Army.  A clone of the 1989 Shareware game by Dwain Goforth.
It can be found in the internet archive on the ISO called Shareware Extravaganza 1993 Disk 1.  The version of the game has a bug in it that prevents blue from attacking red unless it's a cannon.
http://www.archive.org/details/cdrom-sharewareext19931

My history with this game goes way back.  My introduction to it was back at beginnings of the IBM PC days... shortly after the majority of the people in my small community gave up on Commodore.  There were more games for the IBM PC, and many said that the games were better.  VGA was coming.

We played railroad tycoon and warlords, and a few other big name titles.  But the game I remember was a shareware game called Army.  My friend's father found it on a cheap CD of 100 games.
It was a basic game where two players move pieces across a field and fought based on dice-rolls.  We all liked the game so much that we played it for hours and hours.  We played it so much that my friend's father sent the author money.

Time passes and I played a lot of games, and I learned how to write software.

I saw a show about the archive.org and how they were buying book-collections and digitizing them for posterity.  I explore archive.org and found that they had a shareware collection!  So I searched for army.  Nothing.

I found a CD ISO called best board games of 1994, and it was on it!  Sweet.  Well, it was listed as being on the CD but it was not there.

Here's what the listing said:

ARMY is a strategy board game for two players and requires a 640 x 480 VGA adapter and a mouse. The object of the game is to defeat the opposing captain while protecting your captain from attack ("capture the flag".)  There are four kinds of pieces, a board with various kinds of terrain and two rafts which can be used to cross the lake.  Minimum Requirements: EGA or VGA. 

I searched on another CD ISO called Shareware Extravaganza 1993 Disk 1, and it was on it!  Yay!

The manual includes this text:

* Disclaimer *  This game was written by a pacifist.  Any references to real
armies, guns, bullets, and killing is purely coincidental to the goal of
producing a fun game.  While one person can play ARMY it is much more fun with
two real live humans.  My six-year old loves to ride the rafts and shoot
cannons at walls.  I think games should be social, most computer arcade games
leave me dry.

* Sales Pitch *  This game is not free, it has already cost me grey hairs and
probably future cataracts and brain damage.  As Shareware, ARMY is copyrighted
by myself, Dwain Goforth, 1989, and you are licensed to use and distribute it
(please, no modifications.)  No fee whatsoever may be charged for its distri-
bution (including copying, handling, postage, etc., etc...), without my
permission.

I am asking $20 for registration (I know it's alot for a game.)  Registrants
will receive the latest version of the program as well as free trials and
discounts when significant new versions are created.  If you can't afford $20
send what you can and I'll be happy anyway.

With your support I will pursue better sound, the computer as opponent, saving
games in the middle for later retrieval, and the ability to load different
boards and layouts.  I would especially appreciate comments and suggestions
concerning likes and dislikes about ARMY.

Have fun...
Sincerely,

Dwain Goforth
1260 Sunset Ave.
Arcata, California  95521
(707) 822-1291


---

The original game runs successfully in dosbox, but the bug about blue cannons only being able to attack red is a real fun-stopper.

I friended the author on facebook, and emailed him but have received no response.

The reinforcement algorithm was a pure guess.  I'd need information from Dwain to get it 100% right... and he's probably forgotten it by now.  And I seriously doubt that he has the source code lying around still.

This version of the game allows for better sound and better maps to be made.  The saved-game file format is easy to hack -- it is just a tar file with some files inside.  You will find a map file, two images (one is a map, and one is a transparency showing the walls), a music.xml file and some .ogg files that it refers to.  It also contains an armyset file (.ast) that is also a tar file, that contains an armyset description file, along with .png files for the army pieces.

I wrote this clone in a few days, and it's nice that it allows saving and loading of games.  It could easily support network games, if anybody wants that.  A map editor could also be created, but I don't think anybody really wants that either.

I hope that others will continue to share and enjoy this game.
