TheRaven81

That would be pretty neat, we could end up with a "Tenebra: Community Edition", with levels made by the A8 community here.

I spent a lot of time trying to word this so I wouldn't sound like a jerk or come off sounding rude, because I don't want to do that at all. So here goes: As cool as that is, I did not know that. I've only just recently found out that this contest was even a thing. Despite that, I can't justify paying for it - even if it's only once a year - when all I want are the contest downloads, which I can not guarantee will work on my NTSC machine. A lot of the EU developers make their games in PAL, I haven't found a PAL game yet that has worked without issues. Anyways, I went through the thread as popmilo suggested and just downloaded what I found. I have much respect for the people who are keeping such an old platform still alive and kicking.

I hate to necro this thread, but is anything going to come of this project, or is it dead in the water now? 🤔

Well, concerning the game as it is, there wasn't a whole lot of replayability in it, even with the extended case libraries - the board game that it's based on is what you would call a "One-And-Done" game. You play it once and there's really no reason to play it again, because the result wouldn't be any different if you did. They tried to mitigate this by adding 30 different cases to solve, but even then, once you solve all 30, that's that. So to extend the life of the game they came out with "Case expansions", with 30 more cases to solve. I think the board game has 4 or 5 of these expansions, where as our video game adaptation only got 2. Anyways, my point is that even with all the cases available, once they are solved, unless you have a terrible memory there's no reason to play again. So, my guess would be that anyone who had them, likely got rid of them in some capacity after playing them, and they didn't end up in the hands of enthusiasts or collectors. As a result they might have(sadly) ended up disposed of and destroyed by someone who didn't know the value of such things. Now for some slightly positive news. I have still been continuing to dig for something, and I fell upon these eBay auctions which are still going. I would buy them, but it would be a waste because I don't have the means to scan them anymore, so if someone else here wants to snag them for the sake of the archive, that would be nice. Auction for Case Library #1 with Case Book 2 - this is for the Atari ST version, so the disk could also be photographed for the archive, if it's not there already. Auction for Case Book 3 for Case Library #2 - Also for the Atari ST version. Despite being for the ST, the important details required for gameplay would be the same. So both of these could still be used for playing the A8 version, or even the Apple II or DOS PC releases of the Case Libraries.

Is there a public place to download all the entries of the contest that's not locked behind a "Members Only" door?

The link you have is their link to the ATR of the Case Library #2 disk. It's not the Case Book for it, which is what we are missing. "Case Book #1" is for the base game, and that is included in the last half of the PDF of the instructions on Atarimania. "Case Book #2" is for the Case Library #1 disk, and "Case Book #3" is for the Case Library #2 disk, and these are what I am (still) looking for. I attached the file here that I was talking about. As previously stated, it's just a simple webpage of the case books typed out in text with a linked table of contents. It's not a scan, which is what I am looking for. 221B Baker Street - Casebooks 1 & 2.htm

Well, as far as other platforms go, Case Library #1 and #2 were only released for Apple II, MS-DOS, and Atari 8-Bit. I tried adding "Apple II" or "DOS" to the searches, and the best thing I got was when I searched DOS, and found the game on myAbandonware. There's an HTML file there for download with Case Book #1 and #2. #1 is for the base game, and #2 is for Case Library 1. But it's not a scan, it's just typed out in text. That will work for the time being, but a scan would be better for the sake of the Archive. Also ended up with a lot of results related to the board game that this is based on.

The Case Book for the Main cases is in the back of the manual, which is on AtariMania. But there are 2 Case Library disks, and they don't have Case Book scans available. I've dug deep through Google, and I can't find them. TBH I'm not entirely sure case books existed for these disks. Does anyone know about this, that can help me find them(if they exist)?

OH awesome. TY for these. And yes, it is a little blockier, for sure. But personally I think it still looks nicer. A LOT nicer than I could get it to look through the Composite cable, anyways.

Is there a list of such games? The most commonly known example of a game like this, is Lode Runner. I ran into this when I was playing it yesterday. I happened to be using S-Video for the output of my Atari 800XL, and it looked like this: When I switched to a composite signal (a Yellow RCA plug) then it looks like this: Which seems more like what it's supposed to be, and a major difference. Are there any other games that are like this? Games that have a major difference in how they look depending on what type of video signal you are using for your display?

I've actually been trying to learn this too, I'd be interested in what you used for resources to help you. If you were able to produce something like this just as a learning project, you did an amazing job. I wish you the best with your future projects!

OK tried 1.3 - it is resetting now - quite possibly it still was earlier, but maybe I was confused because the Crowns up top don't reset/disappear when it happens. (also the crowns don't display past 3 of them) Something I might suggest, if you (and the rest of the community as well) are interested - would be maybe making a level editor to increase life of the game. Then if anyone is wanting to, they can create new levels for the game to use. I'll be honest, 6 levels was kinda short once you knew your way through, and simply increasing the speed of the spider didn't really make it much harder. So once you've got those 6 levels down, replayability value is kinda low.

Oh I guess not - I only downloaded the XEX from this post here, which is I guess only 1.2? I'll take a look at 1.3 and see if it still happens.

Yeah I was looking at some things ("Rogue", and "Deimos", to name a few) now that I have an AVG cart coming, but I was not sure how well they were going to work without possibly converting them to NTSC. But from what i gather of your comments, "conversion" would probably mean a re-write of the entire thing on an NTSC machine, to get timing of everything correct.

neat game, was able to loop it (finish all the levels and restart at level 1) twice. I think I found a bug, not sure. When you loop the levels, the spider gets faster - that's normal, game says so. But when you game over after that, and start a new game, the speed of the spider doesn't reset back to its original speed.