MARIO130XE Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 There are a lot awesome projects of coding games or their A8 conversions of awesome classics. Just wondering why all the cool projects stops one bit b4 they are finished. I did a search in the AtariAge board and the www using a few names of games and have found lots of those projects. For example: Price of Persia (awesome background graphics and intro done) SMB (very fast n cool graphics, multi directions scrolling + sound + level design was done in different versions & techniques) IK+ (playable demo exists.. no more to say) Ghost n Goblins (title, very nice graphics, running Hero and sound done) Contra (title, background graphics, scrolling done) Sim City (no comment ) And some clips in youtube are showing prototypes of turrican, outrun, rick dangerous, last ninja .... Even if we can't have the 100% conversions of the original arcade/c64/cpc/nes ..... versions on A8 because the © shit, so we could have lots of awesome game releases using the engines. It's a shame, there's only 1 .. ONE!!! great Jump 'n Run (Crownland) for the lil A8. Car Race.. the one and only good n serious A8 game is Pole Position. (smooth and fast graphics) Don't get me wrong, I don't want to beg for more n more games... Unfortunately I am not a coder but I could play any of the originals on original hardware or emulators. I want to understand the reason, why the lovely projects always ends, shortly b4 they are finished. Is it TIME? No prospect of profit? ("Fear, emkay could talk it down?" just kidding ) Any opinions? 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 (edited) Even if we can't have the 100% conversions of the original arcade/c64/cpc/nes ..... versions on A8 because the © shit, so we could have lots of awesome game releases using the engines. It's a shame, there's only 1 .. ONE!!! great Jump 'n Run (Crownland) for the lil A8. Car Race.. the one and only good n serious A8 game is Pole Position. (smooth and fast graphics) I find Wloczykij, although hard, a very nice game. Not a substitute for Mario or Crownland, but it is a bit like this genre. Good looking game, challenging and nice music. Hard controls though. And don't forget Pitfall 2, that is an old classic prototype of this genre, and still extremely cool. It's a pity that cavernia does not have any nice tune or musical effect, but this is one of my favorite games in this genre too. So I do not agree that Crownland is the only game; I like Crownland, but I find the controls frustrating (more than in Wloczykij) and the flicker on the sprites suck on my atari. I would go for a less beautiful game with better playability and less flicker. And my favorite racer is The Great American Cross Country Road Race -> the disk version, so you can save your progress, and you can try different challenges. I like it more than Pole Position. Edited March 4, 2016 by ProWizard Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mgr_inz_rafal Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 (edited) When hobby is considered, the passion for a new idea lives only for a few days or weeks, usually. As long as you're struggling with ambitious programming task, line writing new engine, coding some nice, unusual stuff you have the will to continue. Once the main task is achieved and you start facing reality (balance the game, find someone to compose music or draw graphics, program boring stuff like menu, scores, create levels, etc.) your involvement into the project diminishes. And at that point you want to start something new, something better, something bigger. Therefore, the duration of work for the last 5% of the game tends to extend to infinity Edited March 4, 2016 by mgr_inz_rafal 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
olavese@online.no Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 What was that Castle Wolfenstein clone named again? That looked impressive too with GTIA graphics Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 Contra (title, background graphics, scrolling done) Contra was never a project. It was a tech demo of a sprite multiplexer, and nothing more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pixelmischief Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 What was that Castle Wolfenstein clone named again? That looked impressive too with GTIA graphics "Project M" was the name of that project and yes, that was the project I thought of first when I read the thread. That thing looked amazing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
olavese@online.no Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 Yes, Project M ... It looked absolutely lovely and I really wanted that to come true Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Adam+ Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 There are a lot awesome projects of coding games or their A8 conversions of awesome classics. Just wondering why all the cool projects stops one bit b4 they are finished. ( . . . ) For example: Price of Persia (awesome background graphics and intro done) ( . . . ) Ghost n Goblins (title, very nice graphics, running Hero and sound done) ( . . . ) Contra was never a project. It was a tech demo of a sprite multiplexer, and nothing more. Similar to an old Prince of Persia intro and Ghosts'n Goblins "project" - both made by some Polish guy called Gonzo. I'm sorry to say it, but I have to: please don't take EVER his numerous conversion creations seriously, treat them as kind of demos. Every time just right after he shows something to people and gets some applause, he loses interest and starts working on something else. I think it's understandable in some way: he spends - let's say - about 5% of needed time and withdraws before the really hard part: 95% of the work on the product to be complete... And still there are people who praise him after every announcement of a new conversion. I'm sure it makes him happy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R4ngerM4n Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 Lack of skills? It's easy to put a demo together, but a real game with animation, music and level balancing is by far more complex. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 (edited) Lack of skills? It's easy to put a demo together, but a real game with animation, music and level balancing is by far more complex. Certainly not the case for the Contra tech demo -- or Ripper -- as these were done by the same coder of Crownland. Edited March 4, 2016 by MrFish 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tillek Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 There is a lot of blah blah blah here.... but the question asked could be answered with one simple word. "Life". At least that's why my projects never seem to get finished. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danwinslow Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 Atari programming is hard and time consuming, like all programming, but does not pay well. Since people need to work otherwise, it is hobby status. Since most of us have families and other hobbies, that gets sliced down even further. If I were retired, I would be a LOT more productive. I plan to do exactly that as soon as I can retire, which looks to be 5 or 6 years from now. 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soviet Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 Hey somebody can post a link to this techdemos videos ?, i am unable to find them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LiqMat Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 When hobby is considered, the passion for a new idea lives only for a few days or weeks, usually. As long as you're struggling with ambitious programming task, line writing new engine, coding some nice, unusual stuff you have the will to continue. Once the main task is achieved and you start facing reality (balance the game, find someone to compose music or draw graphics, program boring stuff like menu, scores, create levels, etc.) your involvement into the project diminishes. And at that point you want to start something new, something better, something bigger. Therefore, the duration of work for the last 5% of the game tends to extend to infinity This right here is the truth with most artistic endeavors. I have been an electronic musician for the last 30 years and the fun part is getting all the sounds, effects and starting the song, but getting it finished and fleshing out the guts without being lazy about it can be challenging and so many half written songs exist in my library that "I'll get back to". It takes a lot of time (usually) to make an original piece great. Once in awhile the planets align and a great project just "falls together" quickly, but its rare in my experience. It's work. A lot of work. That's just song writing. I can only imagine what putting together a game on an antiquated machine with extreme limitations involves. Kudos to those who finish. The most impressive project I have personally seen lately is Piggy Bank for the Intellivision platform. It was put together rather quickly, fleshed out nicely and really showed off what that platform can do with an innovative mind behind the helm. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 A shame of course, but human nature to not finish things. Especially when it comes to the really cool projects it seems. Like to show support for whatever (especially 2600/7800 games) early on, but end up losing track of projects when it takes years and/or dozens of pages later in the thread. Unless I can help out with testing, pretty much just wait until whatever finally shows in the store. Less "heartache" that way. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cpt ron Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 +Adam+ - thanks for your expert opinion, but I think it is a bit not fair Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 Just for the records....demo coding and game coding share similarities in coding but are 2 different horses... just my 2 cents for the quote "demos are easy to code compared to games". 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwilove Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 It is easy enough to guess why. That it requires so much hard work involved - that the programmer would rather spend his time on something else instead - probably related to 'life' in general. Also they have to be very passionate about wanting to finish the project - if the passion isn't there, it's simply 'work' to them, which they rather not do at all. I liked the demo of Super Mario jumping around - showing how a jumping character should look and handle - but I don't expect anyone to convert this game across to the A8 hardware. I personally think there is no need to do so - because of the excellent NES and other emulators around. But it would be nice to see a new platform game for the A8 - which is some kind of update of the platform game with new twists and turns present.... And when they are in retirement and have time on their hands - they can certainly work on whatever they are really interested in and want to see completed. So never say never - the possibility is always there for new projects to be done. Harvey 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snicklin Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 Real life is the main problem. Then there are other virtual distractions such as discussing it all on here, Facebook, reading the news, other hobbies etc. Lack of skills was mentioned, yes, for certain people a little bit. I do think though that if you have the skill to code a demo, you can code a game, it'll just take longer than someone else to do it. It's not like the LDA's and STA's are that different, it just requires skills like knowing how hard to set the difficulty, how to structure a game (something which nobody ever talks about) and so forth. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 Snicklin... Exactly.... Nobody teaches you fun.... and game is not a deterministic environment compared to a demo.... I only know few people who can do both... Main kudos go to Tebe and TMR.... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Adam+ Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 (edited) +Adam+ - thanks for your expert opinion, but I think it is a bit not fair Hi Gonzo, after seeing your Pentagram screenshot mockups I've noticed that you are present here on AtariAge as "cpt ron". Maybe I was too harsh for you, sorry for that. But, IMHO you unintentionally make harm to people like Mario130XE: you bring a false hope, they believe you and then you fail to fulfill your promises - again, again and again. Those people have a full right to feel cheated. Have you ever thought about it at the moment of announcing another new exciting project? Wouldn't it be more fair telling right from the start that those programs are just "game mockups" and it's unlikely that they would be ever finished properly? You don't like my opinion, that's OK. This discussion is a good opportunity to hear your version of the story. What would you like to say as an answer to Mario130XE's questions? Could you please share with us your thoughts about the reasons of not finishing games? How does it look from your own point of view? In your case it's not about lack of time, because you just switch to another game and start working on something else. Edited March 5, 2016 by +Adam+ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
analmux Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 ("Fear, emkay could talk it down?" just kidding ) Without emkay's comments and tryouts I never would do research scrolling MCS (i.e. with quad width PM underlays) and advanced undocumented PoKey features. And "why unfinished?": too much of important interrupts in REALITY. And when I was 20 my brains had no limits. Now I'm 35. I got three and a half years of medical treatments for my brain, doing a part time job, and I'm still too tired. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted March 5, 2016 Share Posted March 5, 2016 okay, maybe projects need helpers to test and finish... rather than put aside and forget.... or give up.... maybe say look how close I am..... please help test and finish? Plenty of skilled coders here could help when it is still in mind... not so much help can come later when it is no longer in mind. Who can or will get the job done? How about a finish coding party? Old school.... get together either at a place or online and surprise each other with some great stuff! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yautja Posted March 5, 2016 Share Posted March 5, 2016 Patience. Take in account that Space Harrier took nine years to be completed. And it was worth that long wait. - Y - 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted March 5, 2016 Share Posted March 5, 2016 (edited) Just for the records....demo coding and game coding share similarities in coding but are 2 different horses... just my 2 cents for the quote "demos are easy to code compared to games". Snicklin... Exactly.... Nobody teaches you fun.... and game is not a deterministic environment compared to a demo.... I only know few people who can do both... Main kudos go to Tebe and TMR.... I think you're referring to "demo scene" type demos. As you say, those are different animals altogether. But I think what was being referred to above were the demos of potential games, or games in progress. At least that's what I was referring to, and the way I took the other comments about demos. Edited March 5, 2016 by MrFish Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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