Well now, I am posting this here as quite a few years ago I was in contact with Simon over a new game for the Dragon computer.
To cut a very long story short, I represent an old game development company, who (as I said to Simon) owed a lot to the days of the Dragon and Amiga computers, and we wanted to produce a brand new game as our way of saying “thank you” to the old machine.
Unfortunately, due to mergers, economy, and all manor of other things, we never quite got the game past the initial design stage.
However, in 2010 we find ourselves in a very good position again, and I have decided to post here to tell you all that while the project was shelved, it was NOT forgotten.... and more importantly, we are now pressing ahead with it.
To outline the type of game, here is what we agreed with Simon, "We have decided that we will produce a graphic adventure game for the Dragon. We did look at redoing a couple of our old games, but we felt that because we now specialize in adventure games we should make one for the Dragon in recognition of the machine and its undoubted help in securing us as a company all those years ago."
We also decided that the game would become a part of an adventure game creation program that we were (once long ago) going to make for the Dragon. So, in a vain similar to Sprite Magic, you can expect not only a new game, but also an enhancement to the Dragon operating system which will let you code your own adventures and will enhance the features of the Dragon.
We have scheduled this to be completed sometime in late March 2011, and I will post updates on this site as we go. I may not always be about to answer questions, but I will try my best to check this board at least once a week.
Thanks for bearing with us for so long...but we will get there in the end.
aseeker wrote:To cut a very long story short, I represent an old game development company, who (as I said to Simon) owed a lot to the days of the Dragon and Amiga computers...
I've just discovered and read this thread, and the above immediately made me think about Microdeal... (because of "Tanglewood", "Time Bandit", etc).
But it doesn't actually matter (at least, not at the moment). So welcome back, and thank you for the very nice thought and scheme. I'll definitely be one of those looking forward to reading more from you in the future.
I hope you won't get offended in case my "guess" was plain wrong. But, as a reminder, everyone please think of everything we owe to Microdeal...
I just thought I would give you a small update before our Christmas break.
To clarify the project to you all, so that there is no misunderstanding, the program will be in the form of an emulator for the Dragon. Unfortunately there are very few of us who still remember 6809 code, and because this is a one-off so to speak, for now you will only be able to run it on a PC under emulation (compatible with Xroar and Mess).
It will add several new (and some would say improved) features to the basic Dragon commands, so we are going to take a look at them now.
The first thing we did was to think how we could enhance the Dragon but not to such an extent that the finished product looked more like an Amiga!
There were many good points to the old Dragon and its programming language, but as we all know it had several things that let it down a great deal, which is why it could not compete in the game market with the likes of the C64 and Spectrum machines.
So what we eventually did was to take all the best bits that other people had done on the Dragon, and all the little programming tricks you could do with it (if you knew how) and we used them as a basis for our “improved” version. We believe that was the best way to do it, so that we keep the recognisable Dragon(ish) feel that we all know and loved.
Ok, so that said, here is a list of some of the features that will be going in to the adventure game creation package.
*Remember, this is NOT part of the game. This is an extra we have decided to produce. The game will be mentioned in a later post to this thread, however, it WILL use the features of the adventure creation program to some extent.
R.I.C.K Feature List.
True font modes
You can use 7 different fonts in upper and lower case.
Reason:
The Dragon suffered with its text output, so we figured we would add this for obvious reasons.
Travel mode
If you are writing an adventure, you may like to do very linear formats or you may like to do the “lets go all over the place and see what we can find” style of game. Travel mode lets you add random or pre-scripted events to your game. So instead of just going from point a to point b, you can add a time (in days or hours) it would take to go from point a to b, plus random encounters of creatures or other NPCs.
Automatic inventory
Stores items as text or as pictures.
Automatic text data segmentation
The ability to take a data file in text format, and to read it and print it on screen without splitting the text up.
User denoted variables
Lets the user set up all the variables and names for variables. So if you need to keep track of your health and you need to have it set at 90% when the game starts, then UDVs allow you to do this and the program will keep track of it all for you. You just have to specify what to do when your health reaches 0, or if you drink a health potion, etc using the basic If/then structure.
Sound and music designer
A simple 4 track music designer that lets you mix your voices and save the sound or music out for use in your game.
Automatic adventure screen design
This will let you choose from up to 10 pre-designed screen layouts. There is an option to use your own designs if you wish.
Dedicated output zones
Output your text, sprites, pictures and just about anything else, to a pre-designed or user designed screen box. Screen boxes can take up a full screen, or as little as 8x8 pixels in size. You can have up to 12 zones on a screen.
Sprite designer
8x8 all the way up to full screen.
Simple grid with fill/dot/line lets you make your sprites. You can also load in your own pictures (they will be converted to the correct palette after loading) should you want to make your sprites in another package.
You will also have the ability to display up to 256 animated sprites (size 1x1 up to 320x256 size) on screen at once, and each sprite can have up to 50 animations assigned to it. (animations=pictures)
Random name generator
You can select from names for characters or you can choose item names. The program will then generate a list of random names using your requirements. This list can be saved and used within your program.
[b]Built in Face Gen designer[/b]
Similar to an ID kit. You can either design them yourself in the face gen, or the computer can build them randomly. Alternatively you can load in your own pictures.
Advanced colour seeding
Layering of colours to produce a multi-coloured screen effect.
Reason:
Believe it or not, the colour seeding of 16 bit computers never really was implemented on the Dragon. The question we have is “why not?”. Colour seeding is the technique of adding lines (or dots) of one colour next to another, in a set proportion, which fools the eye in to thinking that there are more colours on screen then there really is.
Most Dragon games were more than capable of doing this as an MC fill routine, which would have been nice as the Dragon would then have appeared to be at least as colourful as any spectrum or C64 was. But for some reason (probably because most TVs could not display the output clear enough??) this was never picked up on by anyone....as far as we know.
Full colour display
The Dragon Pmodes let you use the following :32 x 16 - 9 available colours. 63 x 32 - 9 available colours. 128 x 96 - 2 sets of 2 colours. 128 x 96 - 2 sets of 4 colours. 128 x 192 - 2 sets of 2 colours. 128 * 192 - 2 sets of 4 colours. And its highest set which was 256 x 192 - 2 sets of 2 colours.
While you can use those still if you desire, we decided to allow you to get a full 8 colours on the screen at once in all modes plus black, so you will have: white, cyan, magenta, orange, green, yellow, blue, red, and black available to you.
Reason:
We did this because believe it or not, it has been implemented before in one game, called Dragonfire. Due to some brilliant programming the game displayed all 8 colours on screen at the same time (this was done by refreshing the sub-scan lines).
As far as we know the game was not released for the Dragon, but because of the major similarity to the CoCo computer, we felt that it would have been “doable” on the Dragon should the programming team have sat down with it and tried on a PAL system.
So you can have the old Dragon colours if you want, but you also have the option of full colour if you desire it.
Full Sound control
4 voice over 7 octaves.
Reason:
The Dragon computer came with 1 voice and 5 octaves when you programmed it in its Basic language. However, we have decided to let you design your sounds and music using the 4 voice and 7 octaves range which you could normally only access with machine code.
Sound Bank
A series of booms, bangs and all things game orientated. You can add these pre-made sounds to your game with ease.
Ok, thats the list of main features, I will post a complete list with syntax formatting soon.
One final thing, if anyone on here would like to see something incorporated in to the package, then post and let us know and if its possible we will try our best to add it, as this project really is for the Dragon community at large.
May I take this opportunity to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.
I just thought I would give you a small update before our Christmas break.
To clarify the project to you all, so that there is no misunderstanding, the program will be in the form of an emulator for the Dragon. Unfortunately there are very few of us who still remember 6809 code, and because this is a one-off so to speak, for now you will only be able to run it on a PC under emulation (compatible with Xroar and Mess).
A couple of questions:
(1) Are you saying that this will be some sort of upgrade for XROAR and MESS written for the PC in C/C++
(2) Am I correct in thinking that any games written with this will NOT be usable on a real Dragon
I just thought I would give you a small update before our Christmas break.
To clarify the project to you all, so that there is no misunderstanding, the program will be in the form of an emulator for the Dragon. Unfortunately there are very few of us who still remember 6809 code, and because this is a one-off so to speak, for now you will only be able to run it on a PC under emulation (compatible with Xroar and Mess).
A couple of questions:
(1) Are you saying that this will be some sort of upgrade for XROAR and MESS written for the PC in C/C++
(2) Am I correct in thinking that any games written with this will NOT be usable on a real Dragon
Hello Zephyr, I was just taking a quick look on here tonight when I noticed your reply. To answer you:
(1) Are you saying that this will be some sort of upgrade for XROAR and MESS written for the PC in C/C++
Well its funny you said that, because we did look at doing this, and I have to say that it is still an option provided we can get permission. For now however, this is not an upgrade, but I will keep you informed on this part if and when it progresses.
(2) Am I correct in thinking that any games written with this will NOT be usable on a real Dragon
No. At this time the code produced will be in different formats. I am sorry if I did not make this clear in the above post, but I would have mentioned it in a later one anyway.
The program will output in different formats as in: (1) Stand-alone code that can be run on any PC.
This will be like running an emulator. The user will be presented with the Dragon green screen, and after a pause the game will then run.
(2) Code that can be loaded (cloadm) in to an emulator.
Exactly what it says. You load your emulator, load in the exe and run it.
(3) Code that can be run on a Dragon.
The problem is that at this time we are unsure which Dragon to make it for. We did think of making it for the 32 version but it is too limiting so we are currently looking at the 64. However, as I said in my post, for now you will only be able to run it on a PC. The main problem is that for us to cram it all in to even a 64 will mean that we will have to put limits on some of the graphic routines and the loading routines, so that everything fits in. We can do the coding for a Dragon, but it will not be a fast process, so we thought that it would be best to get the product out to everyone now, and then fix the Dragon problem as a slightly later date.
aseeker wrote:
(2) Code that can be loaded (cloadm) in to an emulator.
Exactly what it says. You load your emulator, load in the exe and run it.
I can't understand how a Dragon program that works under Dragon emulation on XROAR or MESS won't be usable on a real Dragon.
Regards,
Steve
This could be true if the program was provided as an embedded "emulation+software" item: it could well be a piece of code that will operate as an emulated Dragon running the game, which obviously would not be compatible with a real Dragon.
That's how I myself understand the previous statements about this.
Unless Ciaran, or Phill say differently, I can't see that being possible without modification to XROAR or MESS. IMHO, its not possible for any Dragon program running under XROAR or MESS to change the emulated hardware.
