In some cases I would say "got away with", in others, I would just say "sign of the times". I remember Avalon Hill selling BASIC games and reviewers of the time saying essentially along the lines that Avalon Hill allowed editing of the game's "source code" so the user could make their own modifications to the program. It's surely sugar coating, but there is something of a point to that, particularly as late as the early 80's. Many publishers - including Adventure International - would often advertise whether their program was BASIC or Machine Language. BASIC often meant an inferior program, but not always, and many top games - including some of the Ultimas - were mixed languages, including BASIC.
Fascinating. That's really interesting because it shows that they thought at least some of their audience had the ingenuity to make such modifications. Of course, it also made it ridiculously easy for the competition to "borrow" their code. I've heard a few programmers suggest that machine code (and compiling in general) had the advantage that it was now more difficult for the competition to both "borrow" your code as well as prove that you had borrowed theirs. Trade secrets...
In some cases I would say "got away with", in others, I would just say "sign of the times". I remember Avalon Hill selling BASIC games and reviewers of the time saying essentially along the lines that Avalon Hill allowed editing of the game's "source code" so the user could make their own modifications to the program. It's surely sugar coating, but there is something of a point to that, particularly as late as the early 80's. Many publishers - including Adventure International - would often advertise whether their program was BASIC or Machine Language. BASIC often meant an inferior program, but not always, and many top games - including some of the Ultimas - were mixed languages, including BASIC.
Fascinating. That's really interesting because it shows that they thought at least some of their audience had the ingenuity to make such modifications. Of course, it also made it ridiculously easy for the competition to "borrow" their code. I've heard a few programmers suggest that machine code (and compiling in general) had the advantage that it was now more difficult for the competition to both "borrow" your code as well as prove that you had borrowed theirs. Trade secrets...
Matt Barton, Managing Editor
Location: St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA
Email: matt@armchairarcade.com