Unfortunately
the above-mentioned performance partly exhausted my creativity
a bit (and I could not step forward out of that stage for a while),
partly the C64 platform had already become somewhat obsolete,
and increasingly rated as a peripheric environment (either with
its knowledge not enough to continue). After all, I still started
to make a sequel by the name of Horsekiller, however,
it was never written yet. (That ominous skeleton intro is the
only fully finished production to hold its memory.)
Likewise,
as I felt arriving close to the boundaries of the genre reachable
in the given environment, it also induced another sort of intention
in me: just to try making other types of 
games
(however, I never thought to step over to another, bigger platform
for the time being yet). Beside continuing that previous one,
therefore, I set about planning every kind of other ideas of mine.
One of them was that uncertain and undefinite one called as Athar
only as a working name, which did not even become some clear or
concrete final plan at all; but rather just some independent heaps
or masses of disorderly ideas and thoughts, and a lot of graphical
sketches in advance, too (the very most of which unfortunately
lost or disappeared since then). (Some half-made drawings at the
painting application etc.) This would have been such kind of game
program, that must have united all sorts of the typics of the
strategical, adventure and role-playing games in one, mainly happening
on the vast and perplexed, extensive maps of an imaginary sea-world
consisting of several islands, and systems of small islets, as
a peculiar world-trotting alloy. What inspired me was those „hit”
games of preceding years (also amongst my favourites) like e.
g. Pirates, or Seven Cities of Gold, or King’s
Bounty, or Lords of Midnight, or Supremacy,
or the Bard’s Tale series etc.; as far as the fact that
a friend of mine (Tamas Tarnoczky, a talented programmer) had
also worked along a more or less similar idea before (just during
me working on The Galleon), and moreover shared its evolving
phases with me as a tester, called Single Extreme Freedom
(which – though finished and being a good game indeed – finally
was neither published and released yet, nor popular).
Meanwhile
I wrote one or two more pieces of fully worked out, but rather
smaller (rather merely idealistic) games. One of them was called
as just as Undoroid which was a classical logical game,
as a matter of fact not other than a Minesweeper clone
to the 64. I meant it only as some sort of a preliminary study:
herein used for this were e. g. a packing algorhythm by me (freshly
written at that time, for the new games to be made soon later
on, for their more effective memory usage); a recursive algorhythm
by me (for ranging of the empty spaces on the table automatically);
furthermore a new font/character-set that was made for my other
new games, too. (Both being made for the next PA2 project
mainly, albeit also meant to be used again on later. The packing
procedure required a very long time for encoding something – it
lasted for several minutes by the actual computing capacity of
the C64 –, but the unpacking as being much more simple just happened
much faster, ready in a single second or two; that’s why it was
capable to reduce the storage space of previously edited and statically
restored data elements, the most typically of pictures: each and
every average-structured drawing might even be comprised about
to 50-60% of the original losslessly. If I had thought of it a
bit earlier, I would have been able to supply almost twice the
scenes with some illustrations within The Galleon.)
Another
such game of mine was Conway Fighter shoot’em up. On
the one hand, I fully built that so-called Game of Life cell automaton
into it, by English mathematician John Conway, as 
partly
as a freely designable background, as partly also as an active
element of game (due to the right settings you might even collide
with the cell populations breeding in the background which was
not so advisable, or shoot away some cells – which influenced
the further evolvement of them). On the other hand, I contrived
that let be four players to fight against each other with spaceships,
and all of them be controlled at your will: either by a living
person (whether with a joystick or a keyboard), or even by the
computer, using several different algorhythms. (I programmed some
such funny „artificial intelligences” for the interest of that,
from the helplessly/awkwardly random to the self-consciously manoeuvring
one – which could eventually be let together, just the one against
the other.)
Which,
however, was occupying me for several years, was Mantis Software’s
requesting me to join them as programmer. We got acquainted at
the Computer Christmas in 1993, where I showed The Galleon
(A gálya) as being finally finished to the publicity, so
did they their own graphical adventure The Castle (A kastély)
(which became another such „hit game” of the time likewise). They
also had got another previous game called A pokol angyala,
to which they just planned a sequel, and of which became our common
work called A pokol angyala 2. (or just simply PA2).
The graphic-based and icon/menu-driven (although more or less
resembling text adventures, too), relatively monumental adventure
game was being made nearly for three years, with a serious and
big effort, and innovating, yet finally we never finished that.
The main, the most concrete cause of this was the sad and final
backing out by the prospective publishing company (the 576
KByte) out of the project, however, implicitly behind that
was not other than the irreversable and complete decline of the
entire C64 platform by then (which had been expectable since 1994,
namely since the bankruptcy of the Commodore company, and the
stopping of its producement already, and we had been waiting for
that, too, of course, but also hoping that this final stage would
last the more.)
(All
the computer programs mentioned here above can be found at my
own website, all downloadable, playable, and freely – but only
for free – passed on to anyone else, too.)
| |
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A
pokol angyala 2. |
09/01/2011 |
 |
 |
| |
Mantis
Software, 576 KByte (unfinished, 1994-96) |
|
| |
|
Undoroid |
09/01/2011 |
|
|
| |
Minesweeper
(1994) |
|
| |
|
Conway
Fighter |
09/01/2011 |
|
|
| |
A
little abstract, experimental shoot’em up (1993) |
|
| |
|
Athar |
09/01/2011 |
|
|
| |
Some
graphics (only planned, 1993-94) |
|
| |
|
Horsekiller |
09/01/2011 |
|
|
| |
Only
an intro (unfinished, 1993-94) |
|
