Xagon/Qbert Rebooted - similarity

[+Andrew Davie]

I was quite surprised to see a video of Qbert Rebooted, and in particular the use of hexagons... for example, 

 

 

Surprised, because it immediately brought to mind a game from 1984 written by my good friend at the time, David Pentecost.  I also had a hand in the original design, IIRC. In any case, it seems like some of it is strikingly similar...

 

 

 

 

 

 

[+Stephen]

Wow - didn't know you were connected to Xagon.  One of my fave games back then.

[King_Salamon]

I wasn't a fan of the QBert reboot as using the PS4 stick wasn't great for control.  I would have liked a old school joystick for that one. 

 

I think I played Xagon back in the day... was it ported to the C64 at some point?  If not, then I must have played the Atari version at my buddies.

[orange808]

Xagon looks like the better game. Too bad they didn't port it over instead.

[BrianC]

Xagon looks neat! I have seen footage before and was wondering if it was connected to Qb since the enemy behavior seems to be similar. 

[zzip]

There was a whole genre of Q*Bert clones that featured all different shapes back then.

 

Hexagons is where the similarity ends.   Xagon's unique feature is the rising/falling platforms that must be levelled,  Q*bert rebooted plays more like the orignal Q*bert.

[+Andrew Davie]

21 minutes ago, BrianC said:

Xagon looks neat! I have seen footage before and was wondering if it was connected to Qb since the enemy behavior seems to be similar. 

David and I were bouncing ideas off each other during writing these games, and using the same tools for graphics and sound generation. A fair bit of stuff got copied. A bunch of the creatures were drawn by me - the more geometric stuff is David's work, and mine is the "organic" stuff.  The basic game design was me. The operation of the individual surfaces (teleport, bouncing, quicksand...) was David. The graphics programming of the hex animations and gameplay was all David.

[BIGHMW]

I have played Xagon on the 5200 (yes it WAS converted from the A8 port) and even reviewed it on S02 E02 of The (soon-to-be-defunct) Atari Report, it sure is different and quite fun. If you like Q*bert you'll love Xagon, great graphs, some of the best I've ever seen on the 5200/A8, however I just don't understand the gameplay other than you're supposed to have all the hexagons leveled off.

 

 

 

[BIGHMW]

On 1/18/2022 at 10:04 AM, Andrew Davie said:

David and I were bouncing ideas off each other during writing these games, and using the same tools for graphics and sound generation. A fair bit of stuff got copied. A bunch of the creatures were drawn by me - the more geometric stuff is David's work, and mine is the "organic" stuff.  The basic game design was me. The operation of the individual surfaces (teleport, bouncing, quicksand...) was David. The graphics programming of the hex animations and gameplay was all David.

...and if you read (and watch) my review in the video on my last post I say you guys should be very proud of what you came up with, a terrific port, beautifully done.   I just wish I knew of the gameplay object and things to look out for and what to avoid a bit more but IMO this is better than Q*bert and I happen to own both for my 5200 on my Atarimax.

[+Andrew Davie]

51 minutes ago, BIGHMW said:

...and if you read (and watch) my review in the video on my last post I say you guys should be very proud of what you came up with, a terrific port, beautifully done.   I just wish I knew of the gameplay object and things to look out for and what to avoid a bit more but IMO this is better than Q*bert and I happen to own both for my 5200 on my Atarimax.

Haha thanks for that.  One thing I think you missed - many many years since I played it, but I believe the fire button with throw enemy off the screen.  Button+direction, maybe.  But that was one of the important gameplay elements. At least it is in Qb, and memory tells me Xagon, too.

[Chris+++]

 

Qb and Xagon are indeed excellent games with many original elements. Didn't you also code the C64 conversions of Super Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man? I've played the hell out of those over the years. And Asterix and the Magic Cauldron is a superb adventure game, for those of us who really dig exploring over many screens. The way in which you made the view "zoom in" whenever the character encountered objects was extremely novel at the time. I had certainly never seen anything like that before. Thanks for the great games and being generous with your programming knowledge!

 

 

Edited March 18, 2022 by Chris+++

[+Andrew Davie]

2 minutes ago, Chris+++ said:

 

Qb and Xagon are indeed excellent games with many original elements. Didn't you also code the C64 conversions of Super Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man? I've played the hell out of those over the years. And Asterix and the Magic Cauldron is a superb adventure game, for those of us who really dig exploring over many screens. The way in which you made the view "zoom in" whenever the character encountered objects was extremely novel at the time. I had certainly never seen anything like that before. Thanks for the great games and being generous with your programming knowledge!

 

 

Yes, I did the games you mention. Thanks for your generous comments/feedback

 

[Kurt_Woloch]

Really you did? Then I'd like to know why on C-64 Jr. Pac-Man the decision was made to shrink down the mazes as it was done (we're looking at the Quicksilva port here, right?) instead of keeping the original mazes and the scrolling as it was done on the Atari 8-bit version. There also would have been another possibility of shrinking the mazes by making the paths smaller horizontally so that they are only 2 characters spaced vertically (as they already are horizontally), but this would have meant the sprites would have had to be shrinked down as well.

[+Allan]

@Andrew Davie What is the story of Xagon?  Was this suppose to be published by a company but never was? Was it something the two of you did as a pre-homebrew?

[+Andrew Davie]

1 minute ago, Allan said:

@Andrew Davie What is the story of Xagon?  Was this suppose to be published by a company but never was? Was it something the two of you did as a pre-homebrew?

Just-for-fun. We would love to have made money from our games and have them published but didn't know how. Self taught and with no real goal other than making a fun game to play.

[+Andrew Davie]

30 minutes ago, Kurt_Woloch said:

Really you did? Then I'd like to know why on C-64 Jr. Pac-Man the decision was made to shrink down the mazes as it was done (we're looking at the Quicksilva port here, right?) instead of keeping the original mazes and the scrolling as it was done on the Atari 8-bit version. There also would have been another possibility of shrinking the mazes by making the paths smaller horizontally so that they are only 2 characters spaced vertically (as they already are horizontally), but this would have meant the sprites would have had to be shrinked down as well.

I am not familiar with the "Quicksilva port". But I'll answer the question generically.  In the late '80s, access to good information was difficult, especially from Australia. I knew nothing at all about how Pacman operated, other than playing a few games in a local arcade and reading stuff in the gaming magazines that were available at the time. I had no documentation and no information whatsoever about the full content/play of the games. My memory is that I was given a few screenshots of arcade version, or perhaps I may have even played the arcade game briefly somewhere. I really don't remember clearly. But any changes from the originals were probably unintentional or at worst design decisions made because of the lack of time/resources. I would do things differently today - but now we have a completely different world where information is at our fingertips.

[Chris+++]

It was released by Thunder Mountain (like the awesome C64 adaptation of Crystal Castles), not Quicksilva.

And I'm glad the scrolling was taken out. That's why the C64 version of Jr. Pac-Man is my favorite.

It changes the dynamic of a maze game, and not for the better in my opinion, when you don't know where all of the enemies are. You can't really plan things out or develop much strategy. Unpleasant surprises are frequent. It's also why Rally X doesn't work for me.

 

[Kurt_Woloch]

Ah, sorry. You're right. I thought it was Quicksilva, I think I read this back in the day when it was released and reviewed in a mag. But we're talking about the same game here. Then I suppose you didn't even have information about how the complete mazes looked like since a screenshot never shows a complete maze in this game. I didn't think you'd have it that hard programming the game. I read also in a mag that Ocean, at least in some instances, had the JAMMA PCB's of the original arcade games they converted in their company, and having that of course makes it easier to do. Some companies might even have had access to the original code (I think EA's Amiga port of Marble Madness is at least in part based on the original source code of the arcade machine, and Nintendo obviously had access to their own code when they ported their arcade games to the NES). But there have been many inaccurate ports as well back then, so you're not alone here. And everyone's programming style is different, of course... even though I never released a full game professionally, I always tried to adapt things as accurately as possible or think about how it could be done that way... I remember when I made a port of "Plotting" on the Amiga in Amigabasic, I took a notepad with me to the arcade and played the game until, I think, Level 20 or 30 using a lot of continues, drawing down all the level configurations so that in my port they were at least accurate to that point. And I also drew the exact graphics shapes into that notepad. But to each his own, I guess... if the company was happy with the way the game turned out anyway, so be it.