Which game would you like to see written?

Hi everyone,

At the moment, I am currently diving into the depths of the RISC OS & looking to build the OS (Thanks Rick http://www.heyrick.co.uk/blog/index.php?diary=20131105) as well as trying as best I can to understand the ‘ARM MPCore Boot and Synchronization Example Code’.

However I would like to write a game to release at the Southwest show. But, not sure which is the best one to try.

Currently I have either:

• Some design, reusable code for a sort of reworking of Cybertron Mission … Probably isometric.
• A concept for a lemmings style game.
• A POC of a sideways scroller written, that features a car.

+ I will have an update Legends of Magic.

Given the tight timescale – anything radically new is out. But I should (hopefully) be able to do one of the above.

Any other ideas welcome.

Thanks,

Tony

Skweek clone. Very simple, and fantastic game :)
(would probably need to dump original levels too)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Skweek

I have a soft spot for LaserTank and PushyII, neither of which work on my Rpi2.

for the wife:

Candy Crush style game…

Gavin, have you tried it under Aemulor? I had it running (although it was a PiB Rev 2, not Pi II)

have you tried it under Aemulor?

Never bought Aemulor. My feeling, not strongly held, is that if a piece of software is worth running, it is worth running natively.

Brothers In Arm did a Tetris-clone with some nice tracker music and the usual scrolling text nonsense (BIA Tetris?) Would love to see that or something similar again – lost an awful lot of time to it (and Lemmings, Drop Ship and Interdictor) during school lunches…

Tony, yes Oddvar Kloster of BIA did a fine job with his Tetris game. Fond memories! I liked the music (“The Last Sun” by Frederic Hahn, and I highly recommend Jogeir Liljedahl’s excellent remake of it). Did you ever see/play SICK’s version of Tetris? Simply amazing. Probably the best version of the game I’d ever played.

Thanks for the ideas. Something similar to Skweek could be fun to write, because of IPR it would have to be a bit different probably.

Regarding CandyCrush, given the value of the franchise (billions I understand), I will probably have to play it safe and not code anything similar (see http://amigagamer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/homebrew-amiga-game-brings-out-lawyers.html)

Good to see fond memories/possible interest in a Lemmings style game. Will bear Pushy and LazerTank in mind.

Hi David, do any of the original suggestions sound worthwhile?

• Reworking of Cybertron Mission … Probably isometric.
• A lemmings style game (I’ve some ideas for different features and methods of play)..
• A sideways scroller that features a car (I have a POC for this)

Or indeed does anyone have a view on those 3?

I am going to play Skweek later I think…

Which one?

For me, Cybertron (unknown), lemmings (why not), sideways (should see).

For Skweek clone, note that they were many clones (even under RISC OS, see PON: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpi8CkkFEyI ). Anyway, company is now closed, and game available for free since years. Good point is that you can make other levels later (even levels similar to old ones, but as anonymous :) ).

Nota: Arg was also one of my favourite games.

Please would you provide a link to ‘Arg?’

Regarding Cybertron mission:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ0rGboeOL0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybertron_Mission

But I would do it as an isometric view. Ideally a first person shooter , but not in 3 months…

There have been many games on RISC OS. Not many held my attention. This did.

It is called Fervour and you can see it in action here: http://youtu.be/misN2jbpo1Y
(let it okay, the first level is dumb; the rest are increasingly fiendish)

Sometimes when I wasn’t wanting to play, I’d fire it up on the A5000 just to let the title music play. This was 1995. T’was generally more pleasant than Blur, Take That, Coolio, Jackson, Boyzone, East17, Bryan Adams, Shaggy, Oasis, and Robson&Jerome – just to name a few that filled the airwaves of the time…

So Drop Ship is a thrust like game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6TgCSZR0bA

Looks good fun too.

Fervour looks like an elegant piece of game design.

Thanks. It should in theory be easy to write (famous last words)..

Ooh, yes! Fervour was my all-time favourite game, I’d love to be able to play it again. It’s still sat on my hard drive but stopped working when I moved from RISC OS 3.1 to 3.5 :-(

I love the Chicken Invaders series – a RISC OS version would be great.
A modern version of Repton Infinity…although think you might need to chat to Superior Interactive first.

Fervour was one of my all-time favourites too! Chocks Away! was pretty epic too (apart from my sons turning out to be Manfred von Richtofen reincarnated, i.e., much better dog-fighters than their dad….).

Fervour, Chocks Away and Star Fighter were my all-time favorites… So addictive!!!

Lots of votes for Fervour. I’ll fire that up on the my Archimedes emulator on my Pi.

What was it that you liked most about the game? – I wouldn’t want to kill what was good about it, if I made a game of the same type.

So if I make a game in the same style – I could, for example, put the objects on top of the road, rather than it being a part of the road – or I could put some things in the background fro decoration e.g. the curve of a planet below.

i.e. Would there be anything that should be improved about the game as it stood?

I’m concerned that anything there is a lot of already such as Repton or Skweek, might not attract much interest – because any game I produced might not stand out. Also Fervour, looks like something I could easily engineer as Overlord would share some of the game mechanics already.

Lots of votes for Fervour. I’ll fire that up on the my Archimedes emulator on my Pi.

I’d be interested to know if you can get it working on the emulator, I’ve not had any success even like that.

What was it that you liked most about the game? – I wouldn’t want to kill what was good about it, if I made a game of the same type.

Simplicity. The “track” was a set of rectangles. Some were coloured and some weren’t there. The initial beginner levels introduced you to the game, but beyond that you had to remember what colours did what. Points, hyper speed, more time, control loss, extra life, treacle speed, springboard, and so on.
The clock counts down, and the dashed bar along the bottom gets smaller as you progress, so on the more complicated levels you know how tantalisingly close the finish line was when time is up.

Just be sure to have a password or something to allow you to start playing from level # because starting at the beginning each time is the quickest way to lose my interest (the only game that did that that I’ve ever seen through to the end is Chuckie Egg – and that was thanks to a rainy weekend at boarding school with absolutely nothing better to do).

As for improvements… use caution. Part of the charm of the game is that it is exactly what it is. I mean, what’s the point? You are what? Piloting a Zeroid through a broken road suspended in space? There’s practically no backstory that would make sense. So, forget it. Here’s you, here’s the Zeroid you’re in charge of. Here’s what has to be done. Forget the backstory and mind the holes, it’s a loooooooooooooooong way down.

Andrew> I had it running on my Risc PC OK, although IIRC I had to hack it to disable the sound as the sound module crashed it (and half the sphere is missing for some reason). ( https://youtu.be/U9AFtD2qD8I for random video)

Hi Rick,
So I’ll start with the bare bones of the game.
I believe I can see the point your making – remembering the function of the colours is weird, abstract and fun – and forms a core part of the puzzle in the game.
But I could e.g. add nice background space graphics, but I should leave the basic game design and function alone, because that design is the games core appeal.

Anyone know what happened to the original author?

Tony

Only managed to find the demo ‘http://acorn.revivalteam.de/?site=Downloads’

Running this on ArcEm! (http://arcem.sourceforge.net/)

Very widescreen (guess this is 640×256) . But first impressions are – its really cool.

Andrew & Alex – It works fine on ArcEm! running RISC OS 3 with music etc.