New remake under development: OIDS.
Isn’t this just typical for me?…I should be working on one of my other WIPs…and I just start a new one. *sigh* 
Anyway, as you may have noticed by now I like “spaceshooters”,
and one game I’ve been thinking of remaking for a long time is OIDS.
I don’t like all aspects of OIDS though*, so I’ve been thinking that I wanted instead, at some point, to make a game that was a bit like OIDS…but “my own”. So, one evening – not too long ago – I decided to start writing a few routines that could serve as a framework for a game like this someday.
Well, that was a month ago…and I haven’t stopped to take a break since. 
* I’ve been playing the original Start ST game a lot, and a bit on the Mac version too, and now I must say that I’ve definitely come to appreciate to things about the original game I didn’t like originally.
Anyway, I’m currently working almost everyday on remaking the original Atari ST version and I must say that it’s coming together just nicely. I don’t know how long it’ll take me to make it, as it’s got a sh*t load of levels and that takes time to do, but so far I’m having a lot of fun making it, so hopefully it won’t take too long. I’m sure this’ll be my next remake though.
I’ve come up with a nice silhouetted look for the game, but basically it’s just the Atari graphics with a gradient background, and since these pictures are a just works in progress I think it’s safe to say that the graphics will probably change – one way or the other – before the game is done, but for now they’re giving me something to work with so I can concentrate on the code instead of the graphics.
Here’s a few pictures of the game as it looks now.
I’ll post further news about the game over at Retro Remakes.
Bought a new computer and now people are making fun of me.
I’ve always been a PC person (unless you’re thinking of ‘politically correct’ – in which case I’m doing my best to be politically incorrect) and so I haven’t wasted any opportunities to tell the Mac OSX people what I’m think of their inferior platform choice. It’s the ZX Spectrum vs. C64 discussion all over again. 
Well, about a week ago I bought myself a nice and shiny 15″ MacBook Pro – the new core i7 model, and now everyone I know with Mac’s are making fun of me. Hehe, I guess I walked in to that one.
So, why have a done it? A glutton for punishment?…very likely, but no. A while back I installed OSX on my HP laptop but it only works mostly fine – the USB ports doesn’t work and that’s a bit annoying – especially since the plan is to get into developing software for the iPhone and what good is a dev enviroment if I can’t get my software onto the phone easily, right?
…so I decided to buy a real Mac. Hopefully that means less hassle.
I won’t be switching completely to OSX though. The PC and Windows will still be my primary enviroment so the Mac will be mostly for compiling OSX and iPhone projects (when I get to that).
Hopefully I will also (finally) get around to making OSX versions of my games. I successfully compiled and played Omega Race 2009 on the Mac a few days ago but that also only works mostly fine. There’s a strange bug that affects the background picture, and my code for online scores doesn’t work on OSX and I’d like to sort that out before doing “re-releases”.
Let’s see what happens, and when…
New (old) game released – Starbike
Okay, this ‘new’ game has a bit of backstory. Hold on…
Do you know who Dr. Tim Langdell is? If the answer is ‘yes’ then I won’t have to tell you how nutty he is, but if the answer is ‘no’ then you may want to go here and read up on him.
In short: He used to run a software house back in the 80′s but hasn’t don’t much in the way of releasing software since then, because one day he apparently woke up and thought it was a better idea to run his company by using psychological terror and sue people left and right over the rights to games released through his company, instead of actually releasing software. The man is very protective of his trademarks…even if he doesn’t actually own them. Sometimes there’s a fine line between being eccentric and plain nutty, and he’s crossed that line by leaps and bounds. He calls himself a doctor, but he’s clearly more the patient type.
Several remakes has been shut down due to his threats, so in a moment of defiance I decided to remake a game that was originally released by his company, which is something he don’t like, but I don’t take kindly to screwlooseyness(tm) and didn’t care. Well, I cared enough to invent a new author, Dr. Bacon (which is kind of a dual in-joke since Mr. Langdell calls himself a doctor and I’m currently working on a remake of Psycho Pigs UXB) and a new blog to put it on, but I’m now ‘coming out of the closet’ , as I’m quite proud of my Starbike remake.
So, yeah, I did it and now I’m moving my remake from its old home to here.
The whole idea was to see if he noticed the game and would go on to sue me, so I could earn myself a cease and desist order, which I would’ve promptly awarded with a ‘p*ss off w*anker’ letter (which is why I used an alias as a buffer – y’know…deniability and all that), but it’s been 5 months now and he’s probably too busy with his Electronic arts lawsuit. Well, he could still notice it and sue me anyway, but then Ill just have to tell him the same thing – just as myself.
So, grab the game while you can. Not that I expect it to ‘go away’ – even if I’m ordered to remove the game I can still send people a link in an email, right?
One comfort I have, in case the nutty professor doctor decides to take his marital problems out on me, is that I’ve been in contact with Paul Curtis, the programmer of the original game, and he’s certain that the rights to the game belongs to him, and I have his blessings to release this game.
So there.
Click picture to goto the download link.
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…one of those nice e-mails.
A few days ago I had a nice e-mail from Stephen Cargill. Stephen who you might ask?
Well, Stephen Cargill is the original programmer, of the great 16K platform game, Sir Lancelot for the ZX Spectrum back in 1984. It is, as far as I can tell, his first game, and it was also my first remake (and just first game in general) back in 2004.
This is what Stephen Cargill looked like in 1985. I'm sure he looks different now...I know I do.
It was nice to hear from a programmer I admired back then. Indeed, I still play the Spectrum version of Sir Lancelot once in a while. He told me this about my remake;
“I have just found your remake of it and wanted you to know that I think you have done a great job of it“.
That really made my week.
…stay tuned – I hope to have the next update up in under a week.
Current projects: update
Well…you have an idea until you get a new one.
Three weeks into it and I’ve made the decision to abandon my Alien PBeM game before I sink too much time into it.
Several reasons:
I’ve already spent a lot of time on it, and I really like how many of the things work quite well so far, but the structure of the whole thing, and me not planning things out too well in the beginning and just charging ahead with it, has made the source a bit messy already, and I’m not looking forward to keep adding to it.
But I’m just not feelin’ the love for this project and I’d rather work on something I really want to do, than to keep working on something I find it hard to believe I’ll be satisfied with in the time I have for it. I’m getting slightly depressed by the thought of having to work on this for another 6 weeks.
Luckily I’m my own boss though. So for now it’s abandoned. It pains me, but perhaps I’ll resurrect it later. Who knows.
The good thing is that I can now get back to projects I feel a lot move love for, like….well, just looks above.
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Come back soon…