Development Info Newcomer - Serious Incline for the C64

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Why make it for C64? Wouldn't it be much more limiting and unnecessarily difficult?

Ok, there's the "I'm so fucking hardcore cause I took the C64 to the fuckan limit with this game" thing, and the mission statement is all very nice and all but still....

It was originally made for the C64, these guys love the C64, so they use the core engine and make the game exactly how they originally envisioned it. That is what they say when they visit the Lemon64 forums anyway.

You know, sometimes I think it is for the best when limitations are imposed. When I think about the Ultima games these days, I am almost certain that Garriott would not have had a turn based CRPG like Ultima V if he had almost unlimited computer power within his reach. Instead, Ultima IX would have been made a lot sooner. As he said, that was his 'true' vision for Ultima.

This especially works for graphics. If you only have a limited graphical powerbase to work with, what do you do to differentiate yourself from competitors? You have to add depth and gameplay instead. Today, with the power of modern PC's at their disposal, most games cannot even have a proper day and night cycle with NPC scheduling (which was originally made on the C64 and Apple II!), let alone much else that increases the depth of a game.

 

[zeitgeist]

Hmm, these could be interesting as Codex avatars.

 

[Suchy]

20 years in the making. They beat Cleve.
Intro vid by the way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHroQnTasow

 

[spekkio]

Why make it for C64? Wouldn't it be much more limiting and unnecessarily difficult?

The project is for proving a few facts mostly neglected in the CRPGs we have seen so far:

1. High levels of interactivity could be implemented in computer games for good, with no need for heavy computing resources, but for time and effort by the designers.
2. High level, dedicated scripting languages are a key feature to develop sophisticated adventure and role-playing games, and such dedicated scripting languages could be implemented on, and be used for serious development in extremely memory-constrained, 8bit computing environments. The need for such a language is to empower the game/level designers, so that they could enhance and detail the game as much as they want, on their own, with no intervention by lesser life forms (i.e. programmers).
http://call.of.cthul.hu/~hoild/ENCscript-xmpl.html
3. Storyline non-linearity and interactivity as well as interaction with NPCs could be developed to the extreme, while still keeping a coherent storyline and playable gaming environment – we think that "sandbox game design" and "Physics Is The Game" are just attempts to reduce development cycles and at creating games by mere programmers rather than game designers and storytellers.
4. Not even an enermous plenty of in-game items, levels and eye candy can replace the feeling of catharsis at the end of, and during hundreds of hours of smart, advancing, progressive gameplay. Yet all the above could be implemented at the same time.

Redding teh hard?

Working on Amiga / PC would give them: better graphics, better sound, more processing power, more memory.
And nothing more...

Anyway:

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I recall reading about this in a Retro Gamer magazine, good to see it's finally released.

It's an awesome feat of programming, and an epic feat of patience.

 

[Serious_Business]

Looks interesting. However, it seems there is no magic in the game. That's kind of a dealbreaker.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

SID and C64 palette Fucking Rules. Personally, if I'm ever going to make my own cRPG, I'm going to use C64 palette for graphics.

 

[Flatlander]

Why make it for C64? Wouldn't it be much more limiting and unnecessarily difficult?

Because

SID and C64 palette Fucking Rules. Personally, if I'm ever going to make my own cRPG, I'm going to use C64 palette for graphics.

And there is the additional benefit that it will run on about any platform released in the last ~10-15 years, including phones.

 

[commie]

@ spekkio

Ok, there's the "I'm so fucking hardcore cause I took the C64 to the fuckan limit with this game" thing, and the mission statement is all very nice and all but still....

Reading indeed is teh hard,.....for you. Glass houses and all that.

 

[deus101]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8ECmhPfWxA


YEAAAAAAAAA§!!!!

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8ECmhPfWxA


YEAAAAAAAAA§!!!!

Only problem with these are the amount of idiots that butchered working C64's and 128's to make these things.

 

[deus101]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8ECmhPfWxA


YEAAAAAAAAA§!!!!

Only problem with these are the amount of idiots that butchered working C64's and 128's to make these things.

well...no..

They cheated and used an emulator

But still there are c64 aplenty, and i think it would have been a worthy cause.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8ECmhPfWxA


YEAAAAAAAAA§!!!!

Only problem with these are the amount of idiots that butchered working C64's and 128's to make these things.

well...no..

They cheated and used an emulator

But still there are c64 aplenty, and i think it would have been a worthy cause.

I must have gotten it confused with those 'sidbox' things that DJ's used.

 

[deus101]

well, im more concerned about producers stealing from C64 and other tracker artists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbaland_ ... ontroversy

 

[Miew]

Certainly interesting.
Watching the intro, I like the SID music of course, as it brings back a little bit of "that feeling".
I like some parts of the intro as well, like the lightning animations, and the part where the guy is teleported into the labyrinth or whatever it is.

On the other hand, the game certainly shows a lot of influence from more modern games, I'd say. This whole "cinematic style" they're going for... I'm not sure whether it's just to try and show off what they (or the C64 for that matter) could do, or if they were "going with the times" so to speak, even if it seems strange to say about a C64 game coming out these days.

There's this old guy in the intro, explaining about the situation and I feel like this is something rather unusual for a C64 game. Most games would just throw you into a strange world leaving it completely unexplained why you are there, who you are, where you are etc. There wasn't this kind of exposition that we see in the intro to Newcomer.

I remember a game called "Terramex", which started out like a jump n run platformer with a lot of puzzle elements. My friends and I would play it, and at one point in the game we came across a telescope. Walking up to it and using it, the character took a look at the scope, then looked at the screen, at us, for a second, then back to the telescope as if he was saying "Am I not imagining this?" Then it showed the image of some astroid floating to space towards earth.
Maybe the game's manual, which we didn't have at the time, would have given some explanation. But the way it was, I remember this scene I mentioned as pretty striking. Well, for the time at least...

Many games had a pretty eerie feeling to me back then, and I think the kind of explanation we get in the intro to Newcomer wouldn't have been necessary. The part where the guy is teleported into the place evokes some of that same feeling, but the close up shot of the body and especially of their faces I don't really like.
Games like that usually had atrocious loading times as well, requiring you to flip over the disk or put another disk in, which could get pretty annoying. Of course it's not an issue today, if you play with an emulator...
So how many 5 1/4 floppy disks does this game span?

 

[Felix]

Does this mean, there is a chance Grimoire will come out ?

 

[clockradiospeakers]

For those who didn't know, the guy behind this (Zoltan Gonda) is the designer of the NWN Tortured Hearts mods. Take that as you will.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Too bad that it wasn't the designer of the Dance of Rogues.

 

[zeitgeist]

For those who didn't know, the guy behind this (Zoltan Gonda) is the designer of the NWN Tortured Hearts mods. Take that as you will.

Never played it, what was it like?

 

[CreamySpinach]

I say these guys can die in a pit of energizer bunny acid.

They rip on programmers too much. Programmers already have it tough, and for those of us who want to make our own game and do more than program: we are not liking this hi-jacking .

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

I say these guys can die in a pit of energizer bunny acid.

They rip on programmers too much. Programmers already have it tough, and for those of us who want to make our own game and do more than program: we are not liking this hi-jacking .

If only today's programmers could program. The bloatware coming out of developers today is simply ridiculous. More so when you see what programmers could do with 64 kilobytes, let alone the 1 megabyte of the Amiga. Oh, the c64 also had about 1mhz of processor, with amiga having about 7mhz. Throw in a sound chip and a video chip and you are set.

Today, you have, on average, 2-4 Gigabytes of standard memory, graphics cards with their own gigabyte or so, 3+ gigahertz processors that are usually multi core these days....programmers today cannot program.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I blame consoletards and graphicwhores.

 

[CreamySpinach]

I say these guys can die in a pit of energizer bunny acid.

They rip on programmers too much. Programmers already have it tough, and for those of us who want to make our own game and do more than program: we are not liking this hi-jacking .

If only today's programmers could program. The bloatware coming out of developers today is simply ridiculous. More so when you see what programmers could do with 64 kilobytes, let alone the 1 megabyte of the Amiga. Oh, the c64 also had about 1mhz of processor, with amiga having about 7mhz. Throw in a sound chip and a video chip and you are set.

Today, you have, on average, 2-4 Gigabytes of standard memory, graphics cards with their own gigabyte or so, 3+ gigahertz processors that are usually multi core these days....programmers today cannot program.

The game in question is a series of single frames. Animations set it apart from a board game.

20 years? Some programmers. The fact here megaman, is that they focused on strictly on the game design, artists were not limited, and soared into modern day practices through the years.

I think anyone in the right mind would like to optimize their shitty programs they make for their shitty boss. Some really don't want to do better because today's system specs does allow them to get away with performance slop.

I think you are overstating the obvious in a very unclever way just to insult our heavily worked production savy programmers.

bur heer

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

The game in question is a series of single frames. Animations set it apart from a board game.

All games are made up of single frames.

Oh, and obviously all board games have an interface, music, SFX, AI opponents/characters and dialogue choices. There we go: Computer games are just board games. If only my giant tabletop wargames were so easy to play by myself without having to hope an intelligent friend could commit to hours upon hours of their time to play through a campaign.

20 years? Some programmers. The fact here megaman, is that they focused on strictly on the game design, artists were not limited, and soared into modern day practices through the years.

Yes, they soared to mediocrity.

I think anyone in the right mind would like to optimize their shitty programs they make for their shitty boss. Some really don't want to do better because today's system specs does allow them to get away with performance slop.

So they are actually very good at coding, but don't really want to because they hate their bosses?

I think you are overstating the obvious in a very unclever way just to insult our heavily worked production savy programmers.

They did choose to be programmers didn't they? If they don't like it, try something else instead. If it is the equivalent of working in a textile mill, I don't know why they bother.

 

[Fowyr]

If only today's programmers could program. The bloatware coming out of developers today is simply ridiculous. More so when you see what programmers could do with 64 kilobytes, let alone the 1 megabyte of the Amiga. Oh, the c64 also had about 1mhz of processor, with amiga having about 7mhz. Throw in a sound chip and a video chip and you are set.

Today, you have, on average, 2-4 Gigabytes of standard memory, graphics cards with their own gigabyte or so, 3+ gigahertz processors that are usually multi core these days....programmers today cannot program.

This. I remember my amazement and delight as a kid when I found what some programmer don't use straightforward add dx,2. He used some arbitrary command (I can't remember it now) whose additional result was dx increasing.
What was made only to economy several CPU tacts and one byte of code.