Amiga, Commodore and creativity

[Exmit]

Gotta love C64 times in Poland. There was a pirate radio station that would send a pirate signal and you could record games on cassettes :D

 

[piydek]

Isn't that what the whole casual game craze is all about? Trine, Braid, Portal, that plants game, etc. all pretty much fit that bill. Perhaps not challenge, but that's relative anyway.

Well, i haven't been aware of any casual craze and i wouldn't even know about "casual" games if i didn't have steam installed, so occasionally i see games i like under that category. I really liked Trine and Braid, but I really wouldn't call any of them "old-school" although one can see where their roots are. However, in my mind they are still something completely different from "similar" c64 or Amiga games.

Cortex Command? Soldat? Firefight? I Wanna Be The Guy?

haven't played any of them. Thanks for the (maybe unintentional) recommendations.

i never was much for casual games on the C64 and Amiga, sure i played Monty on the run, Cauldron and Samantha Strip Poker like the rest of you guys, but my main game where the RPG's and strategy games.

Well, i have no idea why these games are referred to as "casual". Back in tha day we used to call them just "arcade games" or "action games". Actually i don't see that much of "casual" in them, they were pretty much always completely unforgiving and you really needed to invest time in playing them and developing 1337 skillz in playing. Nothing casual about that IMO.

Just as the other couple of guys, it was impossible to buy an original game on cassette for C64 here in Croatia (Yugoslavia) in the 80s and we have all had only compilations of pirated games. Nobody had the disk drive either. So that's why i wasn't even aware of RPGs back when i used to play on C64.

TBH, I have been playing everything on c64 back then. I wasn't selective at all.

The taste comes with years.

Pretty much the same here, but i still like and admire most of those games. You can see that they weren't made with any kind of commercial success in mind and often contained quite crazy and unconventional ideas. That spirit of freedom and lack of considerations about "market" and "success" made those games wonderful. It's a completely opposite situation today.

 

[Exmit]

It's a completely opposite situation today.

Everywhere where profit is involved there will come people that want money , and not people that want to do something good.
Games were good back then, because there were no big money involved, and programmers that made them, knew what they were doing.
Old games almost never had patches , they were finished without bugs.

Quality - something that was sold for short making deadlines.

 

[piydek]

Nothing more i could say to that, i agree. Basically, there's nothing to agree or disagree with - what you've said is a fact.

The same thing that's happened to music happened to games. But in music, indie labels/distributors are much stronger than anything indie in games. Plus, it costs a lot less to make a record than to make a game.

I hope digital distribution will bring lots of good to games, just like internet did lots of good for music. Anything that enables people who create to by-pass industry mechanisms is great.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

I was the opposite of a most here. I wouldn't have minded a C64, but after seeing 'The Bards Tale', 'Ultima IV', and 'Russia, the war in the east', I had to have one. The rest is history. RPG's and strategy/wargames were the main reason I wanted a C64. Same with the Amiga later on, continuing to the present day.

 

[MetalCraze]

I hope digital distribution will bring lots of good to games

Except digital distribution is around for 6 years and all it does is bringing an unbearable amounts of low-quality "indie" shit.

just like internet did lots of good for music

Eh? Internet basically ruined the music because now every talentless retard can publish his shit and some are lucky enough to sign it to some shitty "indie" label.

Anything that enables people who create to by-pass industry mechanisms is great.

Not when it doesn't have any filters for shit or standards to not let shit through.
Which digital distribution does not have.


Games were great back then because there was a competition to make them better than the next one to get more audience before publishers understood that they shouldn't sell better games for a, now demanding, crowd but sell it to dumb amoeba retards who will defend the game with tears no matter how bad it is. With digital distribution where anyone can release crappy games there's none of that competition either.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

i never was much for casual games on the C64 and Amiga, sure i played Monty on the run, Cauldron and Samantha Strip Poker like the rest of you guys, but my main game where the RPG's and strategy games.

Well, i have no idea why these games are referred to as "casual". Back in tha day we used to call them just "arcade games" or "action games". Actually i don't see that much of "casual" in them, they were pretty much always completely unforgiving and you really needed to invest time in playing them and developing 1337 skillz in playing. Nothing casual about that IMO.

Just as the other couple of guys, it was impossible to buy an original game on cassette for C64 here in Croatia (Yugoslavia) in the 80s and we have all had only compilations of pirated games. Nobody had the disk drive either. So that's why i wasn't even aware of RPGs back when i used to play on C64.

I think that the casual thing is about not having to read any manuals.

 

[piydek]

Except digital distribution is around for 6 years and all it does is bringing an unbearable amounts of low-quality "indie" shit.

I agree that I've come across very few good indie games. But anything that enables the possibility to bypass the money-obsessed development is good. And no amount of shit produced can change that fact.

Eh? Internet basically ruined the music because now every talentless retard can publish his shit and some are lucky enough to sign it to some shitty "indie" label.

No, internet gave power to indie labels who can now even pay good studios, recording engineers etc. and have enough audience to basically put out what they want to put out without money problems making them choose (very often between quite a few good bands) who to put out and who not to put out. Internet made the small distribution through mail possible on a wider scale and labels' websites are direct portals for music lovers where you get information and ability to buy an album directly from the label.

Amount of shit on sites like "myspace" and amount of shit bands that get to make a record changes nothing. We just have to filter more, that's it.

Not when it doesn't have any filters for shit or standards to not let shit through.
Which digital distribution does not have.

In digital distribution for game that may be true, but for music - labels are filters. There's tons of indie labels who have really high standards.

Games were great back then because there was a competition to make them better than the next one to get more audience before publishers understood that they shouldn't sell better games for a, now demanding, crow but sell it to dumb amoeba retards who will defend the game with tears no matter how bad it is. With digital distribution where anyone can release crappy games there's none of that competition either.

I don't agree with this. Actually "competition" is the keyword here - i feel there wasn't really and kind of competition in the market sense in which sense you talk about it. There was competition only to make good games and maybe better than the next guy - it was quite amateurish and idealistic and that's what was so great. The whole thing about market competition and "ways in which to sell more and whom to" mindset came much later.

 

[piydek]

I think that the casual thing is about not having to read any manuals.

That's ok then. But then again, i didn't read a manual for pretty much any RPG or strategy game i've ever played. It's pretty much always possible to figure out anything in-game.

 

[piydek]

When it comes to today's arcade games - what i miss the most is the old "lives" system. 3 lives, maybe an extra one on each xxxxx score, no saves in-level or no saves at all if the game is sufficiently small (not really possible today but that's how it was on C64). Maybe if a game is long a password for each or each several levels (depends on how big they are) and that's it.

This mechanic is extremely important for creating a good, challenging arcade gameplay. And nobody has the balls to use that today. Recently, Team17 made a remake of an amiga game called Alien Breed and they put in the save system where you can not save anywhere, but only on terminals that are found in-level. Now, that was in the right direction but it wasn't bold enough completely. The right thing would be to be able to save only at the end of levels. Now, this thing raised a huge shitstorm over on steam forums. Everyone was saying "why can't i save anywhere booo". I was so disappointed at that reaction.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

When it comes to today's arcade games - what i miss the most is the old "lives" system. 3 lives, maybe an extra one on each xxxxx score, no saves in-level or no saves at all if the game is sufficiently small (not really possible today but that's how it was on C64). Maybe if a game is long a password for each or each several levels (depends on how big they are) and that's it.

This mechanic is extremely important for creating a good, challenging arcade gameplay. And nobody has the balls to use that today. Recently, Team17 made a remake of an amiga game called Alien Breed and they put in the save system where you can not save anywhere, but only on terminals that are found in-level. Now, that was in the right direction but it wasn't bold enough completely. The right thing would be to be able to save only at the end of levels. Now, this thing raised a huge shitstorm over on steam forums. Everyone was saying "why can't i save anywhere booo". I was so disappointed at that reaction.

That was from an age where huge, boxlike machines desperately wanted to kill you and force you to place another coin in the slot. Such challenges are not to be found these days.

 

[piydek]

When it comes to today's arcade games - what i miss the most is the old "lives" system. 3 lives, maybe an extra one on each xxxxx score, no saves in-level or no saves at all if the game is sufficiently small (not really possible today but that's how it was on C64). Maybe if a game is long a password for each or each several levels (depends on how big they are) and that's it.

This mechanic is extremely important for creating a good, challenging arcade gameplay. And nobody has the balls to use that today. Recently, Team17 made a remake of an amiga game called Alien Breed and they put in the save system where you can not save anywhere, but only on terminals that are found in-level. Now, that was in the right direction but it wasn't bold enough completely. The right thing would be to be able to save only at the end of levels. Now, this thing raised a huge shitstorm over on steam forums. Everyone was saying "why can't i save anywhere booo". I was so disappointed at that reaction.

That was from an age where huge, boxlike machines desperately wanted to kill you and force you to place another coin in the slot. Such challenges are not to be found these days.

Haha, yes, but that kind of excess that was on machines i didn't find in any computer games from that time. Yeah, but it could be that those huge boxes were partly a reference point for difficulty. But both the arcade boxes and computer games shared the same "lives" system.


EDIT:

This game for example:

had great challenge, was of the same type as lots of the box-arcade games but was beatable and nowhere was it excessive.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

When it comes to today's arcade games - what i miss the most is the old "lives" system. 3 lives, maybe an extra one on each xxxxx score, no saves in-level or no saves at all if the game is sufficiently small (not really possible today but that's how it was on C64). Maybe if a game is long a password for each or each several levels (depends on how big they are) and that's it.

This mechanic is extremely important for creating a good, challenging arcade gameplay. And nobody has the balls to use that today. Recently, Team17 made a remake of an amiga game called Alien Breed and they put in the save system where you can not save anywhere, but only on terminals that are found in-level. Now, that was in the right direction but it wasn't bold enough completely. The right thing would be to be able to save only at the end of levels. Now, this thing raised a huge shitstorm over on steam forums. Everyone was saying "why can't i save anywhere booo". I was so disappointed at that reaction.

Alien scum can't into challenge. I remember how much tension lack of save added to Tower Assault.

 

[made]

Casual, indie, low budget... whatever you want to call them. My point was that thanks to digital distribution it's increasingly feasible to publish games outside the mainstream, which is a good thing in any case. Naturally, that leads to a lot of crap releases, but also the occasional gem with novel ideas, additive gameplay, whathaveyou. The same applies to music, skyway just doesn't know where to look.

Besides, games weren't universally better "in the good old days", we were just more easily impressed. There was tons of shit coming out for Amiga every month. Take off the nostalgia glasses and browse a database like HOL, you'll find hundreds of titles that you've never heard of, or played briefly and quickly forgot because they sucked.

 

[MetalCraze]

I agree that I've come across very few good indie games. But anything that enables the possibility to bypass the money-obsessed development is good. And no amount of shit produced can change that fact.

I have a hard time thinking about a single indie game that is on a par with better games. Smaller dev studios yes (like Cyanide that finally did a proper WH game since the first PC Blood Bowl), but indies - nooooo.

No, internet gave power to indie labels who can now even pay good studios, recording engineers etc. and have enough audience to basically put out what they want to put out without money problems making them choose (very often between quite a few good bands) who to put out and who not to put out. Internet made the small distribution through mail possible on a wider scale and labels' websites are direct portals for music lovers where you get information and ability to buy an album directly from the label.

I can't see how that disagrees with the point I've made.
If anything that "indie" word became an insult in the recent years synonimous to cheap and badly produced.

In digital distribution for game that may be true, but for music - labels are filters. There's tons of indie labels who have really high standards.

It may be so, but we are talking about games in the first place. So you see the problem here.

There was competition only to make good games and maybe better than the next guy

That's exactly what I said no? Better than the next guy. And it wasn't done by some amateurs either. They perfectly knew what they were doing by moving forward. The idea was that better quality sells more.
It's only when we started getting console ports thanks to Micro$oft from consoles over here (it was quite vice versa before) devs quickly understood that dumbed down simplistic shit is what really sells.
And so right now there is still a competition. Only to make a game as dumb as possible to appeal to even more people. See the Call of "Press F to make the game play itself" Duty and its selling figures (and the inadequate amount of clones). Or recent Beth games.

 

[Luzur]

Starcraft for the C64 is being coded:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94QCuBaHPsA

but he needs some help now.

I wanted some help braingstorming here. So all I really need to do is make a full-screen mouse-controlled version, that works more like warcraft/starcraft where you can click on the unit and tell it what to do. I pretty much know how to make the user-interface, mouse control, etc. What I wanted some advise on are some things I can't seem to wrap my mind around.

1) Pathfinding. I really can't grasp this. In Starcraft, if you select a unit and tell it to go somewhere, it knows how to find the proper path and go. I do not understand how to do this.

2) Large objects.. Okay, so in previous games I've done, all of the objects are exactly 8-pixels by 8-pixels. This makes it quite simple to create routines which draw the screen. but what if I wanted to have an object that is 16-pixels or more, while other objects remained 8-pixels? I'm having a hard time figuring out how the screen-drawing routine would handle that. Actually, even that I could probably handle except that when one of the large objects is half-way off the screen. I guess I could simplify it by having the screen always scroll 16-pixels at a time and larger objects could only be placed on even coordinates.

3) AI - In Planet X1, for example, the evil spiders track down your base. But all they really do is pick a random number between 1 and 6, and 3 of those numbers will be programmed to take the spider in your direction, where the other 3 will be in a different direction. So they kind of wander around randomly, but in your general direction. They have no AI. They just kill you or your base on contact. And being how few C64 users there are, combined with how few have the ability to connect to the internet with their C64, it is reasonable to assume the game needs to be single-player against AI.

Then there are other considerations. I'm having difficulty figuring out how to slice up the available 64K of RAM. I need some space for the actual play map, plus space for storing graphics, code, and information on each unit. So if 50 units are allowed, each unit needs about 15 to 20 bytes of data for it. To say nothing of music.

I believe this can be done. I've been thinking about it for years. The reason I haven't done it is because of those 3 issues above. Any advice?

new nice demo released:

http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=97558

looking nice!

also:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... KEDWX:IT

which one of you won this?

 

[Flanged]

Gotta love C64 times in Poland. There was a pirate radio station that would send a pirate signal and you could record games on cassettes :D

That's a genius idea. Not much fun to listen to, but a great way of spreading round expensive stuff for free. Bet it could be buggy though. We just passed copies round, but that meant somebody somewhere had to buy the game first.

Considering how small-scale the companies were back then, and how much effort they put into their games, feel a bit guilty about it now. But not much.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Starcraft for the C64 is being coded:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94QCuBaHPsA

but he needs some help now.

I wanted some help braingstorming here. So all I really need to do is make a full-screen mouse-controlled version, that works more like warcraft/starcraft where you can click on the unit and tell it what to do. I pretty much know how to make the user-interface, mouse control, etc. What I wanted some advise on are some things I can't seem to wrap my mind around.

1) Pathfinding. I really can't grasp this. In Starcraft, if you select a unit and tell it to go somewhere, it knows how to find the proper path and go. I do not understand how to do this.

2) Large objects.. Okay, so in previous games I've done, all of the objects are exactly 8-pixels by 8-pixels. This makes it quite simple to create routines which draw the screen. but what if I wanted to have an object that is 16-pixels or more, while other objects remained 8-pixels? I'm having a hard time figuring out how the screen-drawing routine would handle that. Actually, even that I could probably handle except that when one of the large objects is half-way off the screen. I guess I could simplify it by having the screen always scroll 16-pixels at a time and larger objects could only be placed on even coordinates.

3) AI - In Planet X1, for example, the evil spiders track down your base. But all they really do is pick a random number between 1 and 6, and 3 of those numbers will be programmed to take the spider in your direction, where the other 3 will be in a different direction. So they kind of wander around randomly, but in your general direction. They have no AI. They just kill you or your base on contact. And being how few C64 users there are, combined with how few have the ability to connect to the internet with their C64, it is reasonable to assume the game needs to be single-player against AI.

Then there are other considerations. I'm having difficulty figuring out how to slice up the available 64K of RAM. I need some space for the actual play map, plus space for storing graphics, code, and information on each unit. So if 50 units are allowed, each unit needs about 15 to 20 bytes of data for it. To say nothing of music.

I believe this can be done. I've been thinking about it for years. The reason I haven't done it is because of those 3 issues above. Any advice?

new nice demo released:

http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=97558

looking nice!

Fascinating stuff. I'd have to check out the demo.

 

[7hm]

I have a hard time thinking about a single indie game that is on a par with better games. Smaller dev studios yes (like Cyanide that finally did a proper WH game since the first PC Blood Bowl), but indies - nooooo.
...

The advantage of indie developers (and a similar group, ambitious modders) is the ability to target niche markets.

They don't have to be better than AAA or even small dev studios because they operate in a market that they create. If we're lucky that market is then expanded by others with more resources.

To take two obvious games - Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft. Neither of these games gets made by a developer that needs to pay salaries, rent, business expenses, etc.

Even when they do go after larger markets the successful games are most often targeted at a segment of that market. For example Lugano / Overgrowth is a third person action game. But it's specifically one of the best fighting games in that perspective around. Spiderweb's games are RPGs but specifically story heavy turn based Western RPGs.

Even when they are just going after a generic market there are still some successes. World of Goo, Braid, Super Meat Boy, etc.

Indies, community developed projects (DCSS) and total conversion mods are the best thing about gaming right now, bar a handful of really well done AAA games. Yeah you have to sort through the chaff, but I have to do that when I go buy a AAA game too.

 

[zeitgeist]

The advantage of indie developers (and a similar group, ambitious modders) is the ability to target niche markets.

Yet that niche target market so rarely seems to consist of reasonably intelligent people who can understand things.

 

[Ladders & Snakes]

I've got ma AMIGA 1200 in the desk.

 

[Flanged]

The advantage of indie developers (and a similar group, ambitious modders) is the ability to target niche markets.

Yet that niche target market so rarely seems to consist of reasonably intelligent people who can understand things.

Who cares about how retarded the user-base is? They don't make the games. The Lugaru forums used to be (maybe still are) one of the biggest hives of stupidity I've ever seen online, but it's still a great game to play. Overgrowth looks set to be better than a lot of AAA titles, and not just because most of those are shit.

Hating a game because of it's players (unless it's online multiplayer) is dumb. You don't have to hang out with them or listen to them. Just play the game.

 

[7hm]

The advantage of indie developers (and a similar group, ambitious modders) is the ability to target niche markets.

Yet that niche target market so rarely seems to consist of reasonably intelligent people who can understand things.

That would be because most people are idiots. Including people who like niche genres.

Nobody has really targeted the blob based dungeon crawler yet outside of Swords and Sorcery - Underworld (Jappers don't count because they're neither indie nor inclined to make games that don't feature lolis). That disappoints me. I think this genre is ready for some indie love. Even roguelikes get more attention.

 

[denizsi]

Gotta love C64 times in Poland. There was a pirate radio station that would send a pirate signal and you could record games on cassettes :D

It... worked? Or was it just a running joke? I don't think the signal would be clear and accurate enough for a recording to actually work.

 

[Wolfus]

Gotta love C64 times in Poland. There was a pirate radio station that would send a pirate signal and you could record games on cassettes :D

It would be funny to tune-in that station in car while driving 130 km/h on the highway :D