[FIXED] Little Computer People

[fiath]

Designed by David Crane and Sam Nelson. David programmed the C-64 version. Gene Smith programmed the Amiga version.

From David Crane:

"Little Computer People first came out on the Commodore 64. It was the first time that a game was distributed where every copy was unique."

"The Amiga version was programmed by Gene Smith. Sadly, Gene passed away last year from a virulent cancer. But up until that time he was still actively programming video games."

[CodyJarrett]

Thanks fiath - updated!

[LaundroMat]

Originally posted by fiath
Designed by David Crane and Sam Nelson. David programmed the C-64 version. Gene Smith programmed the Amiga version.

From David Crane:

"Little Computer People first came out on the Commodore 64. It was the first time that a game was distributed where every copy was unique."

In what sense was every copy a unique copy?

[Steve]

Originally posted by LaundroMat
In what sense was every copy a unique copy?

The little person in the house was unique. He would wear different clothes and probably have a slightly different personality. They must have used some kind of randomizer during production so each copy had a unique little person. Although I'm sure every copy wasn't unique. There must have been some that were the same.

[fiath]

Each copy of the game has a serial number that was different.

"We contracted with the manufacturer of the disk duplicator that we used to modify the code to place an incrementing serial number on each disk."

This was for the C-64 version, the Amiga version was done in two passes since the duplcators machines were not capable of putting a unique number on each disk (the scripting language they used had no global variables).

The serial number on the Amiga version was either written later, or ordered like that from the disk manufacturer.

"The serial number was used to customize the game's initial state (no other special parameters). That number was used as a seed to a polynomial counter that specified all the personality factors for your Little Computer Person."

and

"[Some data] on the disk held the LCPs "brain" to keep personality status as the LCP aged and developed. If you have a disk that has been executed you will see that [the data] has been rewritten by the user's disk drive [we have - fiath]. If it is a virgin diskette that block will be in its initial state (probably all zeros)."

Cool stuff huh?

[Steve]

Originally posted by fiath
If it is a virgin diskette that block will be in its initial state (probably all zeros)."

Have you ever found one of these "unicorns"?

[fiath]

Originally posted by Steve
Although I'm sure every copy wasn't unique. There must have been some that were the same.

On the C-64 every 1 in 256 copies were the same character. On the Amiga, it was *at least* every 1 in 32145678 copies, but more likely every 1 in 2^32 = 4294967296 copies.

So on the Amiga - unless this game sold more than 30 million copies - every copy was unique.

EXCEPT

The budget version on the Amiga - where the serial number is the same on every copy - therefore every budget copy had the same little computer person.

[fiath]

Originally posted by Steve
Have you ever found one of these "unicorns"?

Absolutely Actually more that one due to:

http://www.caps-project.org/wanted.shtml

(the description of which we now know to be wrong - they really were unique)

As people will "soon" find out.

[BippyM]

Originally posted by fiath
As people will "soon" find out.

does this mean that you are planning on releasing 4294967296 different copies

One for each Unique copy possible