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lots of unfinished, awesome projects .. but why?


MARIO130XE

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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?" :D just kidding :-D)



Any opinions?

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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 by ProWizard
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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 by mgr_inz_rafal
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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 :)

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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 by MrFish
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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.

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Guest LiqMat

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.

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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. :lol:

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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

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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.

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+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 by +Adam+
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("Fear, emkay could talk it down?" :D just kidding :-D)

:)

 

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.

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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!

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Just for the records....demo coding and game coding share similarities in coding but are 2 different horses... icon_wink.gif just my 2 cents for the quote "demos are easy to code compared to games".

 

Snicklin... Exactly.... Nobody teaches you fun.... icon_wink.gif 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 by MrFish
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