Errrr – whoops!!!

Ok – admission… I’ve somewhat forgotten to update this for a while!

Things rather gotten in the way over the last year – moving, illness (yikes!), work and so on. Thats the not-so-nice stuff. However, the good news is that over the last few months we’ve been somewhat hard at work on the game… indeed to the stage that it’s very very near completion!

This weekend, which is slightly longer than normal, i’ve a few graphic updates to finish, a little sprite re-organisting to sort, and then I can start work to get things as they should be.

Now – I dont like showing off things until I’m happy with them …. however if you where lucky enough to go along to the recent RetCon show then you’d have been able to see (and play) the latest build. Also would have had a chance to natter with all of us invoiced (Me, Gordon, Balor and Phil W) as we were located next to the stand for Quazar: which as you can imagine had some amazing SAM Goodies on show.

Oh and while I’m at it…. have you purchased the latest issue of SAM Revival magazine yet?
Issue 26 is out right now – and it is absolutely fecking great!
Some very incredible previews and articles indeed. Including the amazing looking new SAM Dizzy game. (Oh and did I mention our project gets some coverage too!)
If you’ve not purchased it yet – click this link – right now!
I will be incredibly shocked if you don’t purchase this right away!

Anyway – to finish off for now (I’ll be back in a relatively short time – as in days not months – as there’s been some nice Sam games i’d like to blather on about šŸ™‚ ) thanks for reading this – and hope to give you more wonderful words soon!


You waitā€¦time passes..

Yes – I know – not got round to updating this for a while. Sorry about that šŸ™

It’s been a rather busy few months recently – what with one thing and another. Not always “of the good” – but … well that’s another matter.

Anyway – good news is that the current project is growing closer and closer to being finished. I’m at the stage of things now where I am supposedly not touching code, but concentrating on debugging, tweaking layouts, and so forth.

Unfortunately I did end up tweaking some code. Good news is that many of the adjustments worked ok. One feature didn’t – so that’s been left out.

Anyway – a few probs at home have reared their head – so will be back to the keyboard in more earnest this weekend. Fortunately have a day or two off from work – so that’s a good thing.


Onto more fun matters….. BATTLEZONE!!!

That excellent coder Chris Pile – who brought an amazing version of CP/M in ProDos and an excellent version of the arcade classic Defender – has brought out a new project, that he’s been working hard on over some time – a version of the classic Battlezone game.

And what can I say – but it’s a really well polished project.
Nice and smooth (and quite fast) 3D, as challenging as ever – and even supports the Trinity interface (see www.samcoupe.com for more info!) too – using it for storing keys and high-score table.

My wonderful video skills (ok don’t laugh at once!) have generated two vids of it in action

https://www.worldofsam.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/Image4_0.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKipYwsm9FA – this is played on Trinity itself (the picture has been adjusted slightly for brightness due to the capture)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l8xnj5KN7M
– as played on the SimCoupe emulator – I managed to score a bit better on this quick game šŸ™‚

Anyway – hope you enjoy them, – check out this page for more info on the game!
https://www.worldofsam.org/products/battlezone

Oh-a, oh-a!

(from Video Killed The Radio Star – from the Buggles – in case you’re wondering!)

Few months back – I was getting a bit in a rut with things – so after seeing some not very good SAM Videos floating about – I decided to finally make my own not-so-good SAM Videos!

Well hopefully a few people will like them!

I did spend a bit of time in making a fancy title sequence for it – with some great funky music (courtesy of an amazing musician – hi Fleeting Shadow!) – but limits in video compression caused in part by my not using an Nvidia graphics card put paid to that.

So I decided to go for the no-frills approach!

Anyway – if you’re interested… check out:

Samsters Videos

Hopefully the odd thing of interest for you! Will add more as and when I get chance – or in the case of my brain getting frazzled on other things!

Bah Humbug!

Well – I had planned to keep this updated more regularly with progress on the project.
Unfortunately things happen – and recently that involves some very not good things.

I have however continued in more work on the game. It’s progressing well. Still some playtesting and tweaking needing doing – but overall – not doing bad.

I did decide to make an addition recently however. Still in two minds about it – as although when it works (which it ALMOST does ) it’s quite effective – it is causing some issues due to working with the legacy code as I am – so still keeping an open mind about using it .

Hence not talking too much about what it is šŸ™‚

Work has been rather hectic with the 9-8 job however, so that’s sapping a lot of my creative juices at present – and leaving my slightly kernackered to say the least. So doing what I can when I can.

New post following with something else i’ve been tinkering with…!
(two in one day! am I spoiling you? Nah!)

Patreonā€¦ Not ising.

Was introduced to patron recently by a good friend and have signed up for a couple of interesting produces content providers and not sure what the proper term is

Anyway really pleased to see that the excellent writer David gerrold yes the bloke that created the Tribbles is serialising part of his most infamous science fiction series the War of the Chtorr.

Definitely recommended if you like your science fiction a bit bloody and well interesting

Back to resting and trying to get rid of this bloody cold I have might get a few more bits of graphic work done before I have another nap

Lets get jiggy…

Bit of a new year break – had a bit of illnessā€¦ but despite all that – ready to go!

Have now got my SAM armed with Trinity (WOW!) and SID Interface.. and am really planning to jump on my work with being able to test on a Live SAM šŸ™‚

More later !

Update

So to recapā€¦

Been working on my own utils for the game. Not pretty but work well enough.

Currently replacing original graphics with the new redesigned ones.. ready for the first and second sets of levels. The third set arenā€™t far off.

Some improvements made on the main animation – which is looking ā€œ
Schwayā€ to say the least!

Lots of other bits coming alongā€¦ but still more to do – so back I get to itā€¦ when is my music starting Spotify?

Certainly not over hyped

Iā€™ll keep this quick because I want to go back to it later

Earlier this year I was lucky enough to go to the retro show in Manchester now that was an experience and a half particularly for somebody whoā€™s a little on the crippled side like myself as itā€™s not really designed for people walking but thatā€™s another matter

Anyway it was quite interesting show there was a nice talk about the very interesting spectrum addict video which apart from a few people in the audience making comments about a certain handheld which I am not going to go on about was rather interesting

Some interesting stands lovely old machines saw a zx81 running with one of the expanded storage units and I think the dragons lair conversion by Jim Bagley. Very impressive work indeed and I really wish I knew how we can press that and resells and itā€™s something I really would like to see on the blue-footed one

There was some interesting stands particularly for Raspberry Pi tinkerers and two particular favourites were the Llamasoft stand and of course the Hewson stand.

Iā€™m really pleased to a finding that Mr Jeff Minter himself,who is a very nice chap indeed, and his game which my voice recognition cannot understand ā€¦ but itā€™s the one used in the Nine Inch Nails video less than, is very impressive. Especially in 3D.

If youā€™re reading Mr Minter,which I doubt but you never know, then Iā€™ll try and bring some lion bars to your stand next time because I know that you rather like them.

Hewson stand had a great book written by Andrew Hewson and the demo of a very impressive game called hyper Sentinel.

Letā€™s be direct me honest here hyper sentinel is definitely very very very inspired by a certain well-known spectrum and Commodore 64 scrolling shoot Em Up.

And letā€™s be honest it is bloody good.

In fact thatā€™s rather an underestimate.

Itā€™s a simple game in the sense that you can jump straight in without any convoluted storylines. But it is fast, it is fun, it looks good, it sounds good, it plays incredibly well.

It has tributes to the Commodore 64 and the spectrum in the form of of switchable graphics Styles. Thatā€™s nice, not crucial, but itā€™s fun to see.

Apparently it was a Kickstarter project and itā€™s good to see any of these that work well although thatā€™s not something Iā€™m afraid Iā€™m touching myself (no innuendo intended there ā€¦. gosh this is starting to sound like your Sinclair on a bad day).

Anyone there was a recent sale on. I finally got around to ordering it. Iā€™ve got it now and my goodness I am very impressed.

If you order a physical copy then you will get a very nicely designed cassette shaped box with a cassette shaped USB drive. This really looks nice and takes me back to the days of decent games.

My only niggle about the physical version and to be totally honest I can understand why it is so is that you still need to sign up to steam to play it but with these days out more and more piracy itā€™s unavoidable.

There is very interesting extra contents with videos, which I do need to sit down to enjoy properly, with Mr Hewson. These seemed to tie in with the book I bought earlier. Also some nice archives and classic Hewson adverts and reviews.

Iā€™m a little disappointed they didnā€™t include some of their original games but of course they are available out there so thatā€™s not a big problem but it would have been nice.

I suspect that some rights issue regarding including them on the USB drive I doubt it space but is probably some legal reason.

Anyway no spoilers on the game itā€™s fast itā€™s fun itā€™s frantic my reactions are rubbish so Iā€™m not scoring brilliantly but Iā€™m enjoying it. I Will had some screens up later but you probably know what it looks like and you probably know what itā€™s very inspired by. I will say is it is definitely worth the money.

Thereā€™s some interesting demos of new products on there. I tried the point and Click adventure which I wasnā€™t very good at but looks quite nice Iā€™ll get round to the others.

Anyway topmarks to all involved Iā€™ll stick a link on later for it but have a look on Facebook if you use a horrible system because there is a few adverts running and with the crazy sales at the moment you might even spend less than I paid.

Sorry for the run on text as usual muscle pains in my hand

Achooo!

Damn flu – make me even grumpier than normal, if thatā€™s at all possible.

However, one thing that has brought a smile to my face (which is a rare site – and tantamount normally to seeing Mr Michael Myers of the Haddonfield Myers, wearing his beloved maskā€¦ as in rather scary!) is seeing some amazing graphics for my current project.

Thank you to the talented person responsible, and these will certainly help make it look much much better!

Have done a bit more work – hope to get more on the way now iā€™ve stopped with as many pounding migraines.