Iron Seed
| Iron Seed | |
|---|---|
 Main game screen, with sensor function displayed | |
| Developer(s) | Channel 7 |
| Publisher(s) | Softdisk |
| Designer(s) | Jeremy Stanton |
| Programmer(s) | Robert W. Morgan III |
| Composer(s) | Andrew Sega |
| Engine | Custom |
| Platform(s) | MS-DOS |
| Release date(s) | 1994 |
| Genre(s) | Space trading and combat simulator, Real-time strategy, role-playing video game |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Distribution | 3.5" disk |
Iron Seed is a 1994 DOS video game, developed and published by Channel 7. It is a real-time strategy, science fiction, space trading and combat game.
Description
The player begins with a single ship and a chosen crew. Planets are randomly generated and numerous ship designs and crew selection allow for different playing styles. Research, exploration, and diplomacy are essential elements for success. New ships, new upgrades, and ancient artifacts help the player in their efforts. Combat can be both in the form of random encounters or planned for by the player.
Development History
The story and art were created by Jeremy Stanton, the code was written by Robert W. Morgan III. The music was composed by the computer musician Andrew Sega who gained reputation in the 90s demoscene as Necros. The game was released and distributed by Softdisk in 1994.
After the game was not available commercially for many years it was released as freeware around 2003 to promote the development of the successor Ironseed II. As progress on the development of the successor and further patching of Ironseed was unlikely the source code of Ironseed 1 released by the developers to the public under the GPL in March 2013. A final patch (v1.20.0016) was released with the source code.
Technical
The game was written with Borland Turbo Pascal for DOS. Also, the buggy CRT library included in Turbo Pascal was used, resulting in 'Runtime error 200' messages on CPUs faster than approximately 200 MHz.[1] This was fixed with a later released patch.
Reception
Iron Seed received a Top Dog award from Home of the Underdogs, who highlighted the game's replayability through the random planets and options, and allowance of different playing styles through the various ship designs and crews. It drew comparisons with the earlier Starflight series and the later Master of Orion.[2] Ironseed was archived by the Internet Archive as Classic PC Game in 2012.[3]
Awards
- HOTU TopDog Award (Relaunched HOTU Version)
- MobyGames 4/5 Points (2008-08-25)
External links
- Iron Seed 2 Site free download of Iron Seed, official new patches for Iron Seed
and the Iron Seed 2 forum. - Iron Seed at MobyGames
- Ironseed 2 Interview on StarGamer.net (Internet Archive version, January 2008)
References
- ↑ Information about the Borland Pascal CRT bug
- ↑ "Iron Seed review". Home of the Underdogs. Retrieved 2012-09-22.
- ↑ Ironseed in the Webarchive