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!Asylum |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #25123, posted by Phlamethrower at 11:01, 26/11/2002, in reply to message #25118 |
 Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff
Posts: 15100
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I'm quite happy to run it; I could get something up over the Christmas holidays 
And I can do some level designs too...  ...
Just so you know, I've posted your news about nobrainer to AcornArcade  Yay
[Edited by Phlamethrower at 11:03, 26/11/2002] |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #25156, posted by Phlamethrower at 12:41, 26/11/2002, in reply to message #25119 |
Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff
Posts: 15100
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Guess who I've found?
Andy Southgate! (Who also has mushware.co.uk as his 'work' site)
Looks like he turned to the Dark Side quite a while ago 
Didn't even mention RISC OS in his CV! But apparently he made £3000 from a game while at uni, and the uni dates were in the right range for it to have been Asylum
[Edited by Phlamethrower at 12:48, 26/11/2002] |
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John Hoare |
Message #25161, posted by moss at 12:52, 26/11/2002, in reply to message #25156 |
Posts: 9348
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Tsk him! He made !Asylum freeware though (I hope), so he's forgiven...
I remember reading a while back that he was working on a platform-independent games library, that could be ported to RISC OS.
BTW, the thread list says this thread has three pages  |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #25164, posted by Phlamethrower at 12:56, 26/11/2002, in reply to message #25161 |
Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff
Posts: 15100
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Tsk him! He made !Asylum freeware though (I hope), so he's forgiven... Yeah, but it'd be better if he was still here
BTW, the thread list says this thread has three pages Yup, just added that bug to the list |
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Phil Mellor |
Message #25165, posted by monkeyson2 at 12:56, 26/11/2002, in reply to message #25161 |
 Please don't let them make me be a monkey butler
Posts: 12380
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I hope you're going to tell him about your Asylum editor. He'd be interested/chuffed/frightened to know people are still playing his game.
Didn't Asylum start off priced at around 25UKP, but then get reduced to something like 6.50UKP not that long after release. So he either sold 3000/25 = 120 copies, or 3000/6.50 = 451 copies, or something inbetween. Or more, if you cover production costs.
Don't forget Oddball! |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #25167, posted by Phlamethrower at 13:00, 26/11/2002, in reply to message #25165 |
Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff
Posts: 15100
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I hope you're going to tell him about your Asylum editor. He'd be interested/chuffed/frightened to know people are still playing his game. Um, er, maybe...
Didn't Asylum start off priced at around 25UKP, but then get reduced to something like 6.50UKP not that long after release. So he either sold 3000/25 = 120 copies, or 3000/6.50 = 451 copies, or something inbetween. Or more, if you cover production costs. Probably somewhere around £25, yes.
Don't forget Oddball! I don't think Oddball was that popular; soon after I bought it (Which was soon after its release IIRC), Arc World managed to get a free copy to stick on their cover disk Did a nice article or two about games design though
*starts thinking of making a nostalgic 'Where are they now?' page to list where all the old Acorn peeps are now* |
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John Hoare |
Message #25168, posted by moss at 13:06, 26/11/2002, in reply to message #25167 |
Posts: 9348
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I *loved* Oddball! Lost my copy now, though... but it was fantastic. Beautiful, too. And lovely music.
Did an editor come with that? |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #25169, posted by Phlamethrower at 13:19, 26/11/2002, in reply to message #25168 |
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Posts: 15100
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I *loved* Oddball! Lost my copy now, though... but it was fantastic. Beautiful, too. And lovely music. Yup. I tried playing it again a week or two ago, and I think my mousing skills must have improved 'cos it seems piss easy to control the ball now
The menus were a bit fiddly though
Did an editor come with that? No, but IIRC you could just replace the fastspr files with normal sprite files. Actually, I'm not sure... I think some of the data files may have just been sprite files retyped to data...
Oddball used FSP2 format though, which is a lot more complex than FSP1 - preshifting, STR & STM blocks (As opposed to FSP1 where it was one byte at a time), animations, and sprites bigger than 256x256. I think I've cracked most of the format, but there's some stuff I've got no idea about... Plus I'm not sure how it specifies whether STRB/STR/STM blocks are used, or the order the preshifted sprites occur in the sprite listing.
I also had a quick look at the level format, but it looks like it's more complex than Asylums.
First I'll try cracking the format Asylum uses for the menu & in game border image - it's compressed somehow, but there aren't any obvious differences between the compression codes and the image itself I'll have a prod in the dissassembled game code and see if I can turn anything up. |
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Richard Goodwin |
Message #25170, posted by rich at 15:06, 26/11/2002, in reply to message #25116 |
 Dictator for life
Posts: 6827
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Well I haven't checked my email for nearly a week What? You haven't checked your email for a week??? Are you some sort of communist?
I was on holiday (well, Christmas shopping with the folks up in Nottingham). When I'm on holiday sometimes I don't even think of you lot at all... 
________
 Cheers,
Rich.
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Andrew Poole |
Message #25179, posted by andypoole at 18:04, 26/11/2002, in reply to message #25170 |
Posts: 5558
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Well I haven't checked my email for nearly a week What? You haven't checked your email for a week??? Are you some sort of communist?
I was on holiday (well, Christmas shopping with the folks up in Nottingham). When I'm on holiday sometimes I don't even think of you lot at all...
Scandalous!
________
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John Hoare |
Message #25184, posted by moss at 09:16, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25167 |
Posts: 9348
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*starts thinking of making a nostalgic 'Where are they now?' page to list where all the old Acorn peeps are now* Oooh, go on - that would be good
Perhaps a general site on old Gamesuite games would be a good idea, instead of specifically one about Asylum. I mean, there's Oddball too, and... um...
...
...
hmmm.
Still, I could HTMLize all the FastSpr data format stuff you've figured out, and stuff like that.
There was something about reviving Gamesuite on the newsgroups a while back; don't know what became of it. Seems pretty pointless to me; what you're doing with the Space Game seems more exciting Still, if anyone else wanted to have a crack at messing about with it, maybe Gamesuite itself could be shoved on there too. http://gamesuite.acornarcade.com/? |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #25188, posted by Phlamethrower at 09:45, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25184 |
Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff
Posts: 15100
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*starts thinking of making a nostalgic 'Where are they now?' page to list where all the old Acorn peeps are now* Oooh, go on - that would be good
Doh! More stuff I've just volunteered for
Perhaps a general site on old Gamesuite games would be a good idea, instead of specifically one about Asylum. I mean, there's Oddball too, and... um... Who started talking about a site on gamesuite?!?!
Still, I could HTMLize all the FastSpr data format stuff you've figured out, and stuff like that. Not a bad idea I guess, although just a section on asylum.acornarcade.com should be enough for that.
There was something about reviving Gamesuite on the newsgroups a while back; don't know what became of it. Seems pretty pointless to me; what you're doing with the Space Game seems more exciting Still, if anyone else wanted to have a crack at messing about with it, maybe Gamesuite itself could be shoved on there too. http://gamesuite.acornarcade.com/? Yes, reviving gamesuite does seem a bit pointless. Sure, it's got the fastest sprite drawer I've ever seen, but it's limited to 256 colour modes (Although 16bit and 24bit are *just* about possible with the right conversion tools), and screen widths of 320 or 640 bytes (i.e. not very much in a 16/24 bit mode). Plus I think the sound player was limited to one sound per channel; I'm not really sure though. Writing a completely new gamesuite yes, but bolting bits onto the old one no
And as you say, the stuff CC are doing with our space game should be far more interesting
Once I get everything else out the way I'm meant to be doing
*debates mentioning something which he's sure he'll live to regret* |
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John Hoare |
Message #25190, posted by moss at 09:56, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25188 |
Posts: 9348
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The only reason I mentioned gamesuite stuff is because it would be nice to have some Oddball stuff on there too (passwords, etc; I can do research for that)... Still, we could always call it Asylum anyway *debates mentioning something which he's sure he'll live to regret*
What? |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #25191, posted by Phlamethrower at 09:59, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25190 |
Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff
Posts: 15100
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*debates mentioning something which he's sure he'll live to regret*
What?
Rewrite old games in C, to provide future proofing, the ability to add mods, etc.
*runs for his life* |
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John Hoare |
Message #25192, posted by moss at 10:03, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25191 |
Posts: 9348
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Rewrite old games in C, to provide future proofing, the ability to add mods, etc.
*runs for his life* Hmnmm; it's not actually a bad idea
Erm, go on then  |
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Andrew Poole |
Message #25195, posted by andypoole at 10:32, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25192 |
Posts: 5558
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Rewrite old games in C, to provide future proofing, the ability to add mods, etc.
*runs for his life* Hmnmm; it's not actually a bad idea
Erm, go on then
Why not Email Andy Southgate and see if he still has the source, and if he has, ask him if he would be prepared to release it
just a thought
________
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #25200, posted by Phlamethrower at 10:50, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25195 |
Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff
Posts: 15100
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Rewrite old games in C, to provide future proofing, the ability to add mods, etc.
*runs for his life* Hmnmm; it's not actually a bad idea
That's what I'm so scared of! It's one of my insane ideas that actually makes sense! Don't you know what that means?!?!?!
Erm, go on then No comment
Why not Email Andy Southgate and see if he still has the source, and if he has, ask him if he would be prepared to release it See what happens when I mention these kinds of things?!?!?!
just a thought Thoughts are very dangerous. Or at least mine are
*decides he might as well say how he came up with the idea*
Basically from hacking round in Asylum trying to fix the background bug. I'd tried running Asylum with the cache turned off, and though it averaged about 2 minutes loading time and 3fps game speed, the background was drawn properly, which led me to conclude it was some nasty self modifying code. So I disassembled the source in StrongEd, and looked for the code. And fixed it. Then thought about stuff like how Asylum wouldn't be RO5 compatible, and how easy it would be to rewrite it in C (The game code is only about 50k, and seemed to be fairly easy to undestand. Plus the sound/screen code was completely seperate (In Gamesuite), and I'd already cracked most of the file formats).
Then I thought about resurrecting other games which don't work now or won't work in the future, such as Diggers (Broken now ) and Wolf 3D (Which I've already written a suitable game engine for). Plus there'd be the opportunity to make everything open source (Apart from the copyrighted game data of course), allow people to add mods, improve screen resolution, multitasking versions, etc.
Anyway, erm, that's that. Scary |
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John Hoare |
Message #25202, posted by moss at 10:56, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25200 |
Posts: 9348
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Sounds great. Erm, do it Have you got time?
And it's crying out for a website too... |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #25204, posted by Phlamethrower at 10:59, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25202 |
Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff
Posts: 15100
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Sounds great. Erm, do it Have you got time? Haven't you been listening? I don't need any extra projects!! 
And it's crying out for a website too... renaissance.acornarcade.com? (To represent the golden era of Acorn games )
Doh! I've said too much again
Erm, get on with launching asylum.acornarcade.com first |
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Richard Goodwin |
Message #25209, posted by rich at 12:55, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25204 |
Dictator for life
Posts: 6827
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renaissance.acornarcade.com? (To represent the golden era of Acorn games ) [snip]Erm, get on with launching asylum.acornarcade.com first Just email me your decision along with the email address to be used as the main contact...
________
Cheers,
Rich.
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John Hoare |
Message #25210, posted by moss at 13:03, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25209 |
Posts: 9348
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/me emails |
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Richard Goodwin |
Message #25211, posted by rich at 13:05, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25210 |
Dictator for life
Posts: 6827
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Not got it yet...
________
Cheers,
Rich.
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John Hoare |
Message #25213, posted by moss at 13:10, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25211 |
Posts: 9348
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Not got it yet... You have now |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #25214, posted by Phlamethrower at 13:13, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25211 |
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Posts: 15100
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goody
*checks mail*
double goody
I'll hopefully have a new version of nobrainer done in time for tonight, my main priority will be the menu/game border image formats, then the music |
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John Hoare |
Message #25217, posted by moss at 13:14, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25214 |
Posts: 9348
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:I'll hopefully have a new version of nobrainer done in time for tonight, my main priority will be the menu/game border image formats, then the music Hmm. I was going to have something done in time for Christmas; but shall I knock up a quick page for NoBrainer now? |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #25220, posted by Phlamethrower at 13:17, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25217 |
Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff
Posts: 15100
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Hmm. I was going to have something done in time for Christmas; but shall I knock up a quick page for NoBrainer now? Yes, just a quick & simple page should do for now. I doubt I'll be making any mods for a few weeks... |
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John Hoare |
Message #25222, posted by moss at 13:20, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25220 |
Posts: 9348
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Yes, just a quick & simple page should do for now. I doubt I'll be making any mods for a few weeks... OK; it'll be up by tomorrow morning
If you're around then, you can check it before it goes online |
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Richard Goodwin |
Message #25228, posted by rich at 13:37, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25213 |
Dictator for life
Posts: 6827
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Not got it yet... You have now
Should be up and running, although the DNS has to propagate. Also I'll be moving all AA DNS handling to Knox soon to make all this a little easier.
________
Cheers,
Rich.
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John Hoare |
Message #25231, posted by moss at 14:14, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #25228 |
Posts: 9348
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Should be up and running, although the DNS has to propagate. Also I'll be moving all AA DNS handling to Knox soon to make all this a little easier. Yay! Thanks
/me plans site |
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Michael Drake |
Message #25252, posted by tlsa at 19:44, 27/11/2002, in reply to message #24901 |
Posts: 1097
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I tried the StrongArm patch for !Asylum but it does not work on my computer, giving the error "Internal error: unidentified instruction at &00009370". I followed the instructions in the ReadMe flie. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?
I have a SA RiscPC with RISC OS Select 4.33.
Cheers,
Mike |
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