Caren and the Tangled Tentacles - C64 adventure appears!

[arnoldemu]

all those greys and brown... feels like pre-colour sepia 70's...



( dawn, C64 still delivers SCUMM while CPC doesn't...  )

Plus can do greys and browns

[Joseman]

Plus can do greys and browns

A cow too (even more bright)... cow > C64

[Gryzor]

Palette notwithstanding, this does look beautiful. Just my 2c.

[Neil79]

Caren and the Tangled Tentacles v1 - An incredible C64 adventure release!

We have been following this for many months now and thus today we are pleased to announce the release of the incredible looking C64 adventure 'Caren and the Tangled Tentacles ' compo version 1.0. First appearing as snippets of trailers and then the playable preview at gamescom developed by a team of people such as Martin Wendt, Oliver Lindau and Kamil Wolnikowski has now appeared on CSDb just in time for the German Forum64 competition.

Indie Retro News: Caren and the Tangled Tentacles v1 - An incredible C64

[enthusi]

The fixed, polished and extended version is out now:
Martin Wendt - cosmology, astronomy, physics

Enjoy ;-)

[Gryzor]

And here's the newest vid:

[Gryzor]

...which I just watched. Bloody beautiful!

[tastefulmrship]

...which I just watched. Bloody beautiful!

This one's a real gem, indeed! v1.1 makes a lot more sense than v1.0 (due to more English dialogue and better puzzles) but both are way too short. (I know! It was an entry to a game compo!)

I'd love to see a CPC version using a 3.5" disc and plenty more locations & puzzles!
EDIT: Or a double, triple, quadruple disc version on C64, of course! ^_^

[reidrac]

This one's a real gem, indeed! v1.1 makes a lot more sense than v1.0 (due to more English dialogue and better puzzles) but both are way too short. (I know! It was an entry to a game compo!)

I'd love to see a CPC version using a 3.5" disc and plenty more locations & puzzles!
EDIT: Or a double, triple, quadruple disc version on C64, of course! ^_^

Point and click games are really expensive to develop from my point of view of "non artist person" They also need really good writing to design nice puzzles, and I'm rubbish at that.

Usually the 8-bit machines are too limited; but the CPC looks specially attractive both because the palette and the 3.5" disk (on top of 128KB of RAM, that is).

[Token]

It's still a preview, very short, but yet awesome. <3

[enthusi]

Oh, dont call it a Preview.
It is a full scale thing. If you know your way, it is a bit on the short side maybe but it depends.
We intentionally avoided the (back then rather normal) back-and-forth running all the time or the riddles that require use-everything-with-everything runs :-)
18 locations, > 23 KB of Text.
Less than the Lucasfilmgames back then but more than quite many similar games in that genre :-)
But yes, there is some more potential.
It is indeed a pity that so few teams take up the challenge of a good point-and-click adventure on other 'homebrew systems'.

[TFM]

Therefore we got Orion Prime on CPC. Nothing did beat that yet. 

[||C|-|E||]

In think that in the CPC we lack a good framework available to everyone (CPCtelera is still more a helping tool for proper programmers). It is quite bad when you know that the computer has enough memory and power to create the game you would like to develop but then you are forced to use ancient operating systems and tools to make it... I mean, do not get me wrong, it is fantastic to have something like PAWS or DAAD for free to create text adventures but I would totally try to do something more like Orion Prime if the proper tools were available and not extremely difficult to use (otherwise I could program the game in C). However, I do not have the time or the knowledge to make something like this, so it is not very fair to ask for it, to be honest  . But we do not need to go so far, a simple CP/M able to use X-MEM as real RAM, for example, would be absolutely great and would allow to create really wonderful and complex text adventures.

[TFM]

Ha! That's what we will keep in mind! 

[George]

Therefore we got Orion Prime on CPC. Nothing did beat that yet. 

That smiley was an irony-one, right?
Otherwise you must be kidding. Though Orion Prime might have nice texts/atmosphere it sure lacks alot in the technical and visual area.
Converted (they sure look like that), purple, still images (without any actor on screen, hello?? You can do THAT with any adventure game creator on c64) and simple mouse-over actions?
Then a  bunch of Text. Nothing animated, nothing moves. Hell, you dont need ANY CPU for an engine like that.
If that is the best CPC has to offer, it sure is time someone starts to code!

[Gryzor]

Ooh! A flame warrior appears!

[Targhan]

Well, Orion Prime has a LOT to offer, technically speaking. A lot of innovative stuff has been done on the graphic and sound side, though it may not be clear for a non-CPCist.
As for the lack of animation, it was a choice mainly based on the fact that I started the game without a graphist, so didn't expect to have one to make full animation.


As a non-C64ist, I watched Carmen game and found disappointing the fact that there is no scrolling, no text overlay... I thought these were easy to do on C64. So did the creators were lazy? Probably a design choice! So let's make our next games better .

[Oliver Lindau]

As a non-C64ist, I watched Carmen game and found disappointing the fact that there is no scrolling, no text overlay... I thought these were easy to do on C64. So did the creators were lazy? Probably a design choice! So let's make our next games better .

As the artist of that game I have to say that the reason is more of some technical features. Scrolling itself wouldn't have been a problem btw.


First of all - the graphics use charmode with some extra limitations because of the background animations which are implemented as video streams. This means - usually you have one charset that provide 1/4 of a screen to do the whole background graphics - minus the areas for each door, cabinet, water tap, feather bed etc. Thanks to this I have the average number of 190 to 200 chars to get the whole scene done except animations. This is not much to build a scene and for scrolling this means reduction of details and also increasing repetetive elements. Please remember that the graphics are using the same basis as for example great giana sisters.

Another point are things that aren't really visible. There are walk boxes for example. Think about having 16 invisible boxes for one scene that are necessary for non-direct movements and could also be used for assigning events. Similar games like Maniac Mansion use about 5 or 6 walk boxes per screen. Caren uses more because of the level of detail, for example walking around fences, trees, standing on a fix position next to an object while opening... If a scene would be larger than it would be necessary to reduce these things either.

To sum things up: I had the choice to get more detail or to get scrolling. Actually I prefer the first option.

Speaking of the sprites/text/whatever the game relies on sprite priority features. For that reason using extensive multiplexers is a really bad idea, but thanks to this it is possible to do some special tricks like cookie cutter masking which provides using kind of free form masking and arranging overlapping game characters without noteworthy cost.

[andycadley]

Finally got around to playing this the other day and it really is rather nice, if a bit short and quite easy. The control mechanism works really well with a single button joystick, which I had wondered about. The graphics are lovely and I don't really think it needed scrolling to work, it certainly does very well within the limitations of the C64 character modes.

I think the only frustrating thing is wanting to know what happens next, it sort of ends at exactly the point it really feels like it's getting started!

[MacDeath]

Hi Oliver.

first I would like to thank you for all the posts you do here... always very interesting and somewhat technical (in graphics and code of course)

I was quite bluffed by the design of the main character's sprite and the overall feeling of the game.

Very often, C64 sprites would lack some clear comic styled black outline or shadowing.
But it is quite needed, as for CPC sprites... the black outline is a way to be sure the coloured parts/hilighted parts of the sprite wouldn't merge with the background du to the somewhat limited palette preventing sprites and backgrounds having radically differnet palettes that may not merge.

also with large pixels and such reduced resolution/palette, to go for comics/cartoon design is actually more than needed and always a better artistic choice.

so yeah, Well done.

Would be a great dream that some coder would make a nice SCUMM like engine for CPC and that this game (and the graphics) could be ported decently on CPC.

I'm pretty sure that the CPC palette and attribute less video mode could actually do this game even better justice... 


By the way, I'm called Olivier too...

As a non-C64ist, I watched Carmen game and found disappointing the fact that there is no scrolling, no text overlay... I thought these were easy to do on C64. So did the creators were lazy? Probably a design choice! So let's make our next games better

Those SCUMM like games are supposed to be like a theatre representation...
Basically the scrollings may not be needed.
It is a fancy interface with a lot of sprites and animation action on what remains basically a text/action based adventure game with point and click and graphics.

The CPC was using a very lot of adventure games with text based actions but the characters wouldn't be represented inside the scenes... or you wouldn't always click inside the graphics box.

CPC offered nice games but they would more likely be first person RPG without the actual RPG (Roll-play and wargame aspect) but jsut adventure.




SCUMM like games offered a cross mix between plateformers/action games, with player's sprite moving inside a background... and full blown adventure game.

Basically some games offered a bit of this exploration without the developped adventure text based aspect...



Marche à l'ombre was to me the clsoest thing we had to a SCUMM-like game... but it was also action oriented which renders it not SCUMM enough.


Fact is : SCUMM like games are nice, fun and a great display of the potential of a machine... a great way to tell a story with sweet "Mise-en-scène" (story telling) that relate to theatre/movie experience.
And CPC has somewhat none.

Orion Prime is great as its sort of game can be, but you don't have the third person feeling of a true theatre representation.
First person is great for its theme indeed... but it can't pretend offering the same experiance as a maniac mansion because it is not the same concept of game play, despite those are quite close in many way.

also "interactive comic books" were quite soemthing.
Perhaps soem Iznogoud or bob morane games could have had some more elements of SCUMM... were they done betterly.

Myst is the good example of those fancy French style First person enigma/adventure games... (and it wasn't even french, lol)

some French companies (Coktel) would later do SCUMM like games like Bargon Attack or the Gobliiins series...
Lots of enigmas but with this third person view.

But not on CPC as it was too late or the games were too big.
by the early 90s, cocktel only released ADI educationnal games on CPC.


anyway.

X-MEM and X-MASS could be great but a simple CPC6128 with many disks os quite enough for a great 8bit SCUMM experience.

the main danger is to aim at somethings as fancy as Monkey Island 2 on a 486 PC with 8megs RAM and HDD... 
as it was somewhat the case when the "monkey Island for CPC" project tried to emerge at CPCrulez one summer a few years ago.

[attachimg=1]

[Gryzor]

Marche à l'ombre was to me the clsoest thing we had to a SCUMM-like game... but it was also action oriented which renders it not SCUMM enough.

Hm, I don't think i've ever heard of this before! Not to mention - pixel b00bs! Ah, those Frenchies...

[Kris]

Such a good game; you should hear to the "associated" french singer named "Renaud"; his songs are.....how to say.......a bit provocative

[Gryzor]

Looks cute I'm sure I'd have been impressed by it, had I seen it when it came out...

[villain]

Never trust pixel boobs that weren't made by the Bollawares! :-)

[Gryzor]

Hey! Pixels: gooood. Boobs: gooood.[nb]apologies to the ladies reading this. Feel free to chime in with your version. Actually... hm, sex was so one sided back then...[/nb]