Both of those classic games are Kellyn Beeck designs. Kellyn designed both the gameplay and the graphic design. I am trying to lure Kellyn Beeck back into game design.
In the early '80's I made good money from CDC for a few years by converting PLATO ed games to every micro under the sun - Atari 800, TRS-80, Apple II, C-64. My partner Mike Johnston and I bankrolled development of our game ChipWits with money we saved from those contracts. The games we ported were pretty dry - Decimal Darts and such.
Twenty-five years, dang. That went fast.
I wrote my first commercial game on the Mac in '84 - ChipWits - and remember the feeling of being dazzled again and again by all the neat goodies in the Mac OS. Especially resources - when I discovered how to store bitmaps as resources I thought I'd gone to developer heaven.
Developing on the Mac that first year was like a treasure hunt because the doc was poor and communicating with other developers was difficult. Most Mac developers wrote their software on a Lisa but I was too poor for that so I used the native MacFORTH.
Andy H was one of the stars of the Mac world. His Switcher, which allowed multiple programs to run (sort of), was a neat hack.
I second opencog. They have an active and growing community.
From the opencog.org home page:
"What is OpenCog?
The Open Cognition Framework (OpenCog) is software for the collaborative development of safe and beneficial Artificial General Intelligence.
OpenCog provides research scientists and software developers with a common platform to build and share artificial intelligence programs. The framework includes:
* a flexible and highly optimized in-memory database for knowledge representation,
* a plug-in architecture for cognitive algorithms and a cognitive process scheduler,
* a built-in LISP-like programming language, and
* other components to support artificial intelligence research and development.
Programs written or adapted for OpenCog may be combined and used in concert with one another for experimentation or to achieve better results compared to their stand-alone counterparts. "
The entry rule was that the game had to be playable and have at least one complete "level" but they weren't too strict on that. They also had you check off a webpage checkbox that made you promise that your game was created in the Indie Spirit.
I had fun last night playing Iron Duke: http://onetonghost.com/ , one of the web browser finalists, for its art and humor rather than its gameplay.
Self-toot warning: I entered my game ChipWits II http://chipwits.com/ . Didn't win but admire the winners and plan to enter another game next year.
Love to get my game ChipWits on the OLPC
on
One SimCity Per Child
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Anyone want to port my game ChipWits - the original version - to the OLPC? I've asked on the OLPC Wiki but haven't followed up.
I wrote the first version in FORTH (in 1984 on the Mac, C-64, and Apple II), so the source code won't be much help.
Kellyn Beeck and his devs did Defender under insane time pressure. It was one of the first 4 games that Cinemaware published and the message from them was to cut features to hit the deadline. Subsequent versions of the game were able to implement more of his original design.
Fun fact about the IBM port - I didn't do the conversion, Cinemaware contracted it out to a company in Utah. My script was PG - I used the word "ass" and "damn" a few times. The UT company took all my horrible swearing out of the script. We made them put it all back in.
I'm still enormously proud of my Cinemaware game "King of Chicago". It was Cinemaware's 2nd best-seller in its first 2 years - waaaaay behind sales of Defender of the Crown by Kellyn Beeck (250k units DoC - amazing in '85, 50k KoC - nice in sales in '86). King was definitely not one of the 10 most influential Amiga games, however, because I rolled my own interactive narrative system - Dramaton ( GDC talk on Dramaton: http://www.zogax.com/verbiage/battle.htm ) - which was just a little too out there for anyone to replicate.
I did the first version of King on the Mac in '86 and then ported it to the Amiga and the Apple IIGS. I did my own art on the Mac (using digitized clay heads) but C-ware wisely redid the art for the Amiga, which had a lot to do with the big sales. Rob Landeros (who later formed Trilobyte and did 7th Guest) did the art.
Coding on the Amiga was a blast. The main online hangout for developers was BIX, the Byte Information Exchange. Simple things like screen-flipping for animation were poorly documented and there was little agreement in the first years about the best way to code them. You had to get down and dirty writing little fragments of code executed by "the copper" - the video coprocessor system.
"Cinemaware is still alive today and currently working on an update of Defender of the Crown.'" - And screwing the original game devs royally. They stripped any mention of Kellyn Beeck from their current version of Defender of the Crown and left my name off the King of Chicago credits on their website. Here's a little discussion with a current Cinemaware employee on the Indie Gamer's forum about their current version of Defender of the Crown http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=9738 &highlight=King/.
At least they'll never butcher King of Chicago because they'll never figure out Dramaton.
Self-horntoot warning - I am also very proud of the game I did before King of Chicago - ChipWits - which I am reviving at http://chipwits.com/ .
Mike Johnston and I (Doug Sharp) are reviving our kids' (and adults') programming game. It's about 6 weeks from completion. It uses an iconic programming language (IBOL) to control a robot through puzzles and quests.
Google "ChipWits".
We're looking for a good online publisher for it. Big Fish Games and Manifesto Games are candidates. Any suggestions or pointers to publishers grovellingly received.
Slashdot Mirror
Glad you enjoyed my little game, Mattpw.
Both of those classic games are Kellyn Beeck designs. Kellyn designed both the gameplay and the graphic design. I am trying to lure Kellyn Beeck back into game design.
It was a fun time to be in the game industry. Once developer could still design and code the bulk of an A title.
Thanks, Evilldler! Makes me feel all warm inside.
Here's a playthrough of my bestselling Amiga game The King of Chicago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17xQQ-PMPBs It sold 50k copies for Cinemaware - not bad for 1987. Some reviews: http://channelzilch.com/doug/kocblurbs.htm I'm still proud of it.
In the early '80's I made good money from CDC for a few years by converting PLATO ed games to every micro under the sun - Atari 800, TRS-80, Apple II, C-64. My partner Mike Johnston and I bankrolled development of our game ChipWits with money we saved from those contracts. The games we ported were pretty dry - Decimal Darts and such.
The 1960's: "I played at Woodstock!" The 1980's: "I wrote a hit game for the Amiga!"
Twenty-five years, dang. That went fast. I wrote my first commercial game on the Mac in '84 - ChipWits - and remember the feeling of being dazzled again and again by all the neat goodies in the Mac OS. Especially resources - when I discovered how to store bitmaps as resources I thought I'd gone to developer heaven. Developing on the Mac that first year was like a treasure hunt because the doc was poor and communicating with other developers was difficult. Most Mac developers wrote their software on a Lisa but I was too poor for that so I used the native MacFORTH. Andy H was one of the stars of the Mac world. His Switcher, which allowed multiple programs to run (sort of), was a neat hack.
I second opencog. They have an active and growing community.
From the opencog.org home page:
"What is OpenCog?
The Open Cognition Framework (OpenCog) is software for the collaborative development of safe and beneficial Artificial General Intelligence.
OpenCog provides research scientists and software developers with a common platform to build and share artificial intelligence programs. The framework includes:
* a flexible and highly optimized in-memory database for knowledge representation,
* a plug-in architecture for cognitive algorithms and a cognitive process scheduler,
* a built-in LISP-like programming language, and
* other components to support artificial intelligence research and development.
Programs written or adapted for OpenCog may be combined and used in concert with one another for experimentation or to achieve better results compared to their stand-alone counterparts. "
http://chipwits.com/
Program bots with graphic chips. A revival of a 1980's classic.
Yeah, I wrote it. But it's still my favorite game this year. So sue me.
The entry rule was that the game had to be playable and have at least one complete "level" but they weren't too strict on that. They also had you check off a webpage checkbox that made you promise that your game was created in the Indie Spirit.
I had fun last night playing Iron Duke: http://onetonghost.com/ , one of the web browser finalists, for its art and humor rather than its gameplay.
Self-toot warning: I entered my game ChipWits II http://chipwits.com/ . Didn't win but admire the winners and plan to enter another game next year.
Anyone want to port my game ChipWits - the original version - to the OLPC? I've asked on the OLPC Wiki but haven't followed up.
I wrote the first version in FORTH (in 1984 on the Mac, C-64, and Apple II), so the source code won't be much help.
http://chipwits.com/
Kellyn Beeck and his devs did Defender under insane time pressure. It was one of the first 4 games that Cinemaware published and the message from them was to cut features to hit the deadline. Subsequent versions of the game were able to implement more of his original design.
Fun fact about the IBM port - I didn't do the conversion, Cinemaware contracted it out to a company in Utah. My script was PG - I used the word "ass" and "damn" a few times. The UT company took all my horrible swearing out of the script. We made them put it all back in.
Thanks for the kind words about my old game.
Thanks, BumBiscuit. Did you play it on the Amiga?
I'm going to be reviving my Dramaton system to do some online games.
What a wonderful and wonderfully addictive game.
I'm still enormously proud of my Cinemaware game "King of Chicago". It was Cinemaware's 2nd best-seller in its first 2 years - waaaaay behind sales of Defender of the Crown by Kellyn Beeck (250k units DoC - amazing in '85, 50k KoC - nice in sales in '86). King was definitely not one of the 10 most influential Amiga games, however, because I rolled my own interactive narrative system - Dramaton ( GDC talk on Dramaton: http://www.zogax.com/verbiage/battle.htm ) - which was just a little too out there for anyone to replicate.
8 &highlight=King/.
I did the first version of King on the Mac in '86 and then ported it to the Amiga and the Apple IIGS. I did my own art on the Mac (using digitized clay heads) but C-ware wisely redid the art for the Amiga, which had a lot to do with the big sales. Rob Landeros (who later formed Trilobyte and did 7th Guest) did the art.
Coding on the Amiga was a blast. The main online hangout for developers was BIX, the Byte Information Exchange. Simple things like screen-flipping for animation were poorly documented and there was little agreement in the first years about the best way to code them. You had to get down and dirty writing little fragments of code executed by "the copper" - the video coprocessor system.
"Cinemaware is still alive today and currently working on an update of Defender of the Crown.'" - And screwing the original game devs royally. They stripped any mention of Kellyn Beeck from their current version of Defender of the Crown and left my name off the King of Chicago credits on their website. Here's a little discussion with a current Cinemaware employee on the Indie Gamer's forum about their current version of Defender of the Crown http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=973
At least they'll never butcher King of Chicago because they'll never figure out Dramaton.
Self-horntoot warning - I am also very proud of the game I did before King of Chicago - ChipWits - which I am reviving at http://chipwits.com/ .
http://news.com.com/2100-7345_3-6163015.html
We are reviving our old programming game ChipWits and would love someone to do an OLPC version as freeware.
We're just starting to playtest a new release of ChipWits. I notice you're a fan. Email me if you'd like to lend a hand.
Mike Johnston and I (Doug Sharp) are reviving our kids' (and adults') programming game. It's about 6 weeks from completion. It uses an iconic programming language (IBOL) to control a robot through puzzles and quests.
Google "ChipWits".
We're looking for a good online publisher for it. Big Fish Games and Manifesto Games are candidates. Any suggestions or pointers to publishers grovellingly received.
Doug - ChipWits, King of Chicago (Cinemaware)