Graphic Text Adventure Games

[Anonymous No.2547996]

Was Sierra the only ones that made these kind of games?
The only other game I've found is one by Gamecrafters named Maddog Williams. Which I highly recommend if you enjoy games like Space Quest and all the other quest titles.

[Anonymous No.2547998]

Maddog Williams is also the game where this guy came from

[Anonymous No.2548007]

>>2547996
Have you searched at all? Sites like Abandonia have pages and pages of DOS graphical adventures. ScummVM even cones with a few good ones for free. Lucasarts made many which are considered better than the Sierra games.

[Anonymous No.2548009]

>>2547996
I doubt they were the only ones, but they most likely owned the rights to that paticular engine which is why you have games like LSL, KQ, SQ, and a few others I can't remember off hand that all play exactly the same.

It just goes to show that storylines matter

[Anonymous No.2548020]

>>2547996
Why Japan never made them like that, despite all those VN?

[Anonymous No.2548028]

>>2548007
I meant text parser games. I forgot to mention that.
Games were you have to write the commands instead of just point and click

[Anonymous No.2548030]

>>2548020
Early Japanese adventures used text parsers.

[Anonymous No.2548038]

>>2548020
you mean like "use tentacle on woman"?

[Anonymous No.2548041]

>>2548038
Want a translated example?
http://www.mediafire.com/download/ld687goze21uqi2/%5B2.0%5DLittle+Princess.zip

[Anonymous No.2548043]

Are you talking animated graphics + text parser, or also still graphics + text parser? Because there's a whole lot more of the later than the former.

Here's an interesting one I just found today:
http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=2364
This game has some twists. From the manual:

"Traditionally, there would have been no choice of the character you control but in Demoniak, it can be any one of 50 characters, who all have different views of events.
...
Each of the 50 characters you can become has psychological problems that loom large just when you need it least.
...
The 50 characters all have defined characteristics and objectives, so the curious will have great fun becoming periphery players and pushing the Demoniak universe to its logically mad conclusion. The mind-reader Sondra is fun, because her psychic abilities let you watch the thoughts of the person she's talking to."

[Anonymous No.2548058]

>>2548043
Btw, the short text manual for this game on lemonamiga isn't the full manual. For that follow the HOL link at the bottom of the page. It has lots of useful info such as a complete list of verbs and their usage, and character backgrounds.

[Anonymous No.2548060]

>>2548041
will this get me vaned?

>>2548043
animated graphics, but that game you posted sounded interesting, even though the art looks horrible

[Anonymous No.2548062]

>>2548060
It's freeware now. Not that publishers care much about fan translations or piracy of 30 year old games.

[Anonymous No.2548065]

Space Quest 3 is really one of the sexiest EGA games

[Anonymous No.2548095]

Well here's one I posted in an unrelated thread. Haven't played it, but it looks interesting:
http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=65
There's also a DOS version (with slightly worse graphics).
And yeah it does have a text parser (visible in one of the linked screenshots).

[Anonymous No.2548126]

There are hundreds of such games. Some of my favorites are by a company named Telarium. Scott Adams also made a bunch.

I don't really see much of a distinction between Sierra text-adventure games and LucasArts point-and-click sorts of games. These days Telltale has taken it into basically interactive-story mode because it's too easy to look things up on the internet, but they're still fun to play - the Sherlock Holmes series of games (not by Telltale, there are numerous such developers) is especially fun to play through.

[Anonymous No.2548130]

There's also the Les Manley series:
http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=933

I think the second game is only for DOS.

[Anonymous No.2548140]

>>2548028
Ah sorry, I misunderstood.

You'll need to look back earlier than Sierra games. By the time the SCI interpreter was out, text parsers had really fallen out of favor.

I had a graphical text game called The Tracer Sanction (pic related), it was a PC Booter. Some others are Trekboer, The Vortex Factor, Mindshadow.

The ICOM adventures - Deja Vu, Shadowgate, Uninvited - were available for DOS and NES, though I think the DOS versions used the arrow keys to control a mouse cursor. Its been literally 25 years since I played Uninvited for DOS so my memory may be inaccurate.

Hope this helps.

[Anonymous No.2548150]

>>2548130
> Led Manley
Oh right in the nostalgia. Spent so many hours on these. The puzzles are such obscure bullshit. Walkthrough required.

[Anonymous No.2548184]

Well this one seems kinda weird:
http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=2421

It looks like most of the game is controlled via the joystick and F1-F10 keys do do actions. But one of the things you can do is talk to people, and type in questions. So I guess it's kinda like Ultima IV in that respect.

[Anonymous No.2548225]

Earthrise: A Guild Investigation (by Interstel Corporation)
Looks like it's for DOS only:
http://www.myabandonware.com/game/earthrise-vz

[Anonymous No.2548248]

Hugo's House of Horrors:
http://www.myabandonware.com/game/hugos-house-of-horrors-wx

This one also had two sequels with similar game engine.

[Anonymous No.2548261]

>>2548248
Falls into the so-bad-it's-good camp

but we didn't know that as kids, it was shareware

[Anonymous No.2548295]

There's also a number of fan-created AGI games:
http://www.agidev.com/

It's not clear which ones will work with the original Sierra engine, and which need an enhanced one. I guess you have to try them and see... I think scummvm might be able to run some of these too.

[Anonymous No.2549458]

>>2547996
That aspect ratio is gross

[Anonymous No.2549461]

>>2548065
OPs pic looked better than yours, even with the gross distortion. The artist that made your pic was clearly overwhelmed by the small palette.

[Anonymous No.2549462]

>>2548126
Your example already has a scumm-like interface. The subject is specifically IF with graphics, where you still need to type your commands, instead of selecting them from the available options. The difference is not as irrelevant as you make it out to be. With a text parser the available commands can exceed the small set available through a scumm-like interface, and you can have more complex combinations.
As for the ease of looking things up at the internet: You just got to be bold as dev and not give a shit. If people want to ruin their experience with a walkthrough, that's their choice. Taking away the puzzle aspect for others though, that's lazy.

[Anonymous No.2549463]

Graphical adventures were a genre the PC and Apple II were particularly suited for due to having bitmap graphics. Trying to do them on the tile-based Commodore 64 was a headache.

[Anonymous No.2549464]

>>2549463
doing anything on the C64 is a headache. Why you'd waste time on that "computer" is beyond me.

[Anonymous No.2549818]

>>2549461
it's the same game

[Anonymous No.2549830]

>>2549818
Are you claiming to be unfamiliar with the concept of inconsistent artwork?
I am well aware that both pics are from the same game. I also believe more than one person worked on this game, if the credits are anything to go by. So I suggested that either both screens were by different artists, or that the artist doing both screens is good drawing environments, but sucks dealing with people and/or facial features.
OPs pic uses the dithering to its advantage to represent different materials, and outlines to give structure. The other pic looks like a failed MS Paint attempt.

[Anonymous No.2549839]

Last Half of Darkness.

I'm not sure but I think it's freeware.

[Anonymous No.2549853]

>>2549461
Stretching a 16:10 game to 16:9 is better than stretching it to 4:3 like many people did back in the day.

[Anonymous No.2549871]

>>2549853
16:10 game? Are you aware that rectangular pixels were an actual thing? These graphics were made for 4:3 aspect ratios.
Notice in this screenshot how the "exhausts" (or what ever that is) don't look squished anymore, the shape of the ship is suddently rectangular, the red circular thing on the left is actually round, and the debris to the right of the ship has a clear right angle as well.

[Anonymous No.2549891]

>>2549871
The majority of games were made with square pixels. Getting stretched to 4:3 was a flaw of display technology and not normally anticipated by the artists. You're trying to see patterns that don't actually exist just to justify your flawed experiences.

[Anonymous No.2549903]

>>2549891
All displays were 4:3 back then. The resolution of 320x200 didn't exist because of 16:10, but because the total number of pixels was below 64k, which is not the case for 320x240. SQ is far from the only game that uses non-square pixels. In fact, if you do find a game that runs at 320x200 and actually assumes square pixels, you likely found sloppy art direction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_13h
>Given the aspect ratio of a 320×200 resolution screen for use on a 4:3 display, Mode 13h does not have square pixels.
While SQ is definitely not Mode 13h, the same restrictions apply.

Pic's a rather well known non-Sierra adventure, which does use Mode 13h and non-square pixels.

[Anonymous No.2549907]

>>2549903
this has nothing to do with the post but throwing a cheap bilinear filter on it is the easiest to get rid of double/non-square pixels
just sayin'

[Anonymous No.2549912]

>>2549907
Non-square pixels are not an artifact but a property of the display mode.
Bilinear filtering has nothing to do with the aspect ratio of a pixel.
The screenshot I posted is 1600x1200 because it makes the individual pixels 5x6, which is the correct aspect ratio and an integer multiple.

[Anonymous No.2549914]

>>2547998
Dat ass
I belive the graphics is what made this game fail, which really sucks because it's a really funny game. It was released after Monkey Island 2

[Anonymous No.2549915]

>>2549903
For comparison, the exact same screenshot assuming square pixels. Both characters look clearly squished.

[Anonymous No.2549917]

>>2549903
Then maybe nearly every game I tried had a sloppy art direction. One reason is that pixel graphics were made with graph paper and graph paper happens to have squares most of the time.
Japs used 640x200 and 640x400 both with 16:10 aspect ratios even though they have over 64k pixels. Monitors were just 4:3 because CRTubes weren't very suited for widescreen.

[Anonymous No.2549928]

>>2549915
That's just your flawed impression because you're used to 4:3.
I was in the same boat until I decided to take a closer look at things.

[Anonymous No.2549931]

>>2549917
>Then maybe nearly every game I tried had a sloppy art direction
Got an example?
>One reason is that pixel graphics were made with graph paper and graph paper happens to have squares most of the time
Some anon in a recent aspect ratio thread posted sketches from Street Fighter 2 development (pic related). The artist used graph paper with non-square pixels, precisely to account for this during development

>Japs used 640x200 and 640x400 both with 16:10 aspect ratios even though they have over 64k pixels
Planar modes are not that suitable for fancy realtime graphics or large palettes. There's a reason games were 320x200 while 640x480 was widely available.

>Monitors were just 4:3 because CRTubes weren't very suited for widescreen.
Widescreen was not even a thing.

[Anonymous No.2549935]

>>2549912
you're correct, I meant that bilinear helps "hiding" the sloppy double pixels and it's a lot easier than setting your monitor to odd resolutions

[Anonymous No.2549936]

>>2549928
Different game, but I think these images are a pretty good example that non-square pixels were assumed by the artist. All round objects are perfectly circular with non-square pixels (bottom row).
As for Monkey Island, just look for screens involving right angles that do not align with the grid. They're usually a solid indicator of distortion (see also the corrected SQ3 screenshot)

[Anonymous No.2549946]

>>2549928
Not an ideal example, but I think it's a safe assumption that a clock directly facing the camera is supposed to be perfectly circular. It is, if the pixels are not square.

[Anonymous No.2549951]

>>2549931
>Widescreen was not even a thing.
Widescreen displays weren't far spread up to the late 90s but widescreen video was fairly common. For video games you also had cases like Darius that used a mirror setup.
But apparently you can't tell SF2 apart from Darkstalkers either. Capcom were more an exception than the rule.
I'll see if I have any parser adventures in my box so that it doesn't go too far off topic.

[Anonymous No.2549957]

>>2549946
Look at the moon in >>2548248. It's clearly round in 16:10. Or the circle around the door in >>2548225.

[Anonymous No.2549963]

>>2549951
>widescreen video was fairly common
Always with black bars, to work on 4:3 displays, because that's what was available.

>But apparently you can't tell SF2 apart from Darkstalkers either
I can't. Fighting games are not my genre. It was just a convenient proof that devs cared.

[Anonymous No.2549970]

>>2549957
Yeah, we already covered bad art direction. Meanwhile over at Sierra (look at the soda logos above the store)

[Anonymous No.2549976]

>>2549957
bold assumption that the lines around the door are meant to be a circle. There's no design or functional reason for it to be perfectly circular. So the artist might as well have used a circle for convenience reason, knowing it ends up as an ellipse on every user's display.

[Anonymous No.2549979]

>>2549928
Nah dude, I don't know about anyone else, but at LucasArts they designed graphics to account for the stretching, since artists also had the same effect on Deluxe Paint.

You can check any asset or original background they have made public, the game version with square pixels will just look squished in comparison. Why wouldn't you fix your graphics so they look good on any major set?

[Anonymous No.2549982]

>>2549979
>Why wouldn't you fix your graphics so they look good on any major set?
Especially since 320x200 is defined as a 4:3 mode

[Anonymous No.2549993]

>>2549979
>Why wouldn't you fix your graphics so they look good on any major set?
It's not fixing, just adhering to the standard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter#Standard_graphics_modes
>The 1:1.2 pixel aspect ratio needs to be taken into account when drawing large geometrical shapes on the screen.

That means CGA (and later, EGA and VGA 320x200 are just descendants of this mode) video cards will send timing signals to the CRT that result in a 4:3 display. You would have to dial down vertical adjustment well to the limit of your hardware to "regain" square pixels in this mode.

[Anonymous No.2549996]

>>2549976
This is all confirmation bias. Circles and squares in 16:10 are pure coincidence, actually supposed to be squeezed or poor art direction while they are god intended in 4:3.

[Anonymous No.2549998]

>>2549993
Even more extreme, 640x200 was a real mode in CGA. Nobody sane would run this as extreme widescreen. The pixels are officially 1:2.4 and CRTs will display a 4:3 image with very long pixels

[Anonymous No.2550003]

>>2549993
I was referring to fixing scanned backgrounds by squishing them so the ingame ratio is the exact same as the original drawing.

[Anonymous No.2550006]

>>2550003
Wouldn't it be smarter to already apply that kind of distortion on the scanning level, instead of losing data by "squishing" in post processing?

[Anonymous No.2550013]

>>2549463
There was a fair number of graphical adventures for Amstrad CPC at least. Here's a nice one:
http://www.cpcgamereviews.com/b/index3.html#bat
It doesn't have text parser, but a lot of them did. In general I think the CPC was better suited to this kind of game, because it could do multimode graphics, with low-resolution colorful image in top part of the screen, and high-resolution text section below it (even 80 columns text was possible).
However, most of them are not animated like the early Sierra games. It's just still images + text.

I think even ZX Spectrum had some nice ones. Look at the Level 9 stuff for example.

[Anonymous No.2550016]

>>2549998
I thought they also used that mode for composite outputs?

>>2550006
I don't think they lost too much data downscaling/squishing an hi-def scan from the getgo.

[Anonymous No.2550018]

>>2549951
That's right, some arcade games used very special displays, but for the most part 80's home computers like Amiga and Atari ST used regular 4:3 display on 14-inch screen. So the people making these games just developed on those systems, with those displays, and made their artwork directly like that in Deluxe Paint or equivalent program.

It's only today that people are even talking about square pixels or display ratio. Back then they just made their pixel artwork on the target platform, without any care about other resolutions or hypothetical ratios. Because ultimately the game was going to run at a fixed resolution and that was that. The only difference would be that some people ran their display on a TV through RF modulator, instead of an RGB monitor. But here again it was same ratio. The picture would just be more fuzzy, and that's all.

I used to draw pictures in Deluxe Paint on Amiga 500, and the ratio or pixel shape never even crossed my mind, quite frankly. I just drew pixels and that was it...

[Anonymous No.2550020]

>>2549993
>send timing signals to the CRT that result in a 4:3 display

You're neglecting the actual shape of the tube. But 4:3 were just the standard. I don't think there's anything in the graphic modes documentation that says "this is 4:3". It's ultimately up to the developer.

[Anonymous No.2550024]

>>2549464
>doing anything on the C64 is a headache. Why you'd waste time on that "computer" is beyond me.

[Anonymous No.2550032]

>>2550013
>It doesn't have text parser, but a lot of them did. In general I think the CPC was better suited to this kind of game, because it could do multimode graphics, with low-resolution colorful image in top part of the screen, and high-resolution text section below it (even 80 columns text was possible)

The Apple II had a feature like this; it was possible to set it so the bottom 20% of the screen was text mode with the over 80% being HGR. In BASIC, you'd invoke this mode by typing HGR, while HGR2 just enables graphics mode on the whole screen.

On other machines, you usually had to use raster interrupts; for example, C64 Jumpman uses multicolor bitmap mode for the playfield and hi res characters for the score counter.

[Anonymous No.2550036]

>>2550032
Didn't someone claim ITT that the C64 doesn't have bitmap mode?

[Anonymous No.2550038]

>>2550036
It does, but the bitmap mode on the VIC-II is still based around 8x8 tiles; you just get to manipulate individual pixels in them. Not used much because it took 8k of memory and was very CPU-intensive. Donkey Kong (Atarisoft version) and Dig Dug both use bitmap mode which is why they're so slow.

[Anonymous No.2550049]

>>2550013
That's not to say the Commie didn't have adventure games; actually there's plenty of static screen ones on there. Sierra did port some of their early stuff like Wizard and the Princess to the C64, just not the AGI games as they were designed for a computer with bitmap graphics (and the AGI engine needed 128k of memory which excluded the C64).

[Anonymous No.2550063]

>>2550018
There were also notebooks.
PC-98 was very popular for adventure games though most parser based ones were PC-88 ports and it naturally used a widescreen display. Games would regularly ask if you had a monochrome/LCD display to change the colors accordingly but the aspect ratio was almost always supposed to be 16:10 no matter what display was used.

[Anonymous No.2550084]

>>2550049
There were some pretty amazing adventure games on the C64, like Below the Root

[Anonymous No.2550227]

Alice for the PC-8801 is odd because the descriptions are in Japanese/Katakana but the commands are entered in English (and ALL CAPS at that).

[Anonymous No.2550261]

found another one
Fuck Quest
came out in 1998, I guess this was one of Sierra's more unknown later titles

[Anonymous No.2550404]

The classic Eroge Tenshitachi no Gogo.

[Anonymous No.2550432]

>>2550261
>I guess this was one of Sierra's more unknown later titles

[Anonymous No.2551206]

>>2550016
>I don't think they lost too much data downscaling/squishing an hi-def scan from the getgo.
We're in the early 90s. Your scanner didn't have much of a high definition. As someone already mentioned the problem of "double pixels" the same applies in reverse when adjusting a scan. If the target resolution is close to the source resolution a lot of samples need to be interpolated, which is messy as fuck.

[Anonymous No.2551240]

>>2550020
>You're neglecting the actual shape of the tube
If you're talking about the curve, GTFO.

>I don't think there's anything in the graphic modes documentation that says "this is 4:3"
CRTs are simple analog equipment, that can be fed timed signals to produce the output. If the timing of the 320x200 happens to result in the exact same screen coverage of, say a 640x480 character mode, that leaves little room for error.

>It's ultimately up to the developer.
They can fight the native output of the display by foolishly insisting on square pixels, or they can produce acceptable output.

[Anonymous No.2551263]

>>2551206
They used professional high end scanners and a Mac, the same station for any logistics/printing/shopping work so they had all the tools to make it look good. Since you're resizing ato 320x200 you're bound to lose a bunch of pixels or two and have to re-add in some detail later but this was perfectly normal.

>>2551240
>If you're talking about the curve, GTFO.

I'm not quite up with the terminology, I'm talking about the screen ratio. Even if the signals its being fed are the same, the gun will act accordingly to the CRT's horizontal amplitude (please tell me this is an actual term) filling the whole screen no matter how large. Please don't hit me.

[Anonymous No.2551271]

>>2550084
That's the IBM version, you barnacle head.

[Anonymous No.2551281]

>>2551263
that "amplitude" is controlled by the graphics adapter. There's a reason graphics modes have so many timing values. They determine the number of scan lines, the dimensions of the output, the number of frames and so on. The knobs on the CRT merely provide corrections. The goal for any graphics mode is to fill as much of the screen as possible.

[Anonymous No.2551285]

>>2551271
This game is from 1985, during the lean period when sales of computers and electronic games were slow. A lot of developers had succumbed to the industry meltdown in 83-84.

[Anonymous No.2551540]

>>2551281
>The goal for any graphics mode is to fill as much of the screen as possible.
That's what the people think that stretch every shit to 16:9.

[Anonymous No.2551547]

>>2551540
I think we both understand how your comment is entirely unrelated and kind of trollish.

[Anonymous No.2551550]

>>2551540
640x400 as unironical resolution? Certainly not in the 90s

[Anonymous No.2551554]

>>2551547
How is it unrelated? Dumb people set their displays to stretch to full screen because they think that more picture is better. Maybe some even made games that way.

>>2551550
Never heard of a PC-98?

[Anonymous No.2551560]

>>2551554
>How is it unrelated?
4:3 was the only aspect ratio available for DOS monitors back then, and CRTs don't work like LCDs. Also again just in case you missed it: By default, due to the timing settings in these modes, a monitor would show a 4:3 image and you had to go out of your way, often to the very limits of the adjustment ranges, to "fix" the display. The reason being that you weren't fixing anything, you were worsening it.

>Never heard of a PC-98?
Not really, not available in my region and not really applicable to DOS CGA/EGA/MCGA modes.

[Anonymous No.2551565]

>>2551560
PC-98 used MS DOS as well, various games got ported to and from IBM compatibles and they always used a 16:10 ratio despite using 4:3 CRT monitors.

[Anonymous No.2551570]

>>2551565
>PC-98 used MS DOS as well
Apparently no CGA/EGA/VGA graphics adapter though.

>various games got ported to and from IBM compatibles and they always used a 16:10 ratio despite using 4:3 CRT monitors
That's their choice. If the devs were worth their salt they probably also adjusted the aspect for that display.

Look, we can argue all day long. I know fuckall about the PC-98 and have no intention to change that. You saw the screenshots earlier in the thread for CGA, EGA and MCGA DOS games. If you want to claim they look distorted, nothing I say will convince you.
For some reason you're strawmanning me up as someone that will run 4:3 stuff on widescreen, when it's pretty obvious I'm moderately obsessed about correct aspect. Sure, have at it, burn that strawman in effigy. I made my case, I think I provided sufficient proof, people are free to read it.

[Anonymous No.2551579]

>>2551570
>when it's pretty obvious I'm moderately obsessed about correct aspect
So you accept that at least some games were made for 16:10 and displaying them in 4:3 is as bad if not worse than displaying them in 16:9?

[Anonymous No.2551583]

>>2551579
So you don't understand the difference between graphics adapters and graphics modes and hardware? You whip out entirely different hardware and think it for some reason matters for the subject at hand? You do understand that the whole thing started on two screenshots of an EGA game? Come on.
Ok, fuck it. You win, yes, that's what you wanted to hear, isn't it? I've been wrong all along, oh master. Stretch the fuck out of your games, you know it all better. Preach to the world.

[Anonymous No.2551590]

No Colonel's Bequest? Also don't shower...
Also... Fuck Rudy.

[Anonymous No.2551612]

>>2551579
>So you accept that at least some games were made for 16:10 and displaying them in 4:3 is as bad if not worse than displaying them in 16:9?
16:10 on some platform, somewhere? Sure, why not. There's all kinds of odd shit. That was never the subject though. The subject is EGA, CGA, MCGA 320x200, which is a 4:3 mode. You can tell that is the subject because the original screenshots the subject started on were for an EGA game, and clearly show aspect ratio distortion. Assuming square pixels on that mode is an error.

[Anonymous No.2551616]

>>2551612
Hugo's House of Horrors is not an EGA game?

[Anonymous No.2551618]

>>2551616
>>2549903
>if you do find a game that runs at 320x200 and actually assumes square pixels, you likely
found sloppy art direction.

>>2551612
>Assuming square pixels on that mode is an error.

We've been over this before.

[Anonymous No.2551623]

>>2551616
For fun, let's assume an EGA game is made for 16:10. You know how you'd play it? You are in DOS, your 640x480 text mode fills your 4:3 screen. The game starts. The graphics adapter switched mode, and your 320x200 image fills your 4:3 screen. You reach for the adjustment knobs and turn the vertical range knob all the way down, until you roughly have a 16:11 display, because it won't go any further, being just for corrections. When you exit the game, you return to your 640x480 text mode, but it's squished to 16:11 now. So you turn the knob back up again until it's roughly 4:3. Now you tell me that is intentional, and people all over the world, including major developers for production software and games just made a mistake by adjusting their screen exactly once and leaving it at that.

[Anonymous No.2551629]

>>2551623
Good thing we no longer have to work with those limitations. I have a 1920x1200 monitor so I can switch between square and stretched pixels in whatever way I seem fit.

>>2551618
Whether it's erroneous or intentional isn't important. It happened and wasn't even uncommon.

[Anonymous No.2551631]

>>2551629
>we no longer
How is that relevant for games made in the days of these monitors?

>isn't important
Yeah, it was just the were core of the discussion

[Anonymous No.2551635]

>>2551631
Because many games used square pixels whether you like it or not.

[Anonymous No.2551637]

>>2551618
>if you do find a game that runs at 320x200 and actually assumes square pixels
friendly reminder


>>2551623
>your 640x480 text mode
720x400 (or 640x350 if EGA)

[Anonymous No.2551638]

>>2551635
Name them.
Also, they ended up looking distorted on most monitors in use at the time, and as such, it's a developer error. That's all I said.

[Anonymous No.2551639]

>>2551637
>720x400 (or 640x350 if EGA)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_mode#PC_common_text_modes
80×30 8×16 640×480 16 colors VGA

[Anonymous No.2551640]

>>2551639
nobody ever used 80x30 with 8px font width.

[Anonymous No.2551642]

>>2551637
>friendly reminder
>For some unknown reason, Jazz Jackrabbit ends up using an oddball 320x199 resolution during much of the actual gameplay

[Anonymous No.2551646]

>>2551642
... with square pixels

[Anonymous No.2551647]

>>2551646
It's a non standard mode, using a non-standard resolution and non standard refresh rate. So why should the standard apply?

[Anonymous No.2551648]

>>2551638
Naming IBM titles is a quest in futility. You wouldn't want to name every game where pixels should be stretched either.
They may have ended up looking distorted but they no longer have to.

[Anonymous No.2551656]

>>2551648
>You wouldn't want to name every game where pixels should be stretched either
Because that's the majority.
Shouldn't be hard for you to name some, if there are so many.

>They may have ended up looking distorted but they no longer have to.
So what does ANY of this have to do with the SQ3 screens clearly being distorted? All because you just had to win an internet argument? You wasted your time, my time, the time of everybody that was reading on here, just because you couldn't handle a remark that the SQ3 screenshots were shit? What a nice victory you got there. Frame it, put it on your wall. Let it be known that you won an argument on the internet. No need to learn anything, or take any info from the discussion, fuck all that stuff. Just got to tell people they're technically wrong, because you're so much better than them. Seriously, what have you achieved? I proved how the SQ3 screenshots looked better, I proved how SQ3 is not an exception. You whipped out a different piece of hardware and non-standard modes, just so you can be "right". Now's your time to call me an autist and/or troll, because that's always how this shit goes down. Fuck me for trying to actually contribute in some form to an exchange. You want no contribution, you want to "win" whatever arguments you see anywhere. Alright, you won. Congratufuckinglations.

[Anonymous No.2551658]

>>2548062
I'm pretty sure they were referring to the it being named "little princess", which sounds pedoish and the japs like their pedo hentia.

[Anonymous No.2551662]

>>2548062
>Not that publishers care much about fan translations or piracy of 30 year old games.
Tell that to Nintendo and Square, Nintendo gets bent out of shape about people pirating their oldest games, and Square hates anyone to ever translate any of their untranslated games at all. Though all except for a PSP Final Fantasy game they haven't been very successful with actually getting people to take them down.

[Anonymous No.2551667]

>>2551647
Because probably, at one point in development, they realized
>"oh fuck this 320x200 thing is stretched and all our artwork is square"
>" hey let's just crank up the vblank interval, problem solved"

or at least, that is what I like to think.

[Anonymous No.2551678]

>>2551656
>Shouldn't be hard for you to name some, if there are so many.
I could literally post a random list of games and you'd have no choice but to believe me or call me a shithead. Even if their in the minority they would still be many due to the unfathomable amount of games and we have no way of telling if they're not actually in the majority.

Try to give up the idea that everything has to be 4:3 and go through your own games. You'll find enough where 16:10 fits better though it's still going to be a fairly subjective matter.

[Anonymous No.2551684]

>>2551678
>you'd have no choice but to believe me or call me a shithead
Or we just check the content of the games. Good to know that namecalling is on your list of options though.

>the idea that everything has to be 4:3
It's called reality, because it was the video mode.

>You'll find enough where 16:10 fits better
Not that I recall, that's why I'm asking for examples.

>it's still going to be a fairly subjective matter
Not if there are things like humans, or known geometric shapes, like right angles, squares or circles in it.

[Anonymous No.2551686]

>>2551658
I think she's in high school. Bans on virtual youth pornongraphy would apply but for most developed countries it wouldn't matter. Possessing is also a minor violation and practically unenforceable.

[Anonymous No.2551712]

>>2551684
> like right angles, squares or circles in it.
That doesn't necessarily work that well.
Take a look at M&M3. You'll notice that this is the Mac port and not the original VGA to which is it identical except for the higher resolution. The minimap area and the buttons clearly look like they'd be square with squashed pixels but the portraits and images are contrary to that. As mentioned the Mac used a higher resolution and the images were rescanned for that purpose and therefore could easily have been adjusted for square pixels had it been wanted.

The reason I'm telling you to check your own games is to save you the trouble of acquiring them.
Try Wizardry 6 for EGA and Warcraft 1 for VGA as popular games.

[Anonymous No.2551715]

>>2551550
Is this 90s enough for you?

[Anonymous No.2551720]

>>2551712
>The minimap area and the buttons clearly look like they'd be square
I'd not make that assumption

>the portraits and images are contrary to that
how so?

>Try Wizardry 6 for EGA and Warcraft 1 for VGA as popular games.
Checked both, Wizardry has that squished look, but I can't find any features that verify it. For Warcraft, check the shield behind the wizard.

[Anonymous No.2551723]

>>2551715
That's 640x480, standard VGA or SVGA, not 640x400

[Anonymous No.2551724]

>>2551723
Not the image of the setup itself, the option to play the game in 640x400.

[Anonymous No.2551730]

>>2551720
Do you spend more time looking at the briefing screen than at the actual gameplay?

[Anonymous No.2551731]

>>2551724
DOS or PC-98?

[Anonymous No.2551734]

Will you two please shut the fuck up.

Nobody gives a shit if you want to argue over non-square pixels.

Let's get back to talking about text parser graphical adventure games.

[Anonymous No.2551736]

>>2551720
Does this look squished to you?

[Anonymous No.2551739]

>>2551730
No, I was just looking for a screenshot where the distortion is verifiable. Though on your screenshot there's also a convenient circular shield in the top actions row. Well, it's circular in 4:3, anyway.

[Anonymous No.2551740]

>>2551731
IBM DOS. Note how it's the English version by Megatech and not Dragon Knigth 3.

[Anonymous No.2551742]

>>2551736
Yes, it does. Notice how the mini map top right has square ... squares now.

[Anonymous No.2551743]

>>2551739
Now all the squares are squished.
Shields aren't really a great indicator for roundness.

[Anonymous No.2551747]

>>2551740
Learning something new every day. Though it's still ported from the PC-98, isn't it? Anyway, yes, you're technically correct, I stand corrected.

[Anonymous No.2551752]

>>2551743
You're assuming the grid is made of squares visually and not just to please the blitter. I'd like to stick to the features that are not implementation dependent, like icons, or cutscenes.

[Anonymous No.2551757]

>>2551742
And the skull is stretched and you made an assumption you claimed you wouldn't. The squares aren't supposed to be squares.
The people making the Mac port knew what they were doing, it's the best version of the game.

[Anonymous No.2551759]

>>2551743
If the shields don't convince you, the grid pattern between both characters on the cutscene might. It's perfect squares angled at 45° with aspect correction

[Anonymous No.2551762]

>>2551757
Given the movement of the group, are you saying the grid is not supposed to be made of squares? Are you saying it's a mere coincidence that it's exactly squares after correction? I was specifically looking for a screenshot having such features, because with the portraits on the bottom it's hard, if not impossible, to tell, and I can't rely on buttons being squares.
The skull's not having human proportions anyway, so I don't use it as metric.

[Anonymous No.2551768]

>>2551734
sure, know any good ones you want to recommend?

[Anonymous No.2551770]

>>2551734

[Anonymous No.2551778]

The Colonel's Bequest

[Anonymous No.2551781]

The Hobbit

[Anonymous No.2551783]

[Anonymous No.2551785]

Cross country Canada

[Anonymous No.2551787]

Fellowship of the Ring

[Anonymous No.2551804]

For non-seria the only things I can think of off the top of my head are Hugo's House of Horrors, which was a single guy's attempt to make seria like adventure games.
And Crash Garrett, which was quite unique for the time, even for an Infocom game. I would go out on a limb here and say that it was most likely inspired by early japanese visual novels.
pic related to the later

[Anonymous No.2551821]

>>2549462
>>2548126

personally I only use walkthroughs for small hints here and there when I'm really stuck. Also guide books were basically the same thing, I don't see anything inherently evil about either, it's all how you use them, like anything.

[Anonymous No.2551825]

>>2549462
I'm not sure why the person used that pic for his post, it really has nothing to do with the stuff he mentioned, it's an image from some obscure, and quite bad, early lucas arts knock off game.

[Anonymous No.2551852]

>>2551821
There's a subtle difference between a guide book and a guide online, and that's the author. Good guide books don't read like a walkthrough, they just contain useful hints and food for thought. Meanwhile guides on the web tend to be so extremely specific, they are a step-by-step manual, or expose even the innermost workings of a game.
Mind you, there is indeed nothing wrong with using either of those. However, no matter what you use, you, as reader and player, should be aware that you're giving up some of the "discovery" involved in a game, which for some games can be almost the only reason to play them to begin with. If you're cool with that, by all means, use a guide, I'd be the last one to tell you how to play your game,
That's also why I said guides on the web should not mean anything to a dev. They are not mandatory reading material, and even today, if players want to enjoy discovering stuff on their own, they can.

[Anonymous No.2551854]

>>2551734
this
go and make your own thread about that shit

[Anonymous No.2551858]

>>2551852
>being this autismo
who gives a fuck, it still comes down to how the people themselves use them, fuck off, walkthroughs aren't the root of all evil.

[Anonymous No.2551859]

>>2551852
>you, as reader and player, should be aware that you're giving up some of the "discovery"
you can skim through a walk through and pick out only the information you need you know, you don't need to read the entire thing if you are just looking for help with a very specific section or aspect of the game. The idea that you are inherently ruining your experience by even glancing at a walk through is complete bullshit.

[Anonymous No.2551861]

>>2551858
... have you read anything that I said?
>there is indeed nothing wrong with using either of those
>If you're cool with that, by all means, use a guide

how do you get from that to
>walkthroughs are the root of all evil
?

>>2551859
>you can skim through a walk through and pick out only the information you need you know
First, yes, you can, though it means that you won't discover that particular piece of information from within the game. That's all I said. And second, as said, web guides are usually very specific. In order to find that bit of information you're looking for, you usually need to skim through the entire walkthrough up to that point, and potentially discover stuff and aspects that you missed.

>The idea that you are inherently ruining your experience by even glancing at a walk through is complete bullshit.
Aren't we glad nobody even made that claim?
I did not even say that bypassing the discovery in the game is ruining the experience. There are plenty games where the discovery mechanism is tedious or pure luck. I wouldn't want to waste my time with that and instead go straight for a guide. I won't be under any illusion though that I'm not bypassing aspects of the game that way.

[Anonymous No.2551865]

>>2548130
so this is pretty much a knock off of Leisure Suit Larry? and it's actually good?

[Anonymous No.2551870]

>>2548184
wasn't this game and it's interaction system one of the influences to Mass Effect?

[Anonymous No.2551871]

>>2551865
>and it's actually good
No.

[Anonymous No.2551875]

>>2551861
god, you are just too autismo for your own good, fuck off, seriously>>2551861

[Anonymous No.2551880]

>>2548261
>Falls into the so-bad-it's-good camp
despite it's bad art direction, mostly due to it was just one guy making the games, all of them, except for the maybe the second, are pretty solid games for what they are.

[Anonymous No.2551885]

>>2551880
all he needed was a friend. A friend that could operate a drawing program.

[Anonymous No.2551889]

>>2551885
>implying that people that made adventure games by themselves in the early 90s had friends.

[Anonymous No.2551891]

>>2551889
of coure they hadn't, that's why the graphics suck. I said they needed them, to unsuck the graphics.

[Anonymous No.2551960]

>>2549463
Parser adventures should use vector graphics.

[Anonymous No.2551963]

>>2551960
examples?

[Anonymous No.2551970]

>>2551963
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiPYBdQmunI

[Anonymous No.2551973]

>>2551970
The visible floodfill is sick

[Anonymous No.2551976]

>>2551973
Watching the image get drawn it part of the charm for vector art.

[Anonymous No.2551981]

>>2551976
The flood fill is a raster operation and an artifact of the slow computer. Also, just in the couple minutes this video ran the perceived slowdown waiting for the screen to finish its work was already annoying enough for me.

[Anonymous No.2551986]

After reading through this thread, I'm utterly amazed nobody mentioned any of Steve Meretzky's games.

[Anonymous No.2552006]

it's not technically "retro" by the board's standards, and the guy who made them is internet drama in human form, but I would highly recommend Yahtzee Crowshaw's Chzo Mythos series.

[Anonymous No.2552009]

>>2552006
what's its interface like?

[Anonymous No.2552017]

>>2548184
do the F keys just map to 10 different actions or what? Would be pretty neat, since scumm only has like a dozen actions as well, and this gets all the actions text off the screen.

Anyone else happen to know graphical text adventures with unusual interfaces?

[Anonymous No.2552032]

>>2552017
Captain Blood had it's own pseudo language. That you had to use to translate and communicate with the various aliens in the game.

[Anonymous No.2552053]

>>2552009
actually, I forgot that Trilby's Notes is the only one that makes heavy use of a text parser, but they are worth playing if you like adventure games anyhow.

[Anonymous No.2552056]

>>2551986
wasn't the spellcaster games the only text parser games of his that weren't full on text adventure though? Also, no, Zork Zero does not count.

[Anonymous No.2552065]

>>2550063
>16:10
>in the early 80s
and here ignorants make out like wide screen games is a new thing.

[Anonymous No.2552219]

>>2552056
Those were the last games that were like that. After that they started making buttons for all the various generic actions you could do in the games. You can see this in Leather Goddess of Phobos 2 and Super Hero League of Hoboken, which are also some of his games.

[Anonymous No.2552298]

>>2551865
According to the magazine reviews, it looks like a worthwhile game:
http://hol.abime.net/1852/review
Btw don't let that lower Amiga Joker score fool you. They grade very, very harshly. Anything above 50% from them is some real praise. But read the reviews for full details and then make your decision...
(I can't comment here because never played it)

[Anonymous No.2552310]

>>2552017
This is from manual:

KEYBOARD FUNCTONS!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
'F1' Toggles status area abd enables text input(ESC exits text mode)
'F2' To pick up flashing object
'F3' Beams up from most destinations onto your spaceship
'F5' Describes object in use/examine box.
'F6' Moves object in inventory display left
'F7' Move object in inventory display right
'F9' Implements sword fight
'F10' 'USE' object

And then they haver some joystick diagrams to do movement and fighting (walking, jumping, blocking, chopping, thrusting...)

[Anonymous No.2552316]

>>2552310
sounds pretty neat, thanks. Funny to see that the screenshots on the box clip the status bar

[Anonymous No.2552318]

>>2552316
ok, ad, not box. Same difference.

[Anonymous No.2552362]

Troll's Tale. This was the first game that Al Lowe worked on after joining Sierra and the beginning of their foray into kids' software (no doubt thanks to Lowe being a schoolteacher). The interface is simplified and simply presents the user with several options instead of a text parser, there is no save game feature, and you can't die or get stuck. Instead, your final score is based on how many turns it took to beat the game.

Released for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, and IBM PC.

[Anonymous No.2552371]

>>2552362
>Al Lowe
>kids' software
While probably true, I can't help but associate Al with Larry, which is not exactly aimed at kids.

[Anonymous No.2552387]

>>2552362
The IBM version only suppers CGA 640x200 composite mode and PCjr 160x200 mode. Curiously, there's no support for CGA RGB like other Sierra games. This might have been due to time constraints or else reducing the game's memory footprint. Thus if run on a RGB monitor, you will just get black and white graphics.

Also if you boot TT on a Tandy 1000, it won't run in 160x200 mode even though the computer supports that because the game checks the BIOS ID byte at FFFF:FFF0 to see if it's running on a PCjr (Tandy 1000s have the same ID byte as an IBM XT).

[Anonymous No.2552408]

>>2552371
he also made Torin's Passage which was one of my favorite games when I was a kid

[Anonymous No.2552430]

>>2552371
LSL of course was based on Softporn, Sierra's only text adventure and likely released as such out of concern that retailers wouldn't carry an adult game with images in it.

Lowe did not work on Softporn (it was some other guy), but he claimed that it sold around 27,000 copies and there were probably 2-3x that many pirated copies floating around. Given that Apple had only sold about 100,000 total Apple IIs by 1982, that was quite an impressive figure by any definition.

[Anonymous No.2552437]

>>2552430
He might not have worked on Softporn, but as far as I know he was quite responsible for Larry as a character and as a series. Good enough for me.

I have yet to play Softporn, if only to figure how it plays and what changed.

[Anonymous No.2552457]

>>2552437
LSL came about one day when Al decided to boot up Softporn just out of curiosity and remarked to himself "Y'know, this game is so outdated, it ought to be wearing a leisure suit." (thus where he got the name for LSL). He then suggested that they remake Softporn using the AGI engine and Ken Williams agreed.

Softporn is a pretty bad example of a text adventure compared to the state-of-the art Infocom games. It only accepts two word commands and the game's scene descriptions are incredibly wooden. Al did a lot to add a sense of humor to Larry that its forebearer lacked. I don't think the game is worth playing except out of curiosity.

[Anonymous No.2552470]

>>2552457
>It only accepts two word commands and the game's scene descriptions are incredibly wooden
Sounds like Larry, alright.

>I don't think the game is worth playing except out of curiosity
That was my impression, and indeed curiousity is the driving force.

[Anonymous No.2552498]

>>2552457
>I don't think the game is worth playing except out of curiosity.
Hey, hey don't be dissin' mah game! At least it don't need any kind of special except rations! And everyone knows pickels are round, not square!

[Anonymous No.2552507]

>>2552457
>Softporn is a pretty bad example of a text adventure compared to the state-of-the art Infocom games. It only accepts two word commands

I tried Planetfall by infocom yesterday because it's supposedly the game that Space Quest is heavily influenced by. And the game yelled at me for just using two words. I was quite baffled and amused

>This isn't a primitive two-word-parser adventure game. If you want to look AT that object, please say so

[Anonymous No.2552517]

>>2552507
Back then companies prided themselves on having a more complex parser. Players used to spend time trying to "trick" the game, and programmers tried to anticipate that.

[Anonymous No.2552520]

>>2552517
speaking of complex parsers, anybody happen to know successful non-english text based (with or without graphics) adventure games? I'm a bit under the impression that the english language works particularly well for that kind of parsing, and that other languages got virtually no love in this genre.

[Anonymous No.2552528]

>>2552032
I wish more game did this.

[Anonymous No.2552542]

>>2552520
Most other languages didn't have an established game industry during the early 80s when the genre was at its height.
There are games with a Japanese parser such as The Portopia Serial Murder Case.

[Anonymous No.2552554]

>>2552520
>>2552542
Japanese devs worked hard to make parsers in their own language, forgoing kanji (and using kana) because most PC gamers had 8-bit machines which didn't have enough address space for complete kanji/kana alphabets. More adventures had English parsers, though, because they were easier to program. Graphic text adventures released just before or after Hokkaido Serial Murders—Portopia's sequel which abandons the parser entirely, using pre-defined commands arranged in a list—use Japanese parsers more often than not.

[Anonymous No.2552606]

>>2552520
I'm guessing if there are any non-english text based games, they were probably only distributed among friends of the maker of the game

[Anonymous No.2552615]

>>2552554
I think there were some Romaji based games as well. Using English seems more like copying English games than due to the complexity of the language.
For Kanji you had to buy a special ROM containing common Kanji but Kana were available on the common computers.

[Anonymous No.2552632]

>>2552520
There were some french and spanish text games on Amstrad CPC (makes sense, as the system was very popular there).
Also some really nice-looking german text adventures for DOS and Amiga (possibly also ported to Atari ST and others?) Also some spanish ones by Aventuras AD (Chichen Itza, for example) and various others.

[Anonymous No.2552637]

>>2552606
Found one.
There were also translations of English games.

[Anonymous No.2552638]

>>2552554
Kanji started appearing in games during the late 4th gen, however they were not commonly seen at all before the 5th gen.

[Anonymous No.2552650]

>>2552638
Kanji were common in computer games in the later half of the 80s. I think the MSX lagged behind but it was the bastard son of a console anyway.

[Anonymous No.2552652]

>>2552638
The PC-98 released in 1982 and had games with kanji around the period the PC Engine launched, given that most owners were assumed to have kanji ROM already installed because they were using the PC for word processing. I don't know what you mean by common (not common because these games weren't on consoles?), but they weren't uncommon. Games like Marchen Veil and RELICS have intermittent sections using kanji for writing.

[Anonymous No.2552656]

>>2552650
I meant consoles games.

[Anonymous No.2552670]

>>2552656
Consoles weren't really relevant for adventures, particularly not those with parsers.
Did any commercial game use the Family BASIC keyboard? Writing your own text adventures in BASIC is trivial but I don't know how well you could distribute them.

[Anonymous No.2553046]

>>2552006
If you know it wasn't retro, why did you post about it? People like you are the reason why this board is going downhill.

[Anonymous No.2553058]

>>2553046
stop being so dramatic

[Anonymous No.2555262]

You also have codename iceman. I know it's by Sierra but many people might not know about it, since it's not in the Quest game series.
Seems that you need a map and a manual to maneuver a submarine though

[Anonymous No.2556583]

>>2552632
The more I look at this, the more I like the graphics and overall presentation. It has its problems, but despite them it's a nice way to enhance an IF.

[Anonymous No.2556598]

>>2551658
It has nothing to do with pedophilia.

[Anonymous No.2559291]

-

[Anonymous No.2561501]

I just played through quest for glory 1 and 2 and had a blast, the text parser really gives the world a sense of realness.

imported my character to QFG3 and am so far not enjoying it, the point and click feels really sluggish, like i don't have full control over my dude, and dialog just becomes a list to click through.

I really wish they had stuck with the text parser/keyboard controls.

[Anonymous No.2561964]

>>2561501
I think point and click is a chore for many other games also. I wanted to play Dungeon Master but having to use mouse for everything was tedious and I lost interest pretty quickly. I wonder if there's any similar RPG where you have 1st person view, but use keyboard shortcuts for movement (like in Wizardry 6 where arrows are used to move and/or turn) and can also type in text for getting/dropping items, and other various actions like talking to NPCs and stuff. Some games give you a menu of choices, but it's not as "open" as a real text parser like in IF games.

[Anonymous No.2562407]

>>2551770
Mah Nizzigga!! One of my favorites growing up (along with KG4), just played about a month ago using DOSBox, a USB floppy drive and two floppies...Anyone here know if anyone has come up with a way to play this game off of one disk? Also, I can't save to a save disk..simply says the disk isn't there.

Have you played Online Systems' Hi-Res Adventure #5: Time Zone? If you like MSA you'll probably like it. I like MSA more because of the outer space theme and wish there was a game just like it but not Disney themed.
>Dear diary
>I wish to homebrew a similar game
> ( -_-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBE8K0XG65I
Watch for about 4 minutes if you like MSA and haven't seen/played Time Zone.

>pic not related
>pic kind of related

[Anonymous No.2562419]

>>2562407
>being poor and having to play 10+ year old computer games as a kid
costanza.jpg

[Anonymous No.2562438]

>>2562419
Cool man!
>goatse.cx in the fridge

[Anonymous No.2562729]

>>2562419
> Not having a 30+ year old computer to play games on.
It sucks, man!

[Anonymous No.2562883]

I wish /vr/ liked text only games more. The threads for them don't get much attention.

Alter Ego technically has graphics but it's just the menu stuff

[Anonymous No.2562925]

The Fellowship of the Rings (Commodore 64 version). This little adventure game lets you switch between images or just a straight text mode adventure.

[Anonymous No.2562928]

The IBM version lets you select any CGA palette/background combination you like, which is nice, except it does so by directly manipulating the 3D9h register and if you were running it on a VGA card, you'd just get the default cyan/magenta/white/black colors.

[Anonymous No.2562946]

"King's Quest was originally commissioned by IBM as a demo product for the PCjr. Perhaps the most complex and ambitious electronic game to date, it required seven full-time programmers working for nearly a year at a reported cost of $700,000 at a time when most games were made by a single programmer in the course of a few weeks."

"In an early interview, Roberta Williams stated that 'IBM insisted that the game have replay value. In Rogue types of games, the map is randomly generated so you never play the same thing twice, but my type of game is the sort that, once you've beaten it, there's no reason to play it again. So IBM wanted something like Rogue or Ultima, but they were asking me to go completely against my style. So we compromised by making it that there are several possible solutions to a puzzle and the player can go back and try the solution that generates more points.'"

"When asked about the advantages of the PCjr, she said 'For one thing, it has 16 solid colors instead of artifacting. For another, it has 128k of memory and as you know, animation takes a lot of space. My new game will only be available on the PCjr until other systems match its specs.'"

[Anonymous No.2562979]

>>2562883
Here's a list of such games I made a while back:
http://vsrecommendedgames.wikia.com/wiki/Interactive_Fiction

I'd say what distinguishes interactive fiction from other adventure games isn't necessarily the lack of graphics, but the lack of puzzle or gameplay elements. There might be some things to gate the player from progressing too quickly, but it's entirely story otherwise. In that respect games like Gone Home might count.

[Anonymous No.2562986]

>>2562979

>>2562928
>>2562925
This game is an example of IF as it's more of an electronic storybook than a game in the sense that King's Quest is.

[Anonymous No.2562997]

>>2562925
This was originally developed by a British dev for the C64, Amstrad, Spectrum, and BBC Micro. Later released in the US where additional IBM and Apple ports were made.

[Anonymous No.2563018]

>>2562979
You haven't played too much Infocom IF, have you?

[Anonymous No.2563031]

>>2563018
Only the two Douglas Adams games. I've heard great things though.

[Anonymous No.2563041]

>Commodore 64 Infocom games
The load times, the load times...

[Anonymous No.2563069]

>>2563031
and you would say there were no puzzles in them? In particular, the "puzzles" in them were at most story telling to slow down the player progress, instead of actual puzzles?

[Anonymous No.2563083]

>>2552632
That's a beautiful use of a limited palette.

[Anonymous No.2563091]

>>2563083
16 colors, but not the standard VGA palette. Also 1x2 pixels in the image. I suspect it's to keep the memory footprint down.

[Anonymous No.2563186]

>>2561964
Uhh... I meant Wizardry 5 (Bane of the Cosmic Forge). And according to Mike Tyson's comments here, there's even a text parser for talking to NPCs:
http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=2670
So not a full-blown text interface, but very close.

Also, no mention of Eamon in this thread, so I'll say it:
http://www.eamonag.org/

I wish there were more of this type of RPG with IF-style text parser. There's also Infocom's Journey: The Quest Begins, but not much else around that I know of.

>>2563091
This (and other similar IF games) were also ported to Amiga (in pic) and Atari ST, so that might explain the constraints.

[Anonymous No.2563205]

>>2563186
There are 17 colors in that screenshot, though this might just be an artifact. Also it's lacking the double-height pixels. Frankly, I can imagine DOS to actually be the more restrictive platform here.
Frankly, I like constraints like that, it's one of the appeals of /vr/ games for me, and it suits IF extremely well, where the primary mechanism is text, and graphics are "just" a touch of flavor.

[Anonymous No.2563234]

>>2563205
ECS Amiga were normally limited to 32 colors though (64 with EHB hack) vs. 256 in VGA. Not sure about Atari ST though.
I just found out this game also has music too! See the Exotica link at the bottom of this page:
http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=2668
The tracks are pretty nice tunes and play ok for me with uade123 (Unix Amiga Delitracker Emulator).
There even seems to be a C64 port of this game! (it's also linked at bottom of above page)

I think this kind of IF with graphics was more prevalent in 8-bit days though. There's the usual suspect of course (Scott Adams, Level 9, Magnetic Scrolls...) but also tons of more obscure things like this:
http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1993

[Anonymous No.2563239]

>>2563234
>256 in VGA
VGA could do 256 colors only in 320x200. The 640x480 mode shown here only does 16 colors.

[Anonymous No.2565283]

>Read the entire thread
>No one has mentioned Legend Entertainment

The guy who mentioned Steve Meretzky gets partial credit, at least.

[Anonymous No.2565310]

>>2563239
>>2565283
This game is 640x480 with 256 colors.

[Anonymous No.2565324]

>>2565310
640x480x8 is an SVGA mode. VGA's 640x480 has 16 colors.

[Anonymous No.2565357]

>>2565310
>>2565283
It's a DOS game, so I think it's using the VESA extension to switch into 640x480x256 mode. Also it seems that the game switches to Mode 13 for cutscenes.

[Anonymous No.2565710]

>>2565283
what would a modern interface for an illustrated IF with a text parser look like? That interface in that pic looks so terribly wasteful and overly "work related" for a game.

Would it make sense to highlight relevant words in texts and for the parser to offer mild text prediction?

[Anonymous No.2566612]

>>2565283
playing this right now. I'm loving it. Thanks!

[Anonymous No.2567686]

Please tell me someone in this thread has played Fantasy Quest. Loved that game.

http://macintoshgarden.org/games/fantasy-quest

And if someone has the hint book, they need to put that shit up on the internet.

[Anonymous No.2567805]

>>2565710
You could do like in ye olde Magnetic Scroll adventures: just hide the stuff in menus. Even the picture can be hidden partially, or even completely.

[Anonymous No.2567806]

>>2567805
Then again, they kind of cluttered things up a bit in their last game...

[Anonymous No.2568430]

>>2567686
Haven't played Fantasy Quest, but it looks fucking awesome based on the screenshot and description. The Ray's Maze trilogy were always my favorite World Builder games. Have you played those?

[Anonymous No.2568535]

>>2568430
Yes, I've played a couple of the Ray's Maze games. Good games, but never did get too far. Fantasy Quest really drew me in with its very RPGish world.

[Anonymous No.2568602]

Quest for Glory was the shit

[Anonymous No.2568607]

>>2568535
Do you have any other World Builder game recommendations? There are a few really good ones out there, but it's hard to find them among the trash heap.

[Anonymous No.2568738]

>>2550227
>katakana only text
ugh, this is so difficult to read

[Anonymous No.2568769]

>>2568602
I'm playing it right now.
I really shouldn't have picked a wizard for the first playthrough. I spent a ton of time collecting spells and training the offensive ones, and I still barely can fight off a brigand.
Also, no money at all because I didn't pick out any thieving skills.
Still, it's pretty fun, if tough.

[Anonymous No.2568894]

>>2568607
> Do you have any other World Builder game recommendations? There are a few really good ones out there, but it's hard to find them among the trash heap.
Unfortunately, no. I'm pretty sure that 'Fantasy Quest' and then Ray Dunakin's games were the only ones I played that felt like real games. All the other ones I knew about back then were short 5 minute diversions based on a concept of joke-y weapons and monsters.

[Anonymous No.2568927]

>>2548248

i actually bought this game for 99cents on a 5" floppy back in 1991 at an airport. sheeeit

[Anonymous No.2568949]

>>2551865
the 2nd one, Lost in LA, was better...

[Anonymous No.2568952]

>>2568894
Oh well. Thanks for the Fantasy Quest rec, though, shit looks tight. I looked through Macintosh Garden and only found three other games that look like they might be halfway decent based on the screenshots:

http://macintoshgarden.org/games/drakmyth-castle

http://macintoshgarden.org/games/hotel-caper-or-the-rescue-of-daring-drake

http://macintoshgarden.org/games/the-phoenix

Although Drakmyth Castle looks like it might use the built-in World Builder combat system, and those games were always ass.

[Anonymous No.2569186]

>>2568952
If you end up playing a bunch of Fantasy Quest be sure to let us know how it went.

[Anonymous No.2569193]

>>2568949
They're both pretty bad though.

[Anonymous No.2569238]

>>2569186
Will do. How is emulation for old Mac stuff on Windows these days, by the way? The last time I tried to emulate World Builder games was on Mac OS X in 2010, and I probably spent ten or twenty hours trying to set it up without successfully running a game. If it's still that much of a pain in the ass, I'll probably just grab my old Macintosh SE from my parents' house the next time I visit.

[Anonymous No.2569317]

>>2569238
Pretty terrible since until recently it was rather different hardware. I gave up and just bought a G4 laptop and boot into OS 9.2 for a bunch of MIDI programs I still use.

[Anonymous No.2569431]

>>2569238
I got world builder games working fine on windows XP (I think using Basilisk II) but that was some time ago now.

[Anonymous No.2569582]

>>2568952
>the built-in World Builder combat system
Is this like an adventure/RPG hybrid system? Does your dude actually have stats and/or can you roll up your character?

For example of hybrid game system, I'm thinking of Eamon for the Apple II.

[Anonymous No.2570218]

>>2565283
And to think I've held back playing this game for all these years because of the ugly interface.
If I could go back in time and smack myself I would do so

[Anonymous No.2570236]

>>2550227
The PC-8801 was Z80-based. Wonder how hard it would be to port a game like that to the MSX (same CPU).

[Anonymous No.2570238]

>>2570218
you can still smack yourself today

[Anonymous No.2570243]

>>2570236
Assuming you mean the MSX1, probably not because it had 32k of RAM while the PC-8801 had 64k.

[Anonymous No.2570248]

>>2570236
The CPU is but one component. Back in the days the available graphics and sound hardware could have been vastly different, to the point that you'd have to rework all assets and even central parts of the game loop.

[Anonymous No.2570267]

>>2570248
Depends. Having a common CPU did make ports easier since you can retain most of the core code (algorithms, game AI, etc) while having to mostly change the I/O stuff. I've read interviews with programmers on classic gaming sites who said that converting a game from the Atari 8-bit to the C64 and vice versa was easy, but adapting it to the IBM PC was _much_ more difficult.

Richard Garriott claimed that Ultima was ported this way by using a converter to modify the I/O routines in the original Apple II source and simply converting them to the Atari or whatever equivalent. He said that the IBM and Mac ports had to be completely rewritten from scratch.

[Anonymous No.2570274]

>>2570236
>>2570243
How about the TRS-80 Model 4? Z80, 64k, internal speaker, and optional bitmap graphics board. That would be crazy to pull off. ;)

[Anonymous No.2570281]

>>2570267
If you go from a dedicated sound chip to a beeper, you can throw away all your sound code. If you go from a per-pixel mode (and a shitload of blitting routines) to something tilebased, you may be lucky and only need to produce the tile data, or you may be thoroughly fucked, because your existing graphics don't align with tile boundaries. In that case you need to recreate all your assets. Also, you can throw away your blitting routines, and might have to rework the game loop to update vram at a different time. If you go from a disk system to something with memory banks, you may have to overhaul your entire data loading mechanism, because of vastly different access times and different availability of banks.
So, yes, it depends. It depends on so many components that are not the CPU, it makes knowing the CPU almost secondary.

[Anonymous No.2570287]

>>2570281
TBF, I did say that the main thing you'd retain is the machine-neutral code like algorithms.

[Anonymous No.2570295]

Fuck, converting SG-1000 games for the Colecovision is a bitch even though they have the same exact chipset. I mean, it's not like trying to convert Genesis games to the SNES or something like that, but a number of things do have to be modified, especially the controller input routines and the fact that the Colecovision's interrupt structure is quite different from the SG-1000 and more annoying to work with.

[Anonymous No.2570316]

>>2570274
If I had a commented disassembly of Alice, I might be able to do it. Sound routines would actually be pretty easy assuming it's the original PC-8801 because the sound hardware was just a 1-voice beeper. Graphics though would need to be totally redone for the Model 4.

As the other guy said, since the Model 4 is a Z80 box, I could keep at least part of the original code.

[Anonymous No.2570321]

>>2570287
>machine-neutral code like algorithms
That's a convenient weasel word there. My blitting routines can be completely machine-neutral, and it means fuckall if I just don't need to blit on a different platform. May memory juggling can be super portable as well, and it's utterly useless if a different platform has such a different memory model, the code is exposing problems.

The only "machine-neutral code" you may be able to retain is the game loop and game logic, which can often be a tiny part of the whole work involved in a game. If you need to rework all your assets and all the audio visual routines, what good does it do that you can retain some core algorithms? And even if you can't retain them, core operations of CPUs are identical across architectures, a "rewrite" is a couple days of translating mnemonics and maybe thinking for a moment on stack vs. registers.

While not exactly /vr/ (sorry), Civilization Revolution is known for having identical game logic code across all platforms. That's all the way from the 360 to the DS. That's how portable "core" stuff can be. It's not where the majority of porting work is either.

[Anonymous No.2570338]

>>2570321
This is what you call a "glass half empty" guy.

[Anonymous No.2570343]

>>2570321
>While not exactly /vr/ (sorry), Civilization Revolution is known for having identical game logic code across all platforms
This is a bit of an asspull because CR was written in C++ like all modern software. Trying to do 8-bit stuff written in asm is quite different.

[Anonymous No.2570362]

>>2570343
You can write for old platforms in C, and especially for non-timing critical code, that's a good thing to do, because it's far less error prone and more productive.
If you produced assembly code, you can still translate the mnemonics if you're lucky (which means either doing it by hand, or letting a program just reformat everything).

LLVM is kind of a big deal lately. You can think of it as some form of "virtual asm". It's rather low level and barebones, yet it can be compiled to a shitload of different platforms. So asm is not a barrier.
The only difference between now and then is tool availability.

[Anonymous No.2570521]

>Apple II

ldx #0
fill:
lda mess,x
sta $400,x
inx
cpx #12
bne fill
rts

mess 'HELLO WORLD!'

>Commodore 64

ldx #0
fill:
lda mess,x
sta $400,x
inx
cpx #12
bne fill
rts

mess 'HELLO WORLD!'

>Atari 8-bit

ldx #0
fill:
lda mess,x
sta $BB80,x
inx
cpx #12
bne fill
rts

mess 'HELLO WORLD!'

>IBM PC

mov ax,0b800h
mov es,ax
xor bx,bx
mov ah,mess
fill:
mov es:[bx],ah
inc bx
cmp bx,12
jnz fill
mov ax,4c00h
int 21h

mess 'Hello world!'


>TRS-80

ld c,0
ld b,3c
ld a,(mess)
loop:
ld (bc),a
inc c
inc a
cp c
jp c,loop
ret

mess 'Hello world!'

[Anonymous No.2570539]

>>2570521
I'd like to point out that you're using the exact same asm dialect for all these platforms. That was not common back then. Each platform/cpu had its own little flavor of mnemonics and syntax, which at least meant you had to re-type the whole thing, or throw some text converter at it.

[Anonymous No.2570543]

>>2570539

[Anonymous No.2570546]

>>2570362
>You can write for old platforms in C
That's what Eric Chahi thought when he tried to do some C programming on Atari ST in the 80's, and failed miserably. So then when the time came to write Another World on Amiga, he instead wrote his own scripting language and did the game engine itself in 68000 asm.
http://www.anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/page_realisation.htm

I guess you could still use the same technique today of separating the scripting from the low-level engine. That would also help to keep a lot of things portable. Especially if you structure your code well ahead of time, knowing you're going to port it eventually.

Otherwise, yeah C was used quite a lot on Amiga at least. I don't know any cases where it was used on 8-bit machines though. But CP/M itself was apparently written in a high level language, so probably some people used C also (if they could make those early compilers behave and not take ages to build something...)

[Anonymous No.2570548]

>>2570543
Captain Autismo there is trying to make the argument that different assemblers had different mnemonics.

[Anonymous No.2570557]

>>2570546
>Otherwise, yeah C was used quite a lot on Amiga at least. I don't know any cases where it was used on 8-bit machines though

HLLs were used a fair bit on Z80 boxen, but the 6502 really pretty much had to programmed in straight asm.

[Anonymous No.2570562]

>>2570548
So essentially you're saying he's trying to argue that that code is whack because some assemblers couldn't process it.

[Anonymous No.2570567]

>>2570562
Pretty much, yeah. It is 4chan and we are crawling with clinically autistic people.

[Anonymous No.2570571]

>>2570521
What's funny is that the Apple/Commodore/Atari code is totally identical except for putting the text screen RAM in a different location.

[Anonymous No.2570573]

>>2570571
Of course, but if you started getting into more advanced stuff, then it would begin to get more different. For example, try writing a program to bounce a ball across the screen. It would be completely different on the Apple and C64.

[Anonymous No.2570578]

>>2570573
C64 you'd obviously use a sprite. Apple II I guess an XORed bitmap.

[Anonymous No.2570583]

>>2570578
Right. I could produce some sample code, but it's a lot of work and I'm lazy.

[Anonymous No.2570584]

>>2570562
>>2570567
The code there is perfectly fine and illustrates how similar all these platforms are, and how porting that kind of code is utterly trivial.
I merely added that what these samples are obfuscating a little is that asms were not as uniform as these samples suggested. There was some minor translation work involved in turning one form of asm into another. That translation may be a poor intern spending a day or two typing the whole thing down, or someone writing a script that parses one asm input file and outputs another.

...

That you fucktards are throwing around the autism bat like it's nobody's business is pissing me off to no end.

All I did was try to provide a bit more context to the code samples. I did not discredit them, I did not call them wrong. I merely pointed out that a tiny step of translation work, that applied in the real world, was missing.

[Anonymous No.2570589]

>>2570578
And the Atari would also use sprites?

[Anonymous No.2570595]

>>2570571
Uh huh. The Apple II by coincidence even has its text memory in the same exact location as the C64 ($400) so you can literally use the exact same code on both systems.

[Anonymous No.2570602]

>>2570589
Yes, although the Atari 8-bits are more of a pain to program because they have that whole Display Line shit you have to set up.

[Anonymous No.2570609]

Ok but now try doing a Hello World proggy on the Famicom. Remember: It doesn't have a standard ASCII character set (the charset is totally dependent on the CHR ROM being used) and you can't access the VRAM except during the retrace.

Do that and you've evolved from a boy to a man.

[Anonymous No.2570613]

>>2570602
Not here though because we're assuming the computer is in the power-on default with the whole screen set up for text mode.

[Anonymous No.2570617]

>>2570609
I know that. The ASCII standard always goes 64=A, 65=B, 66=C, etc.

[Anonymous No.2570620]

>>2570617
>>2570609
I'm not familiar with NES programming, but I'd guess most games probably had the alphanumeric characters placed in the standard ASCII positions for ease of programming (most programmers would instinctively assume A has a value of 64 and so forth).

[Anonymous No.2570624]

>>2570609
After that, we're going to make him do a Hello World program on the Amiga. Yet another completely different CPU, also it has no text mode, just low and hi-res bitmaps.

[Anonymous No.2570626]

>>2570620
There are now alnum or ASCII chars anywhere on the NES. It has no text mode and no provided text glyph set. If you want text, you need to provide your own character set in form of 8x8 tiles and use the standard drawing mechanism (manipulate vram during vblank).

[Anonymous No.2570627]

>>2570624
Didn't the Amiga OS ROM have a text output routine though?

[Anonymous No.2570631]

>>2570626
>There are now alnum or ASCII chars anywhere on the NES. It has no text mode

Technically it does, because the NES's entire graphics setup is based on redefinable characters. In that sense, it works much like the Commodore 64. A dedicated text mode would be like what the Apple II and IBM PC have.

[Anonymous No.2570636]

>>2570627
I think it does (but then I'm not too familiar with the Amiga), but that's cheating. We want to do it with direct VRAM access.

[Anonymous No.2570642]

>>2570626
>now
fuck me, that's "no"

>Technically it does
You're not trying to say the NES has the concept of a caret, that moves after outputting a character? Or that you can move to output a character? You're not trying to imply it has the mechanism to scroll exactly a line, and do so ad infinitum? You do not suggest it has line wrapping? Yeah, these would be text mode features, and the NES has none of it. It's a pure tile engine, with sprites and a map.

[Anonymous No.2570643]

>>2570631
Ok I see what you mean, but the C64 does have a standard ROM character set and OS routines for outputting characters. The Famicom has literally nothing like that. The character set is whatever you include in the CHR ROM and you have to output characters by yourself because there's no OS routine to do it for you.

[Anonymous No.2570650]

>>2570642
>You're not trying to say the NES has the concept of a caret, that moves after outputting a character? Or that you can move to output a character? You're not trying to imply it has the mechanism to scroll exactly a line, and do so ad infinitum? You do not suggest it has line wrapping? Yeah, these would be text mode features

Those features don't exist on the C64 per se either, they're a software function that the BASIC editor does for you. If you're programming in assembly, there's no line wrapping or cursor unless you code that stuff yourself.

[Anonymous No.2570658]

>>2570650
This is correct. The blinking BASIC cursor on the C64 is generated by the kernel routines. If you switch to a custom charset, the cursor disappears, even if you're programming in BASIC, because you lose the solid block character in the PETSCII set that's used to generate the cursor.

[Anonymous No.2570661]

>>2570624
Amiga graphics are planar, so programming them sucks butt.

[Anonymous No.2570665]

>>2570661
EGAds!

[Anonymous No.2570667]

>>2570658
Important distinction - the C64 doesn't have a true hardware cursor like the text mode on IBM compatibles. It's completely software generated.

[Anonymous No.2570673]

>>2570665
*sigh* I know, I know, EGA is also planar and so are VGA modes other than Mode 13. And yes, they're also a horrible programming headache.

[Anonymous No.2570678]

>>2570667
Right. The VIC-II is actually not at all dissimilar from the PPU in that its graphics are based around redefinable tiles. It's just that the C64 is a computer, so it has a default ROM character set which the NES doesn't have.

[Anonymous No.2570684]

>>2570673
Then mode 13h came along and all was good in this world.

[Anonymous No.2570690]

>>2570661
Again, I'm not terribly familiar with the Amiga, but I guess it works something like EGA where you have separate planes for the red, green, blue, and intensity data.

[Anonymous No.2570695]

>>2570684
>Then mode 13h came along and all was good in this world
Thank you for repeating the exact same thing I said above.

[Anonymous No.2570702]

>>2570678
>It's just that the C64 is a computer, so it has a default ROM character set which the NES doesn't have

And OS routines for outputting text.

[Anonymous No.2570706]

>>2570673
was not trying to correct you or anything. Just going along with the ride of "planar sucks to code for"

[Anonymous No.2570713]

>>2570695
Yeah, my reading comprehension sucks. Thanks for the hostility, asshole.

[Anonymous No.2570718]

Ok, /prog/ autists. Write a program to move this ball from the left to the right side of the screen. Do it on the Apple II, C64, Atari, NES, PC*, or Amiga (just pick whatever is your favorite platform).

*Use VGA Mode 13 here as it's the easiest to program with

[Anonymous No.2570746]

>>2570718
What if my favorite retro platform is the MSX?

[Anonymous No.2570756]

>>2570746
then you're fucked and need to learn a real platform in order to participate

[Anonymous No.2570759]

>>2570746
Then write it for that.

>>2570756
Quit liking what I don't like.

[Anonymous No.2570764]

>>2570759
>Quit liking what I don't like.
Come on, they were begging for that response. Why would you not be able to just post the solution code for your favorite platform?

[Anonymous No.2570774]

>>2570643
So how do you write BASIC programs on Famicom? It needs a special cart that also provides the character tiles and screen management for text I/O in your program as well as the actual editor you type your code into? What screen does a bare Famicom boot up to? How do you load programs from the floppy drive if there's no text in the OS to show you the contents of the floppy (directory listing)?

[Anonymous No.2570778]

>>2570764
>Why would you not be able to just post the solution code for your favorite platform?

Well it's not like I can just snap my fingers and have a proggy to move a ball across the screen on the ol' Spectrum. It would take a spot of work.

[Anonymous No.2570782]

>>2570778
sure it would, but I also think the tech heads on here would appreciate it.

[Anonymous No.2570784]

>>2570774
>What screen does a bare Famicom boot up to?

You have completely blank, empty VRAM on power up and your code will need to copy characters from the CHR ROM to display anything.

[Anonymous No.2570786]

>>2570774
>So how do you write BASIC programs on Famicom?
You don't

>What screen does a bare Famicom boot up to?
blank

>How do you load programs from the floppy drive
You don't

[Anonymous No.2570791]

>>2570784
Basically, you just set up a code loop to move characters into the VRAM (during the vblank phase, so it's quite timing-sensitive).

[Anonymous No.2570797]

NES sprites are just an extension of the graphics tiles. They reside in the CHR ROM with the background graphics data and you copy the tiles designated for sprites into the sprite table. The PPU can access 256 tiles at once and you may freely select which ones are used as sprites.

[Anonymous No.2570803]

>>2570521
You can see here that the Z80 is roughly halfway between the 6502 and x86 in terms of programming.

[Anonymous No.2570813]

>>2570803
Yeh the Z80 is fucked up. Especially in doing indirect memory access since you have to use two registers for it, one to hold the MSB and the other the LSB. Hence the "ld (bc), a" instruction. It's saying "Place the value contained in A into the address pointed to by B and C".

[Anonymous No.2570817]

>>2570813
Most important retro computers/consoles are 6502, x86, and 68000-based anyway. The original Gameboy is Z80-based and that was the only one I can think of that was a major platform that lasted for years.

[Anonymous No.2570818]

>>2570817
>>2570803
What? How is the x86 important to retro gaming? Maybe retro spreadsheets or retro databases. IBM compatibles were utter rubbish for gaming until the mid-nineties.

[Anonymous No.2570820]

>>2570321
>>2570281
The Amiga and early Macs are 68000-based, but there's not much else they have in common.

[Anonymous No.2570823]

>>2570817
>Z80 was often used in coin-operated arcade games
>It was also found in home video game consoles such as the ColecoVision, Sega Master System and Sega Game Gear video game consoles, as an audio and general-purpose co-processor in the Sega Genesis and as an audio controller and co-processor to the Motorola 68000 in the SNK Neo-Geo

[Anonymous No.2570825]

>>2570823
>It was also found in home video game consoles such as the ColecoVision, Sega Master System and Sega Game Gear video game consoles

"and that was the only one I can think of that was a major platform that lasted for years"

The Colecovision lasted a few years before the crash snuffed it out and the Sega consoles were irrelevant unless you were a Yuropoor.

[Anonymous No.2570826]

>>2570818
>IBM compatibles were utter rubbish for gaming until the mid-nineties
Except for their abilities in anything not tile based, like polygonal 3D or adventures

[Anonymous No.2570827]

>>2570825
>>2570823
A fine point. The Z80 was used in the Master System, Amstrad, Speccy, and more. It was quite perfectly relevant to gaming, much moreso than the shite x86.

[Anonymous No.2570874]

>>2570827
The old Texas Instruments graphing calculators (from early 90's) also used Z80. You can find lots of code for TI-85 and others at the ticalc.org website (lots of games even).

[Anonymous No.2570908]

>>2570817
>The original Gameboy is Z80-based and that was the only one I can think of that was a major platform that lasted for years.
Perhaps in the home market, even though I would consider the Master System a major platform which lasted for years. The z80 was was used in as many, and possibly more, arcade machines as the 68k. When they stopped using it as the main CPU it was found in virtually every 68k machine including the Genesis and NeoGeo.

[Anonymous No.2571207]

>>2570718
>8x8

Ok, that works nicely, The size of one NES tile. What we do is set up the pixel data, put it into the sprite table, set it to be sprite 0, and then just move the sprite X position register for sprite 0. Which of course is all done during the vblank phase. Since the NES's screen area is 256 pixels across, this can be neatly handled by one CPU register.

[Anonymous No.2571210]

>>2571207
I think that anon was asking for actual code, not a how-to.
Also the 8x8 was intentional, because it's a fairly standard tile size for tile based systems.

[Anonymous No.2571238]

>>2570818
IBM compatibles weren't the only platform using x86.
You shouldn't underestimate spreadsheet games either.

[Anonymous No.2571251]

Here's the code he asked for, but this is for the Commodore 64.

org $c000
sp1data equ $334

lda #147 ;clear screen
jsr $ffd2
ldx #69 ;put sprite data into sprite 0 block
fill:
lda spritedata,x
sta sp1data,x
dex
bne fill
lda #0 ;set up sprite registers
ldx #100
sta $d000 ;sprite 0 X pos
sta $d027 ;sprite 0 color (white)
stx $d001 ;sprite 0 Y pos
lda #1 ;enable sprite 0
sta $d015
inccounter:
inc $d000 ;move sprite 0 left to right across the screen
lda $d000
cmp #255 ;check if we reached position 255
ldx #255
ldy #100
delay1: ;delay loop to slow the sprite movement
dex
dey
bne delay1
bne inccounter
ldx #1 ;enable MSB counter for sprite 0 so we can move it the whole 320 pixel width of the screen
stx $d010
ldy #0
sty $d000 ;reset sprite X pos to 0 as MSB flag now indicates positions 256-319
counter2:
inc $d000
lda $d000
cmp #64
ldx #255 ;delay loop
ldy #100
delay2:
dex
dey
bne delay2
bne counter2
jsr $ff9f ;pause and check for keypress
lda #0 ;turn off sprite 0
sta $d015
rts ;and exit back to BASIC

[Anonymous No.2571253]

(image because this kept tripping the spam filter)

[Anonymous No.2571290]

> Graphic Text Adventure Games
Fucking derail.

[Anonymous No.2571609]

>>2569582
>Does your dude actually have stats and/or can you roll up your character?

Not as far as I can remember, no.

[Anonymous No.2572682]

-

[Anonymous No.2572793]

>>2571290
We're having graphic adventure where you have to solve a puzzle to move ball across screen by typing in some program code.

[Anonymous No.2572810]

>>2571253
I was considering how to do this on the Apple II. It's not really that different from the C64 except you're using an XOR-ed bitmap for your sprite.

[Anonymous No.2572818]

>>2572810
you wouldn't say that if you tried to program it. trying to do things like screen scrolling and collision detection on the Apple II are an utter bitch since the graphics are just a dumb frame buffer

[Anonymous No.2572824]

>>2572818
>collision detection

Pointless feature tbh. The NES and all later consoles don't have collision detection registers at all.

[Anonymous No.2572834]

>>2572824
true but you can still quite easily check for collisions by checking the sprite position registers. on the Apple II or PC, you have to do all kinds of horribly snarled shit with the AND, XOR, and OR instructions.

[Anonymous No.2572886]

>>2572834
Neither system is actually that hard to program once you learn how everything works (and provided you only do PC stuff in VGA Mode 13).

[Anonymous No.2572925]

The Apple II is a much simpler machine than the C64. No interrupts, no sprites, bleeper sound, no color text, graphics colors generated 100% through NTSC artifacts, etc. But then we're talking a computer designed in 1977. That's Pong-era.

[Anonymous No.2573092]

Here's MBASIC code, using @ symbol as the ball, because no graphics on generic CP/M machine...

10 cls
20 for x=1 to 80
30 locate 12,x
40 print "@"
50 sleep 0.05
60 locate 12,x
70 print " "
80 next x

I would have liked to write Amiga C program (already know C) but I don't have hardware or books, and it feels lame to code for a VM. I've been trying to obtain hardware but it's not easy around here. Last dude I talked to wouldn't even test his machine or look to see if the board was damaged with battery acid. Maybe one day...

[Anonymous No.2573146]

>>2573092
10 cls
20 for x=1 to 80
30 locate 12,x
40 ? chr$(254)
50 for i=1 to 500:next i
60 locate 12,x
70 ? chr$(20)
80 next x

GWBASIC adaption for the PC. The FOR...NEXT delay loop works on 8086 machines but anything faster requires being replaced by the TIMER statement. It uses character 254 for the ball (block actually). Character 15 (sun symbol) would be better, but you can't directly display it with the PRINT and CHR$ functions as it's a control code (you'd have to write directly to the video buffer at B800).

[Anonymous No.2573148]

>>2573092
>I would have liked to write Amiga C program (already know C) but I don't have hardware or books, and it feels lame to code for a VM

Real men would write the shit in 68000 asm. Besides, how hard can it be to move a goddamn ball across the screen.

[Anonymous No.2573159]

>>2573146
???

Just use an asterisk for the ball.

[Anonymous No.2573169]

>>2573092
I could write a NES program to move a ball across the screen, but I'd need a Flash cart to test the code on a real machine.

[Anonymous No.2573172]

>>2571251
There might be a few mistakes here, esp. I forget where the default Sprite 0 block is.

[Anonymous No.2573175]

>>2573169
Be aware. NES programming is trickier than C64 or whatever since you can only access the PPU during the vblank phase, so you need to be good at counting clock cycles.

[Anonymous No.2573183]

>>2573175
Actually, proper graphics programming of any system (C64, Apple II, PC, etc) depends on paying attention to the vblank to prevent screen tearing/flickering. The difference is that it's a requirement on the NES and just optional on those other machines.

The C64 and Apple II are a little trickier in that regard since they don't have any flag to inform you that the vertical retrace is happening. It's kind of guesswork on them while PC video cards have always had a vblank flag.

[Anonymous No.2573189]

>>2573175
Not just that, but the PPU's video RAM can only be accessed indirectly by the CPU through soft switches. This means that you have roughly 80 clock cycles to modify the registers and copy graphics data into the PPU RAM. It's trickier than it looks and some NES emulators allow you to write code that wouldn't run on a real system.

[Anonymous No.2573246]

>>2573148
There's more steps involved than just DOS mode 13h at least. You first have to setup a screen with the custom parameters you want, or else you can't even draw a pixel (unless maybe there's a way to do that via Intuition GUI library...) Also the bitplanes thing is kinda confusing. And I guess you probably want to use a hardware sprite or bob and that's another thing to figure out. Anyway, even in DOS I used Turbo Pascal and a very tiny amount of inline x86 asm. There wasn't really anything to learn there except how to do double-buffering and wait for the vertical retrace... For Amiga coding I think you really want some books and to work on the real machine. My Amiga emulator even lags when I just type into the Workbench CLI (some keypresses don't even register!?) so I hardly even play games that way.

[Anonymous No.2573249]

>>2571253
Here's the same graphic for the Apple II. In HGR mode, you have three bits per pixel. The first bit designates whether the phase shift is flipped 90 degrees while the 2nd and 3rd represent the actual pixel.

11=white pixel, 00=black pixel
10=green pixel, 01=purple pixel

If you enable the phase shift flag for a given pixel, then 10=blue and 01=orange. Thus this graphic will be a white 8x8 ball.

(shown as an image because spam filter)

[Anonymous No.2573261]

>>2573246
>Anyway, even in DOS I used Turbo Pascal and a very tiny amount of inline x86 asm. There wasn't really anything to learn there except how to do double-buffering and wait for the vertical retrace

Mode 13 is absolute cake. You just make your ball graphic with a bunch of FFh values (designating white pixels), copy it into the A000h buffer, and use XOR instructions to move it across the screen. Optionally, you can also wait for the retrace flag in 3DFh if you wish to avoid flicker.

[Anonymous No.2573610]

bump

[Anonymous No.2573614]

Ok, what about the classic Macs? How would you go about writing this bouncing ball thing on them?

[Anonymous No.2573624]

>>2573614
If you mean the monochrome 512x384 graphics used on early Macs, it's a little trickier since you have a GUI operating system. The graphics are just a frame buffer with one bit per pixel, which sounds laughably simple. However it's not because you can't just write anywhere on the screen you want or you'll fuck up the graphics used by the OS interface. You essentially have to create a playfield and keep your graphics in-bounds. If you do that, graphics programming on the Mac is just a matter of XORing bitmaps around the playfield.

Also the programming approach on classic Macs resembles modern methods more than something like the Commodore 64 does. Your program has to use the OS functions to generate a window box, menus, and things like that and you can't commandeer all of the system resources like you would on CLI operating systems.

However, the classic Macs do not have memory protection so there's nothing to stop you from writing anywhere you please. You have to be careful to not crash the computer with bad coding.

[Anonymous No.2573634]

>>2573624
Are you suggesting the old mac GUI has no isolation for the windows of the individual processes? No protection against draw calls on other windows? Why bother with windows at that point even? Also, I would expect several programs to actually take advantage of this lack of protection, by messing with the chrome to produce a custom look. Are there such examples?

[Anonymous No.2573640]

>>2573624
BTW, the video buffer on the Mac 128/512/Plus/SE sits at the top of system RAM and moves upward the more memory is present. Thus, a 4MB Plus will have it at $3FA700.

[Anonymous No.2573642]

>>2573634
None of the pre-OS X Macs have any memory protection. There were optional MMU chips for the 680x0 family, but Apple didn't use them for cost reasons.

[Anonymous No.2573648]

How about Atari ST? It has a GUI (GEM desktop) but doesn't multitask. Also no hardware sprites, and just a framebuffer.

[Anonymous No.2573652]

>>2573642
I'm talking about software protection. It's a normal job for the OS to restrict access to the hardware framebuffer and only provide indirect bitmap manipulation. For example in a graphical UI it's typical that a process gets a virtual framebuffer the size of the drawable area of its window, and can do what it wants inside there. The OS translates all these calls to manipulations of the visible screenbuffer, which is inaccessible to the process. As a result, the process can not leave the drawable area of the window, can not mess with the window decoration or other windows.

[Anonymous No.2573659]

>>2573624
Another little point - because program code on the Mac has to be relocatable, you can't use fixed memory addresses. Instead, you have to issue indirect JMPs that jump 128 bytes ahead or whatever. This is another way that the programming approach on classic Macs is closer to modern-day stuff.

This applies to the Amiga as well if your programs are designed to run in Workbench, however this was mostly done by application software and games generally booted directly off a floppy and perform entirely low-level hardware access where they have complete control of system resources.

[Anonymous No.2573661]

>>2573652
That's what memory protection is for, silly. It stops software from writing to areas of memory they don't have authorization to write to.

[Anonymous No.2573662]

>>2573661
And it can be done on software level.
So again, does the old mac OS lack such protection? If it does, what are examples of programs that take advantage of it, by manipulating the window decorations, window shapes and generally leaving the drawable area of a window?

[Anonymous No.2573669]

>>2573652
Well sure, the Mac OSes always had something resembling the Windows GDI that provides basic graphics generation capability, but until OS X, there was nothing to prevent applications from accessing any memory address. It's akin to having laws with nobody to enforce them. Apple's programming manuals did always encourage use of the OS calls instead of low-level access for this reason and to ensure compatibility with different Mac models and OS versions. Writing to the bare metal on Macs was always a pretty uncommon practice.

[Anonymous No.2573674]

>>2573662
>And it can be done on software level.
>So again, does the old mac OS lack such protection?

For the third and final time, there wasn't any memory protection through OS 9.

[Anonymous No.2573676]

>>2573674
>For the third and final time
First two times were talking about hardware memory protection

[Anonymous No.2573679]

>>2573669
>Writing to the bare metal on Macs was always a pretty uncommon practice.
Sure, but games are traditionally on the forefront to break out of these restrictions and take advantage of the bare metal. If you were writing a medival fantasy RPG on the old mac you would not even hesitate to turn the window decorations into a brickwall and roughen up the frame of the window to suggest age. Being able to draw outside of your window is a mighty powerful visual impact. So, again, what are examples of applications leaving their window? There should be plenty, if it was trivially possible.

[Anonymous No.2573680]

>>2573662
>And it can be done on software level

Not same guy but you do realize we're talking about a 1980s OS with an 8Mhz microprocessor.

[Anonymous No.2573684]

>>2573679
I'm not aware of any programs that did that. Doesn't sound like a good idea anyway since it would probably fuck up the OS routines for moving and sizing window boxes.

[Anonymous No.2573687]

>>2573684
That was kind of the point. Apple always discouraged low level hardware access in their programming manuals and for good reason. The fact that you can do something doesn't mean you should do it.

[Anonymous No.2573691]

>>2573684
>I'm not aware of any programs that did that
Which makes me heavily question that it's even possible.

>since it would probably fuck up the OS routines for moving and sizing window boxes
How would it? All they do is change the colors of the same pixels. The moving and resizing routines should do nothing different to what you do, if the whole desktop is indeed one fully accessible framebuffer. None of this changes the code of these routines, and these routines are by design unaware of what's going on inside these windows.
That said, even if it would, somehow, fuck up the routines, so what? Games are perfectly fine with encouraging a restart afterwards. Cool effects demand drastic measures.

At the very least there should be proof-of-concept demos out there. Probably even recent ones, if only to teach homebrew devs the dangers of leaving your own window.

[Anonymous No.2573692]

IDT there's any demo scene for classic Macs. It has a monochrome frame buffer with bleeper sound. Whoop-de-do. You may as well be writing demos for a TRS-80.

[Anonymous No.2573693]

>>2573691
>>2573679
>>2573662
>>2573652
>>2573634
My god, this autism.

[Anonymous No.2573695]

>>2573692
yeah it was pretty comical back then for us Amigafags to hear Crapple users bragging about their overpriced monochrome shitboxes

[Anonymous No.2573696]

>>2573692
>You may as well be writing demos for a TRS-80
People did and do. There's plenty of fun in heavily restricted systems.

[Anonymous No.2573703]

>>2573695
Especially when the Amiga cost <$1000 and gave you VGA-level graphics, sprites, hardware scrolling, and wavetable sound while you could pay over $2000 for a monochrome Mac Plus/SE.

[Anonymous No.2573714]

I'm starting to think Amiga is too much trouble to program without learning lots of details about the machine. Now I'm leaning more towards Atari ST which seems more simpler (closer to DOS mode 13h). If that's still too much trouble, I'll look into 8-bit stuff like MSX or whatever.

[Anonymous No.2573723]

>>2573714
>I'm starting to think Amiga is too much trouble to program without learning lots of details about the machine
Sounds like developing on retro machines is not a thing for you.

>Now I'm leaning more towards Atari ST which seems more simpler (closer to DOS mode 13h)
At least you got one solid hardware to target with the ST. DOS is kind of a range of hardware, which can mean a lot of work to account for that.

>If that's still too much trouble, I'll look into 8-bit stuff like MSX or whatever.
The older and weaker machines are a hell of a lot harder than Amigas, Ataris or DOS, because you need to do a lot of manual labor to get any output, and a lot of optimized manual labor to make anything worthwhile. Tile based machines can be more difficult at first, because you need to do more preparations to do any output. But, for example, doing a simple scrolling map is utterly trivial on a tile based system, and optimization hell (relatively) in mode 13h.
If you want simple, stay away from the retro machines and pick up a modern engine like MonoGame or Unity

[Anonymous No.2573734]

>>2573714
MSX isn't much easier than the Amiga because it uses the TMS 9919 for graphics. It has a separated video bus that can only be accessed by the CPU during the vblank phase which is tricky and timing sensitive.

[Anonymous No.2573740]

>>2573734
>timing sensitive
Seen that said a few times now in this thread. Isn't it common for systems where VRAM access is restricted to the vblank phase to have an interrupt for that? So it's not like you need to count cycles to capture the moment of access. You are of course still dealing with a limited access time, so maybe you got to cycle-count a bit for that, but if you do lightweight graphics, it should be fairly straightforward?

[Anonymous No.2573752]

>>2573723
In the 90's I coded in DOS small things like cracktros (demoscene related) and small arcade games, only in mode13h and using an Adlib sound library, so it was almost a stable platform. Before that I coded things in BASIC on 8-bit machines (a tiny bit of machine language too). Those environments were really easy and fun. But with Amiga it looks like you can't even do anything without first a lot of setup work to initialize all the proper data structures for screen and whatever else you're going to use. The relevant info seems to be scattered about a number of big and expensive books. Anyway I don't even have any retro machine right now. Probably Amiga is overpriced now anyway. That's why I'm thinking of alternatives like Atari ST, or an old somewhat simple machine (apparently that's not MSX...) Part of the fun is also to have a physical machine to play with, so don't want to use those game engines.

[Anonymous No.2573760]

>>2573752
>without first a lot of setup work to initialize all the proper data structures for screen and whatever else you're going to use
Only in the same way that you need to "setup" the video memory and palette in mode13h, it seems.

>Part of the fun is also to have a physical machine to play with, so don't want to use those game engines.
You do sound like you have plenty experience, and you bring up a good point regarding scattered info. So, good luck.

[Anonymous No.2573765]

Legend Entertainment. They were the last of the parser adventure devs and even tried modernizing it with Callahan's Crosstime Saloon. Gateway, Eric the Unready, Spellcasting, etc.

[Anonymous No.2573794]

>>2573765
The first gateway game is a masterpiece of interactive fiction.

[Anonymous No.2573868]

>>2573723
>At least you got one solid hardware to target with the ST. DOS is kind of a range of hardware, which can mean a lot of work to account for that.

If you're doing graphics programming in real mode DOS, just stick with Mode 13.

[Anonymous No.2573875]

>>2573691
>>2573679
>>2573662
>>2573652
>>2573634
My god, this autism.

[Anonymous No.2573890]

Get a fucking room you two. Seriously, make a retro PC programming thread. The rest of us might actually be interested instead of fucking annoyed.

[Anonymous No.2573934]

>>2573868
even sticking to mode13h you got a range of ram, with or without protected mode, various sound drivers, a wide range of clocks (which means you really need to make sure you write clock independent or stay within the refresh rate) and so on.

[Anonymous No.2573959]

>>2573890
>Get a fucking room you two

>>>/lgbt/