Avara from Ambrosia Software?

May 24, 2006 6:27 PM

Do you have the OS 9 game Avara from Ambrosia Software?

As a project to keep myself busy over the Summer, I'm interested in re-writing the game Avara in Java3D. It has not been re-written to run in OS X or in Windows yet. Does anyone out there have the game installed, have an OS 9 emulator that can unpack it for me, or otherwise have the files that were included with it?

I remember that within the data directories for the game all of the 3D models and sounds were stored in a very easily-readable format that would make the porting process more easy.

Anyone out there interested in helping?

posted by yellowbkpk to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

You realize an unauthorized port is infirigning Ambrosia's copyright, right?
posted by nathan_teske at 6:40 PM on May 24, 2006

Sorry that sounded snarky - you should really contact Ambrosia about a port. They might support you if you wanted to do an officially sanctioned release.
posted by nathan_teske at 6:52 PM on May 24, 2006

As nathan_tesek said, an unathorized port is probably bad. That said:

1. You could talk to Andrew Welch (El Presidente) and see if he would authorize it. As long as you can prove you could make a nice port, I don't see why he would be against the idea.

2. Just create your own Avara clone for OS X, and rewrite it from scratch (which you will most likely have to do for most of it anyways).

Either way, I'd support the idea: Avara was a kick ass game.
posted by patr1ck at 6:54 PM on May 24, 2006

Response by poster: I agree that an unauthorized port would be illegal. I sent two e-mails in to Ambrosia earlier today and haven't heard anything, but it's only been half a day.

I realize that I will have to re-write the whole thing from scratch, I was interested in trying to recreate the physics model that they used (one of the major reasons the gameplay was so fun was the simplicity but effectiveness of the physics engine) and use the original models.
posted by yellowbkpk at 7:01 PM on May 24, 2006

I'm not familiar with the game, but Google's first hit for "download avara mac" is www.avara.org.
posted by blueberry at 8:06 PM on May 24, 2006

Avara doesn't have a whole lotta hardware requirements; couldn't you do this with something like Executor? That emulator supports enough Mac bits, I think, to let you install it. I think it even came with software built-in to deal with SIT files and such. Been a while since I used it though. (and, to add my two cents to the issue, I don't see how this is a port - you're not decompiling the software and re-writing it for a different platform, you're merely cloning it in another language and writing routines to read existing data files. this seems more analogous to, say, recreating the Quake engine and using id's WAD files in it, or even creating a quicken-type program that can read quicken files. that is, unless I missed something.)
posted by mrg at 8:08 PM on May 24, 2006

Response by poster: mrg, that's very true. I'm not really porting it, I'm rewriting it -- using the original as a basis for my design.

It was my understanding that emulating OS 9 to install it and extract the files required a copy of OS 9, which I don't have available to me.
posted by yellowbkpk at 8:22 PM on May 24, 2006

Emulator's kinda weird like that. It actually has its own 'thing' that works like Mac OS but isn't really - you don't have to have a real copy of Mac OS to use it. (and, fwiw, Apple used to release the system software for free - up to version 7.5.5 - and you can still download it and use it with, say, vMac, Basilisk II or another Mac emulator. most other Mac emulator programs require a copy of the ROMs from a real Mac, so they're harder to use legally.)

FWIW the proper download link for Exceutor is in the Downloads section.
posted by mrg at 9:21 PM on May 24, 2006

avara is one of my all time faves. why wouldn't ambrosia want to help you. keep us posted eh?
posted by paradroid at 11:37 PM on May 24, 2006

Yes, please do. I have a friend who'd be overjoyed to see this come to fruition.
posted by squidlarkin at 12:15 AM on May 25, 2006

All the copyright stuff mentioned above I agree with. Cover your ass.

Apart from that, I'd go to the Avara forum on Ambrosiasw.com. It's not terribly active since the game hasn't been ported, but the more active players and level developers check it from time to time. They would surely have what you need.
posted by Captaintripps at 4:51 AM on May 25, 2006