readme.txt by Andrew L. Ayers, with editing and proofreading help supplied by Michael Crawford and Tim Lindner October 1st, 2004 Introduction ------------ As I sit here writing this, I can't help but think back on the number of twists and turns this game has gone through to get to this point. It all started off with me explaining and pleading about my plight on Slashdot, with regards to copy protection, how it affects us today, and how it was affecting me in regards to Gates of Delirium. That is what it boils down to - a game, which was effectively abandoned by its owner (Dave Dies and Diecom Products), which appeared to be beyond hope of ever being played again. Despite the best wishes of Dave, no matter what I did, I couldn't get my copy, which I had paid for (well, actually, my parents had paid for it when I was a kid), to work. Had I had a way to back it up when I had received it, it might have turned out to be a different story. Time passed, and eventually I got a response. Out of the blue, I received an email from Michael Crawford on Sunday, July 25, 2004. This was an email which would change everything. He had an interest in the game, had played it in the past, and wanted to play it again. It quickly became apparent that I seemed to have the "last copy" in North America. As the days went by and our email exchanges continued, I became interested in the possibility of getting the game running again... In the end, a three person team was assembled - Myself, Michael, and a man by the name of Tim Lindner, who is a contributor to the open source emulator, MESS. Tim seemed to have fairly intimate knowledge regarding Diecom Products copy protection mechanism. He had worked with it in the past, getting other Diecom games to work under MESS. His knowledge is what enabled us to move forward very rapidly in bringing this game "back from the dead". We all owe him a huge debt of gratitude - THANK YOU, TIM!!! In the end, it turned out well. It still is amazing to me that I can once again play the game I loved so much as a child... About the Game -------------- Gates of Delirium was released by Diecom Products, Inc sometime in 1987, as best as I can tell, for the price of $38.95 US ($52.95 CAN). I don't know for sure, but it seems that this game was, at one time, a "vaporware" game: From old copies of Falsoft's Rainbow Magazine which I own (I only have January 1987 on forward), in the January 1987 issue, GofD is shown with a completely different GUI than what the game ended up being sold with: The screenshot of the game shows the map on which the player roamed taking up about 5/8ths of the screen, with a four-line command input window at the bottom, which also showed the player's statistics (health, experience, etc) to the right (see the image in the extras directory under "advert0187.jpg"). This screenshot didn't change until the June 1987 issue of the Rainbow, in which the GUI is shown with the familiar look that we now know (interestingly enough, Diecom also released the games "Lansford Mansion" and "Caladuril Flame of Light" at this time, which were two graphical adventure games for the Color Computer). The image "advert0787.jpg" in the extras directory shows this new GUI layout. This change in GUI layout suggests to me that Diecom had the product available, but not completely ready, but decided to initially market it with what is likely the "development" GUI - then shipping it with the more advanced and polished GUI once they had enough orders. Of course, this is all speculation. One thing that didn't change at this time, though, was the price (prices didn't drop until sometime in 1988). It was finally reviewed in Rainbow Magazine in the October 1987 issue, by Glen Dahlgren, who gave it a favorable review, concluding with the words "...Gates of Delirium, in my opinion, despite minor problems, is one of the finest and most professional conversions of fantasy role playing games available for the Color Computer. It is exciting, extensive, and pleasing to the eye." I couldn't put it better myself! About the Files in the Archive ------------------------------ This archive consists of a few directories and numerous files. The following is a list of directories and files included in the archive: readme.txt - this file you are reading \extras - extra files related to the game advert0187.jpg - scanned jpeg of January 1987 Diecom ad advert0787.jpg - scanned jpeg of July 1987 Diecom ad dave_dies.txt - text file with email from Dave Dies diskcovr.jpg - scanned jpeg of GofD disk jacket emails.txt - text file of email exchange of recovery gofd1.jpg - jpeg image of original manual, map and disks gofd2.jpg - jpeg image of original disks notes1.jpg - scanned jpeg of map of a dungeon notes2.jpg - scanned jpeg of map of a dungeon notes3.jpg - scanned jpeg of notes of item prices sshot1.png - PNG screengrab of title from MESS sshot2.png - PNG screengrab of title from MESS sshot3.png - PNG screengrab of title from MESS sshot4.png - PNG screengrab of game from MESS \game - Gates of Delirium game disk images gofdgame.dsk - GofD Game Disk, DMK format gofdplyr.dsk - GofD Player Disk, JVC format \manual - Scanned jpeg images of manual and map gofd??.jpg - where ?? = 01-15, pages of manual gofdcorr.jpg - jpeg scan of manual corrections page gofdmap.jpg - jpeg scan of map page One file of note is "emails.txt" in the "extras" directory. This is a blow-by-blow account of the recovery of this excellent game, via a long log of emails (exchanged between me, Michael, and Tim), presented in chronological order. They give a lot of insight into the process that went into recovering the game. About the Manual ---------------- The manual is presented as a series of 15 jpeg scans made from my original copy of the user's manual for Gates of Delirium. In addition to these pages, a page of corrections and the map page, which came with my original copy of the game, is also included. Please note that the information in the manual is intentionally vague. Diecom Products was running a contest at the time for the first person to "solve" Gates of Delirium. No mention is given as to what the prize was going to be. As far as I know, nobody claimed the prize, or if they did, it was never publicized by the company. Also note that on the map I have written (when I was a kid playing the game) notes relating to the approximate positions of various towns, dungeons, and other areas of interest. About the Extras ---------------- In addition to the email exchange about the recovery of GofD, included in the "extras" directory are a few other items: The files "advert0187.jpg" and "advert0787.jpg" are both scans of the advertisement layouts from Diecom Products for their games, from the January 1987 and July 1987 issues of the Rainbow, respectively. As was noted in "About the Game" (above), these two advertisements show the differences in the GUI from the time of the game's release. The file "dave_dies.txt" is a copy of the email received by Michael, from Dave Dies, apparently authorizing the ability to distribute and run Diecom games for the purposes of preservation and emulation (way to go, Michael!). I had gotten verbal permission once from Dave, but it is nice to see it in written form. The file "diskcovr.jpg" is a jpeg scan I made of the original disk envelope in which Diecom distributed Gates of Delirium (and likely its other products as well). The file "emails.txt", as noted before, is a blow-by-blow account of the recovery of this excellent game, via a long log of emails (exchanged between me, Michael, and Tim), presented in chronological order. They give a lot of insight into the process that went into recovering the game. The files "gofd1.jpg" and "gofd2.jpg" are photos of the original manual, map, and disks of the game. This is really how the game came to me in the mail, no box (other than the cardboard shipping box it was sent in, which unfortunately is long gone). The disk jackets display Diecom Product's logo, one in purple (the game disk) and one in red (the player disk). It is unknown at this time whether these were random colors picked for the game's floppies, or if all copies of Gates of Delirium came this way. The games disk labels are simple dot-matrix printed labels, with no special font, printed in light blue ink (I couldn't swear to it, but they may have been printed with the CGP-220 ink-jet printer Radio Shack sold at the time). The game disk (purple jacket) label reads: GATES OF DELIRIUM (C) 1987 BY DIECOM PRODUCTS, INC. REQUIRES 64 K AND DISK DRIVE TELEPHONE # (416)-878-8358 The player disk (red jacket) label reads: GATES OF DELIRIUM (C) 1987 BY DIECOM PRODUCTS, INC. PLAYER DISK DO NOT USE! There are also included three note file scans ("notes1.jpg", "notes2.jpg", and "notes3.jpg") which detail one of the dungeons in Gates of Delirium, as well as a price list for items in the game. Please be aware that these were notes I had made as a kid, and I don't remember to which dungeon or town they belong to (most likely the town of Casa, but I can't be certain). Finally, a few screenshot images (provided by Michael Crawford) from the MESS emulation are included. The first three, "sshot1.png" thru "sshot3.png", are shots of the series of game title screens which appear when you first boot the game. The last screenshot, "sshot4.png", shows the player's group standing near water, next to one of the moon gates in the game (with a skeleton peeking across the water). About the Game Disk Images -------------------------- Of course, these are the most important part of this archive - it is what you downloaded this for, right? Well - don't get into a hurry. First, sit down and read the manual, and understand it. You might want to print it out, as well, for future reference as you play the game. The game disk image is "gofdgame.dsk", which is the first disk that is loaded to start playing the game. It is a DMK format disk image, which means that it can only be read by David Keil's Color Computer emulator, or MESS 0.61b. Please note that it cannot be loaded into Jeff Vavasour's emulators - the emulator does not recognize the disk format. Please also note that you can't save the image of the disk out into the JVC format (Jeff's disk format) and attempt to load it that way, either - due to the funky copy protection on the game which formats the disk image in a completely non-standard track format (for the first 17 tracks), it can't be copied or loaded this way. The player disk image is "gofdplyr.dsk", which is the second disk of the game. It is a JVC formatted disk image, and may be loaded and copied in Jeff Vavasour's emulators (but it won't do you much good without the game disk image). It is in the standard RS-DOS format for the Color Computer. Please heed the instructions of the Gates of Delirium manual: You *MUST* make a copy of this disk image before playing the game. This is because as you play the game, the disk image is modified, as well as when you save the game. So, keep the original in a safe spot (and make it read-only, if you want), and make copies of it, perhaps one copy per each character you create to play and explore the game. To start the game, set up your emulator to read the game disk image ("gofdgame.dsk"), and type "DIR" at the Color Computer's flashing prompt within the emulator (after you have booted into RS-DOS). You should see in the directory listing the binary file "GATES.BIN". Type LOADM "GATES.BIN and press return. This should begin the process of loading the game. The game will later prompt you to insert your player disk (remember, use your backup!), and from that point you can generate a player and begin the game. Conclusion ---------- Well - that is it. There isn't anything more to add, other than transporting yourself to the land of the Gates. It is a large game with a fairly engaging world, and very interesting graphics (which, honestly, can only be done justice on an actual NTSC television, which makes great use of the artifact coloring of the Color Computer - emulation looks good, but it isn't exactly the same). I hope you enjoy this wonderful game as much as we have enjoyed bringing it to you. From all of us: Good luck, and happy adventuring! Andrew L. Ayers, Michael Crawford, and Tim Lindner The "Gates of Delirium" Resurrection Team October 1st, 2004