12 ms·

The Rise and Fall of Ambrosia Software (2019)

144 points by kaptain 6y ago

kaptain 6y ago
An archive for some of the software can be found here: http://www.ambrosiaarchive.com/ http://www.ambrosiaarchive.com/.
pwinnski 6y ago
Wow, does this bring back memories! Ambrosia was a huge part of my early days with the Mac. Such great stuff!
- pwinnski 6y ago
  Maelstrom, Apeiron, and Barrack are the games I remember most fondly, and more than the gameplay, it's the sound design that I remember most clearly. Deimos Rising was also a lot of fun. Strangely, I never got into Escape Velocity. I think maybe I'd stopped using Macs by then.
natechols 6y ago
Any chance some of the copyright holders would be interested in open-sourcing the code? Escape Velocity in particular. EDIT: especially since these games are no longer playable without registration, ouch. Hope I still have my EV Nova code somewhere.
- rdtwo 6y ago
  I love that game. They is a free Open source clone on steam that’s pretty good btw
  - natechols 6y ago
    Thanks, I will take a look at this - it was much less developed last time I came across it but those screenshots look pretty compelling.
  - bovermyer 6y ago
    What's it called?
    - natechols 6y ago
      I assume "Endless Sky" was the reference, at least that's the first thing that came up on Google.
      - blackrock 6y ago
        What ever happened to Endless Sky? Is it still around? Or did it go to the graveyard of oblivion where games go to die?
        NortySpock 6y ago
        https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky/releases https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky/releases Last release in May?
        fernly 6y ago
        https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky/releases https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky/releases Version 0.9.2 released May 1, 2020
- richardjs 6y ago
  It's not Escape Velocity, but Maelstrom was open-sourced [1]! A while ago I forked a version and changed the braking power-up to be controlled by a button press, instead of always active [2]. It was cool to fix something that always bugged me in a game I played when I was a kid. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maelstrom_(1992_video_game)#Legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maelstrom_(1992_video_game)#Le... [2] https://github.com/richardjs/maelstrom https://github.com/richardjs/maelstrom
  - orangecat 6y ago
    Works great! If you're on Ubuntu/Debian/etc, you'll need to apt install libsdl1.2-dev and libsdl-net1.2-dev. I thought something was wrong when the build took less than 2 seconds, but it turns out computers have gotten faster in the last 25 years.
- tapoxi 6y ago
  Someone has made an open-source clone called Endless Sky, I believe there are unofficial ports of the various EV campaigns to the ES engine. http://endless-sky.github.io/ http://endless-sky.github.io/
- grifball 6y ago
  Last time I tried, my code didn't work because it had to be renewed and the renewal server has been down for a while.
  - javagram 6y ago
    You can use the expired code by resetting your computer’s clock to the date and time right after the original purchase supposedly. I haven’t been able to test this because my Nova code was a gift and I have no idea when it was purchased, but if you have the original email with the registration code it’s a possible solution.
- inetknght 6y ago
  You might be interested in Endless Sky [0] and Naev [1]. Both are very similar to Escape Velocity. Both are available on Steam. [0] https://endless-sky.github.io/ https://endless-sky.github.io/ [1] https://naev.org/ https://naev.org/
- wlesieutre 6y ago
  Keep an eye on Cosmic Frontier: Override. It's not the original code, but it will be a re-release of the Override scenario in a new engine designed for data file compatibility with the whole series, plus new features. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-frontier-override https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-f... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-frontier-override/posts/2970711 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-f... https://github.com/EvocationGames/KestrelEngine https://github.com/EvocationGames/KestrelEngine I gather the rights to EVN are a more complicated issue because ATMOS was a whole bunch of people, versus EVO where Peter Cartwright owned everything. Rights to the EV name still belong to Matt Burch who wasn't interested in having it used for Cartwright's rerelease. Also see discussion on reddit for more background info: https://www.reddit.com/r/evnova/comments/g5wgbl/i_discuss_cosmic_frontier_override_for_about_5/ https://www.reddit.com/r/evnova/comments/g5wgbl/i_discuss_co... There are a couple threads scattered around, u/evopac is Peter Cartwright.
- EamonnMR 6y ago
  The answer is a definitive no. Matt Burch has made it pretty clear that he is not gonna open source it. Luckily there are two very good clones (Naev and Endless Sky) and a third got kickstarted (Cosmic Frontier.)
somedude895 6y ago
Growing up in a Mac household, Harry the Handsome Executive was my childhood. I loved all of Ambrosia's stuff.
- saberience 6y ago
  I can still remember his voice saying something like "ahhh pain" when you got damaged!
  - kps 6y ago
    Join us, Harry!
- amatecha 6y ago
  Yesss I absolutely loved that game! I started making levels for it which was super fun as well. Ahhh now I want to play it... haha
unhammer 6y ago
Blogs require DRM now?? :-((
sleazebreeze 6y ago
Modding Escape Velocity games was a critical part of my childhood and probably set me on the path of becoming a software engineer. The parts in this post about the 90s Mac fanaticism are spot-on. I remember having many arguments with friends and neighbors that all were "Winblowz" users and my feelings of smug superiority over them.
- smm11 6y ago
  I was part of, and agree that the 90s Mac fanaticism was far, far over the top. Then came the iPhone.
  - lukifer 6y ago
    It's easy to forget the historical context, in an era when the web and cross-platform toolchains have made computing platform choices a function of taste and preference. Bleeding-edge PC gaming and niche applications notwithstanding, we take for granted that any computer can do any task, be it Mac or Windows or Linux. But in the 90's, desktop Linux and the web were still in their infancy, and Windows held a quasi-hegemony over computing. Mac was the only alternative, constantly fighting for survival, both of Apple itself, and of the legitimacy of the platform ("why should we double our development budget to chase a market with 3% share?" went the refrain). The prominent black Mac blogger Rodney Lain went so far as to compare the "second-class citizen" feeling of being a Mac user to his African-American experience [0]. So yeah, it went over the top, and I got caught up in it too. To some extent, selection pressures were at work: the pragmatically-minded shrugged and bought PCs, and the religious ideologues were the only ones left clinging to their Macs (and each other) for dear life. It's ironic that Apple has become a far greater hegemon/monopolist than Microsoft in its hey-day. ("You die a hero or live to become the villain.") Nonetheless, for all our struggles with walled gardens and data silos, in some ways the modern computing ecosystem enjoys much greater platform fluidity and interoperability than 25 years ago. Everything speaks web; everything speaks *-nix; and there are a plethora of tools that make it feasible to target a dozen different platforms with the same codebase. [0] https://www.macobserver.com/columns/ibrotha/2001/20010928.shtml https://www.macobserver.com/columns/ibrotha/2001/20010928.sh...
  - 6y ago
plasticsoprano 6y ago
EV was great but I wasted so many hours with Barrack. It's the one game I wish would return.
oofabz 6y ago
For me, it was Avara. An online multiplayer FPS in 1996, when 3D graphics and the internet still felt like science fiction. The skill ceiling was high and games were very competitive. Shout out to the ®ed §quadron, the clan I was in. I am still in touch with friends I met in the game, more than 20 years later. The game has been ported to modern OSs: https://github.com/avaraline/Avara/ https://github.com/avaraline/Avara/ There is a video of gameplay with commentary here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AutG8KO4DsY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AutG8KO4DsY
- pvg 6y ago
  still felt like science fiction It was a great game but it came out after Quake.
- kzrdude 6y ago
  I was never good, but I played, on dial up! Amazing times and confusing times. I also made level designs for it, using the Canvas editor (no idea which one was standard, but this one worked). Thanks for the link.
- thegagne 6y ago
  I loved Avara. The level edit capability offered so much freedom. You can find my first level, “chut” out on the internet. My other, better levels, are lost to me. I reverse engineered something I saw in a demo level, where they took doors, triggered them to “open” both vertically and horizontally and set them at the half way point to create “corner” pieces. No other maps had these pieces, and I was fascinated with the idea of using them to create terrain. I ended up making a “quilt” like structure of ramps and corner pieces to make a unique arena. I had not taken any upper level geometry yet so I was just doing it by trial and error. Fun times. I also found you could import wav files and trigger them so I made a jukebox level, which was absolutely massive (uncompressed audio!). I remember sharing these maps by trying to lure people to join my server, but transferring them could take some time because I was on 26.4 modem at the time. Avara was probably my first “development” experience... amazing.
DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
Chiral was awesome. I still remember how my pulse would race during the harder levels.
ketamine__ 6y ago
Cythera was pretty cool.
paloaltokid 6y ago
There's a game from the 90s called Hyperspeed by MicroProse that I wish someone would do a similar writeup on. I freaking loved that game and I can't find it anywhere now.
- majjam 6y ago
  Is it this? https://store.steampowered.com/app/347260/Hyperspeed/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/347260/Hyperspeed/
  - paloaltokid 6y ago
    Well I'll be damned. Yes it is! Thank you!
danaris 6y ago
As someone who grew up on Ambrosia games—from Maelstrom and Apeiron to EV Nova and pop-pop—I'm honestly glad that the company ended the way it did, rather than getting sold off to some megacorporation like Activision or EA and having its soul destroyed and its name tarnished. Ambrosia Software defined an era, for those who lived in the Mac world during that time, and while it would have made me happy to see them continue on, I think the circumstances that allowed them to exist and be successful could only exist during that era. Also worth noting that there's been a recent successful Kickstarter[0] for a modern remake of/successor to EV Override, called Cosmic Frontier: Override. The impression I've gotten so far from the updates is that their timeline for release is going to be some time in the 2022-23ish time frame. [0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-frontier-override https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-f...
dougmwne 6y ago
Shout out to EV Nova, still one of my top 5 videogames. It was the 3rd game in the series and the most polished. It had multiple storylines you could play through and each was epic and memorable.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  EV:N was really mindopening for me as a kid. What blew my mind the most is that my decisions actually made a concrete impact on the world. It was so cool playing the different storylines and seeing solar systems change hands and new technologies appear because of my actions
geogra4 6y ago
The first piece of shareware I ever purchased was escape velocity. Wonderful little game
ingenieros 6y ago
Snapz Pro was nearly impossible to delete from your machine once installed. Not quite ransomware, but close enough.
rezmason 6y ago
The Ambrosia game portfolio's biggest impact was just being so much more polished than Mac games typically were at the time. The publishing model, I suppose, afforded them the resources it required to make everything really pop. I remember the first time my brother and I ran Maelstrom. The splash screen was hypnotic. I was like, "Computers can do this?" Back then their Zeus logo had me thinking they were a team of like a hundred people. Also, I probably wouldn't have spent any time in ResEdit if it weren't for games like Ambrosia's that encouraged folks to make custom sprite and sound packs.
- saberience 6y ago
  Dude, your mention of ResEdit just gave me major flashbacks! I remember first using ResEdit to "hack" games like Escape Velocity so I could gain more resources, make my ships more powerful, and so on. God I loved their games SO much. As a kid that was not allowed any consoles and only had a Mac IICX, Ambrosia games were a lifesaver!
  - khalwat 6y ago
    You made my day, thanks for that! /andrew
    - saberience 6y ago
      No, you made my childhood! I was kind of a lonely kid and discovering computing (via the Mac) and getting these shareware discs and playing Ambrosia games was like finding something really magical. Thank you! And if anyone is reading this now, please make more games like Escape Velocity! (Or re-release them for modern systems!)
- khalwat 6y ago
  I made that game in college with the help of some very talented artists, and my friends who helped with the sound effect. It was written on a Mac IIsi IIRC! We def had fun making it (and playing it while making it) /andrew
inetknght 6y ago
I'm using Firefox. It says: > You must enable DRM to play some audio or video on this page. Uhh... what's up with that?
re 6y ago
I'm still bummed that the removal of Carbon and 32-bit support in macOS Catalina meant the final death of running EV Nova natively on macOS. It got me checking out emulation options for older OSes to see if there would be a way that I could ever play it again, but I either couldn't get them to boot properly (for most versions of OS X), or the performance was too poor (in Sheepshaver).
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  I'm with you on this, and it's part of why I'm still running Sierra on my Mac. Ironically, I think the easiest way to run classic Mac games like EV Nova is on Windows (your old license key should work if you rollback the clock on your computer, and there's cracked versions floating around too)
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    Sadly my license key was lost along with my old AIM email address (!), and the Ambrosia representative I spoke to was unable retrieve it for me. I'll have to try finding the cracked version...
  - EamonnMR 6y ago
    You can get a windows version at http://escape-velocity.games http://escape-velocity.games
TomAnthony 6y ago
Former Ambrosia employee checking in! TomWoozle was my handle back then. I worked at the company from 2003-2005, having (like many here) grown up on their games and spent hours modding Escape Velocity. I mainly worked on the website (I wrote a version of the online store ground up in PHP), but also ran testing for a while and worked managing the later Windows conversion of EV Nova. It was an incredible place to work and I learnt so so much. Andrew was an amazing mentor and an extremely generous guy. My time there absolutely changed my life. One thing that stands out, and it feels like something that won’t be regained from that era, is that everyone there was just having great great fun. I loved going to work. We were a business, but I never remember money being the deciding factor in any decision. It was all passion. I miss those times! If people are interested AMA (though late here so may be tomorrow when I answer).
- munificent 6y ago
  I played hours and hours of Maelstrom back in the day. The game ran so smoothly. It just a beautiful, seamless play experience. Any details on what the code was like for these games? I'd love a peek behind the curtain. At the time, it felt incredibly well-polished.
  - amatecha 6y ago
    Funny you should ask, someone else linked the github repo of Maelstrom 3.0 SDL port! https://github.com/richardjs/maelstrom https://github.com/richardjs/maelstrom So, I'm not sure how much of the code is near-original Macintosh version code, and how much was revised/replaced to support SDL. Probably lots of original stuff though, surely.
  - TomAnthony 6y ago
    I also played many many hours of Maelstrom! That particular game is now open source [1]. On the whole, the main code of most games was not written by Ambrosia. There was a form on the website where you could submit a simple demo of a game idea you had. If Ambrosia thought it had potential then we would sign you up, to support the development, publishing and distribution. Ambrosia had a series of libraries, which were a mixture of C and Assembler, for graphics and sound etc. We had an in house graphic artist. And, of course, the shareware licensing code and mechanism. It was a great model. Coders with an idea could get support to take their game to the next level, and sell it etc. It all seems so easy now but the net was in its infancy then. We were mailing out CDs filled with the games. I never got my hands dirty of the game code, but I know the libraries we had were well polished and optimised, and so were very valuable to coders (no stack overflow back then!). [1] https://github.com/richardjs/Maelstrom https://github.com/richardjs/Maelstrom
amatecha 6y ago
Ambrosia is probably the most legendary Mac game developer. There was no other singular studio whose games were so avidly anticipated and played. Such well-polished games, with great gameplay. I can easily recall every single game they ever made. I think Maelstrom was the first one I played. Great memories :)
- geerlingguy 6y ago
  I think Pangea was the other company (not individual) I can remember still.
Detrus 6y ago
My favorite was Ares. https://github.com/arescentral/antares https://github.com/arescentral/antares A unique combination of strategy and action. Played a lot of Escape Velocity too. Those games were special.
- amatecha 6y ago
  I loved Ares! So good in every way. This game actually helped kickstart my foray into digital music recording, because I loved the music from Ares and wanted to extract the music files from the game so I could listen to them. Turned out the songs were stored as "MADH" resources and I saved them out to individual files -- and it turns out these MADH files were a "tracker music" format created by and playable with the software "PlayerPRO". Thus all the first songs I ever created on the computer sounded a lot like Ares' music because I ripped all my samples from the game's songs! hahah :) Wasn't long before I realized I can use any audio file though, and recorded all kinds of stuff to create new sounds with. Either way, I forever can credit Nathan Lamont and Ares for being the reason I discovered the world of computer-made music. (yes, I still remember his name today lol)
crusso 6y ago
Andrew Welch had an intense Bolo addiction for a while. It was in the latter part of my own Bolo addiction, but we played quite a few games together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_(1987_video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_(1987_video_game) Ah, Bolo.
- amatecha 6y ago
  I played sooo much of Bolo. Still one of my top-favorite games ever. I was so into it, I printed out guides and read them when I couldn't actively play the game. I started to memorize the different "pill-taking" layouts so I could easily take a base so quickly and flawlessly. Well, needless to say my skills weren't too useful because I wasn't able to arrange AppleTalk games of Bolo very often... but when we played, I usually destroyed!!! hahaha :) Ahh, such a great game. :)
  - crusso 6y ago
    Bolo was a cult phenomenon back in its heyday in the early-to-mid 1990s. It was a game with a great deal of tactical and strategic depth that it allowed a huge range of player ability. It definitely wasn't the kind of game where some newbie could just start playing and get a lucky win or be a master in days or weeks. It felt more like a sport where you needed to practice the basics (like you mentioned on taking PBs) while you also learned a lot about strategy. My favorite times were the Bolofests where traveling boloers would come into town and we'd all get together to play on a LAN.
- buserror 6y ago
  I bought a Mac Plus recently, and one of the new things I installed on it's MASSIVE 20 megabytes hard drive was Bolo. And then I proceeded to waste a good hour playing it all sadly by myself without the Localtalk network that used to be full of games, back in the day. sniffle
  - amatecha 6y ago
    Soooo there's actually one really cool thing you can do: run additional copies of Bolo with "brains" like aIndy, Brainwave or so on which act as actual players (sometimes a lot better than actual players haha) ... This was another really fascinating feature of Bolo that many other multiplayer games never had. So you can have simulated multiplayer! Worth a try!
poisonarena 6y ago
For me, it was Taskmaker and Tomb Of the Taskmaker
fwipsy 6y ago
Ah, nostalgia. I bought a 2006-ish Mac Mini recently just so I could go back and play Ambrosia stuff. Managed to get Sketchfighter and Diemos Rising working, but not Gooball unfortunately - this was since the registration server went down, and I guess the DRM hasn't been cracked.
spike021 6y ago
I really miss EV: Nova. It's probably one of the games I've re-played the most. I even kept playing it for the longest time with the expired trial where the ultra-modded, overpowered Starbridge follows you around to kill you for not paying for the full version. Not easy to install anymore with the license server down and all, and I've tried playing the games that try to be clones but they've never really hit the same way.
sitharus 6y ago
Oh wow this brings back memories. I spent many of my teenage year playing, modding and beta testing the Escape Velocity games. I learnt 3d modelling for modding using a pirated copy of lightwave (I’m not proud, but a 13 year old in New Zealand was never going to afford that - even the shareware fee for the games made my dad think) I spent so much time on the IRC server and forums I ended up moderating the ev developers board, even on the unofficial ones after the software change drama. I used the inventive nickname ‘blackhole’ then. Teenagers. Met a lot of weird and wonderful people. I’ve been checking on the site every so often since 2008, but it’s sad to see them go. It was a special time.
- Talanes 6y ago
  It would be great if it was easier to get Lightwave in the hands of every interested 13 year old. One kid I grew up with was homeschooled, and his mom had all the proper registration to buy school discounted software. His mom was able to get him a copy of Lightwave to play around with at home. He's been an animator at Sony for about a decade now.
aerovistae 6y ago
It's worth noting that two of the people who worked on escape velocity are creating a remastered version of sorts, called Cosmic Frontier. Search for the kickstarter and you'll find their project updates!
wlesieutre 6y ago
All this talk of Escape Velocity inspired me to do a bit of googling, and I just wanted to let everyone know that Captain Hector's namesake (Hector D Byrd) has his own twitter and will be turning 28 in about a month: https://twitter.com/hectordbyrd https://twitter.com/hectordbyrd
poulsbohemian 6y ago
The details escape me, but I recall being about 13 around 1990, 1992?, newly into coding, and meeting up with Andrew Welch in some kind of chat forum. What I remember was that he was incredibly kind and offered words of encouragement for my budding programming future. Ambrosia was a serious fan favorite for their commitment to quality games. The 90s were exciting times for software.
Waterluvian 6y ago
Escape Velocity + ResEdit was how I got into programming at 8 years old. Back then I didn't have internet access and had hours upon hours of time to explore my family mac without distraction. I came across ResEdit and teduously learned how to change stuff in the game. First thing I learned is to always back up your software. I would make mods for my brother to play. Javelin Spray was my favourite. My brother and I would also daisy chain AFB keyboards and he would control the ship and I would control the escorts. Some of my fondest childhood memories.
- re 6y ago
  I had a similar experience, though in my case I didn't come to the series until EV:O. My ambitions to create a TC (total conversion) plugin far exceeded both my abilities and persistence. I did have internet access and the escape-velocity.com DiscBoards (before they were merged into the ASW forums) were one of my first online communities. They were also where I first started learning HTML, in order to have a cool "signature"--I'm not sure exactly how much was allowed, but I do recall working on one that involved animated GIFs and a table to reassemble a sliced image, so I'll apologize a few decades later to anyone else that I may have annoyed with my enthusiasm.
unpixer 6y ago
Long ago, Ambrosia Software had a booth at one of the major tech conferences. Contests, trivia questions, t-shirts to win, the usual. Also, they were at the end of a major push to fix bugs in their games, and to celebrate they'd cooked up a bunch of food with bugs in it, and--somehow--convinced their marketing guy to eat the stuff in front of a bunch of attendees. (Maybe he lost a bet?) And yes, I mean actual bugs. Insects. I'm talking roach pizza, worm casserole, that sort of thing. Anyway, he shilly-shallied a bit, and finally agreed to do it, as long as he got to wash the stuff down with wine. (I'm assuming this part was staged as they'd brought a bottle.) There was just one problem. No corkscrew. An appeal went out to the couple of dozen attendees: "Does anyone have a corkscrew?" Bunch of nerds at a tech conference, and nobody had a corkscrew...what are the chances? Well, nobody except me, because I'm so ragingly dorky I never go anywhere without a Swiss Army knife of some sort. I offered it up, the bottle was opened, there were cheers, and the guy standing next to me began lobbying the employees to give me a free t-shirt. Other attendees around him took up the chant, and the Ambrosia Software employees, to their credit, handed me a t-shirt when they returned my knife. It was a really nice one, black cotton with that big square maroon Ambrosia Software logo on the back, and the single word 'thaumaturgy' on the front in white lowercase monospaced font. I wore that shirt for years afterward, until it somehow got lost in the shuffle of dropping laundry off at the laundromat. I'm still sad about its loss, because I was wearing that t-shirt the first time I talked to the woman who later became my wife. It was the shirt that initially caught her attention. We're still together to this day. So thank you, Ambrosia Software. Thanks for the games...and everything else.
- TomAnthony 6y ago
  This was before my time at Ambrosia, but I did work the booth at a few shows in different cities (San Fran, LA, Paris being memories). Your story definitely sounds like the sort of thing that would go down. I also don't have any t-shirts anymore, but EV:Nova mouse mats are still used at my Mum's house!
mewse 6y ago
Andrew kind of took me under his wing during the early days of Ambrosia and taught me a lot about game coding, while I was still in high school. He eventually bought the rights to a game that I had put together and basically transformed it; it became “Chiral”, which I believe was the second game released by Ambrosia. For $1500 he got the source code, data, IP rights, and a time-limited non-compete. It seemed like an almost unimaginably large amount of money to me back then (I was in my last year of high school), but I’m sure it was the smallest of his costs in polishing up the game to his standards! In retrospect, I’d be startled if he didn’t decide the code was a complete write-off and needed to be rewritten from scratch; I’d been an absolute neophyte at the time! But he was kind enough not to tell me about it, if so! Andrew and I still have never met face to face; our conversations were entirely online. And we lost touch shortly after I went off to university. I’m a little embarrassed to have missed this talk, even though was actually in the building at the time. I was exhibiting my own game over in the expo hall, and I had completely lost track of time. Exhibiting your own game is definitely a bit overwhelming; a lot more than exhibiting somebody else’s one! Andrew was definitely the one who got me seriously into game development and made me think about it as a viable career. In a lot of ways, I’m in the industry today because of him.
- Zarkonnen 6y ago
  Can I ask what you're doing these days? I was heavily inspired by modding EV to become a game developer myself.
  - mewse 6y ago
    I spent about fifteen years working at Melbourne House in Australia (which went from being independent to being bought by Infogrammes/Atari, and was then bought by Krome, before finally being wound down, but it was mostly the same awesome group of talented folks for most of that time. At the end, I’d been there for fifteen years and still wasn’t in the top ten list of longest-serving employees; I felt like only a medium-sized fish in a very large pond). After that, I went to an EA studio for a couple years (which was very difficult for me, as I was put on a smallish team where I literally had more years of experience than everyone else on the team added together; I was suddenly in the very strange situation where any silly thing I said would just be taken as gospel and acted upon, and it took me a very long time to figure out how to behave to mitigate the risks of that). Then I did a couple years in (non-games) statistics software to pad out my resume a bit and show that I could do non-games work as well. After that, I started freelancing, doing both games and non-games work, to support myself while I worked on my own game, which is now up on Steam in Early Access. Freelancing was a lot of fun, and I love the freedom to switch between projects and solve the most difficult problems of one project and then moving on to a new, different project with a new ‘most difficult’ problem to solve. Though obviously the lack of job security was a bit of a strange new experience, after spending my whole career on a salary! I also spent a couple years acting as an advisor on the local Film Victoria’s games funding grant program, helping select projects to allocate grant funds toward and just generally advising applicants (whether or not they eventually received funding). I’m super proud of the work those folks do and that I got to be a small part of it for a while. I feel like the blossoming we’ve seen here in the local indie games scene has a lot to do with their support for the industry.
leelin 6y ago
Reading the ending hits closer to home and made me more sad than expected! Andrew Welch was uneasy about the idea of scaling up, especially when they could survive as they were just fine off their utility products Way back in the day, YC always said not to worry about competitors raising tons of money (not sure if that's still the rec). The 2008 DHH boostrapping talk during Startup School is still one of the most influential videos on my career as a founder. But that path is increasingly less popular! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY Lastly, for all the bolo comments out there, I remember the huge transition from modems to school ethernet that made it playable - it was honestly one of the reasons I was looking forward to dorm life!
KnightofNININI 6y ago
Ambrosia was my first meeting with message boards. I joined in 2000 I think. I loved to play EV, Override, Nova, and Ferazel's Wand. The EV games combined with Resedit were my first forays into modding games, and Ferazel's Wand along with Mascot was great fun. I still run SheepShaver on my modern systems because of Ambrosia Software. A friend of mine, who was also a member and fan, wrote a personal reimagination of Barrack as a hobby project while learning coding. While it does lack the ever-charming Bosco, the gameplay is still good!
- KnightofNININI 6y ago
  Here's the link: https://www.bitbreeds.com/artifact/ https://www.bitbreeds.com/artifact/
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
EamonnMR 6y ago
I wasn't gonna post this until it was more Done, but if anyone is reading this they might enjoy my multiplayer EV clone in Godot: https://github.com/eamonnmr/mpevmvp https://github.com/eamonnmr/mpevmvp The server runs best on Linux, and you need to host a server (press host server in the main menu) before you can play. It's not very complete but most of the basics are there.
TomMasz 6y ago
I live just down the street from their office. I remember their parking lot full of cars. Then one day, it was empty and there was a large sign on the front door. Their sign is still up, oddly enough.

144 points by kaptain 6y ago

kaptain 6y ago

An archive for some of the software can be found here: http://www.ambrosiaarchive.com/ http://www.ambrosiaarchive.com/.

pwinnski 6y ago

Wow, does this bring back memories! Ambrosia was a huge part of my early days with the Mac. Such great stuff!

pwinnski 6y ago
Maelstrom, Apeiron, and Barrack are the games I remember most fondly, and more than the gameplay, it's the sound design that I remember most clearly. Deimos Rising was also a lot of fun. Strangely, I never got into Escape Velocity. I think maybe I'd stopped using Macs by then.

natechols 6y ago

Any chance some of the copyright holders would be interested in open-sourcing the code? Escape Velocity in particular. EDIT: especially since these games are no longer playable without registration, ouch. Hope I still have my EV Nova code somewhere.

rdtwo 6y ago
I love that game. They is a free Open source clone on steam that’s pretty good btw
- natechols 6y ago
  Thanks, I will take a look at this - it was much less developed last time I came across it but those screenshots look pretty compelling.
- bovermyer 6y ago
  What's it called?
  - natechols 6y ago
    I assume "Endless Sky" was the reference, at least that's the first thing that came up on Google.
    - blackrock 6y ago
      What ever happened to Endless Sky? Is it still around? Or did it go to the graveyard of oblivion where games go to die?
      - NortySpock 6y ago
        https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky/releases https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky/releases Last release in May?
      - fernly 6y ago
        https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky/releases https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky/releases Version 0.9.2 released May 1, 2020
richardjs 6y ago
It's not Escape Velocity, but Maelstrom was open-sourced [1]! A while ago I forked a version and changed the braking power-up to be controlled by a button press, instead of always active [2]. It was cool to fix something that always bugged me in a game I played when I was a kid. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maelstrom_(1992_video_game)#Legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maelstrom_(1992_video_game)#Le... [2] https://github.com/richardjs/maelstrom https://github.com/richardjs/maelstrom
- orangecat 6y ago
  Works great! If you're on Ubuntu/Debian/etc, you'll need to apt install libsdl1.2-dev and libsdl-net1.2-dev. I thought something was wrong when the build took less than 2 seconds, but it turns out computers have gotten faster in the last 25 years.
tapoxi 6y ago
Someone has made an open-source clone called Endless Sky, I believe there are unofficial ports of the various EV campaigns to the ES engine. http://endless-sky.github.io/ http://endless-sky.github.io/
grifball 6y ago
Last time I tried, my code didn't work because it had to be renewed and the renewal server has been down for a while.
- javagram 6y ago
  You can use the expired code by resetting your computer’s clock to the date and time right after the original purchase supposedly. I haven’t been able to test this because my Nova code was a gift and I have no idea when it was purchased, but if you have the original email with the registration code it’s a possible solution.
inetknght 6y ago
You might be interested in Endless Sky [0] and Naev [1]. Both are very similar to Escape Velocity. Both are available on Steam. [0] https://endless-sky.github.io/ https://endless-sky.github.io/ [1] https://naev.org/ https://naev.org/
wlesieutre 6y ago
Keep an eye on Cosmic Frontier: Override. It's not the original code, but it will be a re-release of the Override scenario in a new engine designed for data file compatibility with the whole series, plus new features. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-frontier-override https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-f... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-frontier-override/posts/2970711 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-f... https://github.com/EvocationGames/KestrelEngine https://github.com/EvocationGames/KestrelEngine I gather the rights to EVN are a more complicated issue because ATMOS was a whole bunch of people, versus EVO where Peter Cartwright owned everything. Rights to the EV name still belong to Matt Burch who wasn't interested in having it used for Cartwright's rerelease. Also see discussion on reddit for more background info: https://www.reddit.com/r/evnova/comments/g5wgbl/i_discuss_cosmic_frontier_override_for_about_5/ https://www.reddit.com/r/evnova/comments/g5wgbl/i_discuss_co... There are a couple threads scattered around, u/evopac is Peter Cartwright.
EamonnMR 6y ago
The answer is a definitive no. Matt Burch has made it pretty clear that he is not gonna open source it. Luckily there are two very good clones (Naev and Endless Sky) and a third got kickstarted (Cosmic Frontier.)

somedude895 6y ago

Growing up in a Mac household, Harry the Handsome Executive was my childhood. I loved all of Ambrosia's stuff.

saberience 6y ago
I can still remember his voice saying something like "ahhh pain" when you got damaged!
- kps 6y ago
  Join us, Harry!
amatecha 6y ago
Yesss I absolutely loved that game! I started making levels for it which was super fun as well. Ahhh now I want to play it... haha

unhammer 6y ago

Blogs require DRM now?? :-((

sleazebreeze 6y ago

Modding Escape Velocity games was a critical part of my childhood and probably set me on the path of becoming a software engineer. The parts in this post about the 90s Mac fanaticism are spot-on. I remember having many arguments with friends and neighbors that all were "Winblowz" users and my feelings of smug superiority over them.

smm11 6y ago
I was part of, and agree that the 90s Mac fanaticism was far, far over the top. Then came the iPhone.
- lukifer 6y ago
  It's easy to forget the historical context, in an era when the web and cross-platform toolchains have made computing platform choices a function of taste and preference. Bleeding-edge PC gaming and niche applications notwithstanding, we take for granted that any computer can do any task, be it Mac or Windows or Linux. But in the 90's, desktop Linux and the web were still in their infancy, and Windows held a quasi-hegemony over computing. Mac was the only alternative, constantly fighting for survival, both of Apple itself, and of the legitimacy of the platform ("why should we double our development budget to chase a market with 3% share?" went the refrain). The prominent black Mac blogger Rodney Lain went so far as to compare the "second-class citizen" feeling of being a Mac user to his African-American experience [0]. So yeah, it went over the top, and I got caught up in it too. To some extent, selection pressures were at work: the pragmatically-minded shrugged and bought PCs, and the religious ideologues were the only ones left clinging to their Macs (and each other) for dear life. It's ironic that Apple has become a far greater hegemon/monopolist than Microsoft in its hey-day. ("You die a hero or live to become the villain.") Nonetheless, for all our struggles with walled gardens and data silos, in some ways the modern computing ecosystem enjoys much greater platform fluidity and interoperability than 25 years ago. Everything speaks web; everything speaks *-nix; and there are a plethora of tools that make it feasible to target a dozen different platforms with the same codebase. [0] https://www.macobserver.com/columns/ibrotha/2001/20010928.shtml https://www.macobserver.com/columns/ibrotha/2001/20010928.sh...
- 6y ago

plasticsoprano 6y ago

EV was great but I wasted so many hours with Barrack. It's the one game I wish would return.

oofabz 6y ago

For me, it was Avara. An online multiplayer FPS in 1996, when 3D graphics and the internet still felt like science fiction. The skill ceiling was high and games were very competitive. Shout out to the ®ed §quadron, the clan I was in. I am still in touch with friends I met in the game, more than 20 years later. The game has been ported to modern OSs: https://github.com/avaraline/Avara/ https://github.com/avaraline/Avara/ There is a video of gameplay with commentary here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AutG8KO4DsY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AutG8KO4DsY

pvg 6y ago
still felt like science fiction It was a great game but it came out after Quake.
kzrdude 6y ago
I was never good, but I played, on dial up! Amazing times and confusing times. I also made level designs for it, using the Canvas editor (no idea which one was standard, but this one worked). Thanks for the link.
thegagne 6y ago
I loved Avara. The level edit capability offered so much freedom. You can find my first level, “chut” out on the internet. My other, better levels, are lost to me. I reverse engineered something I saw in a demo level, where they took doors, triggered them to “open” both vertically and horizontally and set them at the half way point to create “corner” pieces. No other maps had these pieces, and I was fascinated with the idea of using them to create terrain. I ended up making a “quilt” like structure of ramps and corner pieces to make a unique arena. I had not taken any upper level geometry yet so I was just doing it by trial and error. Fun times. I also found you could import wav files and trigger them so I made a jukebox level, which was absolutely massive (uncompressed audio!). I remember sharing these maps by trying to lure people to join my server, but transferring them could take some time because I was on 26.4 modem at the time. Avara was probably my first “development” experience... amazing.

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago

Chiral was awesome. I still remember how my pulse would race during the harder levels.

ketamine__ 6y ago

Cythera was pretty cool.

paloaltokid 6y ago

There's a game from the 90s called Hyperspeed by MicroProse that I wish someone would do a similar writeup on. I freaking loved that game and I can't find it anywhere now.

majjam 6y ago
Is it this? https://store.steampowered.com/app/347260/Hyperspeed/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/347260/Hyperspeed/
- paloaltokid 6y ago
  Well I'll be damned. Yes it is! Thank you!

danaris 6y ago

As someone who grew up on Ambrosia games—from Maelstrom and Apeiron to EV Nova and pop-pop—I'm honestly glad that the company ended the way it did, rather than getting sold off to some megacorporation like Activision or EA and having its soul destroyed and its name tarnished. Ambrosia Software defined an era, for those who lived in the Mac world during that time, and while it would have made me happy to see them continue on, I think the circumstances that allowed them to exist and be successful could only exist during that era. Also worth noting that there's been a recent successful Kickstarter[0] for a modern remake of/successor to EV Override, called Cosmic Frontier: Override. The impression I've gotten so far from the updates is that their timeline for release is going to be some time in the 2022-23ish time frame. [0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-frontier-override https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-f...

dougmwne 6y ago

Shout out to EV Nova, still one of my top 5 videogames. It was the 3rd game in the series and the most polished. It had multiple storylines you could play through and each was epic and memorable.

Rebelgecko 6y ago
EV:N was really mindopening for me as a kid. What blew my mind the most is that my decisions actually made a concrete impact on the world. It was so cool playing the different storylines and seeing solar systems change hands and new technologies appear because of my actions

geogra4 6y ago

The first piece of shareware I ever purchased was escape velocity. Wonderful little game

ingenieros 6y ago

Snapz Pro was nearly impossible to delete from your machine once installed. Not quite ransomware, but close enough.

rezmason 6y ago

The Ambrosia game portfolio's biggest impact was just being so much more polished than Mac games typically were at the time. The publishing model, I suppose, afforded them the resources it required to make everything really pop. I remember the first time my brother and I ran Maelstrom. The splash screen was hypnotic. I was like, "Computers can do this?" Back then their Zeus logo had me thinking they were a team of like a hundred people. Also, I probably wouldn't have spent any time in ResEdit if it weren't for games like Ambrosia's that encouraged folks to make custom sprite and sound packs.

saberience 6y ago
Dude, your mention of ResEdit just gave me major flashbacks! I remember first using ResEdit to "hack" games like Escape Velocity so I could gain more resources, make my ships more powerful, and so on. God I loved their games SO much. As a kid that was not allowed any consoles and only had a Mac IICX, Ambrosia games were a lifesaver!
- khalwat 6y ago
  You made my day, thanks for that! /andrew
  - saberience 6y ago
    No, you made my childhood! I was kind of a lonely kid and discovering computing (via the Mac) and getting these shareware discs and playing Ambrosia games was like finding something really magical. Thank you! And if anyone is reading this now, please make more games like Escape Velocity! (Or re-release them for modern systems!)
khalwat 6y ago
I made that game in college with the help of some very talented artists, and my friends who helped with the sound effect. It was written on a Mac IIsi IIRC! We def had fun making it (and playing it while making it) /andrew

inetknght 6y ago

I'm using Firefox. It says: > You must enable DRM to play some audio or video on this page. Uhh... what's up with that?

re 6y ago

I'm still bummed that the removal of Carbon and 32-bit support in macOS Catalina meant the final death of running EV Nova natively on macOS. It got me checking out emulation options for older OSes to see if there would be a way that I could ever play it again, but I either couldn't get them to boot properly (for most versions of OS X), or the performance was too poor (in Sheepshaver).

Rebelgecko 6y ago
I'm with you on this, and it's part of why I'm still running Sierra on my Mac. Ironically, I think the easiest way to run classic Mac games like EV Nova is on Windows (your old license key should work if you rollback the clock on your computer, and there's cracked versions floating around too)
- nerdponx 6y ago
  Sadly my license key was lost along with my old AIM email address (!), and the Ambrosia representative I spoke to was unable retrieve it for me. I'll have to try finding the cracked version...
- EamonnMR 6y ago
  You can get a windows version at http://escape-velocity.games http://escape-velocity.games

TomAnthony 6y ago

Former Ambrosia employee checking in! TomWoozle was my handle back then. I worked at the company from 2003-2005, having (like many here) grown up on their games and spent hours modding Escape Velocity. I mainly worked on the website (I wrote a version of the online store ground up in PHP), but also ran testing for a while and worked managing the later Windows conversion of EV Nova. It was an incredible place to work and I learnt so so much. Andrew was an amazing mentor and an extremely generous guy. My time there absolutely changed my life. One thing that stands out, and it feels like something that won’t be regained from that era, is that everyone there was just having great great fun. I loved going to work. We were a business, but I never remember money being the deciding factor in any decision. It was all passion. I miss those times! If people are interested AMA (though late here so may be tomorrow when I answer).

munificent 6y ago
I played hours and hours of Maelstrom back in the day. The game ran so smoothly. It just a beautiful, seamless play experience. Any details on what the code was like for these games? I'd love a peek behind the curtain. At the time, it felt incredibly well-polished.
- amatecha 6y ago
  Funny you should ask, someone else linked the github repo of Maelstrom 3.0 SDL port! https://github.com/richardjs/maelstrom https://github.com/richardjs/maelstrom So, I'm not sure how much of the code is near-original Macintosh version code, and how much was revised/replaced to support SDL. Probably lots of original stuff though, surely.
- TomAnthony 6y ago
  I also played many many hours of Maelstrom! That particular game is now open source [1]. On the whole, the main code of most games was not written by Ambrosia. There was a form on the website where you could submit a simple demo of a game idea you had. If Ambrosia thought it had potential then we would sign you up, to support the development, publishing and distribution. Ambrosia had a series of libraries, which were a mixture of C and Assembler, for graphics and sound etc. We had an in house graphic artist. And, of course, the shareware licensing code and mechanism. It was a great model. Coders with an idea could get support to take their game to the next level, and sell it etc. It all seems so easy now but the net was in its infancy then. We were mailing out CDs filled with the games. I never got my hands dirty of the game code, but I know the libraries we had were well polished and optimised, and so were very valuable to coders (no stack overflow back then!). [1] https://github.com/richardjs/Maelstrom https://github.com/richardjs/Maelstrom

amatecha 6y ago

Ambrosia is probably the most legendary Mac game developer. There was no other singular studio whose games were so avidly anticipated and played. Such well-polished games, with great gameplay. I can easily recall every single game they ever made. I think Maelstrom was the first one I played. Great memories :)

geerlingguy 6y ago
I think Pangea was the other company (not individual) I can remember still.

Detrus 6y ago

My favorite was Ares. https://github.com/arescentral/antares https://github.com/arescentral/antares A unique combination of strategy and action. Played a lot of Escape Velocity too. Those games were special.

amatecha 6y ago
I loved Ares! So good in every way. This game actually helped kickstart my foray into digital music recording, because I loved the music from Ares and wanted to extract the music files from the game so I could listen to them. Turned out the songs were stored as "MADH" resources and I saved them out to individual files -- and it turns out these MADH files were a "tracker music" format created by and playable with the software "PlayerPRO". Thus all the first songs I ever created on the computer sounded a lot like Ares' music because I ripped all my samples from the game's songs! hahah :) Wasn't long before I realized I can use any audio file though, and recorded all kinds of stuff to create new sounds with. Either way, I forever can credit Nathan Lamont and Ares for being the reason I discovered the world of computer-made music. (yes, I still remember his name today lol)

crusso 6y ago

Andrew Welch had an intense Bolo addiction for a while. It was in the latter part of my own Bolo addiction, but we played quite a few games together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_(1987_video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_(1987_video_game) Ah, Bolo.

amatecha 6y ago
I played sooo much of Bolo. Still one of my top-favorite games ever. I was so into it, I printed out guides and read them when I couldn't actively play the game. I started to memorize the different "pill-taking" layouts so I could easily take a base so quickly and flawlessly. Well, needless to say my skills weren't too useful because I wasn't able to arrange AppleTalk games of Bolo very often... but when we played, I usually destroyed!!! hahaha :) Ahh, such a great game. :)
- crusso 6y ago
  Bolo was a cult phenomenon back in its heyday in the early-to-mid 1990s. It was a game with a great deal of tactical and strategic depth that it allowed a huge range of player ability. It definitely wasn't the kind of game where some newbie could just start playing and get a lucky win or be a master in days or weeks. It felt more like a sport where you needed to practice the basics (like you mentioned on taking PBs) while you also learned a lot about strategy. My favorite times were the Bolofests where traveling boloers would come into town and we'd all get together to play on a LAN.
buserror 6y ago
I bought a Mac Plus recently, and one of the new things I installed on it's MASSIVE 20 megabytes hard drive was Bolo. And then I proceeded to waste a good hour playing it all sadly by myself without the Localtalk network that used to be full of games, back in the day. sniffle
- amatecha 6y ago
  Soooo there's actually one really cool thing you can do: run additional copies of Bolo with "brains" like aIndy, Brainwave or so on which act as actual players (sometimes a lot better than actual players haha) ... This was another really fascinating feature of Bolo that many other multiplayer games never had. So you can have simulated multiplayer! Worth a try!

poisonarena 6y ago

For me, it was Taskmaker and Tomb Of the Taskmaker

fwipsy 6y ago

Ah, nostalgia. I bought a 2006-ish Mac Mini recently just so I could go back and play Ambrosia stuff. Managed to get Sketchfighter and Diemos Rising working, but not Gooball unfortunately - this was since the registration server went down, and I guess the DRM hasn't been cracked.

spike021 6y ago

I really miss EV: Nova. It's probably one of the games I've re-played the most. I even kept playing it for the longest time with the expired trial where the ultra-modded, overpowered Starbridge follows you around to kill you for not paying for the full version. Not easy to install anymore with the license server down and all, and I've tried playing the games that try to be clones but they've never really hit the same way.

sitharus 6y ago

Oh wow this brings back memories. I spent many of my teenage year playing, modding and beta testing the Escape Velocity games. I learnt 3d modelling for modding using a pirated copy of lightwave (I’m not proud, but a 13 year old in New Zealand was never going to afford that - even the shareware fee for the games made my dad think) I spent so much time on the IRC server and forums I ended up moderating the ev developers board, even on the unofficial ones after the software change drama. I used the inventive nickname ‘blackhole’ then. Teenagers. Met a lot of weird and wonderful people. I’ve been checking on the site every so often since 2008, but it’s sad to see them go. It was a special time.

Talanes 6y ago
It would be great if it was easier to get Lightwave in the hands of every interested 13 year old. One kid I grew up with was homeschooled, and his mom had all the proper registration to buy school discounted software. His mom was able to get him a copy of Lightwave to play around with at home. He's been an animator at Sony for about a decade now.

aerovistae 6y ago

It's worth noting that two of the people who worked on escape velocity are creating a remastered version of sorts, called Cosmic Frontier. Search for the kickstarter and you'll find their project updates!

wlesieutre 6y ago

All this talk of Escape Velocity inspired me to do a bit of googling, and I just wanted to let everyone know that Captain Hector's namesake (Hector D Byrd) has his own twitter and will be turning 28 in about a month: https://twitter.com/hectordbyrd https://twitter.com/hectordbyrd

poulsbohemian 6y ago

The details escape me, but I recall being about 13 around 1990, 1992?, newly into coding, and meeting up with Andrew Welch in some kind of chat forum. What I remember was that he was incredibly kind and offered words of encouragement for my budding programming future. Ambrosia was a serious fan favorite for their commitment to quality games. The 90s were exciting times for software.

Waterluvian 6y ago

Escape Velocity + ResEdit was how I got into programming at 8 years old. Back then I didn't have internet access and had hours upon hours of time to explore my family mac without distraction. I came across ResEdit and teduously learned how to change stuff in the game. First thing I learned is to always back up your software. I would make mods for my brother to play. Javelin Spray was my favourite. My brother and I would also daisy chain AFB keyboards and he would control the ship and I would control the escorts. Some of my fondest childhood memories.

re 6y ago
I had a similar experience, though in my case I didn't come to the series until EV:O. My ambitions to create a TC (total conversion) plugin far exceeded both my abilities and persistence. I did have internet access and the escape-velocity.com DiscBoards (before they were merged into the ASW forums) were one of my first online communities. They were also where I first started learning HTML, in order to have a cool "signature"--I'm not sure exactly how much was allowed, but I do recall working on one that involved animated GIFs and a table to reassemble a sliced image, so I'll apologize a few decades later to anyone else that I may have annoyed with my enthusiasm.

unpixer 6y ago

Long ago, Ambrosia Software had a booth at one of the major tech conferences. Contests, trivia questions, t-shirts to win, the usual. Also, they were at the end of a major push to fix bugs in their games, and to celebrate they'd cooked up a bunch of food with bugs in it, and--somehow--convinced their marketing guy to eat the stuff in front of a bunch of attendees. (Maybe he lost a bet?) And yes, I mean actual bugs. Insects. I'm talking roach pizza, worm casserole, that sort of thing. Anyway, he shilly-shallied a bit, and finally agreed to do it, as long as he got to wash the stuff down with wine. (I'm assuming this part was staged as they'd brought a bottle.) There was just one problem. No corkscrew. An appeal went out to the couple of dozen attendees: "Does anyone have a corkscrew?" Bunch of nerds at a tech conference, and nobody had a corkscrew...what are the chances? Well, nobody except me, because I'm so ragingly dorky I never go anywhere without a Swiss Army knife of some sort. I offered it up, the bottle was opened, there were cheers, and the guy standing next to me began lobbying the employees to give me a free t-shirt. Other attendees around him took up the chant, and the Ambrosia Software employees, to their credit, handed me a t-shirt when they returned my knife. It was a really nice one, black cotton with that big square maroon Ambrosia Software logo on the back, and the single word 'thaumaturgy' on the front in white lowercase monospaced font. I wore that shirt for years afterward, until it somehow got lost in the shuffle of dropping laundry off at the laundromat. I'm still sad about its loss, because I was wearing that t-shirt the first time I talked to the woman who later became my wife. It was the shirt that initially caught her attention. We're still together to this day. So thank you, Ambrosia Software. Thanks for the games...and everything else.

TomAnthony 6y ago
This was before my time at Ambrosia, but I did work the booth at a few shows in different cities (San Fran, LA, Paris being memories). Your story definitely sounds like the sort of thing that would go down. I also don't have any t-shirts anymore, but EV:Nova mouse mats are still used at my Mum's house!

mewse 6y ago

Andrew kind of took me under his wing during the early days of Ambrosia and taught me a lot about game coding, while I was still in high school. He eventually bought the rights to a game that I had put together and basically transformed it; it became “Chiral”, which I believe was the second game released by Ambrosia. For $1500 he got the source code, data, IP rights, and a time-limited non-compete. It seemed like an almost unimaginably large amount of money to me back then (I was in my last year of high school), but I’m sure it was the smallest of his costs in polishing up the game to his standards! In retrospect, I’d be startled if he didn’t decide the code was a complete write-off and needed to be rewritten from scratch; I’d been an absolute neophyte at the time! But he was kind enough not to tell me about it, if so! Andrew and I still have never met face to face; our conversations were entirely online. And we lost touch shortly after I went off to university. I’m a little embarrassed to have missed this talk, even though was actually in the building at the time. I was exhibiting my own game over in the expo hall, and I had completely lost track of time. Exhibiting your own game is definitely a bit overwhelming; a lot more than exhibiting somebody else’s one! Andrew was definitely the one who got me seriously into game development and made me think about it as a viable career. In a lot of ways, I’m in the industry today because of him.

Zarkonnen 6y ago
Can I ask what you're doing these days? I was heavily inspired by modding EV to become a game developer myself.
- mewse 6y ago
  I spent about fifteen years working at Melbourne House in Australia (which went from being independent to being bought by Infogrammes/Atari, and was then bought by Krome, before finally being wound down, but it was mostly the same awesome group of talented folks for most of that time. At the end, I’d been there for fifteen years and still wasn’t in the top ten list of longest-serving employees; I felt like only a medium-sized fish in a very large pond). After that, I went to an EA studio for a couple years (which was very difficult for me, as I was put on a smallish team where I literally had more years of experience than everyone else on the team added together; I was suddenly in the very strange situation where any silly thing I said would just be taken as gospel and acted upon, and it took me a very long time to figure out how to behave to mitigate the risks of that). Then I did a couple years in (non-games) statistics software to pad out my resume a bit and show that I could do non-games work as well. After that, I started freelancing, doing both games and non-games work, to support myself while I worked on my own game, which is now up on Steam in Early Access. Freelancing was a lot of fun, and I love the freedom to switch between projects and solve the most difficult problems of one project and then moving on to a new, different project with a new ‘most difficult’ problem to solve. Though obviously the lack of job security was a bit of a strange new experience, after spending my whole career on a salary! I also spent a couple years acting as an advisor on the local Film Victoria’s games funding grant program, helping select projects to allocate grant funds toward and just generally advising applicants (whether or not they eventually received funding). I’m super proud of the work those folks do and that I got to be a small part of it for a while. I feel like the blossoming we’ve seen here in the local indie games scene has a lot to do with their support for the industry.

leelin 6y ago

Reading the ending hits closer to home and made me more sad than expected! Andrew Welch was uneasy about the idea of scaling up, especially when they could survive as they were just fine off their utility products Way back in the day, YC always said not to worry about competitors raising tons of money (not sure if that's still the rec). The 2008 DHH boostrapping talk during Startup School is still one of the most influential videos on my career as a founder. But that path is increasingly less popular! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY Lastly, for all the bolo comments out there, I remember the huge transition from modems to school ethernet that made it playable - it was honestly one of the reasons I was looking forward to dorm life!

KnightofNININI 6y ago

Ambrosia was my first meeting with message boards. I joined in 2000 I think. I loved to play EV, Override, Nova, and Ferazel's Wand. The EV games combined with Resedit were my first forays into modding games, and Ferazel's Wand along with Mascot was great fun. I still run SheepShaver on my modern systems because of Ambrosia Software. A friend of mine, who was also a member and fan, wrote a personal reimagination of Barrack as a hobby project while learning coding. While it does lack the ever-charming Bosco, the gameplay is still good!

KnightofNININI 6y ago
Here's the link: https://www.bitbreeds.com/artifact/ https://www.bitbreeds.com/artifact/
- deleted 6y ago
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EamonnMR 6y ago

I wasn't gonna post this until it was more Done, but if anyone is reading this they might enjoy my multiplayer EV clone in Godot: https://github.com/eamonnmr/mpevmvp https://github.com/eamonnmr/mpevmvp The server runs best on Linux, and you need to host a server (press host server in the main menu) before you can play. It's not very complete but most of the basics are there.

TomMasz 6y ago

I live just down the street from their office. I remember their parking lot full of cars. Then one day, it was empty and there was a large sign on the front door. Their sign is still up, oddly enough.