Giveaway of the Day Forums

1. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   These two freebies from Apus Software have been around for years. Astral Arrows states a date of 2002 for version 1.1. They are still offered on the Apus site but the forum discussion links fail.

   Hubby noticed last night that Astral Arrows fails and I noticed that Firestones does as well - same error. Both give a "Date_Out Error" at the start and terminate. They get as far as creating a log.txt file with a single line (log) in it.

   I have emailed the developers but I don't have much hope that these old games will be fixed. As far as I can tell, the problem is a 10 year later variation of the Y2K bug - they could not take the change of the "09" to "10"!

   Does anybody have these 2 games that still work? If so, what operating system do you use and how are you getting them to work?

   I looks like I'm gonna lose them and you can't blame this one on Vista. They worked fine until this year!

   Posted 14 years ago #
2. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   I got Astral Arrows back. I contacted Apus software and they gave me a link to a patch to fix the problem. However, the fix didn't work for Firestones so I'm only batting 500 at this point. It's better than nothing!

   Hubby is happy. He doesn't play many games and Astral Arrows is one of the few that he does and he's much better at it than I am.

   Posted 14 years ago #
3. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   I have to give Apus Software a big round of applause! Even on a weekend, they responded to my problems and fixed BOTH programs.

   I needed a new main program for Firestones. It was packed so the patch for Astral Arrows wouldn't work.

   If you have these two "oldies but goodies", use their site's mail point to get his email addy and ask for:

   -- The old game patch for Astral Arrows
   -- A corrected main program replacement for Firestones

   Both old games (tagged for 95 - XP) continue to work fine under Vista32. Neither has a windowed mode but both work great. Astral Arrows is a logic game and Firestones is a noisy Tetris clone.

   Posted 14 years ago #
4. 

   Whiterabbit-uk
   Games Guru

   I posted a link to Firestones a while back. You can find it in the Free Games Synopsis (It has actually only just been added, becasue G@rgoyle used to keep the synopsis up to date. We didn't realize it wasn't until just before Christmas. It's taken me that long to bring it almost up to date. you'll find a whole stack of games similar to firestonesl. :)

   http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/6832

   Posted 14 years ago #
5. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   I thought I had seen Firestones here. The problem with these old games is they are available from so many places and most likely, only the "master" (developer's site) will get their versions fixed. I am hoping that new downloads of the game shortly will have the problem patched. I guess the moral is - if possible, get from the original site!

   I was surprised, and pleased, to get such quick response for such old games and on a weekend.

   Posted 14 years ago #
6. 

   berean
   Member

   Dragonlair, thank you for this information! I love FireStones and when it stopped working on January 1 I was unable to find any up-to-date information about it, and no indication that anyone else had noticed the problem. Somehow, I didn't find the Apus Software site, so I was rapt today to find your posts here. I've emailed the developer and I'm hoping to receive a positive response.

   Posted 14 years ago #
7. 

   berean
   Member

   LOL, just posted the above when a reply arrived from Ivan, the developer. He asked me to post here the link for the fixed executable, so... here it is, along with his advice:

   Please get the fixed executable: http://apus-software.com/files/firestones.exe Just save it to the game folder.

   The full game is available from - http://apus-software.com/product.cgi?p=firestones

   Posted 14 years ago #
8. 

   Florin Giurcan
   Member

   For those who are fans of Astral Arrows ver1.1 I have good news. We corrected (DATE_OUT error), error encountered when starting the game since 2010. Unzip the file is copied here in game folder and running. Enjoy! Authors Florin Giurcan

   Posted 14 years ago #
9. 

   Florin Giurcan
   Member

   Pentru cei care sunt fani Astral Arrows ver1.1 am o veste buna. Am corectat (DATE_OUT error), eroare intalnita la pornirea jocului incepand cu anul 2010. Se dezarhiveaza fisierul copiat de aici in folderul jocului si se ruleaza. Enjoy! Autor Florin Giurcan

   Posted 14 years ago #

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