New Dragon 32/64 Software

A place to discuss everything Dragon related that doesn't fall into the other categories.
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tormod
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Re: New Dragon 32/64 Software

Post by tormod »

Check out Jim Gerrie's stuff. He keeps churning out new games and ports from other computers. viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4760
Mdemon101
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Re: New Dragon 32/64 Software

Post by Mdemon101 »

Does anyone know of any software that was under development by any of the Dragon software houses that never saw the light of day? For instance did Microdeal release everything they had under development? I would also be interested to know if the gentleman who produced Airball did anything else for the Dragon.
sorchard
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Re: New Dragon 32/64 Software

Post by sorchard »

I was working on another game for Kouga Software that never got completed...

The initial concept was a vertical scrolling shooter heavily inspired by an Atari XL game called 'The Dreadnaught Factor'. This basically involved going up against giant spaceships, attempting to take out all their gun turrets and engines while avoiding the inevitable hail of bullets. John Foster and I had a stand at the Hove show in 1989 and we were demoing a very early version along with Mandragore, Balldozer & ROTABB.

By this point the Dragon market was getting way too small to be commercially viable and John decided to call it a day with the Dragon and concentrate on Spectrum and Amstrad games. The pessimism was contagious and I decided to pack it in as well.

A couple of years later I decided to pick it up again as a labour of love. The concept changed to be a more conventional vertical shooter in the same genre as Lucifer's Kingdom. It got the working title 'Black Planet'. (Probably because I was into Sisters of Mercy at the time). The scrolling engine and sprites were reused and I reworked the graphics. I thought it would be cool to have a parallax scroll with two layers of tiled background moving at different speeds. Various weapons were added, the idea being to get upgrades during play.

For one reason or another it got shelved again. I think I decided there wasn't enough memory in a D32 to fit such a game. I think I also got distracted by PCs. Years later I acquired a disk system. That's right, all previous development had been done on cassettes. Suddenly the game started to look viable again and I transferred the DREAM source to disk and carried on.

Then one less than ideal day I was making a backup copy when both source and destination disks got trashed. Not just a bit corrupted, all traces of source code on both disks vanished. Believe me I spent ages with a sector viewer trying to find something salvageable. I couldn't face going back to the tapes again so that was that. :(

Now I know I still have those cassettes somewhere in the loft. I'm thinking they're not going to be in the best of condition as they are at least 25 years old but I'm going to dig them out and have a go at reading them when I get some spare time. My wife will probably think I'm having a mid-life crisis. I probably am :D
Stew
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robcfg
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Re: New Dragon 32/64 Software

Post by robcfg »

Don't give up!

Today we have better understanding and tools that may help recover those tapes, and I would love to see your game!

I also think that ROTABB was quite impressive.

Good luck! And if you need some help, we are here for you ;)
sorchard
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Re: New Dragon 32/64 Software

Post by sorchard »

Many thanks for the kind words. I will give it a shot. I don't wish to hype it up too much though as it wasn't evolved enough to have any of the silly elements that I suspect gave ROTABB some appeal. I remember spending an afternoon with two mates just trying to think up the silliest level names we could for ROTABB. We were giggling like a bunch of kids :lol:
Stew
Mdemon101
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Re: New Dragon 32/64 Software

Post by Mdemon101 »

I wonder whether there are enough users via this forum who would be prepared to pay £2/£3 or a fiver for a new cassette game? There seems to be an active user base for Spectrum and C64 demanding new software and I completely understand there were a lot less Dragons sold in comparison but it would be nice to see if demand for new software is there.

I had a couple of other points that may warrant new threads or indeed been discussed already so ignore if they have

1. Does anyone have a list of the NDUG disks and their contents? Were there any games/demos on these?

2. Has anyone explored converting any of the Tandy Co-Co software that was produced in the US in recent years? They still have a very active fan base and seem to have released software for a while after the machines were discontinued
drmarkb
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Re: New Dragon 32/64 Software

Post by drmarkb »

I would like to see more retro software produced, and have no problem paying for new software- anything up to a tenner I feel would be reasonable- after all there is no way you could produce it commercially effectively all you are doing is recognising someone's efforts on their hobby- they will never make enough money to reimburse them for the many hours spent. You could even have a pay-what-you-want honour system used by some established music artists.

I often pick up older items from back in the day - normally about a fiver or so max- even if I have working wavs.It is just nice to have the inlays on display.

The Dragon suffered more than any other machine for poor quality softare in its early years and from the bone-headed refusal of Microdeal in particular to countenance software for he 64- thus providing little incentive to upgrade for the average family. Whoever thought it was a good idea for dragon data to put its seal of approval onto some of the Salamander stuff needed shooting, along with the person who sifted through all the American co-co software and selected some pretty dire efforts. By the time the good stuff came out regularly the damage was done. Have always wondered what would have happened if the 64 had been graphically better (getting the black and white to something approaching the artifacted NTSC set would have been a start- especially as space is not green) and if it had been taken up by the commercial companies.......

I think Ed Scio who did Airball never did another- seem to remember he may have done something for Microdeal on the ST,but that may just be a false memory.......
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robcfg
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Re: New Dragon 32/64 Software

Post by robcfg »

Hello everyone!

I met a nice guy on this year's RetroMadrid event, that is part of the Kabuto Factory team, and guess what... they made a new game for the Dragon!

It's a board game in basic called Knights & Demons.

He gave me permission to upload the game to the archive and sent me the images of the game packaging.

With some luck, we'll be seeing more and better titles from them!

Regards,
Rob
BBass
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Re: New Dragon 32/64 Software

Post by BBass »

Regarding Ed Scio, he also wrote Wizards Quest which was I understand was the prequel to Airball.

Not sure of anything else though.
pser1
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Re: New Dragon 32/64 Software

Post by pser1 »

Hello,
concerning the game Knights & Demons, just have a look at the page from Kabuto Factory:
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseek ... id=0028054
or at this other page
http://www.rgcd.co.uk/2013/03/knights-d ... d-cpc.html
and this is a port for the Commodore64
http://csdb.dk/release/?id=126751

The game was developped for the Spectrum with nice graphics.
The port to Dragon has been done just using the semigraphics-4, painful, to me :-(
It's a pity they didn't take the time to learn how to program it with the same graphic quality as the spectrum version ....

cheers
pere
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