Torque AGA (Shoah, 1997)

[Heavy Stylus]

I'm looking for the full version of this superb uridium clone from 1997, if it exists. There's a demo version available at the bottom of this page: http://www.back2roots.org/Games/ADF-Games/T/40/.

Anyone know anything about this one?

[Amiga1992]

Looked nice at first but it's really a terrible clone, without a radar you don't know what's ahead of you, and the movement of the ship+scroll is not so nice.

Still a good discovery for me, thanks for pointing this out!

[Heavy Stylus]

You're welcome - I would like to know if there is any more info about it though!

[TCD]

I've uploaded a version to the zone, which doesn't say demo or 'please register'. So I guess it's the full version

[Heavy Stylus]

Unfortunately this is still the preview version... it says so in the readme and also has 'Pay £20 to advertise here' screens between levels...

[TCD]

Ah damn, should have had a look at the disk in WB first I hope that doesn't mean that the game never got to the full version. Fingers crossed anyway

This is very surreal.

I was just searching for the adf and found this thread.

I was the author of that game, it was my baby. Bad news is that it never got completed. It did get a lot further down the line than the demo ( I've not looked at it for so long, but does the demo have vertical scrolling ? The last build did ), but it's lost forever now I'm afraid.

I've always wanted to redo it ( I'm a Flash developer now ) and hopefully will as a personal project.

As a slightly boring anecdote I took a job at gimme5games who were at the time owned by Eidos and part of the carrot for me to work there was that the official licenses for a lot of the old Graftgold games were available including paradroid ( The c64 original, not the crime that was Paradroid 90 ) and uridium.
I was so close to getting my hands on them, then Eidos dumped g5 as a cost cutting thing.

I'd forgotton about the ad between levels too. Hell, I was years ahead If I wasn't such a waster I'd be writing this wearing a crown now after getting out of bath of diamonds.

Anyway thanks for the good words guys, and making an old fart truly happy, I think it's the first feedback outside of a couple of reviews I've ever had for the game.
( Speaking of which, if anyone has some old CU Amigas with the reviews in ( From memory they reviewed it twice, exactly a year apart. I'm sure one issue had the statue of liberty on the front ) and feels like scanning the reviews I promise you'll own me. I'll be your bitch for life ).

Squize.

www.gamingyourway.com

[Shoonay]

Whoa, hello and welcome to EAB, Squize!
Great to see yet another Ami dev found his roots

Thanks mate

It's great to see such an active community still supporting the Amiga. Makes me feel old and happy at the same time.

Squize.

[s2325]

there is also version based on C64: http://hol.abime.net/4360

[Amiga1992]

It's a huge shame you never finished this AND lost the sources..> how can that happen???
It's a shame, someone could have fixed/completed it (put a scanner in it ) if you had them ;(
Welcome to EAB and will be looking forward to your new developments.

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by Akira

It's a huge shame you never finished this AND lost the sources..> how can that happen???

HD crashes (only people with too much time make backups ), faulty disks, lack of interest etc etc. There are many reasons, just pick one.

It's a shame, someone could have fixed/completed it (put a scanner in it ) if you had them ;(

Technically that's still possible as the binaries are still available.

[Heavy Stylus]

Thanks for the facts Squize - another case closed... Like others have said above, shame it was all lost, I think the game had a huge amount of promise.

wow, enthusiastic response

"It's a huge shame you never finished this AND lost the sources..> how can that happen???"

Real life got in the way, I got my first proper job where the only way to make a decent wage was overtime, so I was doing 13 hour days and doing anything after that is a hardship.
68020 isn't the most forgiving language, and the longer I left it the harder it was to get back into it, plus at that time the Amiga was starting to die on it's arse, the magazines were disappearing off the shelves, plus all the remaining mags then started putting large chunks of aminet on their cover CD's, so it would have been lost in the crowd ( It did actually appear on a shovelware cd on a mag ).

As to losing the source, that went with my machine. I'd been lugging my tower 1200 around from flat to flat without even plugging it in, then one crappy day I moved to a tiny flat and there wasn't just space for it ( Same as the CDTV ) so I just wrote it off and left it behind ( Not an easy thing to do, but I had to be a realist, I was never going to finish the game by then ).

After that I didn't do anything on a computer creative wise til around 2001, so 4 years just working in real life.

As to the lack of a scanner, this was based on Uridium which didn't have one. Uridium 2 needed one as the ships were huge but we wanted to keep it quite streamlined.
We did have issues making sure the barriers stood out as we didn't have many colours available but they do get hit by bullets so we hoped the big drop shadows plus your bullets exploding on them would help.

I've recently started playing with Unity which has the potential to do a really good remake of this in, more so than Flash ( Which doesn't have vb syncing, so no matter how smooth you make the scroller it's still going to rip and tear ) so it's on my wish list.

I think I've got the sprite sheet somewhere, if I find it I'll post it up.

Thanks again for the interest guys, very heart warming.

Squize.

www.gamingyourway.com

[Cammy]

Is there any chance you'll ever remake the game for Amiga platforms? This dedicated, enthusiastic Amiga community still appreciates new 2D games. But then again, so do 5 year olds who fuck around with online Flash games for ten minutes before getting bored, and I guess that's where the money is.

'fraid not mate, it's been far too long since I coded in assembler, I'd have to relearn it all again.

I know what you mean about Flash games, even though they pay my rent. It also isn't helped by all the 13 year olds turning out shit for $50.

Is there still a healthy scene of people turning out new games ? I've noticed that the demo scene is still quite active ( The Black Lotus, the stuff I've seen from them retroactively is just insane, things that just shouldn't be possible on the Amiga. Ever ).

Squize.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Squize

Real life got in the way,

Thanks for the REAL facts, not asumptions by a forum member
I wonder if someone salvaged your files after they got your machine, unless you wiped it off before selling it! I know I salvaged files from old computers I bought

Haven;t you thought about entering a gaming platform instead of Flash gaming?

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by Akira

Thanks for the REAL facts, not asumptions by a forum member

Thank you, another one of your wonderful posts. Just in case you didn't notice, I didn't speak for Squize, I just mentioned some general reasons why things like that happen because I thought you may be interested. Apparently you aren't so next time I'll just keep quiet.

hmmm got a bit warmer around here.

"Haven;t you thought about entering a gaming platform instead of Flash gaming?"

Well like I said we've moving towards Unity now, but Flash really isn't as bad as the majority of the crap done with it.

I make what I still consider silly money, games get played by millions of people ( Which is the main buzz ), we're in a position to get some great ip now ( Like the game we did to pimp the new Prodigy album. Hearing that the band were coming off stage in Oz and testing the game, as a fanboy you can't put a price on that. Pity the game itself was so rushed ) and Flash as a platform is getting more mature.
You can blit with it now, so all the old Amiga tricks are useful again ( Here's a demo I did with a lot of old Amiga effects, plasma; infinite bobs and with an Amiga mod running etc. ).

i can now do all the games I wasn't good enough to do before in a fraction of the time.

Sorry this has turned into a pro-Flash post which I guess no one is interested in, I guess I'm just trying to justify it

Because it's a relatively limited platform it does in many ways remind me of the Amiga days, to really push it you have to do a lot of optimising and the community around it is really strong and passionate ( If you ignore the script kiddies and their $50 games ).

Squize.

Sorry about the double post, but I found the player sprite sheet if anyone is interested.

Squize.