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Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space is an innovative computer game which was written shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union.  It's a simulation of the US-Soviet Space Race.  This is a game for one or two players; you choose one of the two superpowers, head that country's space program, and try to beat your opponent to the Moon.

The game has a lot of wonderful features, including a whole range of different ways to get to the Moon.  You can follow in NASA's footsteps and fly Apollo, or try the Soviet strategy of sending up a Soyuz capsule on their ill-fated N1 moon rocket.  You could even fly a Gemini to the Moon--a proposal that NASA eventually rejected in favor of Apollo.  Alternatively, you might decide we were wrong to get away from the idea of reusable spacecraft, and put NASA back on track toward an early type of Space Shuttle.  Or you might even take the science-fiction-inspired Direct Ascent approach with one big capsule that does it all!  Not enough variety?  How about a Soviet scheme to land an entire Soyuz capsule on the Moon?

Growing up, I loved to read about the history of the Space Race, about the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions (back then we didn't have much information about the Soviet space program), about how we went to the Moon, and I'd wonder why we didn't adopt reusable spacecraft back with the Dyna-Soar.  When I saw this game on the shelves back in '93, I was blown away.  Now I could fly to the Moon myself!  Woohoo!

The game is reasonably, though not slavishly, historically based.  Most of the programs that reached production, and then some, are represented here.  Quite a few changes were made for game-balance purposes, but without taking away the historical feel of the game.

Unfortunately BARIS is a fairly difficult game--some would say too difficult (I get into that in my Tips and Background, or you can read the reviews below).  But it still holds endless fascination and playability for those of us who are space-obsessed.  The game was originally published in 1992 on floppy disk.  A year later, it was re-released in an Extended CD-ROM version, which included much better movies, and several small improvements that made it a bit easier, especially for the American player.

 See a comparison of spacecraft in BARIS to their real-life counterparts

Historical Inaccuracies

Any historical sim is going to have a certain amount of simplification and historical inaccuracy, and BARIS works very hard to be true to history, but to make the game work well (and be fun), certain compromises were made.

The way the game works is based mostly on the US space program; much of how the Soviets did things is shoehorned into that model for the sake of simplicity and gameplay.  For instance, the Soviets didn't have a central space agency; they had two or three bureaus that designed and produced hardware that was then approved or rejected by military and political circles.  That would be very complex to simulate (and probably less fun), so instead they took the most important of the bureaus, which had the most influential leader for the first half of the Space Race (Korolyov's), and presented it as a NASA equivalent.

Infighting between the Soviet bureaus, and the duplication of effort it entailed, was one reason they were hampered in getting to the Moon.  Another was that the USSR didn't spend nearly as much on the project as the Americans (an estimated $5-10 billion, versus $23 billion).  They also got off to a late start: it took them two years to figure out that Kennedy's Moon speech was the start of an earnest project and not just a propaganda device--and they couldn't have started much sooner anyway, since a lunar program wasn't in the current Five-Year Plan.  These differences would make the game awfully lopsided, so they were basically ignored.

It should be mentioned that even the Americans had somewhat more going on than just NASA; branches of the military started some efforts toward a space program early on--in fact, Explorer was US Army, though their program dried up shortly after.  The Air Force's space program had some real substance to it and lasted into the 1960s.  The X-20 Dyna-Soar, for instance, was USAF, not NASA.  Likewise, the Air Force had a parallel capsule program called Blue Gemini which would have flown astronauts on military space missions.  Blue Gemini actually flew some unmanned missions; it even refurbished a used Gemini capsule from NASA and relaunched it, accomplishing the first reuse of a spacecraft in history.  The Manned Orbiting Lab was also USAF, and would have used a Blue Gemini capsule and a modified rocket stage; in BARIS the MOL is a mission where you dock two spacecraft together, but that can be any capsule/shuttle combination with docking capability: Gemini/Voskhod, Apollo/Soyuz, or XMS-2/Lapot.

Voskhod was modified to make it a true equivalent to Gemini, the minishuttles are substantially modified from their historical antecedents, and the direct-ascent capsules are almost entirely made up.  Also the Cricket and Duet lunar modules are inventions of the BARIS development team, since they needed one- and two-person equivalents of the Eagle and LK lunar modules, respectively.  The open-topped one-man lander from the Lunar Gemini proposals didn't work well in gameplay testing, so it wasn't included.

Another area where Soviet practices were made to conform to American ones concerns crewing the capsules.  The American approach was simple: 1 man on Mercury, 2 on Gemini, 3 on Apollo.  Not so with the Soviets.  One of the two Voskhod flights had three cosmonauts stuffed inside without space suits so they could grab the three-person prestige first, and many of the Soyuz missions held only one or two cosmonauts.  In fact, the reason they developed the LK lunar module (called L-3 in the game) was because they planned their lunar mission to have only two cosmonauts.  But again, it made things easier and simpler to use the American plan for BARIS--although added flexibility in crew assignments could have been one of the Soviets' advantages.

Then there's the naming of missions: BARIS uses the American practice of using the program name and adding a number which increments for each mission, manned or unmanned, regardless of mission type (e.g., Gemini I, II, III).  The Soviets tended to use different names for different types of missions.  For instance, the unmanned (and canine-crewed) Voskhod missions were dubbed Cosmos, and unmanned Soyuz flights were named Zond ("Probe")--and both names were also used for interplanetary probes.

Intelligence is an area where the situation for the United States was carried over to the USSR for the sake of game balance.  The Soviet space program was all secret, of course, and the Americans had to guess at what their counterparts were planning, with some help from what the CIA was able to sniff out.  Fritz estimated that US intel was roughly half accurate during the Space Race, and that's how it is in BARIS--up or down 10% depending on your difficulty level.  But the Soviets always knew what the Americans were up to, since NASA's doings were open to the public.  KGB agents could, and did, attend launches.  This could have been one of the Soviet advantages in the game (and, in fact, it is just that in Blast Off, a spinoff to the game), but that's not how it was done in BARIS.

One way in which American hardware was made like the Soviet in this game is that during this time in history, the Atlas rocket could not be boosted--but in BARIS, strap-on boosters can be used with it.  It's uncertain if this was done for game-balance purposes: not allowing boosted Atlases would make for a big handicap for the Americans early in the game.

Multiplayer

The original floppy version offered only Hotseat.  However, the CD version added Modem and Play-by-Email.  This was, of course, written before the days of TCP/IP or even IPX multiplayer.  Unfortunately, even these meager options aren't fully usable: while the Modem option works in DOS 6.22, BARIS fails to recognize the modem in Windows--even DOSBox can't seem to get around that limitation.

Operating System

The game was written for MS-DOS.  The Floppy version usually runs ok in Windows 95/98, and sometimes in Windows 2000 or XP.  However, it can be finicky, especially the CD-ROM version.  Fortunately there is a freely-available DOS emulator called DOSBox, and I've had good success with it--I've even used it to get the CD version to run really well in Windows 2000, which is pickier about DOS programs than XP.  DOSBox is available at http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/comp_list.php?showID=623&letter=B .  DOSBox is a command-line program, which means you have to use a bunch of commands and switches to use it.  Luckily someone has written a Windows interface for it, called D-Fend 2, which used to be downloadable from http://members.home.nl/mabus/.  You're probably best off using DOSBox .65, which works with the latest stable release of D-Fend 2, D-Fend 2.0.62.  I've written a guide to setting up BARIS to run in DOSBox & D-Fend 2.

DOSBox does require some processing power, so it works best on faster systems (i.e., newer systems, which tend to have more problems running the game natively--it's nice how that works out!).  To give you some idea, it ran just fine on my old PIV-1.8GHz, but ugly slow on my even older PIII-450MHz system.

If you've acquired the CD version but INSTALL.EXE doesn't run properly on your system, I have a solution for you.  Download BARIS_Installed.zip and unzip it to the drive or folder where you want the game.  It will automatically install the game to a subfolder under the drive or folder you unzip to.  Then point DOSBox to that location, per the instructions in my guide above.

However, you can now bypass all the setup difficulties, slowdowns, and compatibility problems involved with running the game in an emulator, because BARIS has been ported to Windows, Linux, and Mac.  The Race Into Space project is being run by Michael McCarty, the main programmer of BARIS.  It's still in beta and has a few additional bugs, but it runs natively in modern operating systems and has an autosave feature, which BARIS lacked.  I think it's better than BARIS (even the CD version), and play it almost exclusively now.

Versions & Updates

Ver.	Release Date	Operating System	Comments
.1	January 2, 2007	(rpm)	First release
.2	January 17, 2007	(rpm, tar)	Bug fixes, cleanup, improved animations; added Autosave; first release for Windows and Mac
.3	January 24, 2007	(rpm, tar)	First playable version. Bug fixes, smoothing things out.
.4	March 10, 2007	(rpm, tar)	Bug fixes, and lots of 'em. Started using Ogg/Theora codec for movies.
.4.5	August 8, 2007	(tar)	Bug fixes, polishing of game. Included the Grammar Mod.
.4.6	August 22, 2007	(tar)	Bug fixes, including reducing hardware by 50% rather than reducing it to 6%
.4.7	September 25, 2008	(tar)	Bug fixes, including the 900MB Bug. At this point, porting the game was basically finished, and future versions could focus on making improvements.
.4.8	September 1, 2010   October 14, 2010	(deb, tar)	Bug fixes, disabling of the Duration B Bug; also, improvements to the interface to make the game easier to play, and advanced preferences added.
1.0	Official: August 23, 2011   July 27, 2011 (deb, tar)   July 29, 2011   July 31, 2011   August 10, 2011 (rpm)	(deb,rpm,tar)	First stable release; fixes Zombie Crew Bug, too many duration steps; shorter lunar missions; offers more advanced options

Downloading the Game

The floppy version is freely downloadable from Abandonia and The Home of the Underdogs, along with copy-protection answers and the 1.00b patch.  The Underdogs site also has the manual and Ken Fishkin's Hint and Tips for BARIS.  The CD-ROM version has not been regularly available anywhere on the Internet.  The game's copyright has reverted to its designers, who have given fans permission to make it available so long as they don't sell it (see copyright info).  Unfortunately the CD version is so large (250-412MB compressed, versus 9MB for the floppy version) that it's been hard to find a place to host it in my price range (i.e., for free).  I have, however, managed to find an appropriate hosting site, so here are instructions to download the CD  If you have trouble with that, here are some other places you may be able to download it from.  If all else fails, email me and maybe we can arrange a transfer.  Then again, I think the Race Into Space port is better anyway, so I'd suggest downloading that instead.  It's also much smaller than the CD version of BARIS.

If you download the floppy version, be sure to update it.  The CD-ROM version has no patch or update that I know of.

Goodies & Downloads!

Once you have a copy of the game, you may be wondering how on Earth (so to speak) to play this beast!  Or, you may be looking for some extras to enhance your BARIS experience.  Either way, I offer the following.

* I haven't tested these, so no guarantees!

Cover Art Box Cover (110kb) BARIS CD:           small (60kb)   huge (1.6mb) Jewel Case Front:   small (135kb)  huge (19mb) Jewel Case Back:   small (95kb)   huge (11mb)

Icons  (Download all 4) Music from the CD ♫   Gemini   Voskhod   Space Shuttle   Sputnik    ♪ Intro Music (1.5mb)  ♪ Ending Music (1mb)

Email Me -- Feedback is good!   Check out my trip to Antarctica!  Penguins galore!   Read about my trip to Europe, complete with a French barbecue   Explore my Master of Orion page (jump ahead to mankind's future in space)   See Machiavelli: the Prince and the Merchant Prince games   Visit my page of GW-BASIC games & other programs - old stuff here

~ My Guest Book (archived August 2009) ~  Astronaut Complex / Cosmonaut Center View the Roster

• February 27, 2013:  I've made a small update to the Historical Recruitment Mod.


• August 31, 2012:  (Wow, has it been a year?) I've updated some broken links and added the latest version of my enhancement requests document.


• August 25, 2011:  Race Into Space 1.0 has just been released; the game how now been declared stable.  To mark the change, I've given my guide a fresh title, "The Director's Guide to Race Into Space", and updated it to include changes that have been made in RIS.


• June 9, 2011:  Updated information about the upcoming stable release of RIS.


• February 24, 2011:  I've updated the site to show that we expect the next release to be declared stable, finally.  I've also updated the Quick Reference Guide (so that if you print it double-sided, both the normal and direct ascent recruitment guides will print on the same sheet of paper.


• February 16, 2011:  I've found a place to host the CD version, so now there should be a reliable place you can download it from--I've added a page with download links.


• February 9, 2011:  Well, guess what--Sqweebs has ended free hosting too, just like Geocities and atbhost.  So I've moved the Docking Module (at very short notice) to ByetHost.  Hopefully we stay online here a little longer than we did at Sqweebs and atbhost.


• January 5, 2011:  Added projections/expectations for the next release of RIS.


• September 24, 2010:  I've slightly improved my Voskhod icon.  While I was at it, I also uploaded the latest version of the Enhancement Requests list.


• September 21, 2010:  Updated the game history and Enhancement Requests list.


• July 13, 2010:  Well, guess what!  ATBHost.net is shutting down its free hosting service, so I've had to find another home.  Turns out sqweebs is back up and my account and files are still active there, so here we are back on sqweebs.  Too bad--I was getting to like atbhost.


• June 11, 2010:  I've added direct download links for the BARIS CD.  Both contain the same file, which is in Nero's NRG format.  The first file is smaller because it's compressed with a more aggressive algorithm, 7z, which gives you more compression but takes longer to zip and unzip.  I couldn't properly use an ISO for the BARIS CD because ISO only supports one track--but the BARIS CD has three tracks, one for the game and one each for the intro and end music. If you run the game with a CD made from an ISO, the intro and end music won't play.


• May 20, 2010:  I've made some small updates to the Readme in the Historical Recruitment Mod.


• May 13, 2010:  Sqweebs abruptly shut down its Web hosting services because of unspecified "complaints" made (about content that was being hosted, perhaps), so the Docking Module has once again had to find a new home.  So I've moved it to atbhost--I hope it lasts longer here than it did at Sqweebs!  As of now, I've created and added a higher-quality copy of the BARIS Manual, plus the Player's Aid Card (which was included at the back of the Manual in the copy I downloaded from the Home of the Underdogs back in the day).  I've also updated the Enhancement Requests doc.


• March 10, 2010:  Well, thestormwave found another typo in the 'naut roster (which I should have caught since Garriott's son was in space news not so long ago).  That prompted me to take another look at the roster, and sure enough I found a few more anomalies.  Peterson, who replaced Peters in Group II, should be spelled Petersen, with an "e".  More seriously, Ferguson wasn't right: there was a NASA astronaut by that name, but he wasn't recruited until 1998.  So I've updated the Historical Recruitment Mod, the 'naut roster, and--while I was at it--the list of enhancement requests.


• March 8, 2010:  Over at Race Into Space, thestormwave pointed out that my Historical Recruitment Mod missed one typo in the 'naut roster: Basset should be spelled Bassett.  So I've updated the Historical Recruitment Mod and the 'naut roster.  And I've thrown in a small addition to the Enhancement Requests document.


• March 6, 2010:  Just recently, thestormwave has made a bunch of suggestions for enhancements, so I've updated the Enhancement Requests document.  I've also added a new icon, Voskhod, and added .bmp and .gif files to each of the icon zip files.


• March 5, 2010:  It's occurred to me that BARIS/RIS has a rather steep learning curve and that new players would really benefit from some sort of guide to help them get started.  So I've created a Race Into Space Tutorial that leads you through the basics, up to and including lunar flyby and docking tests.
  
  Michael McCarty has made me a project manager for the Race Into Space project!  So I'm now an official participant in the successor to BARIS.  Way cool!  But better than that, it's letting me make changes to the game.  I've implemented a number of small enhancement requests: simple additions to the display, like "How about if we could see how much money we have in VAB/VIB before we Autopurchase equipment?"  The changes won't take effect until we publish the next release of the game (.4.8), but still, they's a-comin'.&npsp; So naturally I've had to update the Enhancement Requests document to show which ones have been taken care of.  Yesterday I separated out Ideas for New Missions & Prestige Firsts and seconds into their own section to help organize it better--so this seemed like a good time to stop and post my changes.
  
  I've also been reading Asif Siddiqi's two-part work on the Soviet space program, "Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge" and "The Soviet Space Race with Apollo", which have given me lots of ideas for changes to my BARIS guide--so I've updated the Appendix.  I really need to give it another rewrite, since the Appendix is getting pretty long--but I'm updating it all the time right now, so a rewrite will have to wait at least until I've finished them (I'm about halfway through now).


• February 10, 2010:  I've updated the Enhancement Requests document.


• February 1, 2010:  I've updated the Enhancement Requests document, and updated the link to Cthulhu's BARIS page.


• January 26, 2010:  I've updated the Enhancement Requests document.


• September 28, 2009:  I've managed to find a hosting site for the CD version, so I've added links to that here.


• September 9, 2009:  Geocities is closing next month, so I've had to move the Docking Module--so here we are on Sqweebs.  I've made some other changes as well; most important, I've made some small updates to the Historical Recruitment Mod.  I've also updated the Quick Reference Guide, the Enhancement Requests document, and the 'Naut Roster.  And I've made some small textual changes to the writing on this page and its subpages.  Lastly, since my last major update I've embarked on a project of learning Linux, so it's now my main OS at home.  I'm running Xubuntu, and so far I'm really liking it.  Part of getting my system up and running, of course, was installing the Linux version of Race Into Space.  That was a bit of a bumpy road, so I've written up a guide to installing the Linux version, and added it to the page.


• May 20, 2009:  I've made some more small changes to the Quick Reference Guide, and a small addition to it.


• May 18, 2009:  I found an error in my Quick Reference Guide: the minimum rocketry for Apollo and XMS-2 is a boosted Titan, not a boosted Atlas.  I've updated the file and uploaded it.  I've also made some additions to the appendix to my BARIS guide.


• May 8, 2009:  I've updated the Historical Recruitment Mod: I noticed some small mistakes, and made some small changes.  The Home of the Underdogs seems to be down for the forseeable future, so I've removed the link to it for the Floppy version.  Luckily Abandonia doesn't seem to be going anywhere though.  Lastly, I've made an addition to the Appendix to my guide.


• November 19, 2008:  An important addition.  There are historical and other inaccuracies in the 'naut roster in RIS and BARIS.  I've gone through the roster and made a number of changes, and have posted those changes here as the Historical Recruitment Mod, which replaces the Cosmonaut Mod.  BarisWiki seems to be down indefinitely, so I've moved the Enhancement Requests list here.  I've thought of more things to mention in my BARIS guide, so the Appendix is back with some new observations etc.  One of those new things is that I've created a Which Spacemen to Recruit chart specifically for direct ascent.  The Quick Reference Guide has also been updated.
  Anton pointed out that the BARIS_Installed.zip file on this site was corrupt, so I've replaced it with a good copy.  I've added links to two new BARIS movies from YouTube.  Lastly, I've added some inspirational music from the early days of the Soviet space program.


• September 29, 2008:  Race Into Space .4.7 has been released, so there is no longer any reason to publish a beta copy of the executable, and I've removed it.


• July 11, 2008:  It's been over six months without any visible activity on the Raceintospace Sourceforge page, much to my dismay.  But with the project seemingly on hold, I've decided to publish a beta patch for the latest version, which one of the developers was kind enough to share with me some time ago.  Raceintospace .4.6 still has a few bugs on top of the old BARIS bugs; this patch fixes three of them, including the one that annoyed me most: about two-thirds of the way through the game, suddenly the Soviet player would start each year with 900MB instead of his/her real budget.


• February 22, 2008:  A significant update to the site.  Biggest item: my BARIS guide has been updated with everything that was in the Appendix, plus a number of changes and new observations (e.g. I've come to realize that Lapot is much more viable than I had thought).  I've also added some new charts, including how to recruit the best 'nauts.  It's a big enough revision that I'm unofficially calling it version 2.  My thinking is that the Raceintospace port of BARIS is reaching a point where it's very stable, and the team will probably start fixing the old bugs soon (such as giving a milestone penalty to your first Duration mission), and implement some of the smaller bug fixes.  This would make Raceintospace the better version to play, and would also make some of the strategies in my guide obsolete.  I'm hoping that this will be the last major iteration of my guide written specifically for BARIS, and that future versions will be tailored to Raceintospace.  I've noticed that when playing BARIS I refer to tables in my guide pretty often, so I pulled them together into a standalone Quick Reference Guide you can keep at your desk for easy reference while playing (and have added it here).
  
  Other changes: the Technology Transfer Chart had a mistake: I had thought the numbers represented safety added to components, but it turns out they show what that hardware will be as a result of the tech transfer.  My bad; I've updated the file.  I've created a side-by-side comparison of the spacecraft in BARIS to their equivalents in real life.  I've added a Historical Inaccuracies section to this page, copied from the BARIS Wikipedia article (don't worry; I wrote it) and edited a little.  A few weeks ago I stumbled on an insightful article about how little impact the Space Race really had; I think it's a great piece and have included a link to it.  And I don't know why it took me so long to think of this, but this site badly needed a link to "The Old Negro Space Program".  I've updated my Translation page to include a partial Dutch translation that Bart Buyens sent me.  I've also added links to some items hosted on YouTube: the BARIS Demo, and movies showing a couple of games played by BARIS fans.  I noticed recently that some of the cosmonauts' names were misspelled (mostly typos) (e.g., Nelyubov was spelled Nelyubv).  I've created a Cosmonaut Mod to fix those spellings in your copy of BARIS or Raceintospace, and have also integrated it into the Grammar Mod.  I've updated the installed copy of the game (BARIS_Installed.zip) to include the Grammar Mod (including the Cosmonaut Mod) and the icons from this site.  I went through the Historical Roster and made a complete list of all the 'nauts, with all their skills (that's when I noticed some of the cosmonauts weren't spelled right).  I used that list to work out a guide to recruiting the best spacemen, which is part of the latest revision; I've also added the complete roster to this page--why not?  Lastly, I've made some small updates to my instructions for Running BARIS in DOSBox.


• October 26, 2007:  Made some small additions to my Appendix.


• October 16, 2007:  Added 999MB Money Cheat, and updated the Appendix to my guide.


• July 7, 2007:  Added link to my new page about Machiavelli: the Prince, and the Merchant Prince series of games.


• May 4, 2007:  Since Cartmancakes encountered difficulties with his planned patch for BARIS and redirected his energies to the Raceintospace project, I've decided to release my Grammar Mod as is.  It was going to be in the patch, and will hopefully be included in the Raceintospace ports, but I don't see any reason not to release it for DOS BARIS.  I hope you like it!  Also, with the method I used for the Grammar Mod, it's possible to partially translate BARIS into other languages, at least ones that use the Roman alphabet.  I invite anyone who's interested to write translations for BARIS; I will gladly include them on this site.


• January 23, 2007:  I've added links to the high-resolution scans of the CD and jewel case.  Download away!


• January 21, 2007:  Brandon Munger brought it to my attention that the ISO images I've had available here are missing the intro and end music, so I've updated my BARIS CD version download link.


• November 14, 2006:  I've added a copy of DOSBoxSettings.zip, which is a set of screenshots of how BARIS is configured in DOSBox/D-Fend on my computer.  Many people have written asking for help on setting the game up in D-Fend, and these screenshots help a lot of them.  I'm surprised it took me so long to occur to me I could take the next step and make it accessible from my BARIS page.


• October 22, 2006:  I've renamed this site to The Docking Module!  After releasing the site, it occurred to me I really should come up with a more clever name than "Leon's Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space Page".  I thought about naming it after hardware in the game, but didn't want to choose something specifically US or Soviet.  Finally it occurred to me that docking modules aren't country-specific and would make a pretty decent name.


• October 15, 2006:  Horst at TheSpaceRace Forum has also generously offered to host a copy of the BARIS ISO for download.


• October 1, 2006:  Martin Samesch has generously offered to host a copy of the BARIS ISO for download.


• July 9, 2006:  I've updated the appendix to my BARIS guide, and added a link to BarisWiki, a new site that features troubleshooting data for BARIS, a semiofficial list of enhancement requests, BARIS guides, and other bits and pieces.


• April 14, 2006:  Dmitry Rydenko signed the guestbook and pointed out that there's a Russian remake of BARIS in the works.  It's called Yuri Gagarin's Race Into Space, or YGRIS.  That's exciting--I think it's only appropriate that the other player in the Space Race have its own Space Race game.  Once it's developed, they plan to translate it into other languages, including English (and hopefully French).


• December 17, 2005:  I've added a link to the Lonely Astronaut series, a group of flash files showing Bill, an astronaut who was left behind on the Moon, and his conversations with NASA control.  Very funny stuff!


• December 13, 2005:  Recently, Robert Haidinger in Austria brought to my attention that there was a more recent patch for the floppy version than the one I had previously known about.  In fact, it turns out there were three--and I had always thought there was just the one.  Big news!  So I've added a link to that patch (1.01) as well as the one I had known about before (1.00b), and have added here a version history.  The patch also provided a Technology Transfer Chart, which I haven't seen anywhere else.  It was hard to read in its original plain-text format, so I've converted it to HTML and included a link to it here.
  
  Also, it's occurred to me that anyone wanting to print my Tips & Background will have to print something like 45 pages, so I've converted it to MS Word, shrunk the print and widened the margins, so now it comes out to only 22 pages. I've posted this above.


• November 20, 2005:  It seems that Interplay's Web site is back online after all this time, and it still has the old support page for BARIS.  I've added a link to that page.


• October 28, 2005:  I've reinstated the link to the CD Version of BARIS hosted by Macros2000, as it seems to be working again.


• October 27, 2005:  I've written an appendix to my BARIS guide, and have posted it here.


• October 24, 2005:  Added a link to the School Demo of BARIS.


• October ?, 2005:  Added a link to my Master of Orion page.


• October 5, 2005:  Added a link to the recent article about BARIS in the online magazine The Escapist.


• October 4, 2005:  The link to download the CD version of BARIS (provided by Macros2000) no longer works for whatever reason, so I've taken all the links I've heard you can download the game from, and dumped them into a text file.  I'll update the file as I hear of new links.


• September 9, 2005:  I've translated this site (badly, no doubt) into French for the francophone fans, like Cthulhus.


• September 2, 2005:  I added translations for the Soviet hardware (you'll see them if you hover the mouse over the pictures).


• August 26, 2005:  I moved my largest download files offsite.  Geocities has a bandwidth-transmission limit, so when a lot of people have been accessing this site, it starts to block access to it.  The block resets itself every hour, so it's only temporary, but still, it's been causing people some inconvenience.  So with the largest files offsite, that should cut down on bandwidth usage and minimize blocked access to the site.


• August 22, 2005:  Added the Moon Hoax link, and the "Trainer" (from The Adrenaline Vault).


• August 18, 2005:  I realized I made a mistake in my instructions for running BARIS in DOSBox.  Previously I had thought you had to set DOSBox/D-Fend 2 to mount the hard drive that the game is installed to as D: and the CD-ROM drive as K:.  The CD-ROM should still be K:, but I just realized this morning I have the game set to D: on one system and E: on the other, corresponding to the actual drive letters.  It looks like I goofed--seems you should tell DOSBox the actual drive letter that BARIS is installed to.  My apologies to everyone who had trouble setting the game up per my instructions!  And if anyone finds I still don't have it quite right, please please let me know!


• August 17, 2005:  Reorganized Goodies & Downloads tables to look more esthetic, and maybe be a little more logically organized.  Proofread my writing on this page, made some small changes, and corrected some embarrassing typos left over from previous edits.  I also added some more information to my page about the BARIS Companion.
  
  Added a higher-res image of the box cover, and a link to "It Looks Like A Dirty Beach", a fan fiction about a Soviet victory in the Space Race, which is set, conveniently enough, in the BARIS universe.


• July 25, 2005:  Published this site.  Also finalized BARISTips.txt.