Turrican 2 MS-DOS AGA conversion

[kremiso]

Originally Posted by ross

Enhanced to Turrican-O

With this in background to promote the release:
[ Show youtube player ]

This theme song is something, but you had to be a pre-teen in early '80 Italy to get goosebumps for it

my god that tune! i grew up with it

yes, perfect choice

[lifeschool]

With the legality thing, people port old PC games and arcade games to Amiga all the time, and nobody really cares about the Amiga scene to make any fuss. These games are over 30 years old in some cases, making them antiques, people copy antiques all the time.

It's a shame the 1942 game was stopped, when we have Bombjack Beer Edition recently, and the Final Fight inspired Metro Siege. Not to mention 1945, 194x, etc

If you are making money or not, Factor 5 could complain that you are using the Turrican assets, no matter what you call the game. Graphics and tunes, and even level design can be copy-written. There is only a small chance they would do that, but as you say, of all the companies on the Amiga, we only have Factor 5 and System 3 (maybe Hewson?, Cinemaware) left.

Porting a game from the PC is less legally complicated than conversing a game to the Amiga, as with Diablo, Command and Conquer etc, because you are providing a conversion kit rather than a whole new game.

They could make a fuss, but they could also endorse the game if you ask them nicely. Porting or converting the MS-DOS version for them could even earn you some money? Why not ask and find out.

For the record, the legal name for the original game is "Turrican II:The Final Fight", not Turrican 2 AGA. If you change the name again, nobody is going to find it in searches.

[Muzza]

Originally Posted by Torti-the-Smurf

Hope you dont mind if i ask ...
Can the OG Amiga Sprites be used in the AGA version ?
That would be amazing

Maybe post release, if it is not too hard to rip all the assets...
It is unlikely to be as simple as just an artwork change though. The PC version has many more map tiles, so the map data is all different. I would not be surprised to find some of the enemies have different number of animation frames etc. too.

[saimon69]

TurrAGAn?

[Superman]

Originally Posted by saimon69

TurrAGAn?

I just read that in a Popeye voice.

[kremiso]

was wondering, the fact that the T2 pc port was made from the (disappeared?) Sun-Project team, and also used different gfx assets from the original

could change something in the presumed or true copyright issues we are reasoning here?

[Torti-the-Smurf]

Originally Posted by Muzza

Maybe post release, if it is not too hard to rip all the assets...
It is unlikely to be as simple as just an artwork change though. The PC version has many more map tiles, so the map data is all different. I would not be surprised to find some of the enemies have different number of animation frames etc. too.

I thought so too
Still; geat that you at least consider it
Thank you so much for more Turrican on Amiga

[Muzza]

Has anyone tried this game on a CD32? (obviously one with Fast RAM). I've had one user say it just reboots their machine when starting the WHDLoad version, and outputs no debug logs. I'm not sure what could be causing it.

[jotd]

TF hardware...

[Muzza]

Originally Posted by jotd

TF hardware...

He has a TF32. They have issues in some way? It doesn't seem to affect every game.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by lifeschool

There is only a small chance they would do that, but as you say, of all the companies on the Amiga, we only have Factor 5 and System 3 (maybe Hewson?, Cinemaware) left.

And DICE, Housemarque, Rockstar North (ex DMA Design), Blizzard, Ubisoft Reflections, Team 17, Raven Software, Traveller's Tales, Blue Byte, Revolution Software, Bethesda, Lucasfilm Games etc...

As for Factor 5 I'm pretty sure they will be pleased to support an AGA conversion of Turrican.

[jotd]

Originally Posted by Muzza

He has a TF32. They have issues in some way? It doesn't seem to affect every game.

I'm very grateful of the TF that Superman built and donated me, but sometimes it resets with no reason. Doesn't seem too stable in games. For instance, I remember that I had unexplained crashes with SWIV.


Very useful to debug some stuff on the real machine though because of fastmem & IDE card.

[alexh]

TF328? Or TF330? The 328 is very simple. If it has issues maybe the underlaying CD32 or perhaps the PSU?

[Superman]

Originally Posted by jotd

I'm very grateful of the TF that Superman built and donated me, but sometimes it resets with no reason. Doesn't seem too stable in games. For instance, I remember that I had unexplained crashes with SWIV.


Very useful to debug some stuff on the real machine though because of fastmem & IDE card.

No me but maybe Superduper.

[Muzza]

Originally Posted by alexh

TF328? Or TF330? The 328 is very simple. If it has issues maybe the underlaying CD32 or perhaps the PSU?

Sorry its a TF328. I'm told this is the only game it happens with. Does a reboot without guru imply a hardware problem?

[jotd]

yeah, Superduper (what an ungrateful sod I am!), and it was also a TF328.

[wairnair]

Originally Posted by Muzza

Has anyone tried this game on a CD32? (obviously one with Fast RAM). I've had one user say it just reboots their machine when starting the WHDLoad version, and outputs no debug logs. I'm not sure what could be causing it.

Yes I have. I've finished your demo (a fairly recent version) without problems on a CD32 with a TF330 (030@50mhz with MMU, 64MB). I ran the Whdload version from a 8GB CF card. It ran flawlessly.

[Muzza]

Someone with links to Factor 5 kindly put in some inquiries about the rights situation with the PC DOS version. The message back was that the artwork is not owned by Factor 5 because there was a third party involved with time limited rights, and those rights likely returned to the original artists.

From this I suspect that Funsoft were the 3rd party (they published it). They were bought out by THQ in 1999, who also went defunct and were sold off to various other companies. It is also possible that Sun-Project (the original developer) have the rights - they only released this one game before disappearing. So the artwork rights could be anywhere (and likely no-one cares about it because its not like they can do anything with it). Of course everything else about the game is owned by Factor 5.

This kills any small chance there may have been to make it official.

But the good news is that Factor 5 have indicated that they are ok with a release calling it Turrican 2 AGA, as long as it is clear that it is an unofficial fan project, not associated with F5, and is free. So it now seems pretty safe to just release it normally with all the assets pre-packaged and using the name Turrican. Big thanks to ScHlAuChi for talking to Factor 5.

[malko]

This is a good news indeed. Not all companies allow the use of a well known name. KUDOS to Factor 5 for such positioning

[dlfrsilver]

Good job !