Nomad

Nomad
Developers: Papyrus Design Group, Intense! Interactive Publisher: GameTek Platforms: DOS Released in US: 1993 This game has unused code. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused models. This game has unused items. This game has unused text.

Nomad is an action/adventure spaceflight game with diplomacy and trading elements.

Unused Code

The Nomad executable has remnants of unused code for the following features:

• EGA support: The game officially only supported VGA graphics, but the hardcoded video mode can be forced to EGA and the game will operate in that mode. For v1.01 of the game, the mode can be changed by altering the 16-bit scalar 13 00 at location 468B6 in the EXE; changing it to 0D 00 enables EGA. Certain parts of the game (including the intro sequence) do not work correctly in EGA. The intro can be skipped by adding nointro to the config file.
• Ship selector list: The game originally used a pick-list for selecting ships to scan or attack. This was eventually replaced with a round-robin selector, but the pick-list code remains in the executable.
• Demo playback: Some code remains to support the playback of mouse/keyboard input for running the game in a "demo" mode. These input records were to be stored in a file named "SPACE.DMO".
• Cargo pods: Originally, the player's ship was intended to have a small cargo capacity, and extra cargo pods could be added to increase it. When this concept was removed from the final game, the player's cargo capacity was simply fixed to a large number (500,000 tradeable items). The vertical fill-level bar at the right of the Inventory window is a vestige of this game mechanic, although the inventory size is now so large that the bar will never show more than one pixel of usage.

Unused Title Screen

Before release, the game had a working title of "Space Mountain" and would be tied-in to the Disneyland attraction with the same name. The Disney ties were severed before release, although this title screen remained in the data files:

Unused Inventory Items

Acodin Pill

This appears to be the sole normal item that has a name and illustration, but that does not appear in the game. It is mentioned in some dialogue text, but is not carried in the cargo hold of any ship.

Unnamed Item Illustrations

The game tracks several abstract concepts in its object data table, and these are not meant to have an illustration associated with them. However, their object slot numbers happen to match those used by three unused object images:

Unused Dialogue

The game has special code for handling conversation with the Kenelm species, which communicate directly in English via a telepathic link. The normal conversation menus are not used, so the player does not have the opportunity to inquire about other aliens, locations, and objects. However, the Kenelm dialogue file contains the lines that would be used in this situation:

Ship's computer unable to establish com-link with alien identified as Kenelm.

Ship's computer detects no response from alien identified as Kenelm.

The Kenelm seek only

To please you, would you like <number> <item> for <number> <item>?

It is done.

No.

No, thank you.

We must return to our work to transform into physical entities.

Unused Animation

Many of the game's alien races have a cultural history that includes stories about legendary figures. Although there are portraits associated with the IDs of these figures, they are simply re-used Chanticleer portraits.

Unused Models

The game contains an unused 3D model of a ship (SHABS.BIN) for the Shaasa alien race:

...and one for an unused labor bot capsule (BOTA.BIN):

Hidden Text

The dialogue text file for the Player contains only the single string "Go away!!!"