Nevernoid 2: The Revenge [Blitz Basic]

[Planeshifter]

Originally Posted by earok

the spreadsheet with video links are here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...RqM/edit#gid=0

It'd be good to get them all done, incase there's other authors out there that'd like to see their games again.


We probably need a permanent 'home' for the games. I think I posted the bundle to the Zone, but I think it'd be good if there was a more easily accessible place to get them. I may just upload it to Mega and then post the link on the first post of this thread.

Hey guys,

I'm so happy that I just stumbled across this thread! I had just recently dug up my old Amigas, and had shown my 7-year old son the game that I developed together on the Amiga with a friend back in 1993. Back then, we made that game using Blitz basic, for a competition in Amiga Format. We hoped to win one of the two Amiga 4000s that were the reward. We worked on the game under immense time pressure, I even missed a semester at university due to that. Then, when we finished the game, we mailed it, and... never heard anything from Amiga Format. And nothing was posted in AF to give any status updates. Just nothing. We assumed that the mail had been lost, and that our entry never arrived.

Yet here, now, in this thread, I find out that it WAS indeed received! Hurrah! I read here ( https://www.everythingamiga.com/2016...z-basic-2.html ) that the entire competition sort-of fizzed out silently, with no in-between follow-ups whatsoever, except this lousy entry somewhere between the pages to "announce" the winners ( https://archive.org/details/Amiga_Fo.../n169/mode/2up ). What a shame!

Our entry was "Nevernoid 2: The Revenge A.A.v.d Woestijne & R.H. Keizer" from The Netherlands, Amsterdam - I'm the "R.H. Keizer", Rainer Keizer :-)

Nevertheless, here we are now, 27 years later, and none of what happened then really matters anymore. The only thing I can do now is to be proud that we actually entered, that we have a game to show for it, which I can still show my son, and last but not least: that it has actually been recorded in history - or at least, well, ok, in a Google Sheet, haha!

I'll try and see if I can make some screenshots from the game (see the post below), and then I'll check if I can make the game available in some way. I've been out of the Amiga scene entirely for those last 27 years, so I first have to get into it again, and into Blitz 2.

I'm more than happy to receive any tips on how and where I could make the game and/or screenshots available, and I would also like to make the source code available.

The funny thing is, that I actually studied Law at university, out of fear that I wasn't good enough in math (which isn't true, but fear can make you do stupid things). Because of my love for computers and programming however, I ended up being a software developer anyhow, and did that for 11 years before becoming a consultant. It's wonderful how life follows it's own course, regardless of some of the things you think you should do :-)

Hope to hear from you guys!

Cheers,
Rainer

[Planeshifter]

I've made some screenshots from the game on WinUAE, showing a bit of the gameplay.
Our main idea was to make an Arkanoid variant, with the cool difference that you wouldn't be controlling just one bat, but four bats and goals at the same time.

All four bats move simultaneously, either clockwise (joystick right) or counterclockwise (joystick left). This means that the topmost bat moves right when pushing the joystick to the right, but the bat at the bottom moves left when pushing the joystick to the right... which makes for some getting used to.
As if that isn't hard enough, pushing the joystick up moves all four bats inwards, and pushing down moves them outwards again.

Failing to return a ball doesn't immediately cost you a life, but it does add up.

The gameplay is pretty hard to be honest, and the fact that we didn't use floating point vectors for the ball movement means that the ball can sometimes get stuck in a loop, which can indeed only be broken by moving the bats inwards - increasing the chance that the ball goes into the goal.

Two-player mode makes it easier, because you only have to focus on either the top and bottom bats, or the left and right bats - but still, they move in opposite directions :-)

We also made a level editor, which could be used to create so-called "custom levels".
The music was composed by me, using OctaMED v4.

[earok]

Hey Rainar, good to hear from you!

I think it's definitely worth getting that game out there, I could see if I could make a video for it (I had intended to do so for every game that was in the Amiga Format archive, but me being me, I got sidetracked with a lot of various Amiga projects).

If you're comfortable with the source code being out there, I do have a number of Blitz Basic repositories on github, I could do the same for Nevernoid.

https://github.com/earok?tab=repositories

[Planeshifter]

Playing the game for a little longer now shows that it is still fun - although hard!

The lack of feedback from Amiga Format, and our thoughts still being with winning that competition and adhering to their rules (of exclusive publication), made that we never did anything else with the game, unfortunately. Reading how others released their game as shareware back in the day makes me think how stupid that was. Ah well - the joys of hindsight!

I'm thinking about making a few minor changes before releasing it. I remember we really had to rush the last bits before sending it out. To our dismay, we also found out that an A500 was just a bit too slow when too much was going on. Fortunately, that's not a problem anymore these days.

While playing, I remembered that we had built in some things to help the gameplay:
- Pressing space sort-of shakes the screen, offsetting the ball so it gets unstuck;
- Pressing the fire button speeds up the bats, so you can manage to deflect the ball in time after all;
- ESC exits the game.

It's quite interesting to look at the code with the experience I have now: there's not a single comment in there - absolutely nothing that explains the function of each variable. In my professional career as a consultant, we had to write many interfacing scripts, and colleagues with no prior programming experience never used comments either...

The name "Nevernoid" is a Dutch pun on "Arkanoid". "Noid" sounds like the Dutch "nooit", which means "never", and "nevernooit" is a slang expression for "never ever"

Arthur (van de Woestijne) and I made the first versions of NeverNoid on the C64. We started developing an Arkanoid game in Basic, but that was waaaaaay too slow. Then we moved to some compiled Basic language, which didn't suffice either. The next step was to move to Assembly language, which was great! At some point however, we used a wrong JSR and everything was screwed up beyond repair. When the Amiga came - oh joyful times! - we started developing the game in AMOS, then moved on to Blitz 2. It was a perpetual, "nevernooit" project, teaching us so many things along the way.

The first screenshot shows the Level Editor, but I'm not sure if that was the final version. The second shows an early prototype of the game, which featured twin screens, just like Twintris. We didn't follow that idea through.


Do I understand correctly that you do posess the game including the source code already?
Also, I saw a post elsewhere on abime.net (http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=84915) that the game is actually on the FTP site in WHDLoad form, but as that's currently down, I can't verify.


PS: I found another game with the name "NeverNoid", that came out 14 years later, for PC. It's also by some Dutch guys, who give the exact same explanation for the origin of their game name: https://www.demonews.com/download/nevernoid/

[earok]

I've put the files that were in the Amiga Format archive in "the zone". That does indeed include the Blitz Basic source code, though I've never tried to compile it - I do see that the copyright notice is from 1987 to 1994 though

There's a process to getting access to "the zone", which I can't quite recall, but the moderator team will help I'm sure

[Aladin]

Hi, here is the archive of the test version whdl on the ftp

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by earok

There's a process to getting access to "the zone", which I can't quite recall, but the moderator team will help I'm sure

How do I get access to The Zone?

[Planeshifter]

Thanks Damien and Earok; I already had access to The Zone, but as the FTP server is down, that didn't help much :P

About the copyright notice: back then, we thought it just stood for the period from which the copyright started until the then-current date, haha :-)

Yesterday, my son and I reached level 25 in two-player mode, just to see how everything looked. I did change the variable for amount of "lives" to 50 though :P

In my opinion, the game definately needs to be made a tad easier, as it is almost impossible now to get far. The time limit is also kind of nagging, and some levels have been mainly designed with looks in mind, and the conceptual thought of what challenge it would pose, but they haven't been tested for playability.

I'm thinking about the possibility to change the controls as well, so you could have for example both bats at the top and bottom move left or right simultaneously, and the left and right bats move up and down simultaneously, at least in two-player mode. But the need for consistency is also there, so...

TIP: if anyone is actually trying to play the game: do remember to use the SPACE BAR if the ball is stuck, or even to just "tilt" it a bit so a hard-to-reach brick can be hit.

Maybe it's an idea to open a new thread just for this game, as I'm kind of hi-jacking this thread now?

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Planeshifter

Maybe it's an idea to open a new thread just for this game, as I'm kind of hi-jacking this thread now?

Done

[Planeshifter]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Done

Great stuff Damien, thanks

[earok]

May I also suggest a move into the Amiga Game Factory sub forum? The main reason is, since this is a game 'currently' under development, it may be worth having the thread there alongside the other games currently under development.

[DamienD]

Yeah ok, done