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RL5203


Cafeman

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RL5203 is planned to be called Detective Powers. In 2009, I was off work for several months, and during this time I read nearly all of Conan Doyle's Sherlock stories. Also, via Netflix DVDs and Streaming, I watched all the seasons and one-off films from the Granada BBC Masterpiece Theater Sherlock Holmes, starring Jeremy Brett, and I was especially fond of those. So I started to think about how to do an Atari 5200/A8 game back then in late 2009/early 2010. Coincidentally to me, there seemed to be a real Sherlock craze building in enterainment. In December 2009, the Robert Downey Jr Sherlock Holmes film came out, and later that year BBC's new Sherlock debuted. Then Elementary also came out on CBS. But my game was focusing on the Brett version, in my mind - 1880's London area, with mystery, clues, dangers, and a smattering of action when it was called for.

I wanted a game that would fit into the "Atari" era style of gaming with constant moving around, exploring and interacting, finding useful items, and using abstract concepts in the gameplay. I didn't want you to have to write down notes to remember who was who (like with the Sega CD Consulting Detective FMV games). But I didn't want a generic "Adventure" or "Action" game that artificially placed Holmes into the action as though he were a ninja or a Double Dragon brawler either.

After some thought, I decided the overall concept of the game should be based on Holmes' famous quote, "Eliminate everything else, and whatever remains must be the truth!". You'd control Holmes (I always imagined the Jeremy Brett version) and explore the 1880's city streets and try to eliminate 'color clues' to narrow down where and whom you should locate. You might start with 4 colors for "Suspect". Eliminate it down until there is only 1 color left - RED for example. Then you know to find a RED character on the streets. All the while, the gameplay involves finding helpful items and not making mistakes or getting into danger, to keep your Detective Powers (DP) meter as full as possible, so that Holmes' abilities will be at their full strength. To further illustrate the 'strategy' of the game, you might find an alleyway is a shortcut to the next street. But if it turns out to be a dead-end, or if you suffered an attack in the alley from thugs or stray dogs and don't successfully escape that situation, then the game could penalize you with reduced DP. If your DP meter drains completely, you've in effect failed the case and must continue. My way of incorporating failure-yet-continuing was to have Holmes announce in-game that "This has become a Three Pipe Problem!" (Google it, if unfamiliar with this Holmes quotation)! You'll have to find 3 Pipes on the streets to restore your Detective Powers and continue to solve the case. Pretty neat, right?

Like many of my homebrew game ideas, over time I came to find it growing too complicated and huge. I just don't have the time to create maps, draw art, and program a "huge" game anymore. I haven't coded anything for this game yet, other than cannibalizing the Adventure II engine, but I do have a workable design document and mockups, and I think the game could be fun. But I have to be careful not to get carried away with scope , or else I'll never finish it. So my goal now is to make 1 trial level ("Case") of Detective Powers and see how it turns out. After that I'll see if I want to add more to it. The intro case might be a simply one like "Adventure of the 5 Napoleans" where you simply have to hunt on a few city streets (each perhaps being four "City Blocks" (screens) wide), and find all 5 missing Napolean statuettes , and each one will boost your Detective Powers and also eliminate color clues. So after finding them all, you should be able to know (for example) to go look for a RED house on a BLUE street and touch the GREEN man found there. Touch the correct man and you'll have solved the case. If this sounds too complicated, I think that once you actually play the game, it would make more sense.

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Here is the official description for the game that I wrote years back:




Assume the role of the world’s most famous consulting detective, using investigation and deduction to navigate Baker Street, countryside manors, and interior room locations in a retro 80’s arcade-adventure style of game play. Find helpful items and clues, keep your Detective Powers fully charged and solve each case. Cases are based on several canonical Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and are planned to include The Musgrave Ritual, The Dancing Men, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Final Problem. Sherlock Holmes Adventures is a 32K game for the Atari 8bit XL/XE computers and the Atari 5200 Supersystem.


I might end up making one or both 64K. Why not? It solves a lot of memory constraint problems. I'm not sure if we have successfully made a 64K 5200 PCB / cartridge yet.

Although the Sherlock Holmes "craze" has settled down since I first had the idea, I will always be a fan of the books, the Jeremy Brett Granada series from the 80's and 90's, and I enjoy the modern takes too. Below are some mockups as ideas for what could be in the final game.

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(_)3




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I really hope you can finish this. It looks fantastic. It reminds me of Atari's Black Belt prototype. It would great to have them in modules, were each version could be a different mystery to solve/crime to solve, but all centering around the same general place.

 

Allan

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I am going to keep working on it, as DP is definitely my next full-time project. I would like to work on it now, but I have to finish AdvII XE first (almost there!).

 

I wonder if anybody has any opinion as to a particular Holmes story that they'd like to see in Detective Powers? If so, share your opinion. My opinion on that changes over time. I'd like to do The Adventure of the Dancing Men, the Musgrave Ritual, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Final Problem. . What if each 'episode', or case, once completed , gave a unique clue pointing towards Moriarty's existence/involvement, and after getting all the clues, you could learn how to activate the final case - "The Final Problem". Or maybe it would be cooler to have The Final Problem as the final case, but after beating that pop up a bonus case ... The Adventure of the Empty House. Where Holmes returns 2 or 3 years later....

 

It will start with 1 case, I'll try to use that to build and tweak the game engine and graphics. Once it seems fun and playable, I will then add the extra cases, which should not take as much effort as the first.

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