Development of Blake's 7 (was OASIS development)

[Chema]

It was a pretty good idea, Symoon. It's just that I could not find a way to do it better

But it was a good challenge, and I'd learnt a lot!

I'd like to hear more opinions and ideas, anyway.

[Dbug]

Well, what's needed is sound
Either the whirrring of cameras moving, or foot steps, doors opening, computers beeping, etc...

[Chema]

This is nothing that can't be done. In fact I simply did not add more background sfx to avoid them being annoying: just the main character footsteps and door hiss when opening doors, and others just when you do things, solve puzzles and so on.

Something very little intrusive, so they give information to the player and not make the player deactivate sound as soon as he boots the game.

I could put sound of doors opening, even put some character moving from one place to another, but don't you think that would make the player try to find out what is going on? Or try to interact with that character looking for some clue? I'm asking because I would not want to put anything that could create a distraction.

Yeah, I know the character may be someone you can talk to, with no real involvement in the story, but I am talking about something more general.

Seriously, I am looking for ideas, as I just could not come up with anything convincing

[ibisum]

Its easy for me to say, since I'm just a random Internet dude, but my 2¢ is that sound effects should be integral to the game environment, itself - i.e., yes, sounds shouldn't be superfluous, but indeed part of the action .. its another layer upon which to give the player hints about what to do.

So, maybe one thing you could do is, use slightly different versions of the standard effects, in cases where there is something important - for example, there is a standard door hiss. If its for a door that will lead nowhere, leave it - use the standard hiss. But if its relevant to the plot-line, make the pitch of the hiss slightly higher/lower/different somehow, in order to give clues/hints for those of us who need it.

If the camera movement is relevant to the plot - make it a slightly different sound, and so on.

EDIT: btw, I'm willing to help with sound effects, if I can!

[Dbug]

Well, you had all these sounds in Space 1999 already.

It's what make the places memorable and alive.

Way too many Oric games are defined by either PING, SHOOT, ZAP, EXPLODE or pure silence, which is kind of a shame

[Symoon]

A small idea, in case you really want to waste remaining bytes: if the player has been inactive for a while, as soon as the pointer moves again, the character can say something like "ah, you're back!".

[Chema]

In Space 1999 we had footsteps, door hiss, the elevator, some small tunes and UI sfx. There was indeed a sfx of computers beeping which appeared in a couple of rooms only.

Here we have all those too (except the computer beeps, which I might add), plus many others such as teleport and some surprises, and I am currently adding some UI sfx (small pics of different pitch when the command sentence changes or when you clic to execute an action and one bell whenever ESC is used to interrupt a cutscene).

What I think is that these kind of games keep the player stopped thinking, reading a conversation or examining the environment for quite long, which makes these sfx sound only at given times, the rest being silent.

If you mean background sounds to put in some rooms... I may take a look at that. It should be possible indeed, but can't afford many of them.

On another thing, if I end up adding joystick support (only IJK and Telestrat) I have some questions:
- Is there any easy way to detect a Telestrat joystick? (detecting it, so I can activate the routines to handle it?)
- Does the IJK joystick detection routine in the wiki work? (same)
- Does anybody have a full routine to handle the Telestrat joystick (in the wiki some values of the table are missing)
- Is it the same routine as with a Telestrat mouse?

[Chema]

Adding small details to bring some rooms to life, such as this, before black and empty, screen... Marvels of multitasking scripting...

https://youtu.be/cRuYr9EH8wM

[Chema]

Uff... I am tired today.

- I added a small tune to play in some tense moments (Blake's Federation March).

- I finished testing (again) the game to make sure it is finishable without issues. I found a small bug and solved it. I hope I did not break anything in the process.

- I also finished translating the walkthrough to English and now I have a readme file, a manual and the walkthrough.

I'd like to translate the manual to Spanish before the release, and I'd need to pass this more definitive version (let's call it beta 2) to some testers so they try to finish the game (even following the walkthrough, if they need to).

I'd like to prepare some floppy labels too and maybe something for a box, so you could prepare a physical edition of the game, but not sure if I will be able to do so.

Almost there....

[Dbug]

Will the manual include some basic description of what Blake's 7 is (the original tv show, etc...) for people who never heard of it?
Courage!

[Chema]

Yes... Here is a copy of the preliminary version:

b7-doc.zip

(491.49 KiB) Downloaded 68 times

[ibisum]

Wow, I cannot wait to play this! Will you make the floppy label art available so we can shrink it and put it on SD cards too .. ? (Cumulus user here)

[iss]

Nice doc, congrats!

... but beware 3” floppies cannot be used.

I'm just curious - why 3" floppies are unsupported?

[Chema]

Nice doc, congrats!

... but beware 3” floppies cannot be used.

I'm just curious - why 3" floppies are unsupported?

Because I don't know how to The game would use both sides and I am not sure how or when to ask the user to flip the disk. Too much hassle with the savepoint (which would be on side B, while playing in side A) and other resources...

And no, I did not find a way to spread the info so everything that is needed is duplicated in both sides.

Should be doable, but honestly I don't have time or energy...

One more question regarding the Telestrat. Is there any way (apart from using Jedes bootfd tool for Orix) to make a Telestrat boot the game disk? I simply cannot emulate that behaviour, even with Euphoric. I tried to put the Stratoric and so, but all I got was a black screen (IIRC).

Oh, and another question more Is there a tool that could be used to duplicate a non-DOS disk from within the Oric? Something that copies sector by sector? Just to add it as a recommendation to backup the game disk.

[Chema]

I am testing this routine to detect IJK joysticks which is from the DF Wiki:

Code: Select all

 
         LDA #%11000000
         STA via_ddra
         STA via_porta
         LDA via_porta
         AND #%00100000
         BNE ijkPresent

And I get a positive test whether I have Oricutron configured to emulate an IJK joystick or none, so am I doing something wrong or is there something wrong with the routine? Anyone?