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this game has been distributed as "abandonware" since at least 1996, version 1.5
I recently bought an original disk of it, which is also version 1.5

Do the EXEs match? NO WHY WOULD THEY

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@foone the real question is

were they too lazy to version it

or the abandonware version got cracked

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I don't think this is a crack. it looks like they made an actual change, and these are just two different "version 1.5"s

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so one of the first things it does is call FUN_1000_40e0, and in the abandonware version, if that fails it immediately dumps you to DOS

in the fresh-disk version, it instead calls a function that prints an error and then quit

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okay I think what it's doing is checking the config file, which determines what soundcard/input devices to use. the 1993 version prints "run setup.exe first" when you run it without a config file, and the 1996 version just...doesn't run?

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oh, no, it's weirder than that. the 1996 version DOES print "run setup first", and the 1993 version just hangs forever

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so that's a bugfix, I think.

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I'm going to ignore this rabbit hole any further

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the amount of work still on my TODO for this game is massive, I can't be tracking down bugs that have been fixed for three decades

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mov AX,0386h

sure, set AX to 902 when you're running on a 386, that's fine. why not?

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