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Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Sphere Explosivo!

I had never tried to use a SPH (Sphere of Annihilation) spell on a Disenchantress before, but zowie that wasn't the brightest idea that I've ever had. It caused an explosion that took out all of the 8 squares adjacent to the discenchantress (including where I was standing) however I had read a life protection scroll so I was able to come back.

8 comments:

Sinjin said...

Wow, I didn't know that one... I used to love watching those sphere's eat through everything on a level. So much that I attempted to recreate it in other coded venues... but I got disenchanted.

GeorgeWill said...

OK, after many months of searching I believe I have located Larn 12.0 which Don Kneller original ported to MSDOS. The files seem to require a bit of work to compile them together to create the game. However, I am sure some of you are more than up to the challenge (and can help the rest of us figure it out).

Larn12b and Larn12bs
http://www.umich.edu/~archive/msdos/un_indexed/

Notes on Compiling Larn (NDMAKE43)
http://www.umich.edu/~archive/msdos/PC1.INDEX

Location of ARC Compression Tool
http://www.umich.edu/~archive/msdos/compression/arc/


Hopefully, this provides us with the earliest version of Larn for the PC and someone can figure out how to get it to work. Good luck!

The Phantasm said...

I'm digging through the larn source. There are some really bizarre things in here.

Scrolls are stored as "\0name", i.e, "\0enchant armor" so the number of those scrolls you have shares the same memory space as the scroll itself. Very weird.

Master Gorgon said...

GeorgeWill thanks for posting that. I wonder if that version of larn actually has the easter egg and the major bug. (the easter egg being you could type a code, which I think was something like CTRL+PVNRT) and it would put one of each item out on the H level. The major bug was that you could deposit negative amounts of money and it would give you money!

Anyway, I'll see if I can get that thing to compile. I seem to remember the dos-port of Larn required that you add ANSI.sys to your startup.

GeorgeWill said...

The PVNERT easter egg/bug was actually built into the program in order to test and debug the game. In the manual, it is labeled as WIZARD mode and Wizards are non-scoring players who have enlightenment, everlasting expanded awareness, and one of every object in the game. I think you know this, but PVNERT refers to the Ideal gas law "PV = nRT".

Additionally, it seems that Larn 12.0 needs (or prefers) to use Nansi.sys (a more advanced version of the ANSI control sequences) to run. From what I can gather, the Larn 12.4 alpha 2 version available through http://larn.rogueforge.net/ was created so the program does not need ANSI or NANSI to run.

Since my drives use the NTFS format, I am thinking about digging up an old reliable hard drive and installing MSDOS on it so I can test and play Larn 12.0 again. If you find a way to play it on Windows XP or Windows 7, let us know.

Unknown said...

Looking at the source, the spheres will explode if they hit a disenchantress, Demonlord level 4 or higher, another sphere, or iif you have Cancellation on.

Master Gorgon said...

I never even tried to cast two SPH spells at once. The danger with those things is that you might just end up taking out the stairs or something. Then you have to teleport around and hope you end up where you need to go before you get trapped in solid rock.

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