reidrac
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I started playing it not too long ago and I dropped the ball after 8 hours or so. Would love to go back, and the club is a good excuse!
The most obvious question is: why a commercial game targeting DOS in 2023? Look and feel is an artistic choice, but surely it could have been all “pretend”.
Looking forward to listen to the interview!
I also recommend the open source version “The Ur-Quan Masters” that TigerQuoll mentioned. It is based on the 3DO version that was released as open source; I had to compile it on Linux, but runs beautifully.
Check it here: https://sc2.sourceforge.net/
(we would play the DOS version for the club, of course)
This would give me a reason to play it 🙂
Starflight was on the club already, so it would be interesting to see how SC2 compares with that one!
It is explained on the website and the game comes with what we could call a “digital manual” 🙂
Perhaps I should have added a help screen like I did on Traxtor!
The original concept was for a Game Boy “alike” game I made back in 2014. Because the limited colours, that’s why it ended with shapes.
The Amstrad CPC version is more colorful: https://www.usebox.net/jjm/return-of-traxtor-cpc/
But because the shapes are using a variation of the main tile color, I had to include an alternative tileset that uses higher contrast for the shape because otherwise it would be unplayable for people that have problem seeing colors.
The CGA had to use those shapes! 🙂
Both are coded in C, with some hand written ASM when needed.
Gold Mine Run! uses DJGPP (32-bit, needs DOS extender); the source is available: https://git.usebox.net/gold-mine-run/about/ — and I made the game mostly on twitch, the videos are available here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvI1iQmfH6UOkBSjL_EwtkmqRivM1bJk-
Traxtor was coded for GCC IA16 (it is a 16-bit game). In this case there’s little ASM and mostly for the CGA; see: https://www.usebox.net/jjm/notes/cga/
In both games I tried to make the game as smooth as possible on the target machine, and turns out the IBM PC/XT was easier than the 386! Probably because the CGA is 4bpp so there’s less data to move around.
EDIT: actually, let me clarify a bit 😀 The CGA game is simpler, and that’s a factor as well. For example: it doesn’t use masked sprites and all the drawing is byte aligned. The VGA is also moving more things on the screen at the same time.
