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30 September 2010, 19:02
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#1 |
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Posts: n/a
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David Makin - former Amiga programmer
Hi all, just joined to make sure everyone interested has a link to my old RPG Crystal Dragon, so here it is (apologies for ads/pop-ups):
http://skyscraper.fortunecity.com/te.../download.html Note - that it really is abandonware so don't worry about copyright issues ! Main original feature - rats that you can use as food (though you may catch disease), kill by throwing at the wall, and that will devour your food if put in sacks/chests next to food items while alive. As to me - I'm still a programmer, latest work is "Free iCandy" for the iPhone 4 which is a *realtime* Julia Set animation program from Parys Technografx (who did Tower of Souls on the Amiga). Who'd have thought a phone could ever do realtime fractals when we were programming the Amiga !!! As you may have guessed my hobby is Fractal Art: http://www.fractalgallery.co.uk/ http://makinmagic.deviantart.com/ |
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30 September 2010, 19:07
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#2 |
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HOL/FTP busy bee
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Germany
Age: 46
Posts: 31,525
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Hi David and welcome to EAB
 We have you listed as 'Dave' on HOL right now : http://hol.abime.net/3136 Guess we should change that now  Enjoy your stay 
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30 September 2010, 19:44
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#3 |
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The 1 who ribbits
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: leek, Staffs, UK
Age: 56
Posts: 3,557
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welcome aboard
amiga + fractals =
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30 September 2010, 19:53
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#4 |
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Still an Amiga user
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Kent
Age: 55
Posts: 2,715
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Hi David - I remember Crystal Dragon - I actually bought it!
On HOL you are also credited with Super Scramble Simulator - was that an original idea of yours? - I seem to remember a very similar game to Super Scramble Simulator being downloadable as a shareware game for Windows about 5 years ago - was that you? |
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30 September 2010, 19:54
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#5 |
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Pixel Blender!
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 51
Posts: 267
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welcome to this great haven of Amiga goodness!!
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30 September 2010, 20:25
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#6 |
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Global Moderator
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: France
Posts: 3,289
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Nice. Another RPG in which you can move around using the keyboard (numpad).
Thank you for taking time to register and share with us.
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30 September 2010, 21:45
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#7 |
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Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Wales (Gods Country)
Posts: 155
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Welcome my friend, great to have you on board.
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30 September 2010, 22:07
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#8 |
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Global Moderator
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Might as well be WORK :(
Age: 56
Posts: 4,110
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Welcome aboard David
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30 September 2010, 23:13
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#9 |
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Global Moderator
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Sidcup, England
Posts: 10,300
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Hi David, and a warm welcome to EAB!
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30 September 2010, 23:47
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#10 |
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Junior Member
Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: No(R)Way
Age: 41
Posts: 3,187
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Cool and welcome, its a great game..Please share any information about the developing process or any other interesting information you have about it
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01 October 2010, 00:55
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#11 |
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Zone Friend
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Germany
Age: 50
Posts: 5,857
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nice to see you here!
(I was the man in the middle to "lure" him here, I reckoned he might want to join, but wondered if he'd actually do it  )
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01 October 2010, 01:06
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#12 | |
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Global Moderator
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Sidcup, England
Posts: 10,300
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Quote:
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01 October 2010, 17:08
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#13 |
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Zone Friend
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Germany
Age: 50
Posts: 5,857
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Don't mention it! I just always like the stories these guys would tell from their former employers, also in respect to size/space/whatever limitations they had to face (and work around)!
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02 October 2010, 00:11
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#14 |
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CaptainM68K-SPS France
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Melun nearby Paris/France
Age: 46
Posts: 10,412
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Welcome David, i'm happy too that you're here with us !!!!
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06 October 2010, 17:48
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#15 |
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Posts: n/a
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Hey
Man crystal dragon is great game,i played it many years ago but remember like it was yesterday.I stuck for many days,before i figure out i can trow coins in to the well-.- Ahh now i feel like play it again |
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11 October 2010, 17:44
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#16 | ||||
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Posts: n/a
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Quote:
And most search engines recognise either Quote:
Super Scramble Simulator was a progression from Shaun Southern's old 8-bit game "Kickstart" and the level design was by Andrew Morris - I gave him a bit of a difficult job because to make the courses as varied as possible he had to position vertical strips just 16 pixels wide ! The similar game wasn't me. Quote:
Quote:
Ian did all the graphics and designed the levels though I had some input with respect to what was possible as far as puzzles went (i.e. switches/pits/teleports etc.) The basic system for health/stamina/food/water/experience/poison/disease etc. was one of the first things we did. This was tested with a small AMOS program that ran in extreme accelerated mode as far as all the stats were concerned and we tweaked things so that (for example) when you got to the green dragon (poison) if you got a full poison bar but were at the estimated levels for that point in the game then you could just about manage to survive I have to admit that the game editor was a bit of a pain for Ian to use because due to lack of available memory there wasn't a proper "undo" mode, this is partly why there's the odd lock or switch remaining in the game that are just red-herrings Overall it took two years, one of the most difficult things to solve was the save game and current game state saving (when changing dungeon levels) each level was 64k plus another 32k for other data, I think there were 24 levels and we allowed up to 5 saved games - and all this had to fit on a floppy. In the end I used a "save changes" method - however if you play the game a fair way through and then proceed to drop a single object on each square of one of the middle levels then it's quite possible that major failure will occur when exiting the level or saving the game !! As each level was designed Ian would keep playtesting and adjusting the amount of food, weapons and spells etc. so that if you played reasonably well then you'd not starve or be too overmatched etc. I say it was intense because at one point I was programming for around 16 hours a day for 7 days a week over a period of around two months. During this time I got really annoyed one day because some of my code seemed to have disappeared - it was only after discussion with Ian that I realised the relevant code was something I'd worked out in my head the night before but hadn't actually written yet Just to add that I think one of my favourite features of the game was the confusion spell, especially as applied in a certain winding corridor with traps firing confusion spells along with moving pits
Last edited by Graham Humphrey; 11 October 2010 at 19:06. Reason: Back-to-back posts merged |
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13 October 2010, 11:00
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#17 | |
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Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: UK
Posts: 457
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Quote:
, that's the meaning of intense!.Between, haven't played it much, but it looks good, polished, and done with passion. I hope you and Ian made a fair amount of cash out of it! |
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13 October 2010, 12:58
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#18 |
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Into the Wonderful
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Earthrealm
Age: 42
Posts: 1,426
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Greetings and welcome aboard.
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05 June 2011, 00:40
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#19 | ||
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Posts: n/a
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Quote:
Also of course the release was a little late in the day for an Amiga game and after the blow with respect to Black Legend things went worse as Commodore began to fail and Amiga games disappeared from high street shelves. I forever curse the Commodore management for the completely insane decision to produce a console device rather than doing what they should have and releasing a (cheap) native 68040 Amiga computer with vastly improved graphics by incorporating a quality graphics card (for the time) such as the Picasso. Quote:
A small correction - I'd forgotten that even using "save changes" we only managed to allow 2 saved games per floppy - the 5 saves was the hard drive version I also didn't make clear - the saved games even on floppy were such that you could play the game to the final level then save it as save A, then go back to level 1 (making changes along the way) and save it as game B then go back down to the last level again making changes and if you then went back to level 1 things would basically be the same as they were on the way down (i.e. the current game levels were saved) - then if you loaded saved game B and went back to the last level things on the way down would be as they were when you saved game B and if you then loaded game A you'd again find all levels remembered as when saved. I think there were 24 levels so altogether that's the equivalent of 3*24*(64k+32k) = 6.75MB on one 1.44MB floppy just for the level data - all without any knowledge (at the time) of "modern" compression methods such as Huffman encoding. Last edited by TCD; 05 June 2011 at 00:51. Reason: Back-to-back posts merged. Use the edit function. |
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05 June 2011, 01:05
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#20 |
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Registered User
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Brisbane, Australia
Posts: 80
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Welcome again!..
I love reading about 'back in the day' recollections from people that were heavily involved in the scene!! |
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