Taipan...
Jeff Thomas
any
background information relating to this game? Is it based on a novel??
On the title screen, it says, it was created by Art Canfil. The Apple
program was by Mega-Mirco Computers. Copyrighted to Avalanche
Productions
Inc.
I never found anything about who Art Canfil is, or what other projects
he
did. Whatever happened to the other companies?
By saying, it is an Apple program, one might assume that there are other
versions for different computers, is that correct?
What does the original Apple II version box look like? Anyone posted it,
on the web? I'd love to see it...
Thanks,
Jeff.
Charles Richmond
>
> I have played this game for many years on the Apple II. Does anyone have
> any
> background information relating to this game? Is it based on a novel??
>
also a movie made in 1986 from this novel titled "Tai-Pan". Both are
available from Amazon.com...
--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond <rich...@plano.net> |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Section8design
that game for hours waiting for those ships to blink and then fall.
HA! You just made my night. Sorry, I have no info for you, but dang,
that brings back memories.
S.
D. Jacob Wildstrom
Cheap plug here, but...
I've just recently uploaded the first release of a more-or-less
faithful port of Taipan to the Z-Machine (the virtual machine
pioneered by Infocom, still one of the major platforms of the
interactive fiction community).
You can grab a copy of it from
ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/taipan.z5
and an interpreter from somewhere in
ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/interpreters-infocom-zcode
Happy smuggling!
+------Archbishop, First Church of Mystical Agnosticism------+
| A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into |
| theorems. -Alfred Renyi |
+------------------------------------------------------------+
| Jake Wildstrom |
+------------------------------------------------------------+
Roger Johnstone
wrote:
Two things I remember about playing Taipan...
Playing it on an Apple II clone, I pressed reset, and instead of rebooting
as it did on a real Apple it stopped with a BASIC prompt. Just fooling
around I typed LIST, and was stunned to find it was written in BASIC.
The infamous money lender's bug! I think a lot of people found this one, you
could borrow a small amount from the money lender, then repay him more than
you owed him. You then had a negative balance which increased at 10% per
month, much better than the regular bank :)
--
Roger Johnstone, Invercargill, New Zealand
Apple II - FutureCop:LAPD - iMac Game Wizard
http://homepage.mac.com/rojaws
________________________________________________________________________
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home"
Ken Olson, President of DEC, World Future Society Convention, 1977
Andre Kostur
@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu:
> In article <ec3b09ad.02042...@posting.google.com>,
> Section8design <stur...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>What a flashback! Thanks for bringing that game up. I remember playing
>>that game for hours waiting for those ships to blink and then fall.
>>HA! You just made my night. Sorry, I have no info for you, but dang,
>>that brings back memories.
>
> Cheap plug here, but...
>
> I've just recently uploaded the first release of a more-or-less
> faithful port of Taipan to the Z-Machine (the virtual machine
> pioneered by Infocom, still one of the major platforms of the
> interactive fiction community).
>
> You can grab a copy of it from
> ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/taipan.z5
> and an interpreter from somewhere in
> ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/interpreters-infocom-zcode
>
> Happy smuggling!
You can also get a version of Taipan for the PalmOS....
Jeff Thomas
> Two things I remember about playing Taipan...
>
> Playing it on an Apple II clone, I pressed reset, and instead of rebooting
> as it did on a real Apple it stopped with a BASIC prompt. Just fooling
> around I typed LIST, and was stunned to find it was written in BASIC.
I was just as amazed to learn it was written in Basic!
More surprising was the special character-set they created for the game, which
really suits it...
> The infamous money lender's bug! I think a lot of people found this one, you
> could borrow a small amount from the money lender, then repay him more than
> you owed him. You then had a negative balance which increased at 10% per
> month, much better than the regular bank :)
Yes! I love the challenge of making a killing... I managed to rake in about half
trillion, a while back (my personal best) and alot quicker than Bill Gates could!
:-)
I nearly lasted until the start of the new century, 1900 (another personal best).
That's roughly forty years, starting in 1860s.
It would be the most common game, I play on my *real* Apple IIe or IIc. Of course,
by using the emulator, I could always speed up the really lenghtly sea battles!
What would I do without my game of Taipan?
Regards,
Jeff.
Apple ][ Forever!
Jeff Thomas
> Two things I remember about playing Taipan...
>
> Playing it on an Apple II clone, I pressed reset, and instead of rebooting
> as it did on a real Apple it stopped with a BASIC prompt. Just fooling
> around I typed LIST, and was stunned to find it was written in BASIC.
I was just as amazed to learn it was written in Basic!
More surprising was the special character-set they created for the game, which
really suits it...
> The infamous money lender's bug! I think a lot of people found this one, you
> could borrow a small amount from the money lender, then repay him more than
> you owed him. You then had a negative balance which increased at 10% per
> month, much better than the regular bank :)
Yes! I love the challenge of making a killing... I managed to rake in about half
trillion, a while back (my personal best) and alot quicker than Bill Gates could!
:-)
I nearly lasted until the start of the new century, 1900 (another personal best).
That's roughly forty years, starting in 1860s. Does the game ever end or will it
carry on until it crashes??
Charles Richmond
>
> [snip...] [snip...] [snip...]
>
> What would I do without my game of Taipan?
>
do *useful* things!!! (;-))
Lazarus I. Long
> You can also get a version of Taipan for the PalmOS....
you can get that at handango.com.
without the moneylender bug i've racked up 27 billion, the year is now
2079 :) 200 guns and a ship larger than my warehouse :) 11200 hold
size, NOT INCLUDING space taken up by guns
now, I wish I could buy warehouses in other cities, buy more space for
the warehouse(s) I do have, and have a greater price spread between
cities. it's no longer worthwhile to sell until you get one of those
unexpected spikes. ahh the good old days...
Matt Garretson
thanks to an Apple //e emulator, and have definitely been having
my best game ever... so far over $190 trillion in the bank. The
way things are going, i could probably keep playing forever, but
i have to reboot Windows pretty soon. Here's a screenshot from
this morning, when I had only $131 trillion in the bank:
http://home.nycap.rr.com/mgarret1/pics/taipan.gif
Yes, i did use the lending bug. But i don't see it as a bug;
just a loan to my good ol' Elder Brother Wu :)
-Matt
Matt Garretson
hitting $999 Trillion, my bank account then rolled over to
$1 Million instead of $1 Quadrillion. That seemed a good
time to retire. Screenshots at:
http://home.nycap.rr.com/mgarret1/etc/taipan/
Best... game.. ever...
-Matt
D. Jacob Wildstrom
Matt Garretson <gar...@alum.rpi.edu> wrote:
>Just an unsolicited update on my epic game of Taipan. After
>hitting $999 Trillion, my bank account then rolled over to
>$1 Million instead of $1 Quadrillion.
Well, actually, your bank account was at 1x10^15, as it should be, but
Taipan doesn't know the word "Quadrillion".
My congratulations, BTW. I never got even close to that high without
the EBWu cheat.
(Taipan for the z-machine now on release 2, with a bunch of bug fixes
on R1. Also, source code released. Both on ifarchive.org. I'll stop
flacking now, really.)
Matt Garretson
> the EBWu cheat.
I did use the "cheat" at the beginning. But after you make your
first Billion or so, the cheat becomes more of a nuisance
than anything else, as you have to keep borrowing from it to
prevent the debt figure from getting too long (more than $999
Million), which messes up the screen's text formatting.
And once the bank account hits ~100 Trillion, it seems to be
most efficient to just sail from port to port without trading
at all, as the bank interest accrues far faster than any earnings
you could make from commerce. (By the end of the game, i
was getting over $4 Trillion in interest per month!) The key
to prolonging the game is to keep about 500 units of general
cargo at all times, to toss overboard when attacked. Yeah
it's cowardly, but it works. :) You need a deathwish to take
on a fleet of over 2500 pirate ships!
> (Taipan for the z-machine now on release 2, with a bunch of bug fixes
> on R1. Also, source code released. Both on ifarchive.org. I'll stop
Awesome... Taipan should be ported to every platform! :)
-Matt
Ben Yates
> Roger Johnstone wrote:
>
> > Two things I remember about playing Taipan...
> >
> > Playing it on an Apple II clone, I pressed reset, and instead of rebooting
> > as it did on a real Apple it stopped with a BASIC prompt. Just fooling
> > around I typed LIST, and was stunned to find it was written in BASIC.
>
> I was just as amazed to learn it was written in Basic!
>
I have a version for the TRS-80 Model-III, clearly Basic code as it
requires Basic to be loaded to run. I'll have to check sometime if the
lending bug was ported over!
I also have a graphic version for the TI-99/4A, called Shanghai, that
is total graphics, no lending, but you dock at ports selling and dock
at ports buying to do the transaction, look out for the big, slow
ship, buy cannon for the pirate boats, etc...