Times of Lore?

Want to talks about games you like, would like to see developed on the Oric, it's here.
JamesD
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Times of Lore?

Post by JamesD »

Anyone know what happened to this?
http://tol.oric.org/
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Twilighte
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Post by Twilighte »

Times of Lore was a very big project. And was taken as far as actual game with sub-missions but it lacked any sound and i just got so frustrated with running out of memory and bugs galore.
Dbug and others suggested using top 16K RAM but then it needed special disk routines and made developing the game a real pain.
I think it is possible to do, but it does require alot of work and optimisation, even maybe a smaller map and game scope.

It would also be so cool if someone else could come up with their own sound routines, or even a musician would show interest in the Oric.
Then perhaps i wouldn't feel so much like producing 100% of the game myself.

So many people have had so many projects and dreams on the Oric, and Times of Lore was just one of my dreams of many including impossible mission, Prince of Persia, Lemmings, Worms, Delta, Wurlde etc.

All of these games are quite possible on the Oric, to a greater or lesser extent but all take a vast amount of time to develop and an overwhelming amount of commitment, endurance and dedication to complete them.

I keep returning to them, adding code, recoding areas or even restarting the projects. I did the same with Magnetix, Pulsoids, ZipnZap to mention just a few and got a good foothold in the development of them and they were completed and released.

It is an amazing feeling when you finally complete a project and just as great a sense of achievement when you look back at these games many years later.

But it all takes mountains of time.
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carlsson
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Post by carlsson »

I kind of recognize the feeling. Apart from the demo groups who only work internally, sometimes I feel like the only VIC-20 musician in this world. Yet, I have published my player routine and some sparse documentation how to use it, so someone else might be able to compose their own music using my player. I suppose it is the same for you, that you have a working player routine and only needs someone to compose music for it?
Anders Carlsson
JamesD
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Post by JamesD »

Well, I think we can work out the music issue easy enough. If the game ran on any machine with an GI sound chip then we can see about yanking the data from within an emulator.
Once we have that then we can worry about modifying it for the existing player or the player for it.

The memory issue... that may require taking a step back, looking at the design, existing code and seeing where it's at before doing anything else.

It would certainly be a shame to see this go unfinished and I'd hate to see it stripped down from the other versions.
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Post by JamesD »

There's an archive with 11 sound tracker modules from Times of Lore on this page:
http://genesis8.free.fr/frontend/music.php
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Post by JamesD »

Well, if we can make the player into a soundtracker format player I think that may be all that is needed.

As for sound effects... I'll have to see if any CPC emulators have a debugger that lets me examine the code.

We may be able to borrow some stuff in the same manner for Space 1999. If anyone knows of a game for another machine with some sound we could *ahem* borrow then that would help a lot.
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Post by JamesD »

The Trakker 128 file format is also on that page... in French.
I'm reformatting a babel fish English translation to match the original but some things came out strange.

I guess the first step is to try to get the files off of the CPC disk image if someone wants to try to use them.
Any interest?
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Twilighte
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Post by Twilighte »

For now my priorities lie elsewhere. :(

I am currently undergoing medication for a long term illness i suffer from, called MF (Lymphoma skin cancer) which can (at times) consume all my spare time and motivation. :cry:

My priorities also lie with work and finding better prospects for the future now. :)

However, work is pointless without play :roll:
On the Oric side i have gradually built up an array of promised and failed projects and as such i must really address these.

So for a list of priorites in the Oric world, these are them.

1) Write music and SFX for Chema's Space1999
2) Complete Times of Lore
3) Wurlde, Decent SEU, Impossible Mission, etc. :roll:


There is no deadline dates for above, only that they need to be done as soon as possible. :shock:
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waskol
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Post by waskol »

Take care of you Twilighte.
Even if we live far away from you, our hearts stay closed to yours.

Take care amigo, health is what you have more precious, do not play with it.
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Symoon
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Post by Symoon »

Couldn't agree more.
Hope you get rid of that soon Twi.
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Twilighte
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Post by Twilighte »

Log.
Back on TOL for last couple of weeks :P
Enhancing title with more menus/music/etc.
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Nox
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Post by Nox »

Great news for all TOL-fans :)
I'm really impressed by what you've done so far!
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coco.oric
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Post by coco.oric »

Wonderful, making an ad&d game on the oric is one of my dreams.
I test your demo of TOL. It's a top game for Oric.

As soon as you did it, it will be a game to use. Go :)
coco.oric as DidierV, CEO Member
Historic owner of Oric, Apple II, Atari ST, Amiga
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Twilighte
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Post by Twilighte »

I need to get over the technicalities of playing SID sound at a constant rate since its interconnected with the music code. The SID sound is needed for the Title music which is nearly finished.

The problem is that the Oric only has one programmable interrupt source. Which means whilst its processing the music it cannot be processing any SID sound currently playing.
The answer is on entering the IRQ and deciding the music needs to be processed, to re-enable the interrupt and allow it to be called during the music process. However this requires ultra optimised sid routine and careful coding when sending any new data to the sound chip :P

After Impossible Mission, I am torn between finishing O-Type or Times of Lore. However both will need this SID sound :wink:
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Dbug
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Post by Dbug »

Using the forum system you can create threads with a poll to ask questions.
So technically you could publish a new message with:

Which game do you want me to work on next:
- Times of Lore (Role playing game)
- O-Type (shoot em up)
- Wurlde (Action adventure game)
- Other (please comment)
- None (I hate oric games, and I don't care !)

:)
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