Blockheads

[Carleton]

Hi, I’m a Commodore 64 programmer from way back when. I’ve recently coded a small game for a 4k competition and as I’ve never programmed the Speccy I thought I’d have a go at a conversion. It’s early days but it’s coming along pretty well.




There’s also a video on this Tweet

https://twitter.com/carletonhandley/sta ... 77920?s=21

If anybody would like to test the game, especially on real hardware, I’d be really grateful.

[R-Tape]

Hi, I’m a Commodore 64 programmer from way back when. I’ve recently coded a small game for a 4k competition and as I’ve never programmed the Speccy I thought I’d have a go at a conversion. It’s early days but it’s coming along pretty well.

Looks neat. I can only test on my Spectrum Next at the moment, but if you like I'd be willing to do so.

[bob_fossil]

This is looking really good. I saw your videos of the original C64 versions over on rllmuk and was hoping it would get a port over to the Spectrum. I'm not a brilliant games player and I don't have proper hardware - just an FPGA ZX-UNO - but I'd be happy to test if that hasn't put you off.

[Carleton]

Cheers for the offer you two. Can you DM me details to allow me to send builds? I’m really grateful for your time.

[Carleton]

Hi, just an update. There was very little interest shown in this project so I've shelved it.

[8BitAG]

466 views, seven retweets and forty likes of that Tweet you posted a link to... How much interest did you want to get before you thought it was worthwhile finishing?

(Edit: Just to say that that comment genuinely isn't any sort of dig. I know the high quality of your C64 work. What sort of response were you wanting to get?)

[Einar Saukas]

Would it help to get people posting here about their interesting on this game? I'm interested!

[Ralf]

How much interest did you want to get before you thought it was worthwhile finishing?

Yes, what did you expect ?

An average new game for Spectrum when announced on forums gets today maybe 10 posts in the thread.
Much more people (think 10x more, 20x more) will try it out but will say nothing.

That's the reality every retro game developer has to face. Your target group are guys in thier 40s/50s who have a lot of worries
in real life, have seen and played hundreds/thousands of games already, get quite a lot of new games for retro platforms
regularly and simply don't get so much excited about a new game like kids.

You write games for yourself and your satisfaction, not for people. A few comments on internet will never be enough prize
for spending 50 or 100 hours on your project.

[+3code]

Hi, just an update. There was very little interest shown in this project so I've shelved it.

[RWAC]

Would it help to get people posting here about their interesting on this game? I'm interested!

Me too!

[8BitAG]

That's the reality every retro game developer has to face. Your target group are guys in thier 40s/50s who have a lot of worries
in real life, have seen and played hundreds/thousands of games already, get quite a lot of new games for retro platforms
regularly and simply don't get so much excited about a new game like kids.

The OP is an experience retro game developer, Ralf. He's shifted plenty of boxed copies of his C64 stuff; which is great. So I don't think we need to be lecturing him about expectations.

I spend a lot of time in different communities for various 8-bit machines and I would say that there are different levels of engagement and responses across them. Different communities support different levels and different sorts of activities... The C64 one, for instance, has a very active new boxed software scene and supports several printed fanzines. Doesn't necessarily mean it's better but it is different. There seems to be quite a willingness to pay for new software over there. On the other hand, they also have a huge "cracking" scene which often seems quite weird to us Spectrum users.

So... it was a genuine question to the OP. What sort of response were you after? Presumably you would've seen a different response to the project on the C64 side of things where you are very well established. The Spectrum gets a lot of small, bite-sized, arcade games regularly released so it is hard to grab eyeballs on that sort of project.

[uglifruit]

Me too too!

[RWAC]

The Spectrum gets a lot of small, bite-sized, arcade games regularly released so it is hard to grab eyeballs on that sort of project.

Yep, the spectrum homebrew scene is extremely healthy with games released seemingly every day.
The downside to this is of course that a new release is not a huge event like it would be on say the Mega Drive.
And a lot of games do get burried in the deluge.

I hope this game does get made as it looks interesting but it looks like the developer's heart isn't really in it and that's perfectly fine too.

[Nienn Heskil]

There seems to be quite a willingness to pay for new software over there. On the other hand, they also have a huge "cracking" scene which often seems quite weird to us Spectrum users.

You're both right but you're also both somewhat missing the point, I think

Rather than the number of likes/dislikes, it's about the (vastly different) mindsets between some of these communities. One way to phrase the prevailing attitude towards new software on the Spectrum might be that it "doesn't really count". You might get some comments (+10% to luck if it's not another agd clone), people sort of play it, but... you can tell. It doesn't count.

Individual comments on the internet aren't worth crap. Some guy writes 'oh! wonderful! fantastic!'. Or maybe, 'pfft, this is trash'. What do I gather from this? He might be someone who spams identical messages in every other thread for all I know. I have no way of knowing what goes on in his head, whether 'white' means 'white', 'black' means 'black', whether 2x2 is actually in fact 4, and so on for him. I have no way of knowing what his standards for good and bad are, and/or whether he's even being honest about it. His message is literally meaningless to me.

But when there's a severe, mass change in the ways people think then yes, it is heard and felt.

As much as it isn't fair to blame the community for this state of affairs (it's not as if people do it on purpose), it's also not fair to blame the developers that see this trend and react to it.

P.S. Cracking scene sh.ts all over 'Licence-Games scene', btw

[Alessandro]

You write games for yourself and your satisfaction, not for people. A few comments on internet will never be enough prize
for spending 50 or 100 hours on your project.

For the quickest of my projects, I would have spent about 2-3 times that time. Ad Lunam alone took me a period of about 6 months on a total of nine just to produce version 1.0. Yet it is a pastime that I indulge in sometimes just to amuse myself and contribute to "the scene". And yes, there have been times when I thought I was pouring too much of my time in it and took a break from it.

I am a bit sad that Carleton abandoned the project because he felt there was little interest in it. But I am sure he has his own motivations and I will respect them, whatever they might be.

[Freespirit]

I like the look of this game, it would be a shame for it not to be finished. Just leaving a positive post in case it resurfaces.

[bob_fossil]

I've been fascinated by the wall jumping / bouncing mechanic since I saw the video footage of the C64 version of this on the rllmuk forum back in February and was toying with the idea of doing something using it. When I saw that Blockheads was being ported to the Spectrum, I carried on hacking away in the background purely as a furlough distraction - whilst waiting for developments. What I've ended up with is not Blockheads. I've gone down a more puzzle based game than a pure speed runner - think Bumpy but with smaller graphics and a greater sense of urgency.

[Carleton]

Hi,

It looks as though my post was a dig at this forum/its users/the Spectrum scene and it wasn't meant to be so I apologise. I'll try and explain my decision a little more.

Ste Pickford once told me that starting a game is easy, completing it is the hard part. And he's correct.

I start quite a few projects and shelve most of them. Blockheads is a conversion I did of a C64 game I coded in 4k for a competition. Whilst that competition hasn't yet ended the feedback for that version has been fairly lukewarm. It came 10th of 38 in a recent podcast I listened to. I started this version before it was released and was hoping people liked the game.

I mostly only have the duller stuff to code to complete Spectrum Blockheads (joystick input, key redefines, frontend etc.) and the motivation to do that based off the response to the C64 version is lacking. Because after the initial fun of getting something running and playing there's a ton of dull work to make it into a fully fledged game. As you quite rightly point out loads of good stuff is being released for the Spectrum anyway so I adjusted my priorities.

I get too easily distracted by new projects. In the past year alone for the C64 I've done a prototype run and gun game, started a conversion of my favourite Speccy game Wheelie and worked on another prototype which is kind of secret. Quite a bit of work has gone in too each of those and they're also in limbo.

Reading my post back it seems a little abrupt and toys out of the pram but that's not the case, I just wanted to let you know the situation.

[ketmar]

still, maybe you can release prototype sources? i don't think that it will help much, but maybe, just maybe somebody will feel like it is a shame to see all your efforts wasted... ;-)

p.s.: i have no working part of the brain that can invent games, but love to write various low-level support code, for example. so who knows... ;-)

[Freespirit]

Hi,

It looks as though my post was a dig at this forum/its users/the Spectrum scene and it wasn't meant to be so I apologise. I'll try and explain my decision a little more.

Ste Pickford once told me that starting a game is easy, completing it is the hard part. And he's correct.

I start quite a few projects and shelve most of them. Blockheads is a conversion I did of a C64 game I coded in 4k for a competition. Whilst that competition hasn't yet ended the feedback for that version has been fairly lukewarm. It came 10th of 38 in a recent podcast I listened to. I started this version before it was released and was hoping people liked the game.

I mostly only have the duller stuff to code to complete Spectrum Blockheads (joystick input, key redefines, frontend etc.) and the motivation to do that based off the response to the C64 version is lacking. Because after the initial fun of getting something running and playing there's a ton of dull work to make it into a fully fledged game. As you quite rightly point out loads of good stuff is being released for the Spectrum anyway so I adjusted my priorities.

I get too easily distracted by new projects. In the past year alone for the C64 I've done a prototype run and gun game, started a conversion of my favourite Speccy game Wheelie and worked on another prototype which is kind of secret. Quite a bit of work has gone in too each of those and they're also in limbo.

Reading my post back it seems a little abrupt and toys out of the pram but that's not the case, I just wanted to let you know the situation.

Thanks for the update. Leonardo da Vinci was the same, creative clever guy with new challenging ideas all the time. Ketmar can do the boring bits for you or ask the guys here if they already have that routine done or can do it for you, share the load to complete a game people are interested in. Just an idea.

[ianace]

I would love to try your game. It looks interesting. I use a Vegan. As well as a +2

[ianace]

Sorry that should read Vega!

[ketmar]

Sorry that should read Vega!

it looked much better before the fix. ;-)

[Ast A. Moore]

I use a Vegan. As well as a +2

[ianace]

Reading it again , you are right!! ZX Vegan 128k!!