Dungeon Master Forum

And even fast and neat action games once got along with 64K: Remember Wizball or IO on C64 for example?

It's interesting to say about the wasting of resources these days in programming, that's something I've always said. I used to write really cool games in 16K when I was at school that everyone wowed over. As far as I can tell all that has really changed is better graphics.

I have a TI99/4a emulator on my PC, my first computer back in 1980, and it has some 16K/32K amazing games which I can sit and play for hours. The thing about games back then is that you could put the cartridge in, fire up the game and it would be a simple maze game or space invaders type thing and you could play it for maybe 2 minutes before winning the game (get your mouse out of the maze before the cats catch you) but you still wanted to play over and over all day to try and get the fastest time or best score. Games these days don't even have a score, which for me defeats the purpose of playing. At least RPGs have a sort of score (you try to get your stats up)

Games these days don't even have a score, which for me defeats the purpose of playing

Going a bit off topic here, but I'd suggest that most games (at least FPSs) these days are really "alternative reality simulators" rather than games. The obesession with realistic graphics and physics has far outweighed the imagination required for innovative and fun gameplay.

Having said that, I still like good looking games... it's the artist in me.

CA: Well, and RTC at least has the gHoF
Yet for me it'd been the other way round - I never liked faster times and higher scores, and once games evolved beyond the packman principle I always preferred games that allowed you to explore and discover. Elite for example did have a score, but tied to it was the discovery of the secret missions and thus opportunities to get unique special equipment with functionalities you didn't have access to before. I also liked stuff like complex but solvable games like Maniac Mansion and Zak McKRacken alot. From these games dungeon designers can learn an important lesson. They just didn't throw a bunch of new locations with new grafics at you for each new subquest, they rather made multiple use of the designed locations by often invovling a location with more than just 1 puzzle. That's also a kind of efficiency.

Wizball on the Atari ST was my first love, it took about 4 hours of solid play to complete as you couldn't save it, but I had many a happy time playing Wizball.

Sorry, but Wizball on ST, Amiga and CPC was crap, well, at least compared to the original - bad adaptions that didn't have the brilliant control and precision of the C64 version, despite ST and Amiga having a lot more ressources than C64. But that's exactly what we are talking about - more ressources do not automatically result in better games.

I loved graphic adventures, all the exploring - and they did usually have a score. Everything by Sierra had a score out of something to achieve and finding hidden things gave you extra score so you could tell how far from the end you were.

Gambit: I love games with amazing graphics, I'm probably the designers nightmare - first thing I always do with something like Unreal is turn "god mode" on and wander through the entire game killing everything with no effort just to see the graphics.

Ah, I never played the original on the C64, only the ST version, so I have no basis for comparison. However I'd have thought that the ability to have colours in 16-bit graphics was vital to a game like Wizball, considering that it was what the whole game was about, and the C64 only had 8-bit graphics?

But anyway, this thread had evolved into something completely unrelated to the original topic...

Slightly OT but while we're discussing games and colours in games - you know what really drives me nuts? Games that have teams or different colour players, or editors/games/tools which use colours to represent things on a map or in a game and they use colours like Yellow and Green or blue and purple for different teams or objects.

With so many millions of colours to choose from, there is so much software out there which forgets that people like me can't tell the difference between close yellows and greens or between blue and purple - a vast proportion of the male population, in fact, is colour blind to an extent (red/green deficient). This is why women can go into a paint shop and say "no, that's the wrong shade of white. We want silky white not linen white" where a man will go "it's bloody white, they're all identical!"

What's wrong with opposing colours which are nothing like each other - red and yellow, blue and green, black and white, etc.

If you ever get an opportunity to play it on a C64 you'll see what I'm talking about. The handling of the wizball was state of the art precise fine-tuned control, the other versions just destroyed this. And the precise sprite collision and clever enemy formations were also converted rather sloppy.

*Drags this back on topic.*

I asked if light might ever becoloured, now it cab be localised. It would make fo rsome nice spot effects and could be useful for making underwater or deep arborial type settings.

Good point about underwater lighting. I've been wondering how to make a level look like it's underwater like in EOB

Would be definitively great to have an option to allow that.

The colour of the light is determined by the wallset bitmaps - and therefore already doable.

ah, that was kind of why I asked about doing it with light. Making new wallsets isn't the easiest thing in the world.

It is with Whack!

Coloured light would effect all dungeon contents not just wallsets, shifting the hue of any object it fell on.

Monsters could glow (if allowed to cast light intrinsically)

Objects such as Bilbo's sword "Sting" could be made to glow and cast a cloured light on the presence of and enemy (again if this kind of detection is possible with "dungeon mechanics" Sophia?)

I reaslise that although DX allows this as it has allowed you to expand image formats, it will also bring a performace hit. In this respect maybe a switch in the confic for LOCAL colour sources, but not global ones. Allowing dungeon designers to colour levels but have local colouring as an added bonus.

Also I'm not suggesting a strong effect, just enough to be noticed.

you can cast hazes sith custom graphics to eiher overlay the characters tile so everything has a glow, or jst the area infront of you