Acorn Game Authors
Duncan Burbidge
newsgroup authored an Acorn game... Would be nice to send a few
praises (or complaints!) to the people that kept us all entertained so
many years ago!
So if anyone reads this who authored an Acorn Game, please reply with
what it was and maybe a little story or two on it!!!
Duncan
Sydney, Australia
Jason Tribbeck
Duncan Burbidge wrote:
> So if anyone reads this who authored an Acorn Game, please reply with
> what it was and maybe a little story or two on it!!!
Indivudal conversions:
James Pond 2: Robocod - this was my first conversion, and to be honest,
I didn't really know what I was doing. It's a little slow, but Millenium
seemed to prefer this conversion to the first one.
Dune II - My second conversion - it was big, and took a long time to do.
The main problem I had was the fixed palette (the game actually converts
on the fly). I would've loved to have done a 'special edition' with a
copy of the first book, and the film.
Assistant conversions:
Xenon 2 - Did a bit of the front end.
Simon the Sorcerer - Again, did some of the front end.
PlayDays (educational) - Didn't really do a lot, apart from helped my
brother finish it!
Originals:
ArcCommand - Pity I had to remove it...
Ubiquitous - Never released outside the school I wrote it in, but we had
a laugh over it.
Konkeror - 2D multi-player version of Conqueror. Had one battle with 8
players on different machines using MIDI as a network (this was in 1992).
Unfinished:
WarZone - Less said the better ;-) Didn't really get more than the
planning stage, and then I ended up doing commercial work. Tek is pretty
much what I wanted to achieve.
Vectaris - Never even mentioned outside a small group of friends, but a
vector-based game.
ETG - Epic Trading Game (or Elite Type Game). Announced on Prestel, with
screen shots, before ArcElite was released. Had point-of-light and depth
shading. Got me my first job (which I'm still at) 13 years ago...
--
Jason Tribbeck
http://www.tribbeck.com/ LongFiles latest version 3.00
newsm...@tribbeck.com VoiceCon latest version 0.08
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Harriet Bazley
Duncan Burbidge wrote:
The only game I've ever been involved in was a BBC conversion -
Tutenkhamen's Tomb http://www.bigfoot.com/~chrisbazley/games.htm#tuten
My little brother wanted to play it - so Christopher (one of my
other brothers) converted it. Then he wanted a level editor, so I
wrote that. :-)
We were very impressed to find that setting X% and Y% before calling
OSBYTE (I think it was) still worked - the backwards compatibility of
RISC OS is enormous. Particularly impressive given that it's an
utterly different processor....
--
Harriet Bazley == Loyaulte me lie ==
Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
Simon Challands
Harriet Bazley <har...@bazley.freeuk.com> wrote:
> We were very impressed to find that setting X% and Y% before calling
> OSBYTE (I think it was) still worked - the backwards compatibility of
> RISC OS is enormous. Particularly impressive given that it's an
> utterly different processor....
I was surprised to find that running BBC Elite on RISC OS (without an
emulator) gives you a nice little message to tell you that it is only
suitable for a BBC Microcomputer.
Games I've written: One or two little things when I was at school that
never went further. People played them, though (there) because it took
the school a while to specifically ban games you'd written yourself.
--
Simon Challands, creator of
The Acorn Elite Pages: http://elite.acornarcade.com/
Three Dimensional Encounters: http://www.3dfrontier.fsnet.co.uk/
ROS402dn
Simon Challands <please...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> In message <a2a115d24...@freeuk.com>
> Harriet Bazley <har...@bazley.freeuk.com> wrote:
>
> > We were very impressed to find that setting X% and Y% before calling
> > OSBYTE (I think it was) still worked - the backwards compatibility of
> > RISC OS is enormous. Particularly impressive given that it's an
> > utterly different processor....
>
> I was surprised to find that running BBC Elite on RISC OS (without an
> emulator) gives you a nice little message to tell you that it is only
> suitable for a BBC Microcomputer.
That's not too difficult to do, you could even take it one stage further,
using a 640KB ADFS floppy you could have the BBC B, Master, Electron, and
Archimedes versions of Elite all together and use a single common BASIC
file to correctly set which binary gets loaded.
--
To contact me please use email(at)sarpcuser(dot)fsworld(dot)co(dot)uk
Andrew Weston
--
The Exile Tribute Site: exile.acornarcade.com
Chris Johns
> > That's not too difficult to do, you could even take it one stage further,
> > using a 640KB ADFS floppy you could have the BBC B, Master, Electron, and
> > Archimedes versions of Elite all together and use a single common BASIC
> > file to correctly set which binary gets loaded.
> I thought only Masters and expanded Electrons could use ADFS?
B+ and BBCs with the 1770 FDC [1] could too, with the appropriate ROM.
[1] even without the 1770 FDC, I suspect that you could still use ADFS
in a beeb for a winchester.
--
Chris Johns (c...@chough.mine.nu)
Kris Adcock
> Suppose I'd better start off...
>
> Konkeror - 2D multi-player version of Conqueror. Had one battle with 8
> players on different machines using MIDI as a network (this was in 1992).
>
That sounds interesting - especially if it was resurrected and turned into a
cross-TCPIP game. Any chance it could be released?
--
Change slight spelling error if you want to reply by e-mail.
Jason Tribbeck
> Jason Tribbeck wrote:
>>Konkeror - 2D multi-player version of Conqueror. Had one battle with 8
>>players on different machines using MIDI as a network (this was in 1992).
> That sounds interesting - especially if it was resurrected and turned into a
> cross-TCPIP game. Any chance it could be released?
Not really; the game was Mode 9 only (in fact the scrolling code was
reused in James Pond 2). It would be better if it was completely rewritten.
Andrew Weston
<URL:mailto:c...@chough.mine.nu> wrote:
>
> > > That's not too difficult to do, you could even take it one stage further,
> > > using a 640KB ADFS floppy you could have the BBC B, Master, Electron, and
> > > Archimedes versions of Elite all together and use a single common BASIC
> > > file to correctly set which binary gets loaded.
>
> > I thought only Masters and expanded Electrons could use ADFS?
>
> B+ and BBCs with the 1770 FDC [1] could too, with the appropriate ROM.
>
> [1] even without the 1770 FDC, I suspect that you could still use ADFS
> in a beeb for a winchester.
What do you mean - both the DFS and ADFS in the same machine?
James Byrne
> So if anyone reads this who authored an Acorn Game, please reply with
> what it was and maybe a little story or two on it!!!
When you say "Acorn Game", I assume you mean ARM era ones rather than
anything earlier, so skipping the various BBC text adventure
conversions Roger Taylor and I did brings me to...
1) Iron Lord
Roger ran a small company called Cygnus Software Engineering which was
contracted by games publishers to do conversions. I was a student and
worked there during my holidays. As I'd just got my Archimedes (with
the full power of Arthur OS) I wanted to do a game for it, and since
Cygnus were working on Iron Lord, I started doing that in my spare
time. I started prototyping it in BASIC, but discovered that the Arc
was so fast that I could do almost all of it in BASIC, which I thought
was amazing at the time.
Facts which probably only I find interesting - the music is all
genuine medieval music, played with samples of real medieval
instruments. The sound effects are mostly home-made, using a Clares
sampling podule.
2) Twin World
The next summer I was working at Cygnus again, and was roped in to
helping finish off a C64 version of Twin World, as someone else was
making heavy going of it. The original was an Amiga game, and I was a
bit depressed by a) how much it lost being pared down to fit in a C64
and b) how much better the Amiga version was than anything I could get
for my Arc at the time (i.e. ropey 4D stuff with all the polish of a
tramp's second best old boot). As a result I started playing around
with an Arc version in my spare time, and got the whole thing done
over the summer.
Now that we had Arc versions of both Iron Lord and Twin World, Roger
persuaded UBI Soft to let Cygnus publish them (as UBI weren't
interested in the Arc), and this turned out to be pretty successful.
Fact of limited interest - for some reason I never managed to obtain
any source code for Twin World (or Iron Lord for that matter), only
the data files, so the game code was all written from scratch.
3) Tower of Babel
Roger knew Pete Cooke, who wrote Tower of Babel, so that became our
next Arc project. This time I actually got paid to work on it as my
main job instead of having to do it in my spare time, which was an
improvement.
A nice game (with a nice box and a nice manual). Sadly, not at all
easy to grasp on a first glance, and lacking in attention grabbing
action. Result; huge piles of unsold boxes in cubicles adjacent to the
Cygnus one, and no chance of Cygnus being able to afford to do any
more Arc games.
Somewhere I have a version that anti-aliases the edges of all the
polygons (to make use of the amazing extra power of the ARM3). I
really must finish it off one of these days...
4) Zool
Cygnus were out of the Arc market, but were doing work for Gremlin,
who decided for some reason that they wanted an Arc version of Zool.
By that time I had graduated and had a new job writing PC DTP software
in C, but as I'm sure you will understand, the thought of spending all
my spare time rewriting a glutinous lump of structureless 68000
assembler into ARM was too much to resist.
5) Premier Manager
Zool must have done reasonably well for them, so Gremlin asked me to
do this as well. In C this time, so much easier, but for some reason
not quite as much fun.
That's it really. Sadly I've not had the chance to work on any other
games since, but have somehow contrived to be in the position to still
do RISC OS work in a professional capacity on and off and, very
occasionally, in my spare time too (if the cause is worth it!)
James
Simon Challands
jby...@netscape.net (James Byrne) wrote:
<Iron Lord>
> Facts which probably only I find interesting - the music is all
> genuine medieval music, played with samples of real medieval
> instruments. The sound effects are mostly home-made, using a Clares
> sampling podule.
I recognised one piece (played with the mercenary), so I thought the rest
probably was, too. That touch didn't go unnoticed.
John Kortink
wrote:
>slamme...@hotmail.com (Duncan Burbidge) wrote in message news:<835da06f.03031...@posting.google.com>...
>> So if anyone reads this who authored an Acorn Game, please reply with
>> what it was and maybe a little story or two on it!!!
>
>When you say "Acorn Game", I assume you mean ARM era ones rather than
>anything earlier, so skipping the various BBC text adventure
>conversions Roger Taylor and I did brings me to...
>
>1) Iron Lord
>
>2) Twin World
>
>3) Tower of Babel
>
>4) Zool
>
>5) Premier Manager
Wow. Let's face it, the Archimedes era didn't produce many (good)
games, but, as far as I'm concerned, you apparently did three of
the really good ones (1, 2 and 3). I never finished Tower of
Babel though.
Hat off !
John Kortink
Email : kor...@inter.nl.net
Homepage : http://www.inter.nl.net/users/J.Kortink
ViewFinder, the high performance graphics card for RISC PC's :
visit http://www.windfall.nl for more details and pricing.
The Doctor
> slamme...@hotmail.com (Duncan Burbidge) wrote in message news:<835da06f.03031...@posting.google.com>...
> > So if anyone reads this who authored an Acorn Game, please reply with
> > what it was and maybe a little story or two on it!!!
>
> When you say "Acorn Game", I assume you mean ARM era ones rather than
> anything earlier, so skipping the various BBC text adventure
> conversions Roger Taylor and I did brings me to...
>
[snip]
> 2) Twin World
Eeeeee! What a fantastic game this is. One of my favourites.
SA + RO4 compatible too.
Thanks for making it.
Cheers!
--
Graham
The RISC OS software site - www.thedeathzone.free-online.co.uk/software
The RISC OS hardware guide - www.thedeathzone.free-online.co.uk/hardware
Deathzone Emulation - www.thedeathzone.free-online.co.uk/emulation
The Main Control Room - www.thedeathzone.free-online.co.uk
William McNee
James Byrne <jby...@netscape.net> wrote:
> 3) Tower of Babel
> Roger knew Pete Cooke, who wrote Tower of Babel, so that became our
> next Arc project. This time I actually got paid to work on it as my
> main job instead of having to do it in my spare time, which was an
> improvement.
> A nice game (with a nice box and a nice manual). Sadly, not at all
> easy to grasp on a first glance, and lacking in attention grabbing
> action. Result; huge piles of unsold boxes in cubicles adjacent to the
> Cygnus one, and no chance of Cygnus being able to afford to do any
> more Arc games.
I did manage to complete this, one of the few Acorn games I did manage to
finish.
Some nice weather effects in it too.
> Somewhere I have a version that anti-aliases the edges of all the
> polygons (to make use of the amazing extra power of the ARM3). I
> really must finish it off one of these days...
Mmm...would be interesting to see the speed of it on the newer machines.
William
--
Take out THETRASH and .invalid before replying by e-mail
West Lothian, Scotland
162MB SARPC 20GBHD RISC OS 4.33
Andrew Weston
> slamme...@hotmail.com (Duncan Burbidge) wrote in message news:<835da06f.0303110431.
> 5d2f...@posting.google.com>...
> > So if anyone reads this who authored an Acorn Game, please reply with
> > what it was and maybe a little story or two on it!!!
>
> When you say "Acorn Game", I assume you mean ARM era ones rather than
> anything earlier, so skipping the various BBC text adventure
> conversions Roger Taylor and I did brings me to...
>
> 1) Iron Lord
> Roger ran a small company called Cygnus Software Engineering which was
> contracted by games publishers to do conversions. I was a student and
> worked there during my holidays. As I'd just got my Archimedes (with
> the full power of Arthur OS) I wanted to do a game for it, and since
> Cygnus were working on Iron Lord, I started doing that in my spare
> time. I started prototyping it in BASIC, but discovered that the Arc
> was so fast that I could do almost all of it in BASIC, which I thought
> was amazing at the time.
>
> Facts which probably only I find interesting - the music is all
> genuine medieval music, played with samples of real medieval
> instruments. The sound effects are mostly home-made, using a Clares
> sampling podule.
>
incidentally?
>
> 5) Premier Manager
> Zool must have done reasonably well for them, so Gremlin asked me to
> do this as well. In C this time, so much easier, but for some reason
> not quite as much fun.
>
> That's it really. Sadly I've not had the chance to work on any other
> games since, but have somehow contrived to be in the position to still
> do RISC OS work in a professional capacity on and off and, very
> occasionally, in my spare time too (if the cause is worth it!)
>
You've done a lot! Nice to still have you aboard Sir :-)
Duncan Burbidge
Nice work James! This was one of my fav. games for the Arc... I agree
as well that at the time there wasnt that many impressive games on the
Arc... my friend and I always argued over his Amiga and my trusty old
A5000 over the better games!!!
> Fact of limited interest - for some reason I never managed to obtain
> any source code for Twin World (or Iron Lord for that matter), only
> the data files, so the game code was all written from scratch.
Was it written in ARM or Basic like you did Ironlord?
> 3) Tower of Babel
Played the demo, but never got the chance to buy a copy... played the
demo a thousand times though!
> 4) Zool
My sister's favourite game. She still nags me to play it to this day!
James Byrne
> Wow. Let's face it, the Archimedes era didn't produce many (good)
> games, but, as far as I'm concerned, you apparently did three of
> the really good ones (1, 2 and 3). I never finished Tower of
> Babel though.
>
> Hat off !
>
>
> John Kortink
Thanks. I should also say thanks to you too, as Translator was
essential for converting the Twin World graphics from the Amiga.
Unfortunately I never quite got round to registering it, until
yesterday when your post reminded me of a debt owed. Sorry about the
12 year delay!
I did finish Tower of Babel - they're all possible. I bet very few
other people did though.
James
James Byrne
> In article <cc97a769.03031...@posting.google.com>, James Byrne
> <URL:mailto:jby...@netscape.net> wrote:
> > Facts which probably only I find interesting - the music is all
> > genuine medieval music, played with samples of real medieval
> > instruments. The sound effects are mostly home-made, using a Clares
> > sampling podule.
> >
> Really enjoyed the music. Where did you get the medieval music from then
> incidentally?
That was Roger Taylor's idea. He likes medieval music and is quite
knowledgeable about it, so he chose the various pieces and created the
music data.
James
James Byrne
> > Fact of limited interest - for some reason I never managed to obtain
> > any source code for Twin World (or Iron Lord for that matter), only
> > the data files, so the game code was all written from scratch.
>
> Was it written in ARM or Basic like you did Ironlord?
No, the other games (except Premier Manager) were written in assembler
for speed. Iron Lord doesn't have a lot of fast moving graphics, and
the few bits that are too fast for BASIC were done in assembler.
> > 3) Tower of Babel
>
> Played the demo, but never got the chance to buy a copy... played the
> demo a thousand times though!
You should have bought it then! A bit late now though.
James
Andrew Hill
"James Byrne" <jby...@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:cc97a769.03031...@posting.google.com...
> slamme...@hotmail.com (Duncan Burbidge) wrote in message
news:<835da06f.03031...@posting.google.com>...
> > So if anyone reads this who authored an Acorn Game, please reply with
> > what it was and maybe a little story or two on it!!!
>
I loved Iron Lord and Twin World - both excellent games!
> That's it really. Sadly I've not had the chance to work on any other
> games since, but have somehow contrived to be in the position to still
> do RISC OS work in a professional capacity on and off and, very
> occasionally, in my spare time too (if the cause is worth it!)
Hmm. You look like a man who needs a decent cause to me!!! Quick! Find that
man a game to convert!!!!
Best wishes,
Drew
Gary Partis
and consoles.... Cant remember all the names etc now though!
Interesting stories?! Read the article named "Tynesoft Boys Club" on
www.stairwaytohell.com
"Duncan Burbidge" <slamme...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:835da06f.03031...@posting.google.com...