When Word Perfect 5.1 was new, companies invested in tutorials and trainings to get to know the in's and out's of the latest Word Perfect version. One of the Dutch tutorials included 'Olifanten jagen' (Elephant hunting) which was a simple game with a simple goal: get all the elephants in a cage. Now you can play it with two players, on one PC or over IPX-network! To keep things civilized I named the game 'Elephant Herding' rather than 'Elephant Hunting'.

The game consists of two versions: 'HERDING.EXE' is a two player version on one computer. 'HERDINGS.EXE' is a two player version over an IPX-network. Both executables are written for DOS and the IPX-network version needs corresponding DOS-drivers. See 'How to run this game?' for more instructions.

Download

Download the game (Turbo Pascal 7 source code included) here.

Video

Screenshot

How to run this game?

Extract the ZIP-file and run 'HERDING.EXE' for a two player version on one computer. One player can use the A-W-S-D keys, the other player can use the regular arrow-keys.

In order to play over IPX-network you have to load up the corresponding network drivers for your network card. An example would be (in the right orde): load up LSL, PNPODI and then IPXODI. In this example 'PNPODI' is a specific ODI-driver for the NE2000-compatible chipset. Using network cards like 3Com you probably need other drivers. After loading the drivers you can start 'HERDINGS.EXE' and press '1' to act as server or press any other key to act as client. Keep in mind that the slowest PC should run the 'server' role in order to get the best performance. A 286 is recommended to play Elephant Herdings over IPX, however a 8MHz XT will work but slows down when multiple Elephants are moving.

To increase performance, make sure your PC is running optimal and is able to read/write ASCII characters as fast as possible. Depending on your hardware configuration you can increase display speed by using 'TheFast Version 1.06' Screen Display Speed Up Utility. The utility is available for download here.

Running it under DOSBox on modern PCs

1. Download DOSBox 0.74 and install it.
2. Go to Start > Programs > DOSBox-0.74 > Options and open DOSBox 0.74 Options.
3. Scroll down to the bottom and set IPX to true and mount a C: drive (make it like the screenshot below)

4. Save the file.
5. Create a folder in C:\ and name it 'DOS' (you'll get C:\DOS).
6. Extract Elephant Herding into C:\DOS.
7. Start up DOSBox through the start menu.
8. In DOSBox you have to define a server and client as follows:
8 a. Server: IPXNET STARTSERVER
8 b. Client: IPXNET CONNECT <IP adress of server>
Check out this screenshot if things are unclear: DOSBox IPX.
Note: you can run DOSBox twice on your computer and test it with multiplayer. Just connect to ' IPXNET CONNECT LOCALHOST' or your own IP address.
9. Go to the Elephant Herding folder by writing 'CD HERDING' (see this screenshot for an identical example with NetKeen).
10. Start Elephant Herdings by typing 'HERDINGS'.
11. Make an in-game seection of server/client (note: this doesn't have to correspondent with the server/client role in DOSBox).