. I was able to find the instruction book on the game last night and did find the floppies as I've always been careful with original disks on games and programs. The cd is in a stack of old file and programs disks. The original name was Circa 7000 Armies of Armageddon.

[Annette]

Looks like Gamershell (http://www.gamershell.com/)is the place to go for your free download of The War Engine http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[jars_u]

Thanks!

For others who might be interested you can read the full story about the release of The War Engine and sites that have it mirrored for download at:

http://tinyurl.com/6oye6d

[Xrati]

Thanks for the info Annette.

I did try dosbox, but the original program (Circa 7000) still has problems with the XMS settings (I have more XMS then the game requires). Maybe Mike Cooney would know how to set it up to run under dosbox?

[Annette]

Xrati said:
Thanks for the info Annette.

I did try dosbox, but the original program (Circa 7000) still has problems with the XMS settings (I have more XMS then the game requires). Maybe Mike Cooney would know how to set it up to run under dosbox?



He may. Let me know if you'd like for me to pm his email address to you.

[Xrati]

Annette, I would like that. This way I can relay any info I get here for dosbox users. PM me.

[Annette]

Done.

[capnq]

Can anyone who is playing this version of The War Engine tell me whether the Caverns scenario in the Bellvilleian Campaign can be won without editing it?

AFAICT, it's not possible for Alpha Squad to meet the victory conditions, because they can't pick up any of the Recoverable Objects.

[Xrati]

You know, I never really played any of the scenarios that came with the game. I was always busy creating my own.

[John Stone]

Hi! Just wanted to mention that the place to get The War Engine installer and it's hotfix update can be found here:

https://ftp.matrixgames.com/pub/TheWarEngine/

On a side note, has anyone contacted Mike Cooney to see if he would authorize releasing the original Circa 7000 Armies of Armageddon and Armies of Armageddon: WDK 2K to the public, hosted at a site like moddb.com? That would be a great place to archive them!