Envoy - who owns it, and where do you buy it?

[First Ninja]

Thank you everyone involved in this thread for trying to sort out what Envoy actually looks like (along with its manual). It may be in place to emphasize that Envoy features a slew of features native to AmigaOS that aren't integrated in TCP/IP (filesystem notifications comes to mind). In that sense, the two protocols are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary - and fortunately, I also recollect that Envoy 3 allows for TCP/IP tunneling.

About the Envoy 3 box, this super low-res piece of cover art is the single photo I've found of what I presume is the jewel case (provided that Envoy ships on a CD). What the back of it, along with any actual box, looks like is still a big mystery to me - so anyone with some insight is more than welcome to post a few photos here.

[Matt_H]

@ First Ninja

I've had similar luck in finding what the original 3.0 retail version looked like. I think I mentioned above that I've only ever seen one other copy, on eBay at least five years ago, probably much longer. That low-res image is indeed the front, and the back looks similar to Schatztruhe's other CD-ROM releases, e.g., the Aminet CDs. Almost certainly the same designer.

I suspect it shipped as jewel case only, with no outer box or printed docs, like the Aminet CDs, and in keeping with the minimalist style of v2.0.

[First Ninja]

Got it, and thank you for digging out a few more pieces of this jigsaw puzzle. You've likely come to the same conclusion yourself, but searching for Envoy on online market places gets complicated by the fact that there is another piece of Amiga software called "Terran Envoy".

Since Envoy reportedly runs really well on Release 4.1, here's hoping that the development will be picked up one way or another. Personally, I think a multiplayer game using the Envoy API would be something truely special.

[Matt_H]

There have been some issues on recent versions of 4.1. It throws up some DOS warnings if you try to write to a shared volume from another machine. Dismiss the warning and all is well, but it’s annoying. I’ve tried playing with the DOS Compatibility prefs to auto ignore the issues, but no luck so far. I haven’t tried it with the new Update 2 yet. Really hoping that will resolve it...

And there are one or two games that support Envoy—see Aminet. They’re turn-based as opposed to real-time, but a game is a game .

[First Ninja]

All the more reason to update Envoy, then - fingers extra crossed that development will resume as soon as possible, especially with the increasing interest in the Amiga echo system in mind.

About those games, thank you for bringing it to everyone's attention. Using the search term "Envoy" currently yields 23 results on Aminet, and one of them is clearly a game - MUI Empire. Here's the description, for anyone interested:

This game has never been tested on a real Envoy setup. I only have one computer so please give me all the information you can if you run into a problem.

This is a beta version and you are welcome to download it and take a look. I will not take any responsibility to any damage done by this program since it is still beta.

Description: Multiplayer galactic conquest game using MUI. It can support unlimited players, unlimited planets and unlimited ship types (limited by memory). It has a sector by sector approach for the game. You can program flight plans for your fleets. It has space mines, hypergates, fuel, taxation, troops, trade and alot more.

It even comes with source code.