DM on the LYNX.....

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 6:24 pm

Didn't realise this came so close to being released....guess the prototype cart is worth a bit..?

http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page ... SCREENSHOT

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 6:39 pm

I dunno.. to me.. it looks like a fake.. :/

I'm fairly certain the could have done better graphics than that.. Looks like someone tooks some items and tried to convert them to a different pallete and shrink some others..

I'd like some kind of legitimate source to confirm this before I swallow it..

moo

Post by **Gambit37** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 7:14 pm

Nothing to do with DM as far as I know; just an embarrasing and shameful rip off by the looks of it.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 11:14 am

I'm in the process of finding out if this *was* a pre-production version that was due for release; if it was a demo-only made to try and sell some extra LYNX units to RPG fans at the CES show; or maybe if it's a home-made game that never saw the light of day.

Either way, I find it pretty stunning that someone liked DM enough to try and make a working version on the LYNX of all platforms...

I'll post back when i find out some more concrete facts about this oddity.

Anyone heard of any other 'odd' versions of DM floating about on obscure platforms?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Aug 26, 2004 4:52 pm

Best i have managed so far (thanks to the forum members on the 'AtariAge' website):

"The status of Dungeon Slayer is largely unknown. Current estimates with respect to game completion are in the range of 30-40%, and I have heard of no one who has a fully playable beta. It may be out there, but it may remain lost forever: the market for Lynx protos is very small, and there are few serious collectors out there looking for missing games"

Looks like a prototype cartridge that never saw a release. No idea yet if it was an officially licenced product or not...

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Thu Aug 26, 2004 4:59 pm

well, I would like to know where they got the images from.. supposedly these are screen caps right? so then who is it that took them? who sent them in.. where did they get them? surely the person who posted them could find that sort of thing out.. he had to get them somehow..

moo

Post by **Gambit37** » Thu Aug 26, 2004 7:35 pm

Just looks like a bad joke to me.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 12:06 pm

Seems legit enough to me. The ST and Amiga versions sold well, but DM was never a 'Street Fighter 2' game in terms of sales. Seems odd, therefore, that anyone would waste time and effort creating this simply as a 'joke'... surely they would have tried a more popular game?

My assumption (and i could be wrong

is that someone with an interest in DM circa 1993 (Psygnosis re-release of DM and Chaos on Amiga) was perhaps trying to catch that particular wave of DM semi-popularity by making a LYNX port. If we are to assume that the LYNX person(s) who coded this much of the game were Atari nuts...then it's a possibility that they knew of the ST version of DM thus decided to try a port.

Hey - i could be barking up a tree. The other strong possibility is that the 'game' was never playable and simply exists as a number of static screens designed to sell a few more LYNX units to die-hard RPG fans at a CES show years ago.... Again, if more comes to light I'll share here.

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 6:13 pm

I think if we've shown anything here it's that DM was/is a very popular title. While it was a home computer title and not an arcade title.. it still went world wide and spawned many sequels. It also spawned and entire genre of this kind of game.. so I think it's fair to say DM was a BIG influence on the home computer market and streefighter 2 was a big arcade influence. Apples and oranges..

Anyway, my big point here is that if you look at the screen caps, there is a certain non DM flare for the creation of the graphics.. the colours used are akward to say the least.. having a skin tone in the dungeon walls looks to me like bad palette conversion.. the stair banners are grey.. not brown.. and the floor is sloppy and no where near as consistent as the walls despite their colour issues. None of these mistakes I would expect from FTL..

which means to me this is a fiction not supported by FTL but by the imagination of some DM fan and quite possibly never had any code to it also.. there isn't all that much work in this.. it's a handfull of screens and much of the art ripped and converted it looks like and then rest quickly drawn..

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 6:39 pm

I should also point out after doing a few quick tests that from the current on screen palette.. they are only seeming to miss the purples for the worms and the cyan from any of the screen caps I tried to convert.. I'm assuming that this thing is capable of the same palette even though it's not exactly the same from this image. It's still a 16 colour image. and they have enough greys they wouldn't need to put skin tone on the walls.. again supporting my claim that it's just badly converted images from screen captures..

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Sep 07, 2004 3:38 pm

I understand that there is a utility that allows developers et al to literally 'grab' screens (and code) from the LYMX onto their PC's. I believe this is how the screens came to exist - they were ripped from an actual prototype LYNX cart.

The 'game' was apparently 40% or so complete, and playable (in the sense that you could walk around etc.)

You are correct about the colour palette - it is off (although I am told that on the small LYNX screen it looked and moved quite well.)

No confirmation as to whether this was 'home brew' (ie Public Domain) or if it was being coded professionally for sale. Either way, the LYNX died horribly in the early 1990's, so i doubt this game will ever see completion.

Still nice to see a concerted effort to port DM to yet another platform...

Tom Hatfield · Post by **Tom Hatfield** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 9:47 pm

If these shots are even legit, they're from an alpha version. Forty percent does not constitute beta in any programmer's vocabulary. If these shots are legit, they came from an emulator (there's only one that works with commercial games), meaning there should be a rom floating around. I was unable to find it. (One site offered a download link for the rom, but it was a ploy.)

Diminished quality is not evidence of trickery. The Lynx existed in an age when most games were developed by a handful of people --- sometimes one or two. The first set of graphics would suffice to demonstrate the engine itself and therefore could be of extremely low quality. They would be redone and polished prior to release.

Howver, due to an unusually distinct lack of publicized information, I'm inclined to agree with cows and insist that these images are mock-ups. I queried four or five reputable search engines, checked every single hit, and came up with no more information than what AtariAge has to offer. In other words, they all stem from the same source; the trick is figuring out which source is the original.

If this game is home-brewed and can be classified as public domain, I would very much be interested in having a copy of the rom. Otherwise, I'd consider the case closed.

Adamo · Post by **Adamo** » Thu Jun 22, 2006 6:37 pm

I realize that`s NOT a Dungeon Master... but otherwise, Lynx was very poor machine (something like "game boy", maybe a bit better). so it`s a pity that this game never found the light of a day..

Adamo · Post by **Adamo** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 11:54 am

here it goes:
oooh Lynx`s DM-like games (never released):
Dungeon Slayers:
http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page ... belID=1979
Eye of the beholder:
http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page ... belID=1978
Alien vs Predator (flip3D):
http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page ... belID=1984
_________________
take a look at EOB piccies (in game envirement), quite nice!!

Remy · Post by **Remy** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 5:57 pm

There was a public domain demo for a DM-type game on the Lynx called The Dungeon.

It's PD, so snag a copy here, if you've got an emulator to run it on.
(You might have to Right-Click -> Save As... the link to download)

You can't do much but wonder around a few corridors and look at some eerily familiar decor, but there you go.

Oh, a couple of screen-caps. Sorry for the quality - my emulator is apparently not the best capturing utility...

Adamo · Post by **Adamo** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 9:20 am

I wonder how Lynx`s EOB Prototype looked like...?
Could someone post some screenshots of that game?
EOB for Lynx is avaliable here:

http://www.oldgames.nu/Eye_of_the_Behol ... uFX/29260/

You`d need a Lynx emulator to run it.

There are also some strange "Dungeon" (?) serie (Dungeon Keeper?):
http://www.oldgames.nu/Dungeon_The_1997 ... _PD/29252/
http://www.oldgames.nu/Dungeon_The_1998 ... _PD/29253/
http://www.oldgames.nu/Dungeon_The_V12_ ... _PD/29254/

Adamo · Post by **Adamo** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 12:16 pm

OK, I posted some screenshots. While EOB LYNX is totally unplayable, DM LYNX was quite advanced, you could move through the dungeon, switch the levers, it even contained 2 levels.
It`s a shame these games were not finished!!!

A fake (?) version...

DM unfinished version:

DM unfinised version:

EOB unfinished version:

Jan · Post by **Jan** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 1:00 pm

I just wonder what are these red guys - enemies? Other players (in "multi-player" mode)? They remind me the old plastic figures I used to play with when I was a kid ("Igráček").

Adamo · Post by **Adamo** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 6:42 pm

These are just example monster for debugging. An author didn`t implemented anything yet as the project was still in beta stage. It`s a pity DM and EOB on Lynx were not finished and released.
But, thanx to Paul Stevens and the dungeon designers, we have DM, CSB and some customs on other portables..!

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 8:17 pm

the screenshot things remind me of bloodwych. Some how this gives a feeling of a rip-off of both dm and bloodwych!!

jan, your figures look like a rip -off of playmobile

adamo, long time no see!

Jan · Post by **Jan** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 8:27 pm

zoom wrote:jan, your figures look like a rip -off of playmobile

Yeah, Playmobil was inaccesible in the communist Czechoslovakia, so the Czechoslovakian company IGRA started producing their version (not just a copy) in 1970s. I still have a box full of them in my parents' house (most of them lost their hair somehow so they have holes in their heads

, and they also lost most of the tools, so these are just crippled corpses now).

Adamo · Post by **Adamo** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 10:24 pm

so, you can make a front, side and back photoes of these Igráčki and include it as a custom monster

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Sat Sep 26, 2009 9:44 am

ahh. childhood memories. I can imagine you like or liked them alot! Did not want to say they were bad, or worse than playmobile at all! Just a try - joke

seemed everything shown here in succession was ripped-off!! lol
Jan´s custom igrác^ki monsters would be undeads!(without arms and holes in head)

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