Skweek discussions with Laurent Arditi (was: IPad/Iphone owners, HOL needs you)

[lilalurl]

Originally Posted by larditi

I remember some iterations for Skweek; and not being very happy with the SuperSkweek box

He he. I don't have children but one day I will try with those of friends of mine to show them the covers and ask them what they think .


By the way, I don't know which audiences you targeted with Skweek on iOS, but if you are thinking of reaching children (besides retro-gamers) perhaps you should include a "kid mode" in the game.

Something like having three hit-points, with a short invincibility after being hit.

From discussions here and on other forums, it seems to us (old gamers) that nowadays games are easier or at least more forgetful of mistakes.
Today, children less used to things like instant death.

The original Skweek was quite kid-friendly since when dying all the coloured tiles remained pink (if the game had a hardcore mode they could all revert to blue) and was quite generous on the amount of lives.
Still, it may be a bit frustrating today.

You could for example have the "kid mode" available as a training mode for something like the first 10/20 levels, so that children can easily enjoy the game the first times they play.
And then after those levels, have a message stating that Skweek must now face real danger and that to get over those first levels, you need to play in normal mode.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by larditi

Thanks!
Yes, after SuperSkweek we started working on a completely different project: a table tennis game. It was super realistic - unusual for at that time -, but yet keeping a good gameplay, such as Konami's game.
But Loriciel, our publisher, went out of business and we gave up the game industry.

Hello Laurent

Can you talk about the copy protection used on the amiga release (internal and external ?)

Cheers,

Denis

Originally Posted by lilalurl

He he. I don't have children but one day I will try with those of friends of mine to show them the covers and ask them what they think .


By the way, I don't know which audiences you targeted with Skweek on iOS, but if you are thinking of reaching children (besides retro-gamers) perhaps you should include a "kid mode" in the game.

Something like having three hit-points, with a short invincibility after being hit.

From discussions here and on other forums, it seems to us (old gamers) that nowadays games are easier or at least more forgetful of mistakes.
Today, children less used to things like instant death.

The original Skweek was quite kid-friendly since when dying all the coloured tiles remained pink (if the game had a hardcore mode they could all revert to blue) and was quite generous on the amount of lives.
Still, it may be a bit frustrating today.

You could for example have the "kid mode" available as a training mode for something like the first 10/20 levels, so that children can easily enjoy the game the first times they play.
And then after those levels, have a message stating that Skweek must now face real danger and that to get over those first levels, you need to play in normal mode.

Yes, we have realized over time that "nowadays", games must be much easier as they were years ago.
For Skweek on iOS, we did several attempts, tweaks, etc. to make the game easy. But still, people complained...

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Hello Laurent

Can you talk about the copy protection used on the amiga release (internal and external ?)

Cheers,

Denis

Hi,

That's a very good topic. As an cracker myself at that time (the lapsing period is over now), I took the copy protection very seriously.
The physical protection was provided by an external company. I don't remember much more.
But the important thing was to hide the protection code in the rest of the game code. For that, I used many tricks (e.g. processor prefetch, self-modifying code to fool debuggers; encryption using the video memory at some key point during the game,...). The principle was to hide many protection checks during the execution; not a stupid single call to a protection code.
However, on Amiga, it was cracked very quickly because hardware debuggers were available. On Atari ST, it was one of the most difficult game to crack. It eventually collapsed but it took a very long time.

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by larditi

However, on Amiga, it was cracked very quickly because hardware debuggers were available.

I wouldn't be so sure that hardware debuggers were the reason for that. Any protection can be defeated without such "cheating" too you know.

[dlfrsilver]

Laurent , do you still happen to have skweek and super skweek amiga
source code and would you be willing to share it ?