Tempest, Venture etc. - cart only or other options?

[carlsson]

23 hours ago, Stephen said:

My favourite part of all of pete's insanity is his utter fear of piracy, even though he copies trademarked games without permission.

I suppose parasitizing on existing brands or replicating audiovisuals from scratch isn't as bad as copying a finished product in their book. Also Petey was intrigued to get into C64 games programming, which I kind of advised him against as that scene is merciless regarding cracking and releasing games. True, the best games from the most honored publishers usually get a grace period of a couple of months, perhaps up to a year before those are released in the wild, but I would strongly doubt his games would be received like that, in particular as a relative newbie on the format with a loud anti piracy attitude on top.

[+DrVenkman]

23 hours ago, Stephen said:

My favourite part of all of pete's insanity ....

 

Those of us who Admin or moderate various Atari-oriented groups on Facebook run into other aspects pretty regularly - he creates new fake “sock puppet” accounts every few weeks and tries to get into the groups despite having been banned from all of them for various rule violations. 

 

The lengths to which he goes to create these accounts is rather astounding. If only he spent that energy fixing the bugs in his games and working with beta testers.  

[Mclaneinc]

39 minutes ago, carlsson said:

I suppose parasitizing on existing brands or replicating audiovisuals from scratch isn't as bad as copying a finished product in their book. Also Petey was intrigued to get into C64 games programming, which I kind of advised him against as that scene is merciless regarding cracking and releasing games. True, the best games from the most honored publishers usually get a grace period of a couple of months, perhaps up to a year before those are released in the wild, but I would strongly doubt his games would be received like that, in particular as a relative newbie on the format with a loud anti piracy attitude on top.

 

Yes, the C64 scene is very active and its coders and fans very verbal or any sort of nonsense from a source. Petey would go down like a lead balloon. As for the grace period, even some of the well liked places get maybe a day with only Parallax not appearing in the usual places. But in general the mood with the devs on the C64 is warm and again the DD's allow everyone to participate so if emulation is your thing then there's a way to play the game and it works, the returns would not make any one a millionaire but the DD's get sold as much as the physical releases. I've brought many a DD because the price is fair, I can shove it on my ultimate and I'm good to go, real machine, digital game.

 

Basically a digital download is the norm on the C64 scene, refusing to do one would get Petey so much flak he would freak.

 

Personally I felt he got away with it the way he talked to his customers on the Atari, very rarely in any selling situation can you get away with insulting your buyers.

[Marius]

On 7/7/2020 at 7:00 PM, skr said:

Xtreem was the first one and plays very well. I bought the cart years ago and still play it a lot.

 

Elite is kind of a successor. As far as I remember, there were graphical improvements announced. I think it was planned to have VBXE support, not sure. Also there is improved controller support, should work very nice with Paddles and Driving controller. But I never bought it, so I can´t say for sure.

 

So you never noticed the bug in the bonus game? There is definitely something going on with the extra lives. If you cross the extra lives border it does not always add an extra life when you completed the bonus round. Sometimes it is even worse, without dying you still lose lives after coming out of the bonus screen. When you are having enough lives left this is not really a big problem, but there are moments you are low on lives, and then it sucks. 

 

I played Tempst Xtreem a lot too, and indeed when you ignore this bug it is indeed one of the cooler games from V61. The fact that my 2nd version had this bug that I couldn't even play the bonus game, was terrible. 

[Keatah]

On 7/5/2020 at 7:31 AM, Mclaneinc said:

Does not help that the programmer is a paranoid multi account making annoyance who insults his customers..

..by telling them their opinions are irrelevant.

[FifthPlayer]

18 hours ago, Mclaneinc said:

 

As for some bugs being part and parcel of the experience, sod that, if its a BUG it needs fixing, if its like the sprite flicker and that's a limitation of the machine then I class that as different, as long as the author has tried their best to eliminate it then I have my choice to buy or not.

Stuff like sprite flicker because of multiplexing hardware sprites, or soft-sprite character cell cutouts, I have no issue.  But one game showed random electronic garbage on the screen when the player went from one screen to the next because the game didn't manage the display list properly.  Another had stutters and hiccups in the background music because the author was lazy and disabled the vertical blank interrupt at certain times, which also disabled the music player.  These issues were bugs plain and simple.  Programming experts here gave the author simple ways to solve these fit-and-finish issues and he refused to do so.  

 

And programming glitches like those are still OK if it's a homebrew game you're giving away, but if you're putting it on a cartridge, claiming it's profressionally made, and asking $40 for it, for me that's a non-starter.

[+skr]

11 hours ago, Marius said:

 

So you never noticed the bug in the bonus game?

No, I never did. I normally just enjoy the game (which I´m quite good, I think). Will have an eye on it next time.

[+Stephen]

9 hours ago, FifthPlayer said:

Stuff like sprite flicker because of multiplexing hardware sprites, or soft-sprite character cell cutouts, I have no issue.  But one game showed random electronic garbage on the screen when the player went from one screen to the next because the game didn't manage the display list properly.  Another had stutters and hiccups in the background music because the author was lazy and disabled the vertical blank interrupt at certain times, which also disabled the music player.  These issues were bugs plain and simple.  Programming experts here gave the author simple ways to solve these fit-and-finish issues and he refused to do so.  

 

And programming glitches like those are still OK if it's a homebrew game you're giving away, but if you're putting it on a cartridge, claiming it's profressionally made, and asking $40 for it, for me that's a non-starter.

Said author also claimed multiple times he could not hear the stutter in the music.  Seriously?

[Mr Robot]

The sad thing is that now Tempest for the A8 exists, no other homebrewer is going to take a shot at doing it right.

[Keatah]

Right. I thought both had lousy programming. So another attempt is bound to be better.

[Marius]

16 hours ago, FifthPlayer said:

Stuff like sprite flicker because of multiplexing hardware sprites, or soft-sprite character cell cutouts, I have no issue.  But one game showed random electronic garbage on the screen when the player went from one screen to the next because the game didn't manage the display list properly.  Another had stutters and hiccups in the background music because the author was lazy and disabled the vertical blank interrupt at certain times, which also disabled the music player.  These issues were bugs plain and simple.  Programming experts here gave the author simple ways to solve these fit-and-finish issues and he refused to do so.  

 

And programming glitches like those are still OK if it's a homebrew game you're giving away, but if you're putting it on a cartridge, claiming it's profressionally made, and asking $40 for it, for me that's a non-starter.

This is 100% the problem. And it is a pity, since almost every title they create has serious potential to be great. I am not sure of course, but to have your stuff tested well you need other people, and more important: you have to trust other people. If you main problem is that you can not trust other people, you can not let anyone else into your project, you do not dare to share your games with beta testers who test your game on real hardware (both PAL and NTSC) ... well then you have to do it all by yourself. And when you are the designer/coder you'll always have your share of blind spots, so while you think everything works great, a real beta tester will force the game into flaws or worse.

 

For me it is simple: I will never buy any V61 title ever again as long as it is this buggy on cart only. 

There are so many other and much better titles. Most of the time even free, or much cheaper.  So why even bother?

[+Stephen]

20 minutes ago, Marius said:

For me it is simple: I will never buy any V61 title ever again as long as it is this buggy on cart only. 

There are so many other and much better titles. Most of the time even free, or much cheaper.  So why even bother?

That times 100.  I've donated more money to people giving their stuff away for free than I will ever hand over to the V61 crew because of their lousy attitude.  That's OK though, according to them I'm just a dirty pirate.

[_The Doctor__]

26 minutes ago, Stephen said:

That times 100.  I've donated more money to people giving their stuff away for free than I will ever hand over to the V61 crew because of their lousy attitude.  That's OK though, according to them I'm just a dirty pirate.

A dirty space pirate at that! Consorting with the likes of Captain P-Card (that's short for Pirate Card in some circles)... and let's not even discuss what that brigand was doing to the good Doctor why cavorting across the entire federation!  Stealing antiquities and showing them off to the likes of Pointy eared or pointy toothed  villains!

 

I bet you put those cards into the main computer core and spit them out of the replicators as fast as you can dumping them on the Ferengi markets like so many stem bolts! Oh the latinum you must swim in!

 

Edited July 9, 2020 by _The Doctor__