Das Boot the game?

[Enigma]

Never knew this existed.....:hmm:

[Kapitan_Phillips]

You're not supposed to promote abandonware here, mate

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Kapitan_Phillips

You're not supposed to promote abandonware here, mate

Well, the company went out of buisness back in 1992/1993.
It's going to be 99.9% impossible to trace the current copyright holder and it is
doubtful that anyone even knows who it is. For all we know the copyright died with the
company that held it.

It is certinaly impossible to obtain a new/origional copy.
It would be a shame not to make an exception for such a good find. I never knew about this either.

All that said, rules are rules.


*Edit*
Perhaps this would be a better link: (Scroll down)
http://www.subsim.com/ssr/simhist.html

Das Boot has aircraft, enemy and friendly submarines, interactive anti-aircraft gun and deck gun firing controls, fantastic ideas for radio (including the capability to decode enemy transmissions), and more. I have never seen a program with so many great ideas come together with such disaster. This is due, in part, to the lack of scope of the simulation. For example, one of the missions is the "Das Boot" mission. It begins in the Gibraltar Strait. You are ordered east through the strait. You are quickly attacked by aircraft, and not permitted to dive. It is foggy and you can't see anything but aircraft. If you are a good shot, you can shoot down all the planes. If you do so, you win, and that is that. This simulator is the only one that uses true three dimensional polygon filling graphics. This type of graphics is usually used with flight simulators. The advantage of this technique is that you get a real three dimensional effect. However, you are unable to show object detail. With fast jet aircraft simulators, lack of detail is fine, since you only see the enemy for a split second. But, for submarine simulators that operate at such slow speeds, lack of detail is very annoying. In Das Boot, it is impossible to determine the identification of a vessel by sight. You must have the XO "ID" the vessel to know what type it is.
Other features were the use of time compression, different external views, enemy use of HF/DF against you ("maintain radio silence to avoid detection"), Metox, and different torpedo types. With the ground-breaking graphics, Das Boot had a lot of promise, but the lack of career missions pretty much sank it.

[Enigma]

Well, I dont even know what abandonware is, nor why it is out of bounds for discussion. My Bad, fellas.

[Platapus]

The graphics look kick butt

I am deleting my SH3 and all the mods for this gem!!!

"When using the binoculars or periscope you can press space to launch torpedoes."

Sweet!

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Enigma

Well, I dont even know what abandonware is, nor why it is out of bounds for discussion. My Bad, fellas.

Usually it refers to products that are very old from companies that no longer exist.
Usually the copyright is held by an individual or even a bank, making it impossible
to obtain the product. Sometimes the copyright is totally lost.

In short, abandonware is code that would never have it's copyright enforced for one
reason or another.

It is sometimes illegal to distribute it, depending on the state of the copyright.
Most of the time it is impossible to find out if it is legal to distribute.

[Blacklight]

I have a copy of that game kicking around in my "Old as sin" games folder along with 4-5 gigs of other old games (mostly DOS based). I havn't tried it yet. Maybe I should and give a full report.

I CAN however confirm that the old game "Red Storm Rising" is a very good game from that era... probably the best of the bunch.

[Stealth Hunter]

Originally Posted by Enigma

Well, I dont even know what abandonware is, nor why it is out of bounds for discussion. My Bad, fellas.

Note however that the company went out of business. Abandonware can be freely distributed unless someone else has bought the copyright to the product. In the case of this, nobody has. It dissolved with the company. Perfectly legit; perfectly legal now. There's nothing wrong with it, other than the fact the FAQ page states not to post it...

So to answer your question, Abandonware is just software or a program that's been thrown out by its original company because it either went out of business or dropped the rights to the title. Copyright to it can be bought by pretty much anyone... be it a single person or something along the lines of another company. As I said, however, this one has no current owner, so it has a free distribution license. Why Abandonware discussion isn't allowed on SS... well, your guess is as good as mine.

EDIT:

Anyone care to offer an explanation to that last part?

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Stealth Hunter

Note however that the company went out of business. Abandonware can be freely distributed unless someone else has bought the copyright to the product.

Very wrong!
Most of the time the copyright is passed to an individual or a bank.

If this is the case it is still illegal. (but not enforced i.e. in the same way SH3/4 mods
are illegal, but not enforced)

If the copyright did die with the company then it is legal. (this is not common)The problem is that there is no way to findout if anyone still owns the copyright.
Thats why many forums chose to err on thee side of caution.

[Stealth Hunter]

In this case, the copyright died with the game.

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Stealth Hunter

In this case, the copyright died with the game.

LINK?
How can you tell?
Dead copyrights are almost never announced.

It looks like the company went down due to financial problems, so its a good bet that a
bank has the copyright.

[Takeda Shingen]

1. This is in the wrong forum.

2. We don't do abandonware on SubSim.

Closed.

The Management