What happened to Ambrosia Software? Is EVN still around?

[Bloodeyes]

So Escape Velocity Nova was my jam back in the day. I pirated it, because I pirated everything back then. A couple years ago I found myself missing it and I went to their website and attempted to buy it. They were using a weird system that kind of set me on edge, where I had to pay to receive a download code. Not exactly standard practice these days, but fuck it. I'd already played the game so I figured I knew they were a legit firm. Wrong. I put my credit card info and I was charged and never got emailed shit. I tried contacting them and even found a phone number for them in America. I called and a recording told me they won't be answering that number anymore before the call cut out. Uh oh. Some googling found a lot of dismayed customers. People who had been buying from them for years, whose money had just gone with seemingly no recourse. It's like they were a legit company that just said fuck it one day and started blatantly scamming people. I reported it as a scam to my bank but they said they couldn't really do anything. At the time I was understandably pissed but I let it go.

But now I'm curious. What happened to Ambrosia? They developed one of the Codex's most beloved games so someone here may know.

Ambrosia Software was a predominantly Macintosh software company founded in 1993 and located in Rochester, New York, U.S. Ambrosia Software was best known for its video games, but also published utility software. Its products were distributed as shareware; demo versions could be downloaded and used for up to 30 days. The company also released some products for iOS. Ambrosia's best-selling program was the utility Snapz Pro X,[1] according to a 2002 interview with company president Andrew Welch.

In 2017, customers reported on Ambrosia's Facebook page that attempts to contact the company were unsuccessful and they were unable to make new purchases.[2] As of July 2019, the website is offline.

This really doesn't cover it. They didn't just shut down, they disappeared suddenly without any kind of public statement and they were accepting money and not delivering software for a while. Just what the fuck actually happened here? Was it drugs? Did someone go to jail? WTF?

 

[Prime Junta]

I wanted to replay EVN too just now. I even bought it back in the day although my license key is long disappeared into bit heaven. Sad to see that it’s no longer possible legally. No idea what happened and where Welch is now.

 

[blessed king of longing]

Copy pasting from the "official" Discord:

The apple store happened, ambrosia refused to adopt, so they stopped making money and software. Andrew Welch laid off all his employees and still sold license codes that were never delivered because the email system wasn't working. Eventually the entire website went down from lack of maintenance.

A little bit more than that. Ambrosia also looked like they were putting all their eggs in one or two baskets (Wiretap Pro, Snapz X Pro, and one or two other apps) that I believe were either out-performed by other paid-for apps or were matched by cheaper or free apps, such as ones that came with the OS. They also stopped making or publishing games as well, other than some $1 iOS app called Hypnoblocks or something. Not that it mattered because they did not adapt to any distribution platforms like Steam or GOG. They stopped making games long before they stopped publishing them, which is also problematic with app stores and distributors like Steam. Why pay Ambrosia to publish your product when you could bypass them entirely and go indie on a bigger, wider platform and keep more revenue for yourself?
At the very, very least, ASW should have ported some of their original titles like Barrak and Maelstrom to newer platforms. And not spent the last few years of their life clutching onto Snapz and Wiretap
Of course, all of that would have had to happen before lay-offs and the like.
Minor, but also lack of sales and price drops. I believe EVN still costed $30 in the last days of ASW's life, even when it was like 10 years old at that point. It's rare that even AAA games are that expensive when that old.

not long after Nova came out, Andrew Welch decided he didn't want Ambrosia to be a game company anymore, because games were for kids and he wanted to make serious utility software. That was when they changed the company logo, among other things.
they continued publishing a few more games but it was not the focus of the company, Andrew mostly withdrew from the community (he used to post on the forums a lot). I think part of it is that he got married. There was some other personal stuff I've heard about but don't know about firsthand
the Mac App Store was a major blow, but that came later on

SO yeah, no good thing lasts forever but at least the EV scene is far from dead: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-frontier-override/description
And there are still ways to play the games https://www.reddit.com/r/Escape_Velocity/comments/9atyzj/ev_nova_download_links_and_more/

A guy did a livestream a few years ago with Matt Burch (EVN designer)


The same guy wrote a very underrated book covering stories and games history that have never been covered before, highly recommended if you were at all into early Mac gaming http://secrethistoryofmacgaming.com/

BTW even if you have a legit key, they're set to expire and there's no way to legitimately get a new one. Thankfully made irrelevant by the community in the reddit link

 

[Bloodeyes]

Wow thanks for your informative post blessed king of longing. I've been pissed off and perplexed about that for years. It's great to finally have some answers.

 

[blessed king of longing]

It's a sad ending to Ambrosia for sure, but if this EVO remake gets any traction, maybe some interesting things can start happening for the series again. EV doesn't seem to get a lot of traction around here tho, I guess it's part of an obscure subgenre to begin with

 

[Bloodeyes]

It's a sad ending to Ambrosia for sure, but if this EVO remake gets any traction, maybe some interesting things can start happening for the series again. EV doesn't seem to get a lot of traction around here tho, I guess it's part of an obscure subgenre to begin with

We used to have a big list of EVN likes pinned somewhere. It's how I discovered the game.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Nice that Original designers making remake but won't give a shekel for site which runs racist slogan like Black Lives Matter, get your game on Steam Green light then we talk Comrade.

 

[blessed king of longing]

We used to have a big list of EVN likes pinned somewhere. It's how I discovered the game.

Any chance for a link?

Nice that Original designers making remake but won't give a shekel for site which runs racist slogan like Black Lives Matter, get your game on Steam Green light then we talk Comrade.

I mean steam has shit like diversity sales and weird sex shit...

https://i.ibb.co/XsjD4PY/Steams-Come-A-Long-Way.png
https://i.ibb.co/wJdJVRC/STEAMTRANNY.png
https://i.ibb.co/85nWBcc/steam.png

You can't really get away from it unless you hit the Epic store

 

[Grotesque]

I've downloaded the game to give it a try.

Is there a patch to make it run in full screen on 16:9 monitors with the image unstreched?

 

[blessed king of longing]

I've downloaded the game to give it a try.

Is there a patch to make it run in full screen on 16:9 monitors with the image unstreched?

There's a resolution patch listed here, but I haven't tried it myself: https://www.reddit.com/r/Escape_Velocity/comments/9atyzj/ev_nova_download_links_and_more/

 

[Jaedar]

Escape velocity nova is great, but I could never really get into any of the other games in the genre.

I would recommend some kind of money cheat though, all the late game stuff requires way too much grinding to get legitly. I mean yeah, you can just run a safe and profitable trade route 50 times and have enough money, but it's basically a waste of time.

 

[Bloodeyes]

We used to have a big list of EVN likes pinned somewhere. It's how I discovered the game.

Any chance for a link?

A search reveals nothing. Either I misremember or it's been lost. The closest I can find is this thread stickied in the Space Games forum which mentions EVN in its OP. This may be what I was thinking of.

 

[Xelocix]

So Escape Velocity Nova was my jam back in the day. I pirated it, because I pirated everything back then.

Why stop?

 

[Grotesque]

this game can be played with a joystick or HOTAS?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

today you learned a new lesson: keep pirating, they deserve it.

 

[Bloodeyes]

Escape velocity nova is great, but I could never really get into any of the other games in the genre.

I would recommend some kind of money cheat though, all the late game stuff requires way too much grinding to get legitly. I mean yeah, you can just run a safe and profitable trade route 50 times and have enough money, but it's basically a waste of time.

It doesn't take long to get rich hauling bioweapons. Especially not once you get to a full escort squad of Leviathans with fully upgraded engines, turn rates and fuel capacity. All hauling full loads of bioweapons.

Copy pasting from the "official" Discord:
SO yeah, no good thing lasts forever but at least the EV scene is far from dead: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-frontier-override/description
And there are still ways to play the games https://www.reddit.com/r/Escape_Velocity/comments/9atyzj/ev_nova_download_links_and_more/

Do you know if the mods that were hosted on the Ambrosia website still exist? I used to use one that added a bunch of new ship upgrades as well as allowing you to purchase different levels of ships. I forget what other ones I used but there were actually a fair few mods for EVN. It's crazy to me how this game seems to be almost forgotten and gone. I didn't play this 30 years ago or anything. More like 10 - 14 years ago.

 

[blessed king of longing]

It doesn't take long to get rich hauling bioweapons. Especially not once you get to a full escort squad of Leviathans with fully upgraded engines, turn rates and fuel capacity. All hauling full loads of bioweapons.



Do you know if the mods that were hosted on the Ambrosia website still exist? I used to use one that added a bunch of new ship upgrades as well as allowing you to purchase different levels of ships. I forget what other ones I used but there were actually a fair few mods for EVN. It's crazy to me how this game seems to be almost forgotten and gone. I didn't play this 30 years ago or anything. More like 10 - 14 years ago.

Sorry to reply so late. The best link I've found so far is http://www.cytheraguides.com/archives/ambrosia_addons/evn/
also http://ev.appcraft.name/http://www.cytheraguides.com/archives/ambrosia_addons/evn/

Then there's a big pack (probably the same plugins), again from the official fan Discord: http://www.mediafire.com/file/om49pbnkzu2et0c/Ambrosia_Plug-Ins_Collection.zip/file "Here You Go Guys A Butt Load Of Plugins From Ambrosia's Site Before They Closed It Downloaded Everything Before Then"

The problem is a lot of the plugins were made for the mac version, so i think many of them first have to be extracted with specific software (sitx format etc) and then maybe also converted, but that utility should come with EVN



Personally I never saw any point in using other peoples plugins since I like the base game the way it is, and making changes with EVNEW is easy as it is

http://www.ambrosiaarchive.com/goodies/thepcnovasong.mp3 and just found this old gem lol

 

[blessed king of longing]

It doesn't take long to get rich hauling bioweapons. Especially not once you get to a full escort squad of Leviathans with fully upgraded engines, turn rates and fuel capacity. All hauling full loads of bioweapons.



Do you know if the mods that were hosted on the Ambrosia website still exist? I used to use one that added a bunch of new ship upgrades as well as allowing you to purchase different levels of ships. I forget what other ones I used but there were actually a fair few mods for EVN. It's crazy to me how this game seems to be almost forgotten and gone. I didn't play this 30 years ago or anything. More like 10 - 14 years ago.

did you end up playing and checking out any mods? after looking at a few, apparently theres some that allow you to pick rare variant ships, and also pick mission strains, they were kinda hard to get without editing. actually thinking of trying a bunch of these out after all.