Poing v7.14 (not on Aminet)

[rsn8887]

I found Poing 7.14, a breakout game by Paul van der Walk, on my old hd. This is newer than the version 7.00 that is on aminet. It looks like it features a customizable level-select screen that 7.00 doesn't have.

I just zoned it.

EDIT:
Permalink https://files.coolatoms.org/poing_714.lha

It is a legitimate latest version by the author of Poing, Paul van der Valk, which was publicly available from
here http://web.archive.org/web/199910080...n/lastver.html

[Radertified]

I wonder if this is an official version from Paul Van Der Valk or a custom level hack, which was a common practice back in the day.

The readme from 7.00 says:

poing readme
13 april 2002

This archive contains the latest public poing version (v7.00) and
a number of levelsets. The reason for this archive is that I still
get requests for it every now and then.

The levelsets are partially made by 3rd parties. They should be
credited for it, but I lost the original archives. Sorry.

Official support for poing is dead, but it's still a fine game
to test yer latest amiga emulator every now and then :-).

I'm leaning towards 7.14 being unofficial however he does state "latest public poing version" so maybe he continued development privately and that's what 7.14 is.

[rsn8887]

I wouldn’t have kept it if I hadn’t been convinced that it was official. However, I don’t remember what convinced me. I had email exchanges with a few devs during the late nineties, so I might have gotten it from Paul himself via email, or from a Usenet post by Paul, but I am not sure because I don’t remember.

I suspect, like you mentioned, that it is a private version from Paul, which would explain the partially updated .guide instructions (version number updated but no changelog).

If anybody knows more, please join the discussion!

The version number is intriguing because it suggests that Paul van der Walk might have done quite a bit of work on Point after 7.00. Maybe he was working towards a Poing 8 but never got there?

Be that as it may, I find the level select screen quite convenient.

[rsn8887]

I also found a mention of Poing 7.14 here:
https://en.everybodywiki.com/Poing_(video_game)

Not sure how „official“ that article is but it does mention the v7.14 release date as October 17 1998.

The edit comment is from 2008 by the person who uploaded 7.00 to Aminet, and it says „ * Legacy */ The last version is not 6! On Aminet you can find 7.00 (Which I uploaded myself) and also I have version 7.14 on my computer which will be uploaded on Aminet sooner or later!“

Note that Poing 6 is the last version uploaded to Aminet by Paul van der Valk himself and is from early 1998. Version 7.00 was uploaded by a third person called Maurice Zarzycki, the same person who mentions 7.14 in the Wikipedia article. Version 7.00 is from middle 1998, so it makes sense that 7.14 is from October 1998, a few months later.

I think it all makes sense. It would be cool to be able to ask Paul can der Valk if he ever released 7.14 himself.

[Radertified]

Looks like the text at that wiki page was a direct copy of the Poing article on Wikipedia, which has since been deleted. Discussion about the deletion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipe...ng_(video_game) . The user commenting on there was named "Pavlor", so I assume they would've been the one that wrote the article and might have commented about 7.14.

Everything you say is plausible, rsn8887. I'd take it as being official for now, but yeah, asking Paul Van Der Valk is the only way to be sure.

[rsn8887]

I found it! I originally got the download link via a usenet comp.sys.amiga.games posting where someone did a review of Poing back in 1999. The review contained a link to a web page next to Paul van der Valk's name:
http://www.casema.net/~falcon/

I am pretty sure that was Mr. Valk's webpage, because he posted a devblog for Poing there, too.

Wayback Machine still has the Poing page as it was back in 1999:
http://web.archive.org/web/199910080...n/lastver.html

On that page, Poing 7.14, is the latest version among all other versions. The following changelog is listed for 7.14:

(17-oct-1998) Poing 7.14.
- Added a level selection screen.

- Editor: added automatic comment to rules. Specifics should appear in the
dev guide one day.

- Added a sound to the "collect item event" (i.e. the G10 levelset).

- The default font has been changed to the classical thin font. This can
still be overwritten by levelsets ofcourse.

- Fixed a date bug: Juli was spelled as "NUL" instead of "JUL".

- Some other small issues.

Then there was a download link to http://www.casema.net/~falcon/poing714.lha, but Wayback Machine didn't archive the file. So that's where I got it from back in 1999. Puh this took some effort researching usenet from 21 years ago

[Radertified]

Very impressive work!

Shame archive.org hasn't got the original archive to confirm that what you've uploaded isn't modified, but I'd bet that the checksum would match so I'm happy

[rsn8887]

I dug a bit further into Paul van der Valk, and found an interview with him from 2001:
http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?vi...tail=interview

And a picture of him:
http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?vi...&detail=photos

The Hall of Light doesn't have much on him in comparison. He has other games on Aminet such as Resq, a Choplifter style game which I always liked quite a bit, and a Kennedy Approach clone, which I have never tried. I always loved his Turbo Imploder tune which used to blast when I crunched my executables

[Radertified]

I've only ever known him for Poing.

I love Choplifter so I just tried RSQ. It's not doing it for me :P