forum.defence-force.org

I am currently fixing bugs that my testers have found in Impossible mission. This means the game is getting much closer to release

However i am torn between what game to work on after this. So answer the poll if you wish to see something specific done.

Times of Lore
Some info
Based on the C64 game of the same name, its a massive sprawling free roaming arcade adventure spread over a complete country with towns, villages, sea, mountains, islands and dungeons. Its alot more than this. See the website created some years ago for more info..
http://tol.oric.org/
Current State:
Its about 75% done.
The game needs extensive testing and the title needs the music added. Disk save and load needs to be written and tested.

O-Type
Some info
Its a full colour, smooth vertically scrolling two player shoot em up.
Look here for more info and to the bottom of the page for captures..
http://forum.defence-force.org/viewtopic.php?t=345
Current State:
Its about 25% done.
The game needs alot of debugging to display big sprites, it needs sfx, music, more levels, more weapons, etc.

Wurlde
Some Info
Its a full colour Disk based free roaming Arcade Adventure set in a magical land of Dragons, windmills, flying fish, Trolls. The game is totally original.
More info here..
http://forum.defence-force.org/viewtopic.php?t=378
Current State
Its about 25% done
Lots more places need to be integrated into the game such as the interiors of castles and dungeons. There is no sfx or music yet.

Lemmings
Some info
You must remember lemmings?, it appeared on 16 bits then was written on most 8-bits. You get to guide up to 50 lemmings through a minefield of obstacles to the exit. You can get them to climb, fall, dig and clamber to their deaths
Current State
Did some experiments, thats all though

Gauntlet
Some info
Hack n slash your selected hero through loads of enormous mazes filled with demons, ghosts and orcs.
Current Status
Nothing done yet

Prince of Persia
Some info
3rd person perspective platform game but where hero can climb, jump, leap, crawl and sword fight his way through the castle to reach the imprisoned princess and kill the visier.
Current status
Some graphic tests done and with it flip screen perspective it would prove fairly easy in the graphic department

O-Type for me, closely followed by Wurlde.

Sam Fox strip poker

(only kidding)

Lemmings is best played with a mouse so I think I'd avoid it even if the source code is out there.

Xeron wrote:Sam Fox strip poker

Just because i can draw naked Fairies doesn't mean i can draw Naked Page 3 girls

The game title attracted people much more than the game itself. From what i remember it was a really naff game and i never saw much of her.
Am i right?

JamesD wrote:Lemmings is best played with a mouse so I think I'd avoid it even if the source code is out there.

Dbug will kill me but its never the way i work. I prefer to rewrite the wheel on these sorts of games and totally ignore any source code out there
Tailoring it specifically to the Oric Scheme and focusing on keyboard/joystick based operation

Twilighte wrote:Tailoring it specifically to the Oric Scheme and focusing on keyboard/joystick based operation

Just to save you some time... try playing Lemmings with a joystick before you go down that road, it sucks. It's too hard to select a lemming. Easy levels become difficult and difficult levels become impossible.

Twilighte wrote: From what i remember it was a really naff game and i never saw much of her. Am i right?

I don't know, I never owned a copy. I was only joking though, and as far as I know it was a terrible game on all platforms.

The only gameplay in Samantha Fox Strip Poker was to patch the game to make her strip whatever the result of the cards was

Since I became a Pulsoids fan I've been dying to ask you to write a shooter that uses the color-blending technology of Pulsoids .. something like Galaxian or Galaga, or maybe some sort of update on this concept .. a 2D scrolling shooter with these color-blending tech would be awesome.

Sam Fox Strip Poker was a decent enough game if you ignored the strip aspect and treated it as a straight poker game. It was tough, but you could win. The only downside was that it obviously cheated rather than using any real AI. As it was, it was a competent but far from excellent game in the short term.

It wouldn't be hard to knock one out (oo-err) quite quickly for the Oric. There are screen grabs (or you can just hack it out) for the Spectrum version that would transfer ok and the basic poker game is easy to put together. If anything, it would probably be an improvement on the original if you could use some modern AI techniques on it.

The visuals themselves aren't anything to shout about unfortunately. They're badly digitised and messy, lacking the clarity they should have. It would perhaps have been better to get a decent graphics artist to use the scans as a source for a redraw that played to the host's strengths.

There was also a sequel of sorts, with Maria's Christmas Box featuring fellow Page 3 and Barbarian cover girl Maria Whittaker in a seasonal case of same game, different pictures, as she stripped down from a Santa outfit.

Can you tell I was something of a fan?

If you really want to do this sort of game, can I suggest a cross breed? Take the celebrity aspect, then tag that to something like Kightsoft's Animated Strip Poker:
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseek ... id=0000206
There's a game that treats its subject with some fun and has novel presentation. Its not exactly got the cheap thrill of digitised pics, buut its a far more charming and enjoyable experience overall.

Lemmings works ok on keyboard/joystick, it ported pretty well to the consoles of the time and there's already a Spectrum port out there.
2 player mode on the Atari ST also left one player on joystick. I still managed to beat my ex-wife often enough.

Antiriad2097 wrote:Sam Fox Strip Poker was a decent enough game if you ignored the strip aspect and treated it as a straight poker game. It was tough, but you could win. The only downside was that it obviously cheated rather than using any real AI. As it was, it was a competent but far from excellent game in the short term.

Ok, thanks for the info

Antiriad2097 wrote:It wouldn't be hard to knock one out (oo-err) quite quickly for the Oric. There are screen grabs (or you can just hack it out) for the Spectrum version that would transfer ok..

What gets me is why everyone assumes one should base any game on the Spectrum version. Pulsoids, Stormlord, Times of Lore and Impossible Mission are all based on the C64 versions.
Resolution wise the C64 is better since most screens will be colour and the c64 resolution is 160x200 whilst the Spectrum is 256x192.
Reducing a monochrome image from 256 to 240 is much worse than resizing a 160 wide 16 colour image.

Antiriad2097 wrote:Lemmings works ok on keyboard/joystick, it ported pretty well to the consoles of the time and there's already a Spectrum port out there.
2 player mode on the Atari ST also left one player on joystick. I still managed to beat my ex-wife often enough.

I agree although it definately benefits with a mouse.
Would the Oric Lightpen be better than joystick for Lemmings?

Twilighte wrote:What gets me is why everyone assumes one should base any game on the Spectrum version. Pulsoids, Stormlord, Times of Lore and Impossible Mission are all based on the C64 versions.
Resolution wise the C64 is better since most screens will be colour and the c64 resolution is 160x200 whilst the Spectrum is 256x192.
Reducing a monochrome image from 256 to 240 is much worse than resizing a 160 wide 16 colour image.

I was just approaching it from the Spectrum angle as that's the version I'm used to playing.

My thoughts on why it would be suitable were because it was mono, and I thought the mono dithered image would work well in Oric Hires mode.
Having checked out the C64 screenshots for this particular game on Lemon64, I'd have to admit they do in this instance look far better than I remember and would probably give a nicer end result. The resolution change needn't be a huge issue in this case - it'd be simple enough just to crop the image instead of scaling it if needed. I'm not sure how well you can replicate a greyscale dither on Oric though.

Antiriad, apologies if i seemed a little harsh, it was not my intention. For most other people they would do exactly as u suggest - take the Spectrum version or at least a monochrome image and convert it.

On the Oric we are missing greyscale, but we still posess some levels of brightness through colours, as proved in Stormlord Fairies.

I am probably alone in basing games on the C64 version.

But please consider doing the shooter instead of strip poker!

It'd be a lot more interesting to my 3 year old, who I am gradually turning into an Oric fan..

Plus, it seems like Pulsoids is half-shooter already ..

Ibisum, i have no intention of doing Sam Fox Strip Poker, i have zero interest in Poker and Sam is a bit dated now.
Anyway the Poll has suggested from the start that O-Type is the way to go after IM
But its only 10 votes so far