Ziriax 100% (Ultimate Edition)

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Hello chatterbox of BS1 Good to see you again aboard on EAB

The publisher in fact did a nasty thing to you. Other people than you were credits in the game manual.

i was astonished when i discovered this when i bought the game in original.

I'm astonished that you could buy the game at all, since the publisher "The Software Business" never paid me any royalties. I had contracts and everything, but what is an 19 year-young guy with no money going to do against a UK based company in a UK based court room? The game didn't get any good reviews, and it was leaked by a beta-tester, loosing a lot of its values, so with a broken soul, but with a lot of coding experience, I moved on.

I still feel a shiver down my spine whenever I play Ziriax, because soooo much passion and energy went into it (not only the game, but all the tools developed next to it, like a level editor, a realtime linker, sprite animation sheet editor, etc).

The bad news was, that I got screwed again with my second game Zarathrusta, since Hewson went bankrupt while selling it. They did pay me some money when they rebooted as 21st Century Entertainment, but only if I would develop Deliverance for them, so it was a bit of blackmailing. But it was fun working with Kim Goossens on it.

But no matter how hard these companies screwed young developers, the friendships that spawned from making these games are very strong, no money can replace that

And I'm still a professional programmer enjoying my work every day, all thanks to the sparks of the Amiga and C64.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Ziriax

I'm astonished that you could buy the game at all, since the publisher "The Software Business" never paid me any royalties. I had contracts and everything, but what is an 19 year-young guy with no money going to do against a UK based company in a UK based court room? The game didn't get any good reviews, and it was leaked by a beta-tester, loosing a lot of its values, so with a broken soul, but with a lot of coding experience, I moved on.

I still feel a shiver down my spine whenever I play Ziriax, because soooo much passion and energy went into it (not only the game, but all the tools developed next to it, like a level editor, a realtime linker, sprite animation sheet editor, etc).

The bad news was, that I got screwed again with my second game Zarathrusta, since Hewson went bankrupt while selling it. They did pay me some money when they rebooted as 21st Century Entertainment, but only if I would develop Deliverance for them, so it was a bit of blackmailing. But it was fun working with Kim Goossens on it.

But no matter how hard these companies screwed young developers, the friendships that spawned from making these games are very strong, no money can replace that

And I'm still a professional programmer enjoying my work every day, all thanks to the sparks of the Amiga and C64.

How well did Deliverance do for you?

Technically, it made Gods look a bit silly.

[Nibbler]

Ross

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

How well did Deliverance do for you?

Technically, it made Gods look a bit silly.

Oh that is a nice complement! Gods was a better game imo, we only had 6 months to make Deliverance. I just got paid for the working hours, since it was supposed to be a quick and dirty conversion of the C64 Stormlord II. However Kim Goossens wanted to show off his graphics skills, and decided to make something completely different ;-) But we contractually we had to make 10 levels, and that was simply impossible in combination with the insane gfx and animation from Kim... Out of budget we had to finish the game with a silly shmup as the final level. I got paid reasonably well for Deliverance, but we did not have any royalties, since it was supposed to be a conversion... Afterwards we went into 3D. Kim is now working at Ubisoft.

[nobody]

I wonder how much money these companies made from the work of other people. Nowadays the creators have internet, Steam etc so they can bypass company men but back then it was all about blackmailing and stealing I guess.

[demoniac]

The screenshots and features for this release looks impressive.

[Methanoid]

Thank you Ross and great to see a cracktro

[CodyJarrett]

Deliverance:

Where to get??? ;(

[DamienD]

The Zone!

See: How do I get access to the zone?

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by CodyJarrett

Deliverance:

Let's talk more about Ziriax, after all, everyone knows Deliverance a lot more anyway. Ziriax has remained underrated and kinda hidden all these years.

Ziriax, I suppose the answer is "no", but is there any remote chance all those tools like level editors for Zarathrusta can be recovered and released? Was there also a level editor for Ziriax? How about a sprite editor?
Would be cool to use the engine to do something else

[ross]

THANK YOU ALL FOR THE COMPLIMENTS!

Kudos to Peter Verswyvelen, privately he wrote me really exciting words.

I'm honoured by the IndieRetroNews article!

Just a little curiosity.
I've noticed a Youtube video:
[ Show youtube player ]
The uploader got the incredible patience to wait 8 minutes for end of scroll-text.. but.. is not the end

The spaceship fail also the second approach to planet 'ross'.
On the third try there is a change in flying asset/attitude
Insanity? Yes.. this explains where the name of the played module comes from Thanks to Hukka!

[Crown]

HI Ross,

thanks for the hint!:

that's fun indeed. I am gonna learn to be patient then.

No unfortunately these tools are lost.

I was a bit of a maniac back then, I wrote everything in assembly language, direct to the hardware, no call to the system libraries. I even made a custom disk loader, again using the hardware directly. This was all possible because Commodore published these wonderful books about the system. I surely miss those days.

Originally Posted by DamienD

The Zone!

See: How do I get access to the zone?

Got it. Thanx Damien!

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by calculon

Got it. Thanx Damien!

No problem

...but aren't you one of the people that now has my collection?

If so, then see here

[solidcore]

Ziriax writing hardware direct is pretty awesome, I suppose you made your own library that you re-used throughout your games at the time?

Really appreciate all the hard work you put into your games, I'll enjoy them with my son.

Thanks.

Originally Posted by solidcore

Ziriax writing hardware direct is pretty awesome, I suppose you made your own library that you re-used throughout your games at the time?

Really appreciate all the hard work you put into your games, I'll enjoy them with my son.

Thanks.

Thanks! My library evolved from game to game really. The 68000 CPU was a joy to work with, I always had the feeling it was made for programmers, not just for compilers.

[HappyKool]

thank Ross