Spice Trade
Spice Trade is an rpg/strategy/adventure game about a poor spice farmer in 12th century Baghdad area. Start from nothing and dominate another continent. Spread the influence of your culture while creating your own empire! Since the 14th century, Europe has been a global super power when it started colonizing other continents. But what if history had gone a different way? What would Europe be like if Asia had prevailed? Abu Al-Qazzaz is the main character in Spice Trade. He is a poor young man from Baghdad, who has inherited a house and some land .. oh, and he wants to get married too. Abu decides to try his luck in the spice game. He has to prevent the European countries from gaining a trade monopoly. Will Abu be able to beat out the Europeans in the spice trade? Could Europe have been different? How? You decide!

System requirements
  • Version 1.4.2 (not tested, it's from the homepage)
  • Tested with JRE version 1.6.0 Build 27 GA5 (2013-02-17)


Spice Trade on an eComStation machine with Open JDK


Installing Spice Trade
Download the file Spicetrade-1.2.jar (194.9Mb, not a typo!). Create a folder (directory) "spicetrade" or something similar which fits your needs. Copy the file "Spicetrade-1.2.jar" to the new created folder (directory). That's it!. You can find more info (tutorial) on the Spice Trade site.

The used spicetrade.cmd file
Spice Trade works with Open JDK in OS/2-eCS. I have made a "spicetrade.cmd" file with the following contents; 
@echo off
set CLASSPATH=
set BEGINLIBPATH=[drive: java]\JAVA160ga5\bin
set path=[drive: java]\JAVA160ga5\bin
[drive: spicetrade]
cd [drive: spicetrade]\spicetrade
java -Duser.home=[drive: spicetrade]\spicetrade -jar Spicetrade-1.2.jar 2>spicetrade-bugs.txt
I use 2 separate folders (directories), one for Java and one for Spice Trade with the files created by this program. The references used in the cmd file;

  • [drive: java] = drive with Java
  • [drive: spicetrade] = drive with Spice Trade

should be replaced by real drive letters. Adjust the file from the distribution below, ie. different drive and directories. Save "spicetrade.cmd" and copy it to the "spicetrade" folder(directory) or your choice of folder(directory).

Create a new program object. Specify the path and file name: "[drive: spicetrade]\spicetrade\spicetrade.cmd". In the tabpage Session check the boxes "OS/2 window", "Running as an icon" and "Close Window to end program". In the tabpage General you can enter the name "Spice Trade". The download also has an OS/2 icon.

I want to point out that this is a way to start the program, OS/2 and its successors do have much more ways for starting a java program.

Parameters / options explained
  • The specification "-Duser.home=[drive: spicetrade]\spicetrade" will ensure that Spice Trade will save all necessary files in own directory instead of saving them in the home directory.
  • The addition "2>spicetrade-bugs.txt" ensures that errors are saved in the file "spicetrade-bugs.txt". The 2 in "2>" is not a typo! The file stays empty on my machine.

Remarks with running Spice Trade
It is a huge file, but even with only 1Gb of memory it will play. Sound works. Most of the times you have to click twice on the options/menu items before they work. Be patient in some cases. As the game starts it will take your full screen size. Don't panic, this is normal. You can go back or by using the menu options in the menu, or you use the OS/2 option of Ctrl+Esc keys and go to X-Center of whatever menu system you use. Almost forgot, read the tutorial!

Download
In the file you can find all necessary files, all drive letters in the command file are on set to C:. You can download it here: spicetrade-os2.zip. Mind that you also need to download Spicetrade-1.2.jar.

revision August 1, 2020