STE'86

David Crane and co also got wiped out by the "games crash" that only occurred in US. The UK's games industry boomed for 10 years so who would you say had the best business plan?

why did I enter here with my comments? because all i see on here are fantasy graphics and imaginary code as per usual. You dont need some half arsed conversion of my c64 pop title, because you already have a very nice one thank you very much to Mr. Fish. one which looks INFINITELY better than those g2f conversions. and more to the point, is programmer friendly and actually usable. you could, should you want to, have a working into to PoP inside a few days. But i suspect that some on here don't actually WANT a workable solution because then you have to stop blathering about how you COULD do it and actually DO it. oh and when i played it last night, the fat guard was on level 6 just before you meet the shadow for the second time.

LOL. whole games have been written in the time it will take to get this front end into shape

actually they don't transition well at all from a design point of view because it "breaks the rules" that the previous 2 screens of intros have created when it goes to full screen for the harem scene. using 3 sets of full screens would in actual fact have been much better from a design perspective. or put a frame around the harem sequence. In the original version he ( or the artist) leaps back and forth from one style to another. not a good example tbh. Steve

this is amied at all of you and no one in particular... Why are you expending so much wasted energy on trying to match the c64/apple title screens? you already have a perfectly fine title screen done by Mr Fish. the "title cards" can be done in hires with no coloured borders, you could instead copy the style of the old silent films that were Jordan Mechner's inspiration like so: all you have to do is Google for "arabic Borders" and you are sorted. not all the versions of Pop had opening titles exactly the same, so why keep trying to copy something that's always just out of reach or costs a ludicrous amount of time and effort to attempt to get close to. I can readily visualise a really nice opening sequence done in this manner and am quite baffled why you keep trying to overthink it. Steve

Pah! says you who didnt convert 200 odd sprite frames and draw all the intro data. would these 2 or 3 projects you are working on be the same ones as last year perchance?

I'm probably a lone voice here, but I don't see that as an improvement. I like the shading in the original, which after all utilized a strength of the A8 - namely the ability to display more than a couple of shades of the same colour. The modification seems to me to make it look more like a C64 game (perhaps this is the intention). Totally agree... That screen is a C64 colour and no C64 sprites. The point is that there aren't different colours/shades on the Enemys. The lack of different colours on the sprites is what makes the A8 worse... If we had different colours on Enemys and on our two guys the A8 would look you would love A8 shades and large Pallete. If the A8 version something like this (just PAINT re-done) and what would you say? still looks incredibly mono to me. just like "ST syndrome" when they first released that machine and all games looked insipid with 8 shades of a couple of colours. took 2 years for that idea to get thrown away. STE here again clashing opinions together... your artistic view vs other artistic views and personal feelings. I know your points... that would be when Amiga would came out... ST conversion got more shades as we have 32 or 64 exta colors... yes indeed. the primary difference of course being that my "artistic ideas" to improve 4 colour games are completely workable and implementable in any situation. whereas all the others so far are to put it bluntly, flights of fancy using imaginary hardware capability and paintshop pro Steve

I'm probably a lone voice here, but I don't see that as an improvement. I like the shading in the original, which after all utilized a strength of the A8 - namely the ability to display more than a couple of shades of the same colour. The modification seems to me to make it look more like a C64 game (perhaps this is the intention). Totally agree... That screen is a C64 colour and no C64 sprites. The point is that there aren't different colours/shades on the Enemys. The lack of different colours on the sprites is what makes the A8 worse... If we had different colours on Enemys and on our two guys the A8 would look you would love A8 shades and large Pallete. If the A8 version something like this (just PAINT re-done) and what would you say? still looks incredibly mono to me. just like "ST syndrome" when they first released that machine and all games looked insipid with 8 shades of a couple of colours. took 2 years for that idea to get thrown away.

gotta love emkay. i finally get a chance to use a screen popmilo used on another forum, and i have been itching to use: imagine away. imaginary coding is all the rage on here after all. Steve

well firstly, if you did nothing else you would ditch the 4 shade, single colour, luma slider fade. zybex has 3 of bloody things and it looks so mono. change the lowlight for a totally different colour and pick the highlight colour thats a similar colour but from a different chroma scale. not but maybe Steve

TBH photoshop is FAR from useless to draw 8-bit pixels. I have been successfully using it to do just that for over 18 months. you just have to have cs2 and above and set it up correctly, with no auto antialiasing. load in the Palette for your required machine set up your resolution to be say 160x200 and activate 2:1 aspect ratio to give yourself the 320 screen size with what you would refer to as "double clock" pixel size. draw with pencil NOT brush and you get pure colour with pixel accuracy. with layers. making both it and GIMP the apps of choice i think. thus... Steve

i thought i may as well attach this link here for anyone wanting to mess with a8 shooter games: 4 colour shooter graphics these should be a8 compatible as well as c64. Steve

I do feel i have to ask this question... why are you looking at stuff like this that was never finished on a c64? there is usually a good reason it was never finished. and that usually revolved around the fact that the games were designed around c64 demo routines by demo writers generally, which meant once the "fun" bit of the visuals were done, reality dawned and the coder realised he was unable to actually bolt a game into it. wouldnt it be better to take something simpler technically but with an actual game in it to convert? my personal favourite for a conversion/reboot would be: Highnoon very playable, graphically possible without too much effort and open for expansion technically. Steve

if it was me, i would base my conversion process on the colours used in International Karate. simply because it was done at the same time as the 64 version by the same guy needing to get the same result. using pretty much all the c64 palette. so... i would have expected him to have done the comparison/conversion already. just a thought. Steve

thats a coincidence. we will be very interested to hear a c64 pull off the sound effects too. more so because we are having a few problems getting people to stick their necks out and do sound fx Steve

real life fist music approx 1m 30 is where u will recognise. to "anyone" considering this as a project, then i assume you will be thinking "we have IK it should be fairly easy to do Fist because it's the same really" a word of warning... it isn't. IK "cheats" by having all player movement over blank screen. Fist however on all versions does not. players regularly cross over highly coloured and detailed backdrops. so anyone even "thinking" about this would first have to decide to scrap that element(present on all versions) or get an enormous headache trying to figure out how half the screen won't splatter attributes as 2 different coloured players somersault about. or you do it in 4 colours it may indeed be possible to "jacket" the bbc version like knighlore but the graphics are a bit "CGA" on the beeb in 4 colours Steve

i never found IK's blocking code to be at all reliable. maybe it was just the speed but maybe it was the code itself. i can't say. Fist's however worked (to me) perfectly, if you pushed the stick away from the opponent as it attacked then you would block. the code selecting the correct one. something that would have made Barbarian from palace a much better game. btw in answer to an earlier post, one of the music tracks in fist in reality is called "dance of the yao people" you can youtube it. Steve

Way of the exploding fist was the original c64 karate combat game in '85 Fist II the legend continues was a "karate adventure" along the lines of karateka but much bigger and less linear. but sadly quite buggy. Fist+ was a kneejerk reaction to IK+. basically 3 player fist. it was lacking in polish looked like what it was, an attempt to cash in on IK+ using the old exploding fist name. as to IK vs Fist, this one still rages on any c64 forum that asks the question. opinion is fairly evenly divided. my own personal opinion is that IK was "fluff" all flash and lacking in substance. it was faster than Fist, BUT Fist was made to be slower. IK tends to be played by thrashing the joystick around till one of you falls over and blocking is haphazard at best. Fist however gives you time to react to a move as it animates and blocking is executed flawlessly. watching 2 fist "masters" at play is like watching a real fight. waiting , attacking, defending, countering. for my own opinion, 25 years after its release its still the best 2 player fighting game on a computer for fun. i was involved with doing a conversion of this to amiga and PC which sadly never got finished. it's my "thing" Steve

A coder who doesnt wish expound ad nauseum about his long term project? "curiouser and curiouser" said Alice. a very rare species indeed and not one i have ever encountered before Steve

modified to act like an upside down mouse or possibly so it can be used purely one handed? Steve

actually not. seeing as how even the person(s) usually in denial on here may have actually learned something even indirectly. Steve

at last a "do-er" now then have you considered changing the top fade to something else to give it a bit more "pop"? maybe sunset/sunrise colours or whatever you prefer. just try to stay away from direct luma progression of a single hue. as that makes the a8 go "mono" very fast. this was done using your palette oh and i added a slight amount of extra detail to the grille just keep going! Steve

wrong! stop making this shit up. you have been directed at least 3 times now to legal docs that say otherwise. NOW BELT UP! Steve

and this new point has what to do with converting art and removing sigs? I know that the a8 is hamstrung by its out of the box bitmap colour limitation. in fact i have told you that many times and you have always denied it before. however, how long it takes to do a pic on an a8 is immaterial, as a 4 colour one can be done in exactly the same time as a 4 colour c64 one, of which there are many "classic" ones. it taking time to add colour does NOT in any way give anyone the right to skip the design step by stealing another's pre done 8 bit art then re badge it when u add colour. do your own stuff and sign it or convert others work and leave their sig intact. that is the verdict on here and no amount of twisting and misdirection from you will change that. Steve

or alternatively you could just stop reading and posting on this thread in an effort to get the mods involved. if it offends your delicate sensibilities. i assume that was what its for being as how as usual u ignored Emkay's provocation AND the fact that i posted another 10 or so lines in answer to it? Steve