OHRRPGCE 20 Year Anniversary!

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TMC
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OHRRPGCE 20 Year Anniversary!

Post by TMC »

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Yes, really! Today, is the remarkable 20th anniversary of the oldest surviving copy of the Official Hamster Republic Role Playing Game Construction Engine, a demo of Wandering Hamster dated November 4th, 1997.

You can still download it today and play it in DOSBOX! Check out the Wandering Hamster page archived from 1997:
https://web.archive.org/web/19971011231 ... ander.html
(mirror of the download)

See Timeline on the wiki for lots of tidbits about the start of the engine.

(Although I searched hard, I couldn't work out when the first release of the OHRRPGCE editor was, although I'm fairly confident it was January 1998 or December 1997. James started development in summer 1996. I don't know when the first demo of Wandering Hamster was either, but there were at least two before this one.)

To celebrate, I've added support for this early demo of WH to the next version, Etheldreme. Now we can claim 20 years of back-compatibility :)
To play it, you will just need to rename the WORKING folder in the .zip to something ending in .rpgdir, like WANDER.rpgdir, so that the engine will recognise it as a game.

(However, not all of my fixes are in the latest nightly build yet. Most significantly, two of the maps use the wrong tileset, and there's an engine bug message when James joins the party. I should have prepared this ahead of time!)

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This demo of WH has no music or title screen. Flanat only has four buildings, and the demo is pretty short, with not too much to do at Hasim Castle but fight Broaste, although I did stumble upon a secret area which has since been removed! It is a long walk back and forth to the castle, and you do need to level a bit to beat Broaste.

Uhh, well the one thing that doesn't work is that lots of global text strings are mixed up! Theres lots of status effect messages which got removed later.
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Last edited by TMC on Sat Nov 04, 2017 4:25 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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SwordPlay
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Post by SwordPlay »

Congrats, on this, the Vigintennial / Vicennial anniversary. Or something like that. Wikipedia also tells me another term is china/porcelain anniversary.
Cool anyways. Here's to another 20 years. God bless you all fine sirs and may the good ship continue sailing.
*brightly coloured balloons and confetti falls from the ceiling*
Last edited by SwordPlay on Sat Nov 04, 2017 6:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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FnrrfYgmSchnish
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Post by FnrrfYgmSchnish »

Wow... 20 years! The OHRRPGCE is almost legally old enough to drink (let's hope nobody tries pouring beer into their computers next year around this time.) Never thought about it until now, but I guess I've been using the OHRRPGCE for more than half my lifetime, 19 years now since I first found it in 1998 -- probably October based on the date of that old version I found on a disk at my dad's place years ago.

Speaking of that, I randomly looked up a forum post about an even-older version that was found and I'm pretty sure I know why some files were missing from the October 1998 one that I had, particular a few random .BAM files -- I probably deleted them to make room on the disk for other stuff, most likely the .RPG file of an early game attempt that I must have deleted at some point since it wasn't on the disk when I found it. not a lot of space on those 3.5" floppies, unfortunately.
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Post by kylekrack »

Amazing. I'm barely ahead of it in age. Unless you count the summer of 1996 as its conception, then it's got me beat. I'm not sure how to feel about it.
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Post by MorpheusKitami »

Nice. If I'm not mistaken, that makes the oldest current updated game creation kit originally made in English. Hopefully it'll keep that status for a while.
TMC
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Post by TMC »

In English? Which Japanese creation kit are you thinking of?
VERGE was released in 1997, and also had a long run, but seems to be dead. Hard to tell, since it was forked and reimplemented a number of times.
Of course, some people understandably thought the OHR was dead too due to those multi-year gaps between releases, but we never actually stopped working on it. We're just really bad at cutting releases (and it was almost always my fault specifically!). Thankfully that's changed, and we're going to do 3-monthly releases now.

I've also been an OHR user for over half my life!
I'm pretty sure I know why some files were missing from the October 1998 one that I had, particular a few random .BAM files -- I probably deleted them to make room on the disk for other stuff, most likely the .RPG file of an early game attempt that I must have deleted at some point since it wasn't on the disk when I found it.
Although there were files missing, even after I added them neither of the existing copies (of custom.exe specifically? I forget) from 1998 would run. Maybe the floppy disks were bad so some files didn't copy partially or at all. Did you provide both of those copies from 1998?
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Post by FnrrfYgmSchnish »

Although there were files missing, even after I added them neither of the existing copies (of custom.exe specifically? I forget) from 1998 would run. Maybe the floppy disks were bad so some files didn't copy partially or at all. Did you provide both of those copies from 1998?
I only had the October 1998 version on a floppy disk (I know I didn't find out the OHRRPGCE existed until fall of 1998, since Pokémon was already out by then, so I never even saw the July 1998 version.)

Entirely possible that the disk my copy was stored on was going bad by the time I found it, though, since I remember some of the other disks from the same set were already starting to go bad (every floppy drive I tried them in was having a hard time reading them -- it'd work sometimes and other times make some weird noises and claim they weren't properly formatted) by the time I stumbled across the old OHRRPGCE files on that one.
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Post by RMZ »

Wow, I never stopped to realize how the old the engine was. Been using it for like 17 years myself. I can't really imagine what life would be like without this creative outlet. Thanks to everybody that has supported it and worked on it over the years. You guys are the real heroes, keeping it going and making this little engine more amazing with every release.
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Post by Goodwin »

RedMaverifckZero wrote:Wow, I never stopped to realize how the old the engine was. Been using it for like 17 years myself. I can't really imagine what life would be like without this creative outlet. Thanks to everybody that has supported it and worked on it over the years. You guys are the real heroes, keeping it going and making this little engine more amazing with every release.
Congratz on the anniversary. Here's for 20 more!
Last edited by Goodwin on Mon Nov 01, 2021 4:56 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by MorpheusKitami »

TMC wrote:In English? Which Japanese creation kit are you thinking of?
VERGE was released in 1997, and also had a long run, but seems to be dead. Hard to tell, since it was forked and reimplemented a number of times.
Of course, some people understandably thought the OHR was dead too due to those multi-year gaps between releases, but we never actually stopped working on it. We're just really bad at cutting releases (and it was almost always my fault specifically!). Thankfully that's changed, and we're going to do 3-monthly releases now.
I was thinking of RPGmaker. That started in 1992. But depending on how you look at it, it might not count.

OHR doesn't seem to me to be the worst at cutting releases, but then I've seen more than a few other open-source projects turn into nightly bloat.
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Post by Fenrir-Lunaris »

After all these years, I thought that icon was like some sort of harp or musical instrument, and NOT a pixelated hamster face. NOW I see it.

Also, Bob having 0 Sleep is the one thing we can all agree on.
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Post by Bob the Hamster »

I would say those screenshots take me back-- except that was so long ago I seem to remember nothing about that first demo. Gisli joining early? Yugo's shop with a different layout? I gotta replay this, because I don't remember any of that! :)

It is amazing that I have spent more than half my life working on this engine. Thank you all for being a part of it!
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Post by The Wobbler »

Fenrir-Lunaris wrote:After all these years, I thought that icon was like some sort of harp or musical instrument, and NOT a pixelated hamster face. NOW I see it.
My mind's blown, I was sure it was a harp.
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Post by FnrrfYgmSchnish »

I have vague memories of seeing the hamster icon as some sort of mangled skeletal remains (like... I think I was interpreting the lines around the eyes with the ears sticking up at the top as part of a ribcage or something, somehow?) waaaaay back when I first started using the OHRRPGCE. Not sure why that was the first place my mind went when other people are seeing harps and such, but... oh well. XD

Can't remember exactly when I figured out for sure that it was a hamster... but I'm guessing it was sometime after 2002-2003, since the "Bob Doll" item in [deleted game circa 2001] was never edited to use the hamster-head icon instead of the question-mark-in-a-circle a lot of miscellaneous items had. Maybe somewhere in the range of 2008, since FYS:AHS and Okédoké both use it for the "Hamster Scroll" item.
Last edited by FnrrfYgmSchnish on Mon Mar 21, 2022 2:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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TMC
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Post by TMC »

I also only finally realised that icon was a hamster head a couple years ago! It seems so obvious now, but I was never able to recognise anything in it. I thought it looked like a log with some bits sticking out of it, maybe a collection of bones or a strange instrument.

Grimli (and also Dusty) only join after the end of the demo.
Goodwin wrote:Congratz on the anniversary. Here's for 20 more!
Hi, and thanks!
Last edited by TMC on Mon Nov 06, 2017 2:33 am, edited 2 times in total.
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