The US Gold book Kickstarter

[Cholo]

I didnt see this mentioned anywhere so just a quick mention that the kickstarter for the US Gold book has started and is still running over at:

The History of U.S. Gold by Chris Wilkins — Kickstarter

Made by the same people who did the Ocean book. Donno if this belongs in the News forum like the Ocean book did, but ill post it here for starters.

[MacDeath]

some games were good, but also the unfair share of shitty speccy ports and crooky crooks from tiertex... 

[Shaun M. Neary]

This will be a good one, I had a feeling this would happen if the Ocean one was a success.
Definitely second banana to Ocean, and US Gold really did have some awesome games out there too.

I was most definitely excited in 1988 when they struck their deal with Capcom to do the exclusives. Sadly, a few turkeys came out of that, but Strider, Forgotten Worlds, Ghouls N Ghosts and believe it or not, I liked Tiger Road. The arcade of that was a bit odd anyway.

They also gave us Golden Axe which had me playing for quite some time.

Even the earlier stuff had me joystick wrangling into my early teens. Bruce Lee still gets played to death by this gamer, The first two Gauntlet games were done so well, even the tape version, the multiload wasn't such a pain.

It's far too easy to put them a few notches below Ocean, but Ocean had many turkeys too, and they admit that themselves.

Also, I remember their History In The Making compilation, there was a mini booklet in there the size of the manual with info on game sales, interviews with staff etc. I wonder if anything will be lifted from that?

Either way, I've backed this. I'm almost (finally!) finished reading the Ocean one.

[Gryzor]

Thanks for opening the thread, I forgot doing it even if I was among the first to back the project.

For me, it's not about whether USG had a stellar output on the CPC or not, it's an interesting story/book in itself. Thankfully it reached its goal within three days, now all we've got to do is wait for 2015

[Shaun M. Neary]

For me, it's not about whether USG had a stellar output on the CPC or not, it's an interesting story/book in itself. Thankfully it reached its goal within three days, now all we've got to do is wait for 2015

Precisely! One of the impressions I got from the Ocean book from the programmers is how much of an utter nightmare the CPC seemed to be to code for, as opposed to the C64 and Speccy. So getting their take on their time with the company will always make for good reading.

[steve]

...One of the impressions I got from the Ocean book from the programmers is how much of an utter nightmare the CPC seemed to be to code for,

That's intriguing, what was nightmarish about coding for the CPC?

[Axelay]

That's intriguing, what was nightmarish about coding for the CPC?

At a guess, writing Z80 code specifically suited to the ZX without any consideration or possibly much knowledge of what would or would not work well on the CPC, then trying to hack that ZX code to run on a CPC which went and had the temerity to not be exactly like a ZX, and then blaming the CPC for being so different you couldn't get away with a quick cash in without it showing in the quality of the final game. 

Precisely! One of the impressions I got from the Ocean book from the programmers is how much of an utter nightmare the CPC seemed to be to code for, as opposed to the C64 and Speccy. So getting their take on their time with the company will always make for good reading.

More seriously, which interviews gave you that impression?  I borrowed the book off my brother for a few days over Christmas and read the 'obvious' CPC related interviews plus some others my brother mentioned were interesting, and all I recall is the usual 'the CPC version was a bit rushed' style comments.

[Shaun M. Neary]

More seriously, which interviews gave you that impression?  I borrowed the book off my brother for a few days over Christmas and read the 'obvious' CPC related interviews plus some others my brother mentioned were interesting, and all I recall is the usual 'the CPC version was a bit rushed' style comments.

I can't remember which ones off the top of my head. The CPC versions were always rushed because they couldn't meet the insane deadlines set by Ocean. Programmers were often "spoiled" by the likes of the C64 and speccy, and (ST and Amiga later) for being a lot easier to work with. Even the AA staff slated the CPC for that, especially their tech guys in AA100 when asked what CPC was an acronym for. "Crazy Piece of Crap" was the one that made me laugh the most.

[Axelay]

I can't remember which ones off the top of my head. The CPC versions were always rushed because they couldn't meet the insane deadlines set by Ocean. Programmers were often "spoiled" by the likes of the C64 and speccy, and (ST and Amiga later) for being a lot easier to work with. Even the AA staff slated the CPC for that, especially their tech guys in AA100 when asked what CPC was an acronym for. "Crazy Piece of Crap" was the one that made me laugh the most.

I've yet to see a compelling argument as to why the CPC is particularly 'hard' to develop for compared to other platforms.  The few times I've seen anyone try to do so, it's always revolved around how much they had to change from a spectrum code base to make it work on the CPC.  That amounts to no argument at all.

[Gryzor]

Is it only me, or there have been numerous interviews with programmers saying it was a joy to develop on the CPC?

[Carnivius]

I recall reports about the CPC being easy enough to code on.  Probably by people who actually spent the time trying to get used to the actual specific hardware rather than sloppily port crap over to it. 


Anyways yeah US Gold could be fantastic when they felt like it.  UN Squadron is one of the finest 8-bit arcade conversions on any 8-bit AND clearly makes use of the CPC's superior graphics capabilities over the other 8-bits (maybe a lil sluggish but come on look at those gorgeous graphics and the amount of sprites on screen particularly when your default gun is upraded like crazy) AND had cool music even running on the 464 (ok it gets drowned out a bit by the shooting sound but even the concept of sound AND music at the same time was rare on the CPC's in general) AND has the 2 player co op mode even the SNES version lacked.   So there!   

[arnoldemu]

Coding on the CPC is a little bit more complex than the Spectrum perhaps because of the double buffer.

On a ZX 48K for example you have the screen and most times people draw to a back buffer that they draw to the screen.
Sprites are drawn with software same as CPC. You can do that on CPC, but it may not be the best.

I think the only difficulty may be to get enough speed out of the CPC and making it less slugish.

When I read these game comparisons it's often "CPC is slower".

EDIT: Of course a lot of these comparisons are biased, it's obvious to read but it's nice sometimes when they admit the CPC version is better - doesn't happen often.

[Axelay]

Coding on the CPC is a little bit more complex than the Spectrum perhaps because of the double buffer.

On a ZX 48K for example you have the screen and most times people draw to a back buffer that they draw to the screen.
Sprites are drawn with software same as CPC. You can do that on CPC, but it may not be the best.

I think the only difficulty may be to get enough speed out of the CPC and making it less slugish.

That's still talking in terms of someone doggedly sticking to an approach they know though, not being more complex.  A developer using an approach suited to the spectrum and complaining it was difficult to get the speed up on the CPC while ignoring a more suitable option, for whatever reason, and then concluding the CPC was hard to work with.... that's just absurd.

[sigh]

One of the things that I feel with the CPC, is that I'm still not sure what it's truly capable of. Newly released games on the spectrum and C64 are very impressive, though the leap they take in quality when compared to that of the 80's, dont seem to be as big compared to when it happens on a CPC. When you look at something like BB4CPC or SubHunter, the leaps in quality are HUGE compared to what was developed in the 80's. I know that we have better ways of compressing data, but it just seems like there's so much about the machine that we dont know. I think that had we had more dedicated CPC programmers creating the games from scratch during the 80's, we could of gathered a lot more info on the machines capabilities.

It's wondrous and frustrating at the same time.

[robcfg]

Orion Prime and the new R-Type are also quite remarkable examples of the power of the CPC.

Also, to be fair, we have very powerful tools now and all the time in the world.

[Cholo]

Is it only me, or there have been numerous interviews with programmers saying it was a joy to develop on the CPC?

Indeed, i at least recall the darling twins mention that they used a amstrad to write their early amstrad and spectrum games on. Having a working keyboard & the fast 3" drive helped making quick changes to source/code. they had someone make em a transfter cable so they could copy over data from the amstrad to the spectrum. That and that there being 2 of them ment they could produce games faster then most of their competitors.

EDIT: the OLIVER twins not the darlings, woops.

[Nich]

I didnt see this mentioned anywhere so just a quick mention that the kickstarter for the US Gold book has started and is still running over at:

The History of U.S. Gold by Chris Wilkins — Kickstarter

Well, I didn't back the project because I don't have a credit card, but I paid £25.00 for a pre-order of the book through the Revival Retro Events web site.

Imagine my surprise when a few days ago I received a copy of Chris' Ocean book through the post! The thing is that I already have a copy of the Ocean book which I paid for towards the end of last year, and received just before Christmas! I've e-mailed Chris twice to see what he wants me to do with the extra copy but I've had no response at all.

I'm just wondering if this has happened to anyone else? I'm concerned that my pre-order of the US Gold book may no longer be valid now and I may have to cough up another £25.00 for it when it is eventually published.

[Gryzor]

I think Chris will fix you, if he hasn't replied it's probably because he's busy with his new project and maybe he hasn't even seen your email... But I don't think you've got anything to worry about!

[Nich]

I think Chris will fix you, if he hasn't replied it's probably because he's busy with his new project and maybe he hasn't even seen your email... But I don't think you've got anything to worry about!

You're right. An hour or so after I posted, Chris replied and told me to post it back and mark it "return to sender", which I have done - so everything's all right now.

And after reading the comments section of Chris' latest Kickstarter project, I would also like to see an Amstrad CPC games book!

[Gryzor]

And after reading the comments section of Chris' latest Kickstarter project, I would also like to see an Amstrad CPC games book!

Do let him know!!! The more the pressure, the better!

[Lazy Dude]

+1 on that! I think both of these titles are now on my want list

[Trebmint]

Perhaps this is off topic and might seem a bit mean but.... as cool as people writing books about 80's computers and making a living from it is. A little bit of me thinks I'd far rather see people paid to create new games rather than just reliving old memories

[steve]

But from an author/publisher's point of view, more people will read a book than play a game.

[Carnivius]

Perhaps this is off topic and might seem a bit mean but.... as cool as people writing books about 80's computers and making a living from it is. A little bit of me thinks I'd far rather see people paid to create new games rather than just reliving old memories

Some folks get inspired to make new games because of reliving memories of old ones.  I do anyways. 

[Lazy Dude]

well the books feature unseen stuff and interesting interviews with people that made the scene.
I also would support the idea of new games (they still happen - right!)