Subject:      Re: Alternate Reality: Negotiating...
From:         paradise@netcom.com
Date:         1996/02/15
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Well, well :). Actually the city was never meant to be alone. I used to 
think it was Datasoft that caused the city and dungeon to be split in 
two, but as more of my neurons refresh themselves about the design and 
programming I did way back in 1984, it was the people we were dealing 
right before them. They wanted something out now. So I split the first 
part of AR into two games. The first gives a person a taste of AR and the 
rest expand evermore into the alternate reality. Dungeon was supposed to 
come out shortly thereafter. Sadly, when Datasoft got a hold of it they 
needed me to advise their people converting the city and they held off on 
publishing the city while slowing down my completion of the dungeon. The 
original dungeon had 3-d traps and pits, localized sounds, etc. That one 
disappeared after I left to work on the stealth bomber(After I saw that 
Datasoft would never pay me or Gary a dime). Years later 
Datasoft employees completed an abbreviated version of the dungeon. All of 
Datasoft's time (which we had no control over)
was subtracted from our(Paradise Programming's) share of the royalties( 
as per a small section of the contract gave them the right) 
leaving us(You guessed it) 0. Not a very fair exchange. The contract we 
signed with Datasoft returned all rights to us after they stopped 
selling it or ten years whichever occurred first. They never had rights 
to the rest of the series(Arena, Palace, Wilderness, Revelation or 
Destiny). There is a lot more to the story, some of 
which a fan has posted at http:://www.ksk.sala.se/~sp93rob/dungeon

The game was the first with original music, movie like intro(full intro 
was only on the original Atari ), 3-d texture mapping etc. Not bad for a 
1.8 mhz 48k computer. I never liked the IBM-PC city conversion(Can't turn 
off the sound and it only used the pc-speaker)..

-- 
                                             Philip Price
                                             paradise@netcom.com