Monkey Island for CPC - Is it a fake?

[arnoldemu]

The problem with threads like this is not the impossiblity of being able to implement on the cpc, but more the improbability of somebody spending the time and effort to do so.

I would have done it, but I already have 3 projects lined up.

Clearly the way forward for this is for somebody to make a game designer, able to do a monkey islandish game, and others similar. This is basically a way that allows the non programmer types to get involved in a way they just cant at the moment.

I was thinking about a similar idea for elvira.

The idea would simply be to write the core code, then provide the other team members with the build scripts and data.
They would then populate a spreadsheet with the required information and the tools would convert this into game data.
They could also add graphics and with some minimal editing to build scripts, add these to the code.
So here, other people who are not so strong with programming, or who wish to help with the other tasks can help to finish the game.

from my experience, if you are talking tools and tool chains, then most of the time you will find they evolve as you develop a game. You will find where you need to make changes to improve the flow.

  I think as a group we need to look at ways to actually work as a community to get projects designed, and built, not just talking about it. Orion Prime possibly shows that sales can actually be fairly high (around 200). This though not a commercially viable level its a higher amount than I would have expected, and actually given the modern tools and PC based development it might be expected that a 1984/1990 3 month amstrad project might take half that time.

Well I think already people are working in teams, but maybe it is not so obvious.
Devilmarkus and Mr.Lou helped me with Blue angel. I need to fix 2 remaining bugs and it will be released.
But for me the development time is long because real life takes over mostly.

    For instance is it possible that as a community we might develop and publish games? Some of the Revelo big box games are lovely and desirable in themselves.

The mojontwins do a good job as a team of developing and publishing games.
However, most of their games seem to use the same engine.
They use C for easier code development and use existing libraries for gfx and sprites

      And that development is shared out, and people add as much or as little as the want, including a full design doc.
That we as a community develop a number of standards formats for mapping, engine and characters so that all routines become freely available to anyone and are fully documented, and to a large part interchangable.
That existing coders should release interesting code to the community
A pool of graphics and sprites should be harvested from the thousands of existing software.

This is all a "perfect" situation.

The source code, build tools and all data for blue angel 69 will be released at the same time the game is released.

I found however, that the game evolved as it was being developed. Certain features had to be changed to fit into ram.

Your idea to develop games as a team is a good idea, but either you are being very optomistic or I am being very pesimistic (or realistic?) in terms of effort and time.

I would love to see other games released for cpc, both small and big, so really anything that is released that can help is excellent.

[TFM]

Bdos could be mounted at any DOS / Windows PC too. Timo wrote a native support for that. FAT32 is not the advantage Format for a CPC. But thats an OT Discussion. Fact is, BDOS can handle it and its very stable and safe to use.

So BDOS can handle FAT32? Is that correct?


About FAT. I'm not it's biggest fan, but it has an advantage of MAJOR importance. And this is true if we like it or not! If you want to fill a FAT formatted hard-disc or SD card with CPC software, then you just plug your hd / SD to a PC and fill it up with data.

And sorry, I neither want to install a new OS (BDOS f.e.) on my Laptop (it was had enought to get Windoof 7 running), not do I see another way to fill my hard-disc if it is in a proprietary format. If I'm wrong please correct me. It's always time to learn something new.

However, I don't want fill my hard-disc by juggling 3" discs 

[TFM]

Ok, then OS ROM means you need other hardware than disks and Basic Cartridge...so not the average 6128+ config...

Nope, there is no reason why an advanced OS couldn't be in the same cartridge. 512 KB ROM is enough (if not compress it

Yes, additionnal routines means a lot of cool stuff with no RAM wastes... but...well... while you're at it, why not simply a ROM+Disk game then ?

Well, that's just a DOS, it misses the other features. But right, it can be at least a step in the right direction.

... but I have to organize my birthday party for saturday...
Massive hangover and left foot (the broken one) pain incoming...

Oh man! I wish you the very best to survive it!!! What did you do with your foot? (Kicking an c64 user? )

Anyway.... instead of all these threads about old games, that everyone has already played, being ported to CPC, why not focus on creating a new game for multiple platforms instead?

There are other threads talking about new games. And about multiplatform... If you do something for mutliplatform, the result is always ugly. Do it for one system, then you can do it right! And btw: Where do you find a multi-platform expert, I know one guy who has that knowledge, but he has no time for nothing.

The problem with threads like this is not the impossiblity of being able to implement on the cpc, but more the improbability of somebody spending the time and effort to do so.

You talk out of my deepest heart!    Only people who have developped a bigger project can understand this. For a a newcomer it's easy to mention wishes, but if you look how much time you have to invest even in a small project (... and by the way we all have regular jobs, except PDT, he has all time for the CPC) then you think twice about the size of a project. And things like multi-platform are overkill, not one of us is a "CPC company" with a dozen or more man power.

[arnoldemu]

About FAT. I'm not it's biggest fan, but it has an advantage of MAJOR importance. And this is true if we like it or not! If you want to fill a FAT formatted hard-disc or SD card with CPC software, then you just plug your hd / SD to a PC and fill it up with data.

I agree here it isn't always important of the extact format of the storage system.

For me, I want to use these storage systems like amsdos. And in my programs I want to use firmware functions to open and read files.
Then my programs will work if I copy them to mass storage with no changes, and also I don't need to detect hardware and make special code.

I want to use the storage system so it is transparent. Use the functions I know to do the tasks I want.

[TFM]

I agree here it isn't always important of the extact format of the storage system.

For me, I want to use these storage systems like amsdos. And in my programs I want to use firmware functions to open and read files.
Then my programs will work if I copy them to mass storage with no changes, and also I don't need to detect hardware and make special code.

I want to use the storage system so it is transparent. Use the functions I know to do the tasks I want.

Yeah, this would be the ideal situation. You have it both. In this case you can use a device like usually and you can easily fill this device with data. So, we miss a DOS replacement that uses FAT hard-discs.