Electrek

[s2325]

I have only preview version:

[Wilfy]

My name is Wilf, I'm one of the guys who put Electrek together, it was done with friends in York in my friend Chris Nodder's room where we all used to hang out, we called it Heworth Castle and our 'studio' was the HCCS, the Heworth Castle Creative Studios (or Cracking Squad dependent upon if we were creating new stuff or cracking other's).

Anyway, I put the name into Google on a whim today and saw these screen shots!

As far as I can recall now, I did all the graphics and animations, including the font, Chris did all the coding and music and many of the early level designs, Doobs playtested and did lots of the harder levels, between us we came up with the ideas for gameplay and gimmicks as we went along, and the other names on the high score are just the rest of our good friends who hung around the place at the time, and may have done playtesting, ideas, commenting and drinking tea!

I don't think we ever did the final tweaking to get it to play with a nice proper difficulty arc and I believe we only ever sold one copy of the full game, but we did get a very favourable write up in some Amiga magazine as I recall!

I'm pretty sure I can find the whole game on 3.5 inch disc, I think I have it archived in my cellar along with the original Amiga it was written on, although I don't know if either would still work after years in a damp cellar, and if so I would have to contact the others to see if it's OK by them, but I have been giving some thought to putting the whole lot on eBay for the space and cash, hence why it occurred to me to google it.

Anyway, I just thought I would sign up so I could say hi and thanks for the trip down nostalgia lane from the screen shots, I'll contact the others to see what they have left of our past programming endeavours (there was plenty more, C64, Spectrum, ZX81 and Dragon, amongst others, upon which we programmed games and music in our time!), and feel free to ask any questions.

Cheers!

[Shoonay]

Hello and welcome!

Please enjoy a nostalgic journey back, here, on EAB.

[Wilfy]

And those screen shots make great phone wallpaper! I just sent one to Chris Nodder the programmer to jog his memory!

Cheers s2325!

[Graham Humphrey]

Welcome to EAB!

It would be cool if you could find this, it would be another "lost" title discovered

[Wilfy]

I don't really have the time right now to get into this too deeply I'm afraid, guys, I'm not really free during the week and this weekend I'm visiting friends, but ASAP I'll get a bit more serious about this and pull out that archived Amiga, try and find a monitor and leads for it, and assuming it still works see what I can find on the disks, promise!

Could be fun!

I've already informed the others involved too so if you're lucky one or more of them might get involved too with their archived material, if they have any, and surely at least one of us must have the completed Electrek game, and with extra extra luck, maybe a few other gems!

I do recall we did quite a few games, either original pieces or modernisations of older formats such as Archaos and Attack Of The Mutant Camels and such, if I have got that title right, though I'm not sure of the legality in the modern age of the permitted distribution of such things as they weren't our own concepts, but we cut our teeth as games programmers on the Amiga by doing 'remixes' of favourite old hits (C64 games mainly), but as I say, I have no clue how much, if any, of this stuff, I or my friends still possess nor how feasible it is to retrieve any of it, but I've sent out a few emails and texts now I know there's an audience for it and I'll let you know if anyone gets back to me, and at the very least I'll definitely dig out what I've got in my cellar, catalogue it, and let you know.

Once I've done all that, I'll get the FAQs read up and see what I can figure out I can do with any of it.

Cheers, and I'll keep looking in and keep you informed of any progress!

[Shoonay]

Don't worry about it, really - we are used to waiting

[Wilfy]

Hi chaps, quick update for you in my break, Chris has contacted me today, he seems pretty chuffed folks are talking about his game, and is getting an Amiga Emulator up and working on his Mac, we'll see if he still has a copy of the full working version, he's also looking thru what you guys' already have archived and presumabley working out how all that business works, so I'm basically handing over the baton to him for now and we'll see what he comes up with.

Hopefully he'll get himself on here and let you know personally, but if not I'll let you know whatever he's found as soon as he passes that info onto me...

Cheers!

[Graham Humphrey]

Cheers for the update Wilfy. Hopefully we'll get some positive news.

[StrategyGamer]

Please upload Elektrek to Aminet so we can all play it! Please please please.

Aminet is FREE and will host your game FOREVER. Please don't let your works of art be lost!

An Amiga game is a work of art. We want to preserve them all.

[DamienD]

Hello Wilfy,

Welcome to EAB

Been reading through the thread. Thank you for taking the time to join up and post

Look forward to more good news and your friend Chris also becoming a part of EAB

It's still early days and no pressure on timescale what-so-ever... Aminet is a good suggestion, may I also suggest a website created by our very own CodyJarrett: Amiga Games That Weren't

It's a great resource for all those lost / found gems

In fact I've also moved this thread to the project.aGTW section

[Wilfy]

Hi guys, quick update again, back from my weekend break, thanks for the info DamienD, and I've managed to locate my Amiga and rescue it from it's exile in the cellar, some peripherals and some disks too (not yet sure if they're Amiga disks). It all looks in pretty poor condition I'm afraid but I have not yet tried hooking it up and hopefully the grime is just superficial and nothing a good vacuuming and a clean damp cloth won't rectify. I'm afraid it wasn't well stored and I simply forgot it was there till recently, but a happy discovery is that it was stored with a monitor that I think is it's original, so I think I have all the bits I need.

I may not have time to do this properly till next weekend as if it works it'll take quite a while to go thru every disk and catalogue what's on there I should imagine, not to mention just try and remember how the heck an Amiga actually works (some online googling required to jog my memory I should imagine!), and of course I can always fall back on an emulator, although that presents other technical difficulties, but it should be a fun project for this next weekend as I have nothing else planned.

No news from Chris or anyone else yet which presumabley in this instance means there is literally no news, life does tend to get in the way of such things, anyway it's all up in the air at the moment, I'll let you know when the first plate crashes!

[Wilfy]

**STOP PRESS** Chris says he knows Doobs has a copy of Electrek on a hard drive he uses with an emulator, but has not yet had a chance to try and track it down, but if/when he does he most definitely wants to share it with you guys for free so as soon as one or other of us finds it, that's the plan!

[ppill]

Thanks for the effort! Looks like a good game.

[Wilfy]

Shalroth sent me this today, it's the original review of Electrek I mentioned above: http://amr.abime.net/review_19775, hard to find 'cos they spelt the name wrong!

And also spelt wrong, look up this other forum: http://www.lemonamiga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1106 for an update on the FOUND game, Chris and Doobs apparently have it all in hand, but I'll fire mine up on the weekend anyway just to see what I have!

[DamienD]

Very cool news Wilfy, thanks for all your time / effort plus keeping us updated so frequently

Are Chris and Doobs also going to join EAB?

[Wilfy]

Cheers DamienD, and as far as the others joining in, I can't say feller, sorry, they always were oddly shy about such things, especially Chris, he's one of those guys who's ridiculously talented in music/programming/electronics and stuff but rarely ever completes anything 'cos it's never finished enough to allow it to be judged!

It's very like him to want to tweak it one more time before he re-releases it rather than just let it go in it's original slightly flawed state, but it really did need the difficulty arc tweaking, so I can respect that.

I remember it was too quick & easy to recharge yourself when you were low on energy bars, and therefore too hard to die on the early levels for the first few stages, but then suddenly became impossible to survive when we got to Doobury's later harder levels where-upon most folks just put the joystick down, so hopefully they've also found the level editor and are gonna do some new 'inbetween' stages to smooth that out a tad, but I guess we'll just have to see!

I'm hoping at the very least Chris will tell you in person when he's got it sorted to his satisfaction though, and I hope it won't take too long.

I'm in two minds about it myself, I think maybe they should just release it as is and THEN take their time and do a tweaked '2007 remix' of it that's more playable, but it's really a hard one to call as the original whole Electrek (or Elektrek) game does seem to be completely unknown and was definitely flawed, but it's really up to Chris, it's his baby.

I dunno, whaddya reckon, guys?

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Wilfy

I'm in two minds about it myself, I think maybe they should just release it as is and THEN take their time and do a tweaked '2007 remix' of it that's more playable, but it's really a hard one to call as the original whole Electrek (or Elektrek) game does seem to be completely unknown and was definitely flawed, but it's really up to Chris, it's his baby.

Personally I think that's a great idea

...but whatever you guys decide to do is cool of course.

[BippyM]

Sounds promising

Can't wait to play another lost gem

[Wilfy]

Reet, having had some conflicting reports, I decided to ring Chris tonight and get clarification 'from the horses mouth' to what's what, so:

YES the game is found, NO the level designer is not, but it may yet, and I was rather surprised to find that I'm mistaken and the Amiga I have is NOT the original it was written upon, that one is with Doobs, mine was the later upgrade Chris got I think, so Doobs has the better chance of finding the level designer on his Amiga's internal drive, however Chris says he has pretty much forgotten how to program the Amiga and isn't at all sure he can be bothered to go into any great time & effort to re-acquaint himself and re-program the game just for the hell of it, I can't say as I blame him the man does have a life, but it looks far more likely we'll just be getting the original game as is, at least for now, tho he did sound interested in the concept of a 'remix' and didn't discount it completely should we find the level designer.

I believe they're planning on getting PC drivers into the Amiga so that it can recognise PC disks, which seems a good way of going about getting it out of there.

At my end, we've just got an Amiga emulator going (me and Shalroth) and I'm curious now as to whether or not we can do anything with it at my end, so I'm sorely tempted to try waking up my long sleeping Amiga right now, asides from any other reason I'm told we can get it working on the widescreen TV if we can just find the right cable, and that just has to be tried!!

I'll let you know...