Greetings Pie3D Archiver

[Technopeasant]

Greetings,

My name is Graham Lawrence Wilson and I am a programmer, writer and webmaster who has a keen interest in retro-gaming - particularly old DOS first-person shooters. I am actually sixteen, soon seventeen, so I was born a generation after them which makes my interest all the more notable. After coming across Pie3D from several games from www.dosgames.com/ I made a Wikipedia article on the subject using all the sources I could find.

Link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_in_the_Sky_(game_engine)

Sadly, I missed this, and a few other sites, when I first did in in March 2010 as I was using "Pie3D" as my Google search term instead of "GCS". Still, this has now been corrected. Soon after posting the article I was actually contacted by Kevin Stokes who came to my software group, Piga Software, forum and thanked me in person and mentioned that PieSkySoft is now back in action making apps for Android.

Link: pieintheskysoftware.com/

We also got to talking about a possible source code release. Stokes says he has dug up the old code and would like to port it to OpenGL (from Direct3D - ick) and get it running fine again if he can and then release it. Do not get your hopes up (this was last discussed by him and me in November) but maybe if you find anyone interested with skill in C++ you can talk to him. I do not have any experience in that front so I have just been able to function as advocate.

Link: piga.7.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=97

Anyways, a more refined search lead me to this site and I would just like to say hello and let you know you are not alone in the world of Pie3D. As I said, I am also quite interested in retro-gaming and particularly retro-game archiving which is the main effort of my Blood Wiki project (for the games Blood, 1997 DOS, and Blood II, 1998 Windows).

Link: blood-wiki.org/

[Saturdaynight]

Teachnopeasent, thank you for visiting this site and sharing with me, your information. As you can see, it can sometimes take a while to get a response here. There are a few of us out there that still toy with the Pie GCS.

You can also visit gcscentral.proboards.com. They cover many game creation application and are a great little community.

Nice work on the Wiki!

Further, it is good to here that you were able to get in touch with Kevin Stokes! If Keven released that code, I am sure people would be ecstatic.

I'm sure Kevin is like me. I've always got a lot on the plate and it's hard to promise something when you are constantly busy.

I am still actively working on pie GCS projects when time permits. I'm sure you've seen the screen shots on the homepage. For the DOS GCS they aren't bad at all.

My C++ skills have been out of practice for some time. I went to school for programming but I can at least read and comprehend most of the code.

Anyway, welcome aboard and I hope to hear more from you in the future. Keep in touch.

[Technopeasant]

Ah, alright. Sorry for being a bit late to get back here myself. I will keep in touch if Stokes ever gets back to me on the source code thing. I might just talk to him and tell him that I have at least someone who is interested in peeping at it. He seemed to be under the delusion that everyone had forgotten about this engine.

[Saturdaynight]

That is the reason I have this site kicking around. Even though this engine does not hold a candle to todays gaming platforms it still is enjoyable to make games for people to play or at the very least makes game for your own satisfaction.

[Technopeasant]

Here is a message I just sent off to Kevin Stokes:

"Hello again Mr. Stokes,

I hope I do not sound too insistent bringing this up again but I have more news. A few months ago I found out that whilst making my article and finding sources for it via Google searches I made the fundamental error of never using the term "GCS" and so missed out on finding some of the best sites for Pie3D on the web. I have now partly corrected this by linking to them from the article's external links, though I have not really updated the article based on my findings yet. Anyways, one of the sites I found is a guy who runs a site called GCS Archives and aims to host backups for all things related to the GCS. He hosts a forum on his site and I posted an introductory message and he recently finally got back to me. He says he knows people would be interested in a code release and he has some cursory C++ knowledge and says he would at least glimpse at the code. I just thought I would send this message to you and re-print the offer.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_in_the_Sky_%28game_engine%29#External_links
gcsarchive.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=4

Look into this if you life,
Graham L. Wilson

Technical director,
Piga Software
icculus.org/piga/"

[Saturdaynight]

Well written!

[Technopeasant]

You think that is something? Some of my e-mails are truly intricate articulate mass diatribes.

Though I guess that shows that I am obsessive, or at least struggle with the concept of "casual correspondence". :-P

Anyways, no reply yet but I can wait.

[Technopeasant]

Hello, I just decided to pop in today and would just like to thank you for noting my article, and my name, on your site.

I also had a look around your links page, and have one or two suggestions. First off, you should link to Stokes' new site, if only just to support him. Not to mention the great history pages. I also came across a great little collection of Pie3D games to download (links that actually still work I might add) here: www.demu.org/pages/search.php?search=Pie&Submit=%C2%A0%C2%A0Search%C2%A0%C2%A0

The MD2 sites are very much appreciated, as those might just serve well for my own purposes. By the way, I did another Google crawl today and came across this interesting use for Pie3D: education in the realm of problem solving!

Link: www.cs.uccs.edu/~chamillard/cs110/cs110advertising.htm

Good luck on your DOS version demonstration. Those multidimensional platforms are really cool considering how Pie3D works!

[Saturdaynight]

Technopeasant, yeah I'm feeling the bug again so I might just do some updates to the links page to incorporate those links. thanks for the links.

It may be an old engine, but nothing is easier at producing 3D FPS games then Pie3D GCS.