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[Nirklars]

Thanks for this game! Its really good. And as a bonus the professor sounds just like Dr. Phil.... :amused:

[CataBina]

Anybody here still playing this or having finished all levels?

[Luchsen]

Half yes and yes. Why? In need of help?

[CataBina]

Yup, thanks for the quick reply. Following levels drive me nuts: 51-53, 56, 60, 62-64. and 66 - 74 except for 71. If you have hints for any of these, I'd be most grateful. Especially 51 is AAAAAAARGH!!!! :-)

[Luchsen]

I have not much time, but I will look. Don't be surprised when it takes long, though.

[CataBina]

No problem. I have a life beside Avish and whenever I can spare an hour or so, I'll try one or the other level again.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Batmanifestdestiny]

This game is fun, but I'm stuck at level 3


EDIT: LOL, never mind, now I'm stuck at level 5...or whichever one is Mary Poppins.

Hi

I'm so delighted to read all of your messages.
I never thought people would be playing this game and enjoying it nearly 20 years after it was developed, and it gives me a great joy and pride.
Let me share with you some of the history of this game:

"Avish" was developed by 4 teenagers from Israel:
Dvir Besserglick
Gonen Dukas
Amir Kaminsky
and myself, Amit Amely

The game was developed in Pascal (Borland, if I remember well), with some parts in assembler.
Dvir and Gonen did most of the programming, with some help from Amir.
Dvir designed the main character.
Amir wrote the music and designed most of the levels.
I was responsible for graphics and animation (using a pirated version of AutoDesk Animator Pro), and also designed some levels (I don't remember today which ones. The snail level is mine for sure).
The game concept was the work of all of us together.

We worked on this game during our last year of high school, back in 1992
We did it for fun, not thinking about money.
Avish's character is based on a real person, our history teacher Avishay. He was very dry, strict and humorless, but since he was so absent minded, he managed to gain a cult status and that inspired us to base a computer game on his character. The voice of the Avish is Dvir, making a pretty accurate imitation of Avishay.

After we have finished the game and saw that it was actually pretty cool, we decided to try to make some money out of it. High school was over, I got drafted to the army and wasn't involved in the negotiations with the different computer companies. Eventually they signed a contract with "Bug Multisystem" for 15% of the profits. The game had two versions, Hebrew and English. Bug decided to market the game only in Israel, in the Hebrew version. My friends also had the pleasure of being hosted on a TV show about computers, and talk about the game. The game wasn't a big success, and pretty soon it was moved from the shelves to the cutout bins. It was also given as a prize in a TV computer game show called "Hugo". 2 or 3 years later, each one of us got a 100$ check for the game.

Years have passed. I finished my military service, and went to University to learn computer science. The others did things in the opposite order, and started their military service only then, after finishing their studies. The game was forgotten. One day I found the abandonware site "Home Of The Underdogz". I really liked the idea of sharing old games which are no longer available in the stores for free, and after I discussed it with Dvir, I decided to upload our game to HOTU. So I sent the website author the non released English version (which was also fixed by Dvir to work on Pentium machines). And the rest is history...

Originally Posted by Amit Amely

Hi [...]

Hey,

I'm amazed to read your story. (Even if it's more than a year since.) Thanks for sharing it. I found the game on this site some years ago.

I sat down with a hex editor tonight and figured out large parts of the level format. The probably only thing I miss is the item placement, which I hope to find out later today or in the upcoming days. I got a class now, so I can't continue right now, even if I'd love to. You still have some die-hard fans of the game indeed!

-- Simon

Hey Dvir,

thanks for offering the feedback address. I wrote an email two weeks ago, but I'm not sure whether you check the address anymore. I'd actually like to get in touch with you or Amit about the game. (You can also email me directly, email address is in the text file I'll link to in the next paragraph.)

Anyone: I'm the same person as two posts above, but I never published what I found out about the Avish level format back then. Basically, I know how to make a single level with a hex editor. To make multiple levels, either one must keep all item counts per level the same, or someone must find out how the game decides what portion of resource.dat to read. Here is a thorough description of how a single level is specified:
http://asdfasdf.ethz.ch/~simon/etc/avishformat.txt

-- Simon