Looking for a shareware RPG called Lord of Destruction

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MrFlibble
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Looking for a shareware RPG called Lord of Destruction

Post by MrFlibble »

A user in another forum is trying to locate what seems to be a super obscure DOS shareware role-playing game that is called Lord of Destruction Part 1 - Demon Hordes of Death (no relation to the Blizzard namesake). The game was developed by Gabe Macchia and published by Rebelsoft in 1994-1995. It was distributed via the Scott Miller model, and the shareware package was supposedly called LD1.ZIP.

Googling has come up with nothing of interest so far. cd.textfiles.com doesn't seem to have this game, and same goes for various FTPs that have DOS shareware games. Gabe Macchia doesn't seem to have a website for his games (at least, a site that is online today), however it's still possible that the shareware version of the game might be found on some shovelware CD or somesuch.
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Re: Looking for a shareware RPG called Lord of Destruction

Post by DOSGuy »

Sorry I didn't see this sooner; it's been a busy week. I know someone who claims to have this game, but I don't know if it's the shareware or full version. I'll let you know when he gets back to me.
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MrFlibble
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Re: Looking for a shareware RPG called Lord of Destruction

Post by MrFlibble »

Thanks a lot!
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Re: Looking for a shareware RPG called Lord of Destruction

Post by DOSGuy »

Okay, he has the game and will let me check it out, but I don't know if it will be the shareware version. If it's the full version, I'm hoping I'll be able to learn something that would lead to a copy of the shareware version.
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MrFlibble
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Re: Looking for a shareware RPG called Lord of Destruction

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Well, actually I have already been provided with a pirated registered version of the game (complete with the hacker group NFO file and a warez FILE_ID.DIZ) in another forum, which I deleted from my PC upon discovering that it was not the shareware version. I checked the TXT manual before deleting that version though, and unfortunately there is no additional contact information apart from the physical post address of Gabe Macchia that can be found in the shareware version of Plague of the Moon as well.

One bit of potentially useful info found by vetz at VOGONS is that the shareware version had been distributed via AOL, as attested by this message archived by GoogleGroups:
I was looking through the files on america online today and noticed
two shareware rpgs that I never saw on the net. One was called lod11.zip and
is Lord of Destruction. The other is ultizr3.zip and is Ultizurk III. I would
have grabbed them but as the AOL account is not mine, I couldn't. Has anyone
seen these games on the net? From their descriptions they sounded interesting.
This also means that I was wrong speculating that the shareware distributive was called LD1.ZIP, while Superteeth (the guy who's looking for the game) recalled the name correctly which is LOD11.ZIP.

I also suspect that this is why maybe the shareware version is so hard to find: there's a shareware (now liberated) game called Lords of Doom, which is a DOS graphical roguelike created by a Polish programmer. The shareware archive is also called LOD.ZIP or LOD1.ZIP (depending on the version). I think it's possible that the sysops replaced copies of the Lord of Destruction shareware with Lords of Doom without realizing that these were two different games. For example, IIRC the uwp-uml archive at gamers.org (can't access it right now for some reason) contains Lords of Doom alongside Ultizurk III which is also mentioned in the Google Groups message.
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Re: Looking for a shareware RPG called Lord of Destruction

Post by DOSGuy »

So many of the shareware files I want were hosted on AOL, and are forever lost because Archive.org doesn't archive FTPs. What a treasure trove it would be if AOL ever went into their backups and published their FTP archives.
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Re: Looking for a shareware RPG called Lord of Destruction

Post by MrFlibble »

BTW, I just realized that while searching old shareware stuff I'd bump numerous times into a listing of games that had been hosted by AOL, and it always seemed useless as the links are all dead. However, in fact this listing can be of some use.

Indeed, lod1.zip is mentioned here, the file is only about 218 KB in size (conversely, Lords of Doom shareware is around 500 KB). There's no way to verify that this is Lord of Destruction or that the archive is complete though.
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Re: Looking for a shareware RPG called Lord of Destruction

Post by DOSGuy »

As feared, it was the registered version (v2.2), and there's no useful contact information in it. The executable isn't compressed, so it was easy to find Gabe Macchia's name in the .EXE, but I didn't se anything else useful. Apparently the game was compiled with Borland C++.
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Re: Looking for a shareware RPG called Lord of Destruction

Post by MrFlibble »

Bummer, but, well, hopefully something crops up eventually. Do you think Gabe Macchia is still reachable via his post address?
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Re: Looking for a shareware RPG called Lord of Destruction

Post by DOSGuy »

Abandonia refused to host the registered version of Plague of the Moon because someone wrote to Gabe Macchia in 2007 and he declined to declare the game freeware. That makes liberating his games unlikely, but maybe he could pass along the shareware version.

I did a reverse lookup on his address and found a bunch of people with a different last name. I was unable to find any G Macchia in Montgomery, AL. The only Gabe Maccia I could find in the USA was in Melbourne, Florida. He may have moved (or died) since 2007.
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Re: Looking for a shareware RPG called Lord of Destruction

Post by MrFlibble »

DOSGuy wrote:Abandonia refused to host the registered version of Plague of the Moon because someone wrote to Gabe Macchia in 2007 and he declined to declare the game freeware. That makes liberating his games unlikely, but maybe he could pass along the shareware version.
Yep, I also found that discussion in the AB forums, I thought that he might provide a copy of the shareware version if anything.
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Re: Looking for a shareware RPG called Lord of Destruction

Post by blinkingboythe »

DOSGuy wrote:So many of the shareware files I want were hosted on AOL, and are forever lost because Archive.org doesn't archive FTPs. What a treasure trove it would be if AOL ever went into their backups and published their FTP archives.
Not only that, but thousands of game addons, parody wav files, pie-3d gcs games and other such odds and ends were hosted in their internal (members only) archive which seems to have completely vanished =\
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Re: Looking for a shareware RPG called Lord of Destruction

Post by Reapter »

MrFlibble wrote:Well, actually I have already been provided with a pirated registered version of the game (complete with the hacker group NFO file and a warez FILE_ID.DIZ) in another forum, which I deleted from my PC upon discovering that it was not the shareware version. I checked the TXT manual before deleting that version though, and unfortunately there is no additional contact information apart from the physical post address of Gabe Macchia that can be found in the shareware version of Plague of the Moon as well.

One bit of potentially useful info found by vetz at VOGONS is that the shareware version had been distributed via AOL, as attested by this message archived by GoogleGroups:
I was looking through the files on america online today and noticed
two shareware rpgs that I never saw on the net. One was called lod11.zip and
is Lord of Destruction. The other is ultizr3.zip and is Ultizurk III. I would
have grabbed them but as the AOL account is not mine, I couldn't. Has anyone
seen these games on the net? From their descriptions they sounded interesting.
This also means that I was wrong speculating that the shareware distributive was called LD1.ZIP, while Superteeth (the guy who's looking for the game) recalled the name correctly which is LOD11.ZIP.

I also suspect that this is why maybe the shareware version is so hard to find: there's a shareware (now liberated) game called Lords of Doom, which is a DOS graphical roguelike created by a Polish programmer. The shareware archive is also called LOD.ZIP or LOD1.ZIP (depending on the version). I think it's possible that the sysops replaced copies of the Lord of Destruction shareware with Lords of Doom without realizing that these were two different games. For example, IIRC the uwp-uml archive at gamers.org (can't access it right now for some reason) contains Lords of Doom alongside Ultizurk III which is also mentioned in the Google Groups message.
I am looking for the full version if you still have any leads. I actually played the shareware version as a kid back on AOL games and was hoping to find this one. It's one of the last two rare games I played I am trying to find.
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