awrc@cs.ed.ac.uk (Al Crawford) (03/15/91)
In article <1991Mar15.182741.1322@grape.ecs.clarkson.edu> walshm@clutx.clarkson.edu writes: > >RE: Dropzone anyone remember this game? it was basically a Defender-clone, >except with a big spaceman as your ship. Some incredible multicolored >sprites, smooth as silk animation/scrolling, a title page which was incredible >and a sound effect for your exploision which was downright INCREDIBLE! the >best sound effect ever on the 8-bit and one that holds up against anything > >I have heard today anywhere! > >Anyone know what happened to the company and/or programmers? this was one game >WAY ahead of its time! Yes, I loved this, one of the first games I ever bought for my XE. It was written by a guy called Archer Maclean who, if my ailing memory serves me correctly, was an American living in the UK. He did write some other stuff afterwards but I don't have a clue what he's doing these days. >RE: SYNAPSE > >along the same lines, the graphuics and games put out by this company were >downright amazing...blue max, fort apocalypse, encounter, rainbow walker, >drelbs, necromancer! any of these programmers go on to games today still? I don't think Encounter was actually a Synapse product - it was produced by a UK firm called Novagen which, initially at least, was a guy called Paul Woakes. It was licensed to Synapse in the US. He went on to write the game Mercenary, which was released on the 8-bit and almost every other machine under the sun. After that he wrote Damocles (Mercenary II) which is only available for bigger machines, like the ST and the Amiga. Damocles was the most recent product - it was released sometime last year. Quite impressive (solid 3D etc). -- Al Crawford - Al_Crawford@edinburgh.ac.uk "Breakdown. Splinter. A thousand fragments disperse and die."
borgen@stud.cs.uit.no (Boerge Noest) (03/16/91)
In article <7807@skye.cs.ed.ac.uk> Al_Crawford@edinburgh.ac.uk (Al Crawford) writes: >In article <1991Mar15.182741.1322@grape.ecs.clarkson.edu> walshm@clutx.clarkson.edu writes: >> >>RE: Dropzone anyone remember this game? it was basically a Defender-clone, >Yes, I loved this, one of the first games I ever bought for my XE. It was >written by a guy called Archer Maclean who, if my ailing memory serves me >correctly, was an American living in the UK. He did write some other stuff >afterwards but I don't have a clue what he's doing these days. Well, he wrote International Karate (IK) (European title, don't remember the title in USA - Championship Karate? - anyway, it was stopped in USA because Data East(?) thought it was a bit too similar to one of their licences), and IK+ (all 3 done on the C64 too), and is reported to be working on a snooker(or whatever you call it, billiard?, pool?) game for the ST and Amiga. All this as far and correct as I know. > Al Crawford - Al_Crawford@edinburgh.ac.uk -- |/// borgen@stud.cs.uit.no (Borge Nost) \\\| |// ...and then there was AMIGA... \\| |/ studying at the worlds northernmost university (Tromsoe, Norway) \|
norlin@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Norman Lin) (03/16/91)
walshm@clutx.clarkson.edu (Clutch CARGO,Spinner,Paddlefoot,Silver Skuder,Spinner,Paddlefoot, ,2173988593,2173988593) writes: >in reverse order... >a poster recently posted a program that supposedly allowed the 8-bit to have >4096 colors. HOW IS this possible?!?! I though 256 was the limit. Anyone >know why this program is only coming out now and how technically this color >extension is possible? This piqued my interest and I contacted the author, whereupon he informed me he was rapidly flipping between display pages with a DLI on one line. This technique actually has been around at least since the early 80's when Compute! magazine published an article to get 10+ colors on the old CTIA chips (though it used a VBI instead of a DLI but the results are practically the same). >RE: Dropzone anyone remember this game? it was basically a Defender-clone, >except with a big spaceman as your ship. Some incredible multicolored >sprites, smooth as silk animation/scrolling, a title page which was incredible, >and a sound effect for your exploision which was downright INCREDIBLE! the >best sound effect ever on the 8-bit and one that holds up against anything >I have heard today anywhere! Yeah, this game did impress me so I disassembled parts of it. Actually the majority of the animation is... hold your breath... done with CHARACTERS. The whole field (except for the bottom landscape part) is an ANTIC mode 4 field. You'll notice that the main enemeies (the Nemesite and the other one that looks like the Nemesite except his eye goes the other way) are very small, so that redefining blocks of characters to move them finely presents no problem. If you look closely, you can notice that when two enemies overlap, they flicker as one set of block characters or another takes precedence. It was quite easy to "lift" the character set from the game and incorporate it into some neat demos... The Nmeye and the Blunder Storm, as well as your player, are P/M graphics. >Anyone know what happened to the company and/or programmers? this was one game >WAY ahead of its time! >RE: SYNAPSE >along the same lines, the graphuics and games put out by this company were >downright amazing...blue max, fort apocalypse, encounter, rainbow walker, >drelbs, necromancer! any of these programmers go on to games today still? Agreed. Encounter is one of the few 8 bit games (others include Rescue on Fractalus and The Eidolon, with their fractals) that, to this day, has still totally eluded my comprehension. HOW on Earth do they do those graphics, and so fast? I tried disassembling it but got hopelessly lost. I believe it is done in ANTIC mode D (graphics mode 7), and I suppose that since the figures are geometrically simple (diamonds, circles) and consist largely of white space on the interior with no detail, the graphics could be done in real time rather than having preset graphical shapes overlayed onto the screen. How is the perspective handled? How are collisions (i.e. missile hits) detected? Any programmers out there care to comment? >MTM "Matt the Man" Walsh;alias: THE CLAW,SCOOTER,SKUDER,GILLIGAN,TAIL DRAGGER >mail all editorials, responses, donations, junk mail to: > walshm@clutx.clarkson.edu > This has been a program-length advertisement ---|\-#-/_|-------/|-------,*.----||---Norman Lin, University of Oklahoma---- ---|/-----|------/-|---,"--|---,"-||------norlin@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu------- --/|------------/-*'---|/------|--||-----(IP addr: 129.15.[20|22|24].2)------ -|/|\---/_|-----|-----------------||-"I gazed in your eyes, and saw the moon- --\|/-----|----*'-----------------||------------and the skies"---------------