Some links to pages regarding old games

A collection of links related to old games.

Jeff's Gameblog

TheAlmightyGuru.Com

The Midi Shrine

Beyond Classic DOS Games

Free PC Gaming Blog

The History of Computer Role-Playing Games Part 1: The Early Years (1980-1983)

The History of Computer Role-Playing Games Part 2: The Golden Age (1985-1993)

A History of D&D Video Games

A History of D&D Video Games - Part II

Pools of Radiance - Classic Dungeons and Dragons

Stu's Rusty Bucket

The Roots of Computer Roleplaying

The Return of the Condor Heroes (TV) 神雕侠侣

I found this on YouTube, just to share. Even before I read the novel, this was the TV series that introduced me to The Return of the Condor Heroes. It was only after watching this TV series that I got interested, and went on to read the novel, which was even more in depth. Though there are many screen adaptations, I still think the 1983 TV series by TVB is the best.

A search on YouTube reveals many clips of the series. And there are also VCD sets (and DVD sets too, I think ) available for sale now. You won't regret getting your own copy, these 24 episodes will keep you glued to the screen popping in disc after disc chasing the story.

Xi Shuo Qian Long Xu Ji 戏说乾隆续集

This is the sequel to Xi Shuo Qian Long 戏说乾隆, with Adam Cheng playing Emperor Qian Long, though with a different female lead.

What I like about this series are the theme songs. They truly express the show, the social divide between the emperor and the female lead.

Lyrics of opening theme Wen Qing 问情
Lyrics of ending theme Lai Sheng Zai Xu Yuan 来生再续缘

Xi Shuo Qian Long 戏说乾隆

Another classic Chinese drama series that I used to watch, this is about the Qing dynasty's Emperor Qian Long. I especially like the theme songs (link to Youtube below). The show has also been released on DVD, though the one with English subtitles doesn't seem to have a good review (something about the English translation being lousy). I guess that means our non-Chinese speaking friends won't get to enjoy this classic show.

The show is about Emperor Qian Long and his exploits, as he travels undercover to take a look at the real world, rather than the coloured version that he gets through his ministers attending court. At 42 episodes (for the first season), this is a long-running show, but it is interesting and will keep you glued to the TV watching episode after episode (if you have the DVD...) I remember having to wait through the week trying to find out what is going to happen during the next episode (they used to air only two episodes a week, if I remember correctly).

Adam Cheng portrays the part of the emperor just great. I guess it takes an experienced actor to be able to pull it off, since the part requires both charisma, wit and character. Angie Chiu portrays his love interest and does so quite nicely too.

Besides the first season, there is also a second season to the drama series. The two seasons are usually known as "The Legendary Chien Lung" and "The Legendary Chien Lung II" in English, while "Xi Shuo Qian Long" is the hanyu pinyin (aka romanization) of the Chinese characters 戏说乾隆, which is the title of the show in Chinese.

The opening theme song at Youtube
All three theme songs at Youtube
Watch the episodes online

Get Smart

Anyone remembers the TV show, Get Smart, about the fumbling Agent 86 Maxwell Smart, his beautiful partner Agent 99, and the evil nemesis organisation KAOS?

This TV comedy series used to air in Singapore back in the 1980s, and I remember watching every episode back then, enjoying the laughs from the fumbling spy, and being amazed that somehow, he still manages to save the day at the end of the show. James Bond is cool and slick, the ultimate spy. Maxwell smart is dumb and exactly handsome, yet he somehow manages to get the job done (although Agent 99 does help a lot).

The show also has a lot of spy gadgets, the most famous being the shoe phone, which is what we would call a cellular phone nowadays (just that it was built into a shoe). It was hilarious when the shoe starts to ring at the most awkward of times. And of course, the Cone of Silence that hardly works.

The show (seasons 1 to 5) is now available in DVD, so those who miss the old times can try to get their hands on a set for enjoying at their own pace back in the comfort of their homes.

And there is the upcoming movie too, scheduled to air in June 2008.

All you need to know about Get Smart
Youtube video of the opening theme
Another site on Get Smart
Official site for the Get Smart 2008 film

Magic: The Gathering

Magic: The Gathering (MTG) is still very much a popular game, even though it was released more than 10 years ago. It is a card game played between two players (called a "duel"), each with his own deck of cards (usually customised by the player). Each player gets to draw a certain number of cards from his deck, which he can then play out.

Creating decks was fun and required brains. First, you decide on a theme, an effect that you wanted to use. Then, you start adding cards that achieve those effects into the deck. Next, you add in supplementary cards to complement those main cards. And of course, you need to add in land cards, since they provide the mana that you need to play your cards.

I was introduced to the game by friends from Lothlorien. And I still have the cards from the older editions of the game, which right now could be worth a lot more than I can imagine. I don't play MTG anymore, since to play, you need to constantly keep your deck updated (there are many sets available, including expansion sets), which can be both taxing financially, as well as taking time to learn about the new cards and how to use them. Besides, it is hard to find time to play too.

But it was fun. And you didn't need that much time. All you needed was a deck of cards. The only challenge I had back then was in finding people to play with, since it wasn't catching up amongst my friends yet. Most of them had better things to do than spend time and money on game cards. Which probably explains why in the end, I stopped playing too. But for my computing project, I wrote a program to help me keep track of the MTG cards in my collection. Sad to say, that program has since been lost, as I didn't keep any hardcopy of the program listing, and the computer it was on has since been discarded.

The official MTG site
A promising MTG freeware game

Micromouse

I used to take part in inter-school micromouse competitions (organised by Ngee Ann Polytechnic) when I was still schooling.

What is micromouse? It is a small little robot that moves on wheels and uses sensors to "see" around itself. The competition is actually to see how fast a micromouse can get from one corner of a maze to the centre of the maze. This it does by using its sensors to draw a map of the maze as it moves around, and then deciding how best to move within the maze to get to the centre, based on the algorithm programmed into it.


The first few years were done using a custom program from Ngee Ann Polytechnic. Basically, you don't really control the mouse much, except for defining the maze solving algorithm and parameters for movement. Subsequently, you get to control the micromouse using C, with a specially designed IDE that incorporates the required libraries to control the motor and sensors. This was when I started learning C programming. Before that, I was dabbling in BASIC, though I had tried to pick up C, but with little success.

I don't have those programs with me anymore, it has been more than 10 years since I took part in micromouse competitions. But the memories of staying back to work on the mouse, of time spent running it through the maze time and time again, of fine-tuning the movement parameters, and debugging the program, these remain to this day.

Micromouse Information Centre
Mobots
Ng Beng Kiat's Micromouse page
A micromouse maze solving algorithm

Calligraphy piece starting with 剛 and 毅

After seeking advice from my calligraphy teacher, she wrote me a sample, and I followed it to write the above. I guess it takes practice to be able to write well. It takes practice to be able to do anything well.

This will be a gift to one of my superiors to congratulate him on achieving a milestone.

DBGL: DOSBox Game Launcher

I have written about DOSBox before, because it allows me to play all those old DOS games that I so enjoyed in my youth. But unless you enjoy typing all those commands in, it is best to get a front-end to DOSBox that will allow you to choose the game that you want to play. One of such front-ends is DBGL (short of DOSBOX Game Launcher). It is based upon D-Fend, which unfortunately, is no longer being worked on.

DBGL works on Java, and allows you to create multiple profiles and even use multiple versions of DOSBox, as well as multiple configurations. So you can have different configurations to emulate older PCs or the newer ones (with better graphics and memory). And it is open source too!

Bilateral Trading Simulator

The above is a screenshot of the simulation landscape that I used for my thesis on bilateral tradings in a mobile environment. It was modeled after the Sugarscape model that was used by Joshua Epstein and Robert Axtell in their research on artificial societies. Their findings was published in the book "Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science From the Bottom Up".

As part of my final year requirements, I was required to write a thesis. My professor had originally intended for me to use my programming skills to help him develop a tool for multi-agent simulations based on what he read about Sugarscape. Using Java (which I picked up while writing this tool), I developed the Bilateral Trading Simulator, in which mobile agents move around in a landscape, harvesting resources and trading those resources.

Price is determined in one of four ways. It can be a global price, which is the average price that each agent is willing to pay for each resource. Or it can be a local price, which is the price each agent is willing to barter at with the agent that it is trading with. Or it can be a game of bargaining, in which each agent either tries to get a price most beneficial to itself, or succumbs to the demands of its trading partner. The last way to determine price is a global price that is determined using a logistics function.

I finished the simulator in 3 months, when I had 10 months to do my thesis, so I managed to persuade my professor to allow me to carry out simulations using the simulator and analysing the results. One of the findings is that when individuals exercise their bargaining power to influence the price of bilateral tradings, the artificial society as a whole becomes more efficient. I guess that gives us a reason to be selfish.

The simulator was also modified by a fellow student for his research in simulation of the immune system.

GIMP 2.4.1

For those who don't know, GIMP 2.4.1 is out. You can get it from the download page at the GIMP website.

Windows users will need to download it from here.

Mac users, please read this and see what suits your flavour.

Unix/Linux users, check out the binaries available. Of course, you can always download the source code and compile it yourself.

DNS-312H Network Attached Storage part 3

Please read this post for my experience with DNS-312H NAS.

If you have any questions on setting up DNS-312H, please feel free to drop me a comment on this post or the previous post, and I will try to help you. I have gotten it to work on Windows XP before, and it is working on Vista as well. Of course, it works on Fedora Core 7 too.

Being Prepared - Before it is too late

An article by me, published in the Forum page of The Straits Times in Sep 2005. This article subsequently made its way into some civil defence handbook.

"Hurricane Katrina taught us one thing, that it is never too late to be prepared. The Indian Ocean tsunami caught people off guard, without warning. But Katrina gave lots of warning before she hit land. Yet Katrina still managed to cause damage and loss of lives. One of the reasons could be due to civil defence, or the lack of it.

The United States has, or had, a civil defence programme. For a nation that was faced with possible nuclear war against the USSR, civil defence was taught and practised. But over the years, with no nuclear wars or major disasters hitting the US, people grew lax in civil defence. September 11 might have been a wake-up call, but with the focus on the intelligence failure and the subsequent military action, it never brought back the right attitude about civil defence. Katrina is the American's wake-up call for civil defence.

Civil defence teaches us that defence is our responsibility too. We must be prepared to do our parts, no matter how small, when disaster strikes, be it war or hurricane or earthquake. To this end, we have drills in which we practice what to do when the civil defence siren sounds, queuing for food with coupons in hand, tuning in to the radio to listen to announcements, etc. These little actions on our part will go a long way when disaster strikes.

We must continue to take civil defence seriously. Katrina, and the tsunami of Boxing Day 2004, only reminds us of the consequences should we let down our guard. Only by maintaining the right attitude towards civil defence, will we be able to ensure that we stand the best chance against any disaster that hits our island nation.

Do you know what to do when the civil defence siren sounds? Do you know where the nearest air raid shelter is? Do you keep a portable radio at home with batteries? Is your kitchen cabinet stocked with an adequate amount of canned food? If not, maybe it is time to start thinking, for who knows when disaster will strike?"

The need for scholars

An article by me, published in Sep 2005 in the Today Newspaper's Voice section.

"40 years since independence may be a good time for us to relook at some of the systems that we have in place, systems which we implemented in the past that may no longer be relevant today. The scholarship system was introduced in the past to groom potential leaders. Promising youths are selected and sent overseas for an education, with hopes that exposure to a foreign country will enable them to bring back ideas to better Singapore. Without the ideas brought back by these scholars, Singapore would not be where she is today.

But should an organisation look at a youth of 18 years, with no prior working experience in the organisation, and decide whether he or she is going to be future leader of the organisation? Or would it be better to wait and track his or her performance over a few years before deciding
to groom these potential leaders for higher leadership posts? In other words, do we want to give out scholarships to 18-year-olds for them to complete their undergraduate studies overseas, or do we give the scholarships to 28-year-olds for them to pursue further studies overseas?

Some may say that giving scholarships to 18-year-olds gives potential leaders coming from a less privileged background a chance for undergraduate studies. I agree. We can change this to a sponsorship scheme, in which organisations can continue to sponsor those with potential for undergraduate studies at our local universities. I am sure our local universities are as good as universities overseas. After they complete their studies and work in the organisation, if they continue to show potential, we can then send them off for further studies overseas. Their experience in the organisation will also enable them to know what are the relevant ideas that they can bring back to Singapore. There will be less people wanting to break their bonds, since they were chosen to go overseas because they have shown their potential and their commitment
to the organisation. Our scholars would also be of sound character and possess the necessary qualities for higher leadership, since they would be chosen based on assessments given by superiors who have worked with them before. I would think this is a better investment of taxpayers' money.

40 years of nation building has passed. Is it not time now to look at existing systems and review their relevancy in the next 40 years ahead?"

Muso Jikiden Eishin-Ryu 無雙直傳英信流

Some may not know it, but besides learning taiji, and having a first dan in Japanese calligraphy (shodo 書道), I also have a second dan in iaido 居合道. So what is iaido, actually?

Iaido is actually derived from iaijutsu 居合術 (which was in turn a part of the bigger martial skill known as battojutsu 抜刀術), which is the skill of being able to quickly draw a sword, cut your opponent in that single draw, and then return the sword back into its scabbard. In feudal Japan, with its turbulent times, it was of course a very useful skill to have. But with peace, there was less need for killing, yet these skills trained not just the body, but also the spirit, and thus martial skills became martial arts, and their focus changed towards training the spirit, more than killing people. Iaido is the martial arts form of iaijutsu.

The school/style that I learnt is Muso Jikiden Eishin-Ryu 無雙直傳英信流, which traces back to its founder, Hayashizaki Jinsuke Shigenobu 林崎甚助重信. After learning the basic seiza 正座 moves, instruction moves on the the standing moves (like batto ho 抜刀法) and tatehiza 立膝 moves.

As with all martial arts, the important thing is to train the spirit, not just the body. Being able to perform all the moves correctly is not the ultimate goal. It is in training concentration, focus, being able to accept criticism, mental calm, etc. that is the goal.

In Singapore, iaido is non-existent, since there are no teachers here, much less say a dojo. I do have a few fellow iaido students in Singapore (they should be fourth dan by now), and maybe in the future, we may get together for some practice sessions.

A picture of my sensei, Esaka Seigan 江坂静厳.

A listing of iaido dojo in Japan
An article in Japan Times

A warrior's soul

After writing about iaido, I won't be doing justice if I don't talk about my katana, the warrior's soul. As Kimura Takuya's character pointed out in the movie Love and Honour, a samurai should not be away from his sword. I have owned this katana since the year 2000. Although I don't practise iaido these days, I still bring it out every once in a while, just to oil it and keep the rust at bay. Looking at it, holding it in my hands, it brings back memories of when I spent hours each day training in iaido. The urge to draw it out and practise a few moves comes everytime I touch my katana.

A katana is a warrior's soul. There is this special link between man and sword, that somehow just cannot be easily explained to those who never have this bond.

Miyamoto Musashi

For those who do not know, Miyamoto Musashi (also known as Shinmen Takezo, Miyamoto Bennosuke and Niten Doraku) is one of the most famous swordsmen in medieval Japan, towards the end of the Warring States Period and during the start of the Tokugawa Shogunate. He is famous not only because he was undefeated in duels, but also because of this skill in using two swords at once, his artistic talents as well as scholarly skills. Not only has he written a book on strategy, he paints too. And his swordmanship school of using two swords together survives today as the Hyoho Niten Ichi Ryu school of kenjutsu.

Miyamoto Musashi is the true kensei, "sword saint". His life was devoted towards improving his skills with the blade, and in the end, he remained undefeated, dying in bed. A legendary figure in Japanese history, he has been portrayed in films and books, the most famous of which must be Yoshikawa Eiji's "Musashi". While the book seems to accurately portray the historical Musashi, there are actually some fictitious parts, such as the love story. But still, the action-packed novel, with the heroic duels, makes it one of my favourite books. And in the upcoming drama series "Heroes", there is going to be another character based on Musashi, Takezo Kensei.

He is also the model for my character Eldriz on the Forgotten Kingdoms MUD.

Service?

My wife was telling me about the security at our place today. She was trying to use the sauna 15 minutes before it closes, and the security guard in charge of the sauna facilities kept stressing to her that he wants to get off work on time (facilities open till 10pm), that he wants to lock up everything in time.

When my wife got out of the sauna, just before 10pm, all the lights for the other facilities were off, their doors were locked, and the security guard was waiting with his bag at his counter. I think it was plain rude. After all, if facilities are open till 10pm, it means people get to use them until 10pm, after which the staff comes in to clear up and lock up.

There was a short thank-you note in the papers today, praising the service at Tao's, a local restaurant. I have been there once, and while the food may not be the best in the world, their service is good, at least in Singapore. I guess this is because their boss (a good friend of my brother) personally interviews the staff to ensure that he gets the correct people. If you notice, his service staff aren't Singaporeans. I guess that says a lot about the kind of service that we can expect from fellow Singaporeans.

Calligraphy piece - 剛毅

My most recent piece of calligraphy, the Chinese characters 剛毅. I have also written a short phrase using these two characters, which I will upload once I have gotten my teacher's comments and have it framed up. The phrase is 剛勇似猛虎、毅然如古松.

Economy at the expense of the environment?

We were just told that while protecting the environment is important, we should not do so at the expense of the economy. Economic development still comes first, because we play only a small little part in damaging the environment. After all, we only contribute 0.2% towards emissions that harm the environment. This 0.2% is not going to save the environment, so if we have to choose between environment and economy, we should choose the economy.

Now, if everyone thinks like that, no one would bother to do anything for the environment.

The importance of basics

Getting the basics right is very important.

I learnt to drive in Japan. And I would say that the driving instructors there are very strict (or at least, mine were). They made sure that students learn the basics correctly. And they stress the importance of observing basic road courtesy, which they teach too. For example, students drive slowly compared to the rest of the traffic, so occasionally, when going along one-lane roads, they will get the student to stop at the side of the road and let the rest of the traffic behind overtake first.

So coming back to Singapore, and driving on the roads here, at first I found it horrifying that our road users are so barbaric. Most lack basic road courtesy, and don't even observe simple rules like signalling before changing lanes. Yet it is also because of the strong basics that I had, which allows me to continue to survive on the roads today, keeping to my basics and yet not be endangered by the dangerous drivers around me. It is only when you are strong in the basics, can you be able to adapt to the situation.