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[Shuan Wuan]

I remember playing it 7 years ago on my 486, then I lost the disk and haven't been able to find it again.I think it was also known as "Cyber Chopper". The music was great and the gameplay was fun, you could blow up virtually anything and after each mission you got money with which to buy upgrades and fuel.It would make a great addition if its not protected.

-Sorry about the bad grammar and spelling-

[Tom Henrik]

This one?

Won't be abandoned for another couple of years, as it is an Ubi Soft production.

[Shuan Wuan]

No, Operation Vulture 3 came out in I'd say 1995 by H/M Software and it was 2d.

Edit: I managed to find a shareware copy, but it doesn't like dosbox, when it trys playing sound/music it locks up and freezes your machine, so that you have to cold-restart.

[Luchsen]

In contact with developer if it's active shareware.

[Luchsen]

Developer not existent anymore. [APPROVED]

[corey6969]

Hey,
I am sorry to bring back an old thread but I was wondering if this game will ever be added to the site. I have been looking for the full version everywhere but havent found it yet. I do have the shareware version and do have it working in Dosbox and on my old 486. So any word on the game?

[ChuckHomic]

Hey. One half of H/M Software here.

I'd say we're prepared to public domain everything we've done as shareware. I don't know how to make that legal, but there you go.

I noticed that even though the moderator said [APPROVED] it's still not on the site. I can help sourcing the software, but you can download it pretty much anywhere from one of dozens of DOS game nostalgia web sites. I can also dig up the sequel, which was only made available to folks who registered the shareware version. (Which, by the way, was none of you slackers. We only asked for $15, people...)

Thank you for the comment about the music, Shuan. I wrote all the music, and I was just listening to the Level 1 song today which inspired me to see if anyone remembers the game. Out of the entire Internet, this thread seems to be it.

[The Fifth Horseman]

I'd say we're prepared to public domain everything we've done as shareware. I don't know how to make that legal, but there you go.

Releasing a program under public domain must be done through a notary. Doing so would relinquish any control, ownership or copyright you hold over the game.

A simpler means of achieving free redistributability of the program would be just changing the license, allowing you to retain the copyrights for any future use. According to this article, including an appropriate licensing document with the software pretty much takes care of that.

To give you something to work from, here is a copy of a release note included by Apogee in their freeware re-release of Caves of Thor:

Caves of Thor Release Notes - December 2005
Caves of Thor is (c)1989/2005 Apogee Software, Ltd.
---------------------------------------------------

This game was deleted from Apogee's product line quite a long time ago, and 
has been re-released as freeware in December of 2005.  There are a few notes
you should be aware of with the release.

1) We offer no support in helping to getting this freeware release running.  
   You are on your own in getting it working.

2) Each episode needs to be run seperately.  The respective commands for 
   each episode are caves.exe (Ep1), realm.exe (Ep2), & revenge.exe (Ep3).

3) This game does not handle modern computers very well, and as such 
   requires a third party program to help your computer adapt to the game
   better.  We strongly recommend the use of MoSlo, a program that can make
   a program think the computer is slower.  We have a demo version of this
   program in the "Miscellaneous Files" section of our downloads page here:
   http://www.3drealms.com/downloads.html

4) The offer for source code mentioned inside the game no longer exists; no
   one lives at the addresses mentioned in the documentation.  Please do not
   try and contact anyone at these places - if someone is there, it's
   not us, you'll just be bothering someone who has no idea what you're 
   talking about.

5) This game is released as freeware.  That's not to be confused with 
   public domain, abandonware (which is illegal), or releasing something 
   under the GPL.   This is a freeware release, which means we retain full 
   legal rights to the title and it's materials.  You are free to play the 
   game as we've released it, but not free to "do whatever you want with 
   it", which includes selling it or otherwise using the materials for your
   own gain.

Enjoy Caves of Thor!
-- Apogee Tech Support, December 2005

license

A generalized fill-in-the-blanks version would be something like this:

<title> Release Notes - <current date>
<title> is (c) <original release year>/<current year> <copyright holder>
---------------------------------------------------

This game was discontinued from our product line a long time ago, and 
has been re-released as freeware in <current date>.  There are a few notes
you should be aware of with the release.

1) We offer no support for this freeware release.

2) This game was not produced with modern computers in mind. You may 
   need a third party program such as DOSBox (http://dosbox.com/) to run it 
   properly on modern computers.

3) This game is released as freeware. That's not to be confused with 
   public domain, abandonware or GPL. This is a freeware release, which 
   means we retain full legal rights to the title and it's materials.  You 
   are free to play the game as we've released it, but not free to "do
   whatever you want with it", which includes selling it or otherwise using
   the materials for your own gain.

-- <copyright holder>, <current date>

[TotalAnarchy]

"Approved" means that whoever has the game is allowed to share it and upload it on Abandonia's FTP. Since there was noone who had it, it wasn't uploaded on site. Plus after being uploaded on the FTP, we also need some time to find people willing to review it, also from our regular users. So there

I can give you FTP access so you can upload the games on our FTP, if it's not a problem. I don't know how people release software in the public domain. Maybe you just need to go to a notary/lawyer and authentificate the document.

[ChuckHomic]

Thank you for the info. Apogee's freeware license seems preferable to public domain. Anywho, the shareware version is freely distributable as-is, so if you give me the FTP info, I'll upload that. Once I find Operation Vulture 4, I'll whip up a license and upload that, too. Thanks for the support.