Not quite retro but...

Robdav · 16 Dec 2018 at 21:37

Back in the day, i'm talking jet set willy days, there used to be a whole thing about games being written by kids sitting in their bedrooms. I remember reading about these kids who were my age creating the games I was playing in their spare time.

I'd always wanted to do this, but life got in the way as they say.

So do we have anyone on here who had actually done this? created a "retro" game, and had it published?

If so I'd love to hear how you came up with the idea, created the game, what system(s) you wrote it on and how you went about getting it published.

vanpeebles · 17 Dec 2018 at 09:00

I'm in the process making my own text adventure for the Sinclair QL, using a special package called ACT. I've got the box art done etc, hoping to do a limited small release. I'm about 95% done.

I also did the graphics for a remastered QL adventure that is currently for sale too

lakitu · 17 Dec 2018 at 16:22

vanpeebles said:
I'm in the process making my own text adventure for the Sinclair QL, using a special package called ACT. I've got the box art done etc, hoping to do a limited small release. I'm about 95% done.

I also did the graphics for a remastered QL adventure that is currently for sale too

Don't forget to let us know when you have it all finished. Would love to try it.

Robdav · 17 Dec 2018 at 22:18

Thanks Vanpeebles

anyone else?

vanpeebles · 18 Dec 2018 at 08:04

lakitu said:
Don't forget to let us know when you have it all finished. Would love to try it.

Will do!

I'm hoping to crack on at Christmas with it, the hardest part is the last 5% Need to knuckle down

Mr Plow · 19 Dec 2018 at 01:25

Haven't done it myself other than when I use to try copying programs from magazines and teletext for our Atari 800XL that rarely ended up working. There's an excellent book all about the subject of the early British games industry -

https://readonlymemory.vg/shop/book/britsoft-an-oral-history/

They do a bunch of other cool stuff as well.

SickAsAParrot · 19 Dec 2018 at 13:59

I wrote a fruit machine program on my Spectrum, entirely in basic, but it had all the auto-nudge and gamble features that were common on real machines at the time. It was huge, took up most of the 48K RAM, but it ran pretty well, I optimised it so the visual aspects ran as smoothly as possible while all the calculating was going on in the background.

Never sought to publish it, it was for my amusement only.

Robdav · 20 Dec 2018 at 23:36

Mr Plow said:
Haven't done it myself other than when I use to try copying programs from magazines and teletext for our Atari 800XL .....

That was me too. Used it sit there and copy code form magazines for hours, sometimes it worked, other times it failed. I learnt a lot whilst doing that including not wasting my time copy code from magazines!

Robdav · 20 Dec 2018 at 23:37

SickAsAParrot said:
I wrote a fruit machine program on my Spectrum, entirely in basic, but it had all the auto-nudge and gamble features that were common on real machines at the time. It was huge, took up most of the 48K RAM, but it ran pretty well, I optimised it so the visual aspects ran as smoothly as possible while all the calculating was going on in the background.

Never sought to publish it, it was for my amusement only.

sounds awesome. did you plan out how you were going to code the game up-front or just bang away at it and add features as they came into your head?

SickAsAParrot · 21 Dec 2018 at 11:20

Robdav said:
sounds awesome. did you plan out how you were going to code the game up-front or just bang away at it and add features as they came into your head?

Just sketched out a flow diagram really, with all the main subroutines on it and where they would be called from. Everything else was on the fly. Designed all the graphics from scratch too so it probably took a lot longer than I imagine it did. One thing I did for fun at the end was print the entire thing out on the ZX printer, the resulting printout went all the way around the wall of my student bedsit and then some.

I'd have liked to have learned machine code, did a bit of Z80 as part of my Uni course but in retrospect it would probably have been a waste of time because in a few years we were all using C anyway.

ScoTTyBEEE · 21 Dec 2018 at 20:16

I met the sister of the guy who created paperboy while i was in Ibiza.

Hades · 22 Dec 2018 at 13:29

I wrote a lot of mini games on my VIC20 and C64. But they were for myself. Nothing good enough to ever try publishing. I learned a lot though and it was great fun.

Flubble · 24 Dec 2018 at 13:04

i remember the Net Yaroze playstation, i didn't have one though

vanpeebles · 3 Jan 2020 at 22:13

lakitu said:
Don't forget to let us know when you have it all finished. Would love to try it.

Just over a year has passed, but I released my game at last

You can find all the details here:

https://qlforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3072

paradigm · 4 Jan 2020 at 10:30

Watch the 8-bit guy’s videos on his creating of Planet X1/2/3 games. Excellent retro games published in the modern day!

lakitu · 7 Jan 2020 at 19:16

vanpeebles said:
Just over a year has passed, but I released my game at last You can find all the details here:

https://qlforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3072

Hey that's great, I'm gonna check it out.

b00merang69 · 7 Jan 2020 at 19:33

"Bite Lip"

vanpeebles · 7 Jan 2020 at 19:58

lakitu said:
Hey that's great, I'm gonna check it out.

Please let me know what you make of it. I have plans for a sequel, but I’m making a quick dungeon adventure next for a change of scenery.