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Ex-Activision Designers Launch Retro Game Publisher Audacity Games™


jaybird3rd

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I don't think the term "homebrew" has any negative connotations (to me),  but these guys worked in the industry, selling video games through a company for profit on a large scale;  It was not a DIY approach where they learned to code in their spare time (at "Home" perhaps) where they would create ("Brew" if you will) a game to be sold as a boutique item in limited quantities.

 

The beer analogy definitely applies...It is Awesome when one of your friends has been brewing beer at home and brings over a bunch to try...At that point, it is a completely different experience compared to buying a 6 pack of Coors at the liquor store or even bringing home a "craft beer", which might be a good description of Circus Convoy actually...

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43 minutes ago, Cafeman said:

I can't tell the difference from Circus Convoy, and Casey's Gold.  One is a guy jumping across truck cabs and trailers, another seems to be a guy jumping across train cars. What else do we know to distinguish the 2 games? 

One has an activision-style sunset, but I bet the other has an activision-style dawn.

Clearly the difference is night and day.

 

 

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I'm not sure if it's been mentioned yet, but it's something that's been in the back of my mind.

 

I'm excited about the online leader board and know I'll probably be ranked pretty low :D but I'm worried about how long it's going to take for someone to figure out how to manipulate the QR code the cart produces... or more likely, the URL it points to in order to cheat their way higher up on the list.

 

I hope it's not something like just passing some query string to a page you need to log in to (god I hope it needs you to log in!) like:


http://someurl.com/highscores?userId=1234&code=abcd&score=900000000000

 

Or something even encoded that's easy to decode like just a simple base64 encoding on the query string.

 

My guess is that there's a private "key" it's encoded off of that both the server and the cart know. Problem arises with the fact that we can dump the carts or the people who have the digital download can view the contents and extract the private "key". Whatever url encoding process is done based on this key needs to be able to be generated by the 2600 and being a 2600, it won't have the advantages of state of the art cryptography libraries and will be using something "brewed up" by Audacity. That said, they could have a key for each cart (like a UUID) that would be hard to guess and even if you dumped the ROM, you would only have access to manipulate that one account's high scores instead of blindly spamming the leader board. This would require extra work on their side to maintain a database that matches UUIDs with serial numbers (not that it would be hard to do). I hope it's not just based on the serial number as they are sequential and it will be easy to guess the next one or previous one... or any one actually.

 

I'm hoping that the audience that this game is for keeps it from being screwed around with like that for some time and I hope Audacity has planned for this eventuality with some sort of moderation on the high score list for obviously bogus claims.

 

 

 

Edited by slacker
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2 hours ago, Atari_Warlord said:

Any updates on Circus Convoy shipping?  I logged in to see if the ROM was available for download yet, but couldn't find anything at my order portal.

I have a low number. I'll let you know when mine ships.

Edited by john_q_atari
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6 hours ago, Atari_Warlord said:

Any updates on Circus Convoy shipping?  I logged in to see if the ROM was available for download yet, but couldn't find anything at my order portal.


I did see on my Twitter today a post by Garry Kitchen; showing a stack of Circus Convoy boxes and stating shipping was starting today.

https://twitter.com/kitchengarry/status/1374402775455469578

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Honestly, I was a little bit surprised that a spoiler-filled playthrough was released BEFORE anyone got the game.  While it was bound to happen once the carts were released, this seemed pretty fast.  The way the designers were talking on the Interview made it sound like some secrets were pretty deeply buried and may take some time/trial/effort to figure out.  But, if everything's already known-- well, that's a bit of a shame (at least to me).  Does that mean it's not as difficult to finish the game as the Designers thought?

 

It would have been cool to see some collaboration threads on atariage like "hey, I tried X on screen Y and got a widget. Anyone have any ideas?"  That will likely still happen, but since a bunch of people can just reference a video now, I have a feeling that sort of collaboration won't happen as much as it could have.  Since I didn't watch the video myself, did they show how to get every star? If so, that makes getting the "perfect" patch a bit less of an achievement (although, you do have to have a PERFECT run, so it's still hard, just documented).  That said, promoting a full playthrough opens the door such that Speed Runs are the new achievement, which isn't a bad thing.

 

I have a feeling this is more of a "me" problem, since I'm old-school where maps / videos / etc... didn't exist when games came out when I was younger, and I'm nostaligic as heck for this game.  In the very old days, the only way out was through-- that or waiting a few months for a magazine that may have had tips and tricks.  I personally am going to ignore the video, play the heck out of the game, and try to figure out its secrets myself.  Maybe if I have questions, I'll try to ask in a non-spoliery way, but it would take a while to get to that point.

 

I do want to mention that I think ZPH does AWESOME work, and I totally get the marketing aspect of a full video in order to help get the word out / drive sales / get speedrunners engaged.  It all makes sense to me, and the more sales they can get, the more games we're likely to get down the road.  But, as for me, I... may just hide for a while until my copy gets here. :)

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35 minutes ago, chad5200 said:

Have games really started to ship?

I am VIP #67 and have not received any notice.

Curious to know who here got the notice or the actual physical game already.

I have one of the lowest numbers for both the VIP and the standard version and I have not received a shipping notification.  The download is not available for me either.  

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