Richard Costello's Coding memories

[mc68060]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Give Kevs graphics the release they deserve, not with a crappy youtube video

Full ack! They really deserve to be preserved for eternity. A Youtube video (although better than nothing) just can't do such masterful pixel art justice IMHO.

[invent]

Now I remember the game seeing the preview via CU Amiga, very nice isometric graphics

http://amr.abime.net/review_39710

[Ricardo]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Headsup, Gremlin no longer exist, and i can assure you they absolutely dont care.

That small room in Sheffield on the second floor where they stored all the source code and assets to all their games before they were bought up by Funcom.....binned, every single last disk or CD.........Ramrod would have gone the same way.

Give Kevs graphics the release they deserve, not with a crappy youtube video

As far as I am concerned Ian Stewart owns the rights (unfortunately), and he still exists (fortunately!). He paid for the development of it.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Ricardo

As far as I am concerned Ian Stewart owns the rights (unfortunately), and he still exists (fortunately!). He paid for the development of it.

a website exists, which has been allowed by Ian Stewart himself.

The gremlin Graphics games are freely downloadable here, with the game covers and manual scans :

http://gremlinworld.emuunlim.com/

next here is what is written on the main page :

"Welcome to Gremlin Graphics World, this is the official 100% legal distribution source for old Gremlin titles with permission from the software house themselves. Not only will we provide you with the games but with a little help from you the public we will also offer the original cover art, screenshots and much more so bookmark us now so that you don't miss a thing."

Ian Stewart gave his approval and this website is Gremlin Graphics legal archive.

So i guess you know what to do next

[Ricardo]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

So i guess you know what to do next

Looks like a dead site to me... :-))

[BippyM]

Site works here :/

[mc68060]

@Ricardo:
You don't have to release any sources or graphics to the public. You could just make them available to Galahad and he would try to finish it. This has been successfully done before. Mark Cale of System 3 provided Galahad with the Putty Squad sources and files and Galahad created a working version which was then even published on System3's official site. See here http://www.codetapper.com/amiga/inte...a-putty-squad/

Also, Ian Stewart soon has a book about the history of Gremlin Graphics coming up, see here:
http://www.bitmapbooks.co.uk/product...n-in-the-works

I'm sure he would agree to such a co-operation as it would certainly generate some publicity for his book. A release of Ramrod would hit all major retro news site in a second so Ian would get some publicity for the new Gremlin book. And it's not necessary to release any sources or files. Just make them available to Galahad and he'll see what he can do. That would really be great and a true service to preserving Kevs pixel mastery!

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Ricardo

As far as I am concerned Ian Stewart owns the rights (unfortunately), and he still exists (fortunately!). He paid for the development of it.

Id like to buy any Atari ST hard drives you have, dont worry about deleting the contents, will use as is.

[Ricardo]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Id like to buy any Atari ST hard drives you have, dont worry about deleting the contents, will use as is.

Hmmm I ought to loose it somewhere :-)

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Ricardo

Hmmm I ought to loose it somewhere :-)

Thats the spirit.......your call chap, but seriously though, didnt realise Kev Bulmer had passed away, his graphics were great......even the really early Gremlin stuff

Would be awesome to see all that work get an airing either way

[Ricardo]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Thats the spirit.......your call chap, but seriously though, didnt realise Kev Bulmer had passed away, his graphics were great......even the really early Gremlin stuff

He contacted me because a magazine was wanting to do specials on unreleased games and wanted to start with RamRod. Which is why I came wandering about here. He then went quiet. Couple of years later I got an e-mail from his partner and found out why he had gone quiet. He was a great artist, not just pixel painting but he used to do stuff for White Dwarf and Games Workshop too. Disney were REALLY particular about people drawing Mickey Mouse, but the title screen that Kev did got passed straight away as "perfect" which is high praise from Disney.

[Ricardo]

Quick update. Looks like my RamRod ST master uses 11 sectors per track (standard is 10) and thats the issue the PC floppy is having reading it. Which is good news because it means the master might still be OK - but bad news is I need to get my ST repaired now.

[dlfrsilver]

shame you don't have any amiga, otherwise, you could have dumped the game disk easily.

It's right that PCs can't basically dump ST 11 sectors disks this due to the hardware limitation of their Floppy disk controller.

[SyX]

I was googling about Ramrod and i found in Gremlin Archive two pictures of Richard's development floppies.

I hope that he has been able to preserve them and maybe someday we could see how Ramrod played

[s2325]

Excerpt from the Richard Costello interview by Lost Dragon.

"RamRod was finished on the ST but it had no depth and the gameplay was
rubbish. Robocop meets Marble Madness is a perfect description. It was
very heavy on graphics, which as you mention were gorgeous (all by Kev Bulmer
R.I.P.) they were the best bit. But the game just consisted of the main
character wandering about 3 levels each 4 screens high (vertically
scrolling) and on each level playing 4 arcade games-within-a-game where
RamRod was scanned into the arcade machine (like in TRON) where he became
the central character in Space Invaders etc. The arcade games were added
in an effort to add game play. The whole project was a bit of a dinosaur
with no central control, management or direction unfortunately - I was no game
designer, I enjoyed writing cool code - and I was left to come up with
the game I guess, so all it became was a lump of cool code displaying cool
graphics, bit of a demo I guess. I recently found my ST master discs so I
am trying to get them working (my ST is dead at the moment and the format
of them means they can’t be read on a PC)."

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari...rod_31081.html
interview http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari...t-ii_9421.html

[Ricardo]

Quick update, can't believe this thread is over 10yrs old. Hope everyone is Covid free!

I recently managed to stick the Ramrod master discs into a 1040ST. One of the 4 sub games appears to have a disc error, but apart from that everything else ran fine, so the master appears (mainly) ok.

p.s. Ramrod music & sound was by Benn Dalglish.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Ricardo

Quick update, can't believe this thread is over 10yrs old. Hope everyone is Covid free!

I recently managed to stick the Ramrod master discs into a 1040ST. One of the 4 sub games appears to have a disc error, but apart from that everything else ran fine, so the master appears (mainly) ok.

p.s. Ramrod music & sound was by Benn Dalglish.

So.......just being chatty or?

Sadly Benn has now gone as well, can't believe its been nearly two years

Yeah, this thread is older than the development time of Ramrod.......... there's something in that I think.

[kamelito]

Glad you’re still around, keep us posted.

[Ricardo]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Sadly Benn has now gone as well, can't believe its been nearly two years

Didn't know that. When I read the above the first thing I thought was he smoked too much... Too young for such a talent, lovely person too.

[Ricardo]

Originally Posted by kamelito

Glad you’re still around, keep us posted.

Nice avatar ;-)