"I could use C, Pascal, or Assembler." Me: "I'd go with C, but this guy seems like the type to choose Assembler." "I didn't know Assembler for 8086, but I endeavored to learn." I KNEW IT! :D
@@blackcathardware6238 - That brings back memories. Turbo C++ and Microsoft Quick C were my favorite. Sadly, I didn't start using Turbo Pascal until version 6.
@@benz0rx86 - Oh, yes. If you have an MS-DOS, FreeDOS or even a DOSBOX machine. You can get it from WinWorldPC. It's like QuickBasic with the IDE, help files built-in and everything. It's actually fun to code with.
Man, hiring that pixel artist makes for a tremendous difference! Looks gooorgeous. Also; That CGA composite mode! I am also amazed why not more people used it back then.
That's because it's not available on anything but a few display cards, and it only works with a composite monitor. It worked on the PC Jr, for example, and (maybe) on the original IBM CGA card when plugged into a composite display, but once everyone went to RGB displays, that mode disappeared because it can't actually be displayed on an RGB monitor.
Yeah it looks great but has one flaw, AFAIK it only looks that good on NTSC composite TVs or monitors... So wouldn't work correctly in most of the world outside the Americas where PAL or SECAM are used.
There are only a few channels I like the video before watching and this is most definitely one of them. I always get excited when I get a notification for The 8 Bit Guy.
Celcius1au when things get better for I, I will gladly support his channel monetarily. I’m glad people like you are able to give anything right now so I can enjoy such great content.
@DamnMerasmus He's telling you to chill the fuck out, get laid, do something. "His own website where he provides downloads" is not steam, and has nowhere close to the same exposure.
@DamnMerasmus and I don't think we could but such awesome emojis on youtube two years ago, so there's that. And you didn't use a hip term like "necro-posting". If you want to complain about someone resurrecting a thread, you have to use a clever term! ;)
Writing x86 assembler in college [1984? 1985?] was one of the most miserable times of my life so kudos to you from having picked it up and made it work so quickly. Looking forward to part 2 and the Kickstarter!
When you make a kickstarter, can you add a tier for both the DOS copy and a Commodore 64 copy? Unfortunately I missed the c64 full box and I would like both sets. Can’t wait! :)
I haven't seen it commented on yet, but - wow - that's super fast work. I mean, since november you have two tools written and useful, and even a prototype of the graphics modes. Either you're super fast with this kind of programming, or you have way more free time than I do! Hats off to you! I guess my background isn't in micro programming, so some would think I work fast at what I do, but to me having these results that quickly is damn good...
this is just so cool! really enjoying seeing an ms-dos game brought to life! the internet is just so amazing; so cool that you can collaborate from Texas with someone in France and put a video of it out still just blows my mind! looking forward to the future updates!
The red/green/yellow CGA palette is so much easier on the eyes than the white/magenta/cyan palette. Maybe I'm just partial to it because of the classic Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!, and Family Feud games from around 1987 that I played when I was a kid. They used the RGY palette (and J! actually used both, the RGY palette was used for the contestant podiums while the CMW palette was used for the main game board and clue text).
speaking of which, I have an old machine I probably should get up and running, it is a very late DOS era machine though, it's from the later 90's using a Celeron and i think megabytes of Ram :/
Having played a lot of this kind of games I love the dedication you put to keeping alive the vibe that gave me so much joy. Plus learning a lot along the way. Love the channel. Great job!
There is a beauty to the way assembler source code looks with its instruction, op1, op2 columns all neatly formatted. Good luck with this project, mate, I love all the choices you've made.
Please give us a choice to release this on low capacity USB or even download, not just on floppy. Main reason why people ask the game to be on MSDOS and VGA is because they only really need DOSBOX to run the game even on modern multicore computers. Only obstacle then is the media, which can be problematic when modern PC do not even get optical disc drives nowadays. I am afraid if you limit the media to floppy, that can eventually lead to piracy where people want to play it but can't due to media type which can lead to someone to rip the game and upload online... then the sales will go away. If you give us option to pay to download directly or release the game on USB drives, that will make most people enjoy your game without any obstacles.
The C64 version has always included a free digital download. The same will be true for the MS-DOS version. I fully expect 90% of users to be playing it in DOSBOX.
The 8-Bit Guy: To clarify, do you have any plans on selling a download-only version? 'Coz I don't even have a machine with a disk drive any more, so I wouldn't feel like I had any need for a boxed copy. This might also be a good excuse to get yourself an account on Itch.io or maybe even see if GOG is interested in it.
It's great being able to see what's behind coding a game like this for so many older machines. Your videos are always very informative and engaging, thank you for the great content!
I think I finally realized why I find your videos fascinating, 8-bit Guy:Let’s set aside computers, programming, 8-bit style games, building networks and even old keyboards. It’s the fact that you are so into your hobby, and you make these videos with such in-depth detail, but at the same time demonstrate it where a layman to all these things (such as myself) can kind of grasp - it’s seriously awesome.I admire anyone who does something just to do it - basically a really enjoyable hobby. I’ve been watching your videos lately and I notice the same thing among all of them - you’re so into what you do, and you want to share it with the world.Really though, it’s awesome. Thanks for the 2 hours or so of entertainment I’ve gained from watching your videos
When you start to look for Beta testers I'd love to sign up. I finally purchased a working Tandy 1000HX with external 5.25 floppy drive. It does have the 640K ram upgrade and mouse. :-)
I really enjoy not only the content and the production of your videos, but I really like the explanations and reasonings displayed. Great work! Thanks for producing these gems.
Eventhough I didn't have any of the computers or play any of the games from the 70's/80', getting to see and learn about all this stuff through channels like yours is so cool. I absolutely love it. Seeing your process for making this particular game is really interesting stuff.
it should support pc speaker, adlib music, and sound blaster sound effects. (sound blaster can use the same adlib music to not make things too complicated with a different set of opl3 tracks, let it use the same opl2 tracks)
The Toshiba T3200 was EGA. It had a greyscale plasma display. Pretty typical of the era. I'm sure there are more. EGA was actually pretty popular. It was all I had for a long time with an old Zenith Data Systems XT clone. At one point it looked like someone had upgraded it to a 286 somehow. I haven't seen that machine since I was a kid, but I'm pretty sure the 286 was sitting on a daughter card. Haha when my 20mb(!!) MFM drive died all I had was two 5.25" floppy drives. I played so many DOS games with disk swapping and EGA. Kings Quest V was TERRRRRRIBLE to play off a floppy drive, but it was possible. Man gamers now have no idea what we were willing to put up with. I played so many Sierra games on that computer. Good times.
I'm also recalling there actually were quite a few 286/386 laptops with EGA chips inside. That just doesn't always feel as obvious, if the display is still monochrome.
Thank you 8-Bit Guy for your videos. I was born in '89 so I missed a lot of early technology. My family's first PC was a Windows 95. But I got into Retro Gaming for a while when I was around 16 to 20 years old, so your videos are really great to watch and see the history of computing. Best of luck on your game.
It's always good to see homebrew software still being done today and I'm more of an indie game supporter these days as triple A games/developers/publishers are becoming scumbags these days. Roll on the work by indie developers and sod off EA and other rats!
Banana Mustard - You can often tell the difference between the quality indie devs and the slack handed ones tho. Some are doing derivative projects and opting for 8-bit/16-bit GFX but the good indies devs will strive to produce good standard and then improved work and not handcuff themselves to a style/genre unless they really have rewritten the holy grail for that genre and people are shouting 'TAKE MY MONEY!' The thing is that old games, styles and genres are also being rediscovered, and with triple A developers also getting lazier by the day, maybe the leading indie devs are just the right thing to offer other people games, corner the market and at a reasonable price where you don't feel like you've been robbed and then queue up again to get robbed again when you're expected to pay more for triple A games.
Most of the time, you can tell, but also some devs like to test things out (what are the challenges/are my thories on how to solve said challenges good, if not I might be screwed here.../how the language actually works/etc). A crappy mario clone might actually be someone's first attempt at making a platformer. Key word here being "might" XD... Anyway, I agree that alot of AAA games don't seem to respect their fan base anymore and I'm amazed at 8-Bit Guy's motivation on making the planet X series :P
Amazing work on this, as well as on Planet X2. I love seeing how detail oriented you are, how much thought and careful consideration you're putting into the development of this game. Shame you weren't doing this 20-25 years ago - You would have make a massive impact on the DOS gaming market back then. Even now, I can see this came developing a hardcore following.
Looks great! I really love the story art! Very cool to see those artworks between different display modes. The concept of these videos is fun too, very interesting to follow the development of an "old" game. Keep up the effort
I was secretly hoping 286/EGA would be the target machine, because that was my first desktop. I miss gaming on that machine! I need to find an old PC to relive those days....
I'm actually now thinking a fun alternative graphics mode for it could be 640x200 16-fixed-colours. Only a few games ever tried it (and generally then, like with Monkey Island, it was in an attempt to recreate the VGA graphics on a CGA/EGA monitor, and generally looked like crap), but maybe it's time for another shot? With a more sympathetic pixel-arting approach it could look pretty lush. And be an interesting alternative on VGA (where it would actually still be as high as the resolution/colour combinations could go... just with line-doubling and more flexible palette). Or indeed even 640x350 16-colours-from-64, which is actually more common...
+DDavidonettwothree ... well yeah, that's fairly well known. Although the compatibility is a bit limited, as it only supports the RGB monitor and a lot of the special tricks that could be pulled off by directly messing with the CGA registers won't work (and at worst could end up damaging your EGA monitor if you tried them) +SuperMushroomy ... er, yeah, that's kinda what I understood by what he said. The basic 4-colour CGA mode will work on an EGA machine, without any need for a special EGA mode. Nice as that would be, as an in-between step between CGA and VGA (or even _instead of_ VGA, especially if it was 640x200... enough old games simply used the EGA graphics with some extra hardware acceleration, or an altered 16-colour palette, if you chose VGA mode).
I really REALLY LOVE that you are making these and all your decisions exactly as you would have decades prior... Its exactly how I would want it done now, I'm going to check your games and stuff out!!
This is so cool! I still have my first computer, an IBM PC with 4.77 MHz 8088 (and 8087 math coprocessor). It has CGA but I don't have a monitor so composite mode is the only option for now, so it's great you're supporting that mode. It has an AST Six Pack Plus card so it can have 640K of RAM and it has ROM chips from 1984 and a 20 MB seagate hard drive. I used to have a Sound Blaster but took it out at some point in time. I hope that my 4.77 MHz computer will be sufficient but I understand if you don't. I am used to things working slowly or poorly on this computer because I used it long after it was practically obsolete: 1987 - 1993! It's the computer I learned all my first languages on: BASIC, assembly (not very well), and Borland Turbo C.
It'd be rather amusing if you managed to throw in some routines that could detect an x87 copro and speed things up somehow using it... I think that's the one an only time I've ever heard of anyone having a 5150 with an 8087 in it (I didn't even know they came in 8-bit-bus compatible flavours...) so it would be essentially optimising the game for that one particular computer out of the whole world :D
Quite interested to see your work process. As someone who dabbled in DOS programming back in the 90s, I do have one little suggestion for the VGA mode: Since there are actually two separate blacks in the 320x200 VGA mode (0 and 16), you can use one as a transparency color, so in VGA mode you can have the game engine render the edges of the tiles around the vehicles while still only using 1 byte per pixel. And yes, even when using assembler to take some shortcuts (I used PASCAL for most of my game code, but all of the graphics routines were assembler), in the VGA 320x200c256 mode (Was that mode 13? It's been so long, I don't remember) it's hard to refresh the entire screen on any processor under 40 mHz without seeing massive flicker. Of course, I was also an inexperienced teenager, and I was just writing byte arrays for each sprite/tile straight to the section of memory that was the screen. I'm sure there were faster/better methods, especially if you're using any additional software drivers that may be more readily available now than I had access to back in the days before the internet was ubiquitous So have fun optimizing! I usually just cheated and only redrew the tiles that changed. :)
Chicken Scratching(.com) partial screen updates aren't cheating; that's called being smart. And VGA doesn't limit you to the default palette in _any_ mode; you can easily redefine any on-screen colour to any one of 260,000 possible colours, even in text, CGA, or EGA modes.
The accelerator functions of VGA, along with its multiple pages, should allow you to do full screen writes without any flicker (something which should only be an issue on CGA and maybe MCGA cards; even Hercules allows two pages). Just have two copies of the screen on separate pages, and write to one whilst displaying the other. When complete, set a flag to switch to your newly completed flag at Vblank and raise an interrupt so that your code knows to start drawing again, just this time on the other page. Bank switching / page flipping / double buffering was a fairly common technique for avoiding flickering and tearing back in the day. It lets you make a reasonably smooth, break-free impression even if your code can't run fast enough to score a perfect 50/60/70hz (or even 25/30/35hz) every time. And, yeah, that "second black" is just an artefact of how, by default, the first 16 colours of the VGA palette are set to those of CGA/EGA TTL. After that you get a larger default gamut whose exact contents depends on what VGA BIOS is in use, but it generally restarts from black, and may run through, say, the 216 colours of the 6x6x6 web-safe cube (duplicating at least a few of the first 16 along the way, and adding up to 232 total) then finishing up with an additional spread of greyscales or the like to fill it up to 256. There's no real magic to it, it's just so that the CLUT is initialised to _something_ other than all black or random noise after startup, in case a program flips to an 8-bit mode but forgets to initialise its palettes. In actual use, most programmers would be expected to completely overwrite that, from index 0 to index 255. However, the wider colour palette itself is useful; it cramps one's style rather less than to sacrifice one colour of 256 to be always transparent (generally set to some glaring colour not otherwise present in the main set of colours, often primary magenta), or one out of a 16-wide sprite palette when you've got 16 different palette banks (or more) to pick from in the first place (only losing 16 colours total, so leaving 240 behind - and as they only need be transparent for sprites, the "missing" 16 could be reused for backgrounds anyway), versus 1 out of a fixed set of 16, or worse a fixed set of 4, which are the circumstances where you'd probably want to use bitmasking instead.
I do believe that VGA's default 256-color palette is same for every properly compatible VGA card... and that 6x6x6 RGB cube + grayscale colors sounds actually like the default 256-color palette of xterm ;) But the VGA-palette is different: th-cam.com/video/-9QnckzyYvs/w-d-xo.html sorry about the HORRIBLE finnish computer generated speech - there's textings in the video in english... anyway, you should get the idea from this video. It's kinda a palette for HSV (Hue, Saturation, Value) color set (instead of RGB).
You don't come across quality content like this very often. David, thank you so much for sharing. I am really excited to see where this project goes in the future.
3:27 Wait, what!? There are *plenty* of games made by either a solo dev, or a small team of two to four people that have been grand successes! But anyway, yeah, this is really cool. I'd love to play it once it gets off the ground...
It isn't so much a matter of success as it is just a matter of polish and features. I can't be expected to produce motion-video intros and things like that. I would need 2 years of working on this straight and a team of artists to do stuff like that.
I was carrying a Faberger egg from one room to the other when my gf told me that this vid was up, so I straight dropped it and rushed to the tv to watch 8-Bit guy
Hey David, big fan. Are you going to go into your development workflow? I'd be interested in seeing what your write->assemble->link(?)->run cycle looks like and what the parts you use are. Thank you for consistently great content.
I find this kind of work very interesting, having a inside view of how games works its just fantastic, really love how the game looks, in my opinion the transition between the different types of grass can be improved, congratulations, looking forward to that kickstarter campaign.
Kordanor's Reviews It’s the sound track from PX2 he released. Themes I composed with this release in mind, based on Dune2 from Frank Kleplacki. It’s available as a download under the PX2 lite version we’re selling: eox.no/product/planet-x2-c64-box-set/
thanks man for posting these awesome interesting video. They are so informative about old technology and new . I am in school for CIT just started tho. I really have enjoyed these videos. I stumble across your channel and never looked back. I have binged watched for hours on end and now I have ran out of videos lol. KEEP THEM COMING I LOVE IT!!!! and thanks again PS you have even got me thanking of buying a keyboard lol.
I'm curious; is there a way to make the unused space in the tiles (at least for the units) transparent instead of completely black? I think it would look nicer overall.
Thought about the same. @David, I'm assembler man too. I think you can code two tiles blending routine for CGA gfx. Can't see any problems nor significant performance hit there for vanilla 8086 (at least, if you'll cache the blended tile somewhere, probably in round robin buffer).
Damn! That's looking super great! Especially the 4colors CGA version! I really hesitated to propose you my help on the pixel art part, since it's also my job; but I sure I think it would not be looking so great! Really neat job!!
Would it be possible to make an "alpha" layer for the tiles so that the ground could be drawn around the player on the fly instead of leaving that black square? I'm sure the implementation could look something like generating a temporary tile during the render and then using the temporary instead of either of the source frames. I'm curious whether that'd be too much work for these old DOS machines or not.
I plan on adding transparency on the VGA version. Not only will it be easier to do in a 256-color environment, but most machines running VGA should have the CPU power to handle that. Doing transparency on these old XT class machines just isn't feasible at the speeds I want to run things.
The 8-Bit Guy EGA has hardware support for bitmasking, making it well worth the effort to support its planar graphics mode. As an added bonus, you can reprogram the palette registers on VGA to give nicer colours while still enjoying all the hardware acceleration features EGA has to offer ;-).
Man, Reno is more than a pixel artist, he's quite a famous comic book artist first and foremost. That's great; you're lucky to have such a talented guy working with you.
This is absolutely fantastic. I'd love to see into the source code some, maybe even a video on the sped-up drawing routine. Also, that Tandy is a beauty.
Dave, you could sell for now digital versions of Planet X2, then you can get an idea of how many you are going to need for the hard copy that the people will get at a later date. Also I'm defintely going to see if I can throw in a pound or two for Planet X3.
Awesome work so far, I'm certainly impressed! I'm glad you went with Assembler even if it seems crazy from a modern perspective - you are totally right that it was the norm for the time.
This is looking very good so far. Your hired artist has done some a great job so far too. Once you get around to making the VGA tile editor, maybe you should try and have the option to generate CGA and composite CGA tiles from the VGA tiles, that you could then tweak in CGA tools so that they look just right. Maybe it would help and save time with the task of making the different graphical modes look alike. The Kickstarter is a great idea, however don't forget to print some additional copies for people who would stumble upon the game after the campaign has ended. Great job! :)
One could do that - I'm betting, though, that he is using a fairly modern assembler that supports functions and such to do the actual coding so there is not much reason to use C IMHO. It would be cool to know what assembler is being used - I'm betting $5 that he isn't typing it in using debug.exe ;-)
It's not just the language, per-se, it's the associated tools that also influence such a decision: compiler (for C or Pascal), assembler and linker. In addition, "3rd party" libraries might play into one's decision of programming platform. The "standard library" for the C compilers of the time offered little, so you'd be using other libraries to implement core graphics features and other I/O features. Or you'd be writing all of those libraries yourself in 808x assembler.
Awesome work. I know you are really busy but would you consider doing a few getting started videos on assembler? This video really inspired me to try and create something and you have a great presentation style that is easy to follow. I would even be willing to pay for this if you offered it as premium content via patreon.
Yoooo the cga composite looks amazing! Like an early nes or late colecovision game (which I suppose would be the fictional age of the engine, lol) god, I can't get enough of how amazing this is, you're my inspiration to actually get up and try to learn dos.
Yeah, but probably didn't _run_ in it. You can get BASIC compilers. It's just that the closer to the metal you code in the first place, the more you can hand-optimise the code rather than relying on the compiler to do it for you, as well as the larger a program you can make with any kind of ease because the programming and particularly compiling side of things tends to need a lot more memory (which at the very least may mean more disc accessing, maybe even disc swaps) than the final result does. With something like Ultima 1 where running speed wasn't really an issue even on a poor CPU (and the actual moving parts of the graphics were limited to a rather small part of the screen), and even memory maybe wasn't super pressing, you could get away with it. If you wanted to make a game which was signficantly more complex, and had more things happening on screen at a higher speed, you'd have to move into C or Pascal, maybe even Assembler. (and remember even ASM isn't true machine code - it still uses a lot of human readable mnemonics for variables as well as opcodes, doesn't need you to have an intimate knowledge of where every last thing will end up in memory, etc... the compiler takes care of that for you, as well as auto-optimising some common routines if it detects you're using a sloppy version of them, etc...) Some later versions of the language like QuickBASIC for DOS, or STOS/AMOS (and GFA Basic) for the ST and Amiga, added more low level features and commands and much more powerful compilers whilst still retaining their otherwise fairly friendly HLL interface, so you'll actually find some fully compiled programs and games, particularly shareware but even some commercial examples written using them.
I'm really excited for the full development, David! How do you plan on distributing the game? Would there also be any sort of DRM-type thing? It would be just a nostalgia/throwback joke, but I'm interested to see if you planned on doing that as an optional type thing.
Hey David, You mentioned that you didn't know CGA could display 16 colors. The first game i played (and found out to be able to display 16 colors on CGA) was Tunneler. It's a multiplayer game in a single computer, using only one keyboard. Look it up, it's great fun. The only problem with my Tulip PC compact II (with a NEC V20) was that when moving diagonaly and shooting at the same time, the keyboard couldn't keep up. When both players did that, the computer would have to react to 6 keys being pressed at the same time. One of the players would then just simply be unable to make that desired move. You probably don't know Tulip by the way. It was a Dutch computer maker which sold really well in the late 80's. People could buy one through their work, and then they could sell working hours, without paying taxes. They even took back stock that was to be shipped to the UK, to meet the demands from Holland. When my parents got it, most of my friends still had PC's with 4.77Mhz processors, when as you know, the NEC V20 had 9.54Mhz.
![[TH] VCT Masters Shanghai Playoffs DAY 5 // 100T vs PRX | FUT vs TH](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/q75pv359eP4/mqdefault.jpg)
"I could use C, Pascal, or Assembler." Me: "I'd go with C, but this guy seems like the type to choose Assembler." "I didn't know Assembler for 8086, but I endeavored to learn." I KNEW IT! :D
I would choose c too. I used to know pascal, but I forgot ):
I'd chosen Turbo C or Turbo Pascal as that segmentation on 8086 is really awful. And both Borland compilers really create nice machine code anyway.
@@blackcathardware6238 - That brings back memories. Turbo C++ and Microsoft Quick C were my favorite. Sadly, I didn't start using Turbo Pascal until version 6.
@@classicnosh I never knew there was a QuickC - you've blown my mind!
@@benz0rx86 - Oh, yes. If you have an MS-DOS, FreeDOS or even a DOSBOX machine. You can get it from WinWorldPC. It's like QuickBasic with the IDE, help files built-in and everything. It's actually fun to code with.
That french guy's cutscene art is friggin ridiculous. It nails that 80's sci fi aesthetic perfectly.
i know right? it's dynamite
I might have said it before but you are an unbelievably patient person.
Man, hiring that pixel artist makes for a tremendous difference! Looks gooorgeous.
Also; That CGA composite mode! I am also amazed why not more people used it back then.
I think his own graphics had a certain charm as well tho
Evan Verburg Definitely!
That's because it's not available on anything but a few display cards, and it only works with a composite monitor. It worked on the PC Jr, for example, and (maybe) on the original IBM CGA card when plugged into a composite display, but once everyone went to RGB displays, that mode disappeared because it can't actually be displayed on an RGB monitor.
Tom Wilson Ooohhh, now that makes sense actually.
Actually 8 bit guy had a nice video about composite mode.
I'm blown away by the CGA composite mode.
Yeah it looks great but has one flaw, AFAIK it only looks that good on NTSC composite TVs or monitors... So wouldn't work correctly in most of the world outside the Americas where PAL or SECAM are used.
MultiMidden any TV made since the 90s should support all three video standards; regardless of where it was sold.
There are only a few channels I like the video before watching and this is most definitely one of them. I always get excited when I get a notification for The 8 Bit Guy.
jerrywh3 same, this channel is my favorite!
jerrywh3 What was the old name of his channel agin I forget iBook guy or I can’t remember?
If I could spare more per month I would gladly give 8bit guy more money for more great content
Tay Tay yes it was iBook Guy.
Celcius1au when things get better for I, I will gladly support his channel monetarily. I’m glad people like you are able to give anything right now so I can enjoy such great content.
If it works on DOS, does that mean you can release it on Steam?
🤔
@DamnMerasmus blows marijuana smoke on your face vigorously
@DamnMerasmus He's telling you to chill the fuck out, get laid, do something. "His own website where he provides downloads" is not steam, and has nowhere close to the same exposure.
@DamnMerasmus and I don't think we could but such awesome emojis on youtube two years ago, so there's that. And you didn't use a hip term like "necro-posting". If you want to complain about someone resurrecting a thread, you have to use a clever term! ;)
@DamnMerasmus Because he's a moron. What kind of a normal person would respond just 🤔
Writing x86 assembler in college [1984? 1985?] was one of the most miserable times of my life so kudos to you from having picked it up and made it work so quickly. Looking forward to part 2 and the Kickstarter!
When you make a kickstarter, can you add a tier for both the DOS copy and a Commodore 64 copy? Unfortunately I missed the c64 full box and I would like both sets. Can’t wait! :)
I haven't seen it commented on yet, but - wow - that's super fast work. I mean, since november you have two tools written and useful, and even a prototype of the graphics modes. Either you're super fast with this kind of programming, or you have way more free time than I do! Hats off to you! I guess my background isn't in micro programming, so some would think I work fast at what I do, but to me having these results that quickly is damn good...
He is a workaholic nerd, probably sleeps just few hours a day xD
Does the game come with the map editor?
I'm really digging those new sprites you commissioned. Such a "small" thing makes the game look so much more refined.
Agreed , makes a yuge upgrade to the look. Well worth it
this is just so cool! really enjoying seeing an ms-dos game brought to life! the internet is just so amazing; so cool that you can collaborate from Texas with someone in France and put a video of it out still just blows my mind! looking forward to the future updates!
The red/green/yellow CGA palette is so much easier on the eyes than the white/magenta/cyan palette. Maybe I'm just partial to it because of the classic Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!, and Family Feud games from around 1987 that I played when I was a kid. They used the RGY palette (and J! actually used both, the RGY palette was used for the contestant podiums while the CMW palette was used for the main game board and clue text).
Andrew Long Green/Red/Yellow can be used to great effect; especially if low-intensity blue is programmed as the background/border colour.
Double that. Magenta on the black background makes eyes hurt after a while, red and green are much softer in that regard.
Oh boy! Can't wait to play it on my brand new 286 processor with 640k of ram and a cutting edge VGA graphics card!
Were you able to afford the 10MB hard drive upgrade? Or is it floppy only? ;)
Oh yeah I got a sweet deal on the hard drive! It only cost a second mortgage and my firstborn son. I was totally stoked to get it.
speaking of which, I have an old machine I probably should get up and running, it is a very late DOS era machine though, it's from the later 90's using a Celeron and i think megabytes of Ram :/
UnAnonymous I love you
Perfect Focus I love you too. ;)
The CGA pixel art is absolutely dynamite.
The VGA pixel art is absolute TNT.
No the GCA composite is TNT.
The VGA is ATOMIC BOMB.
For me, the VGA is absolutely a DUKE NUKEM
Correct.
Yes it is
Always enjoy 8-bit guy videos, full respect for putting so much effort in to clearly explain your thinking and methodology in all of your projects
Hope this will be on GOG in digital form.
Great point, I'm sure lots of folks would support him there. This guy is awesome.
Yes please on Gog
You can download it from the 8-Bit Guys website and use it on DOSBOX.
Oh yes please put it on GOG :)
Yes! Please try to put this on GOG.
> first info on DOS port of planet x2.
> Isn't called planet x86.
I AM DISAPPOINT.
is that greentext on youtube
This should be the real name of the game
"Planet x86" 😂
But in reality, he released "Planet X1" on Commodore VIC-20 (or 16, but I can't really remember), and later he released X2 on C64.
Jaekoff for someone wstching a guy's channel about retro stuff you sure are not familiar with mailing lists and qutoing are you?
>using meme arrows on youtube
Having played a lot of this kind of games I love the dedication you put to keeping alive the vibe that gave me so much joy. Plus learning a lot along the way. Love the channel. Great job!
Probably one of my favorites of your videos. Thanks for doing such a deep dive into the process.
Wow David, you've been busy. Really digging the Composite CGA mode.
YES YES YES! I'll buy it when it comes out!
I'm hyped for the progress updates!
There is a beauty to the way assembler source code looks with its instruction, op1, op2 columns all neatly formatted. Good luck with this project, mate, I love all the choices you've made.
Part 1 already looks amazing. You have a really good work ethic, and it shows. You've already done a ton so far!!
Please give us a choice to release this on low capacity USB or even download, not just on floppy. Main reason why people ask the game to be on MSDOS and VGA is because they only really need DOSBOX to run the game even on modern multicore computers. Only obstacle then is the media, which can be problematic when modern PC do not even get optical disc drives nowadays. I am afraid if you limit the media to floppy, that can eventually lead to piracy where people want to play it but can't due to media type which can lead to someone to rip the game and upload online... then the sales will go away. If you give us option to pay to download directly or release the game on USB drives, that will make most people enjoy your game without any obstacles.
I think he gave a download version with the purchase of x2, and I would imagine he would do the same with x3
The C64 version has always included a free digital download. The same will be true for the MS-DOS version. I fully expect 90% of users to be playing it in DOSBOX.
The 8-Bit Guy Count me in the DOSBox camp. I don’t own any retro computers.
I would try it on my Pentium machine a few times, but then I will mostly play on DOSBox
The 8-Bit Guy: To clarify, do you have any plans on selling a download-only version? 'Coz I don't even have a machine with a disk drive any more, so I wouldn't feel like I had any need for a boxed copy. This might also be a good excuse to get yourself an account on Itch.io or maybe even see if GOG is interested in it.
Amazing, Dave. You're the man. Eternal admiration.
It's great being able to see what's behind coding a game like this for so many older machines. Your videos are always very informative and engaging, thank you for the great content!
I think I finally realized why I find your videos fascinating, 8-bit Guy:Let’s set aside computers, programming, 8-bit style games, building networks and even old keyboards. It’s the fact that you are so into your hobby, and you make these videos with such in-depth detail, but at the same time demonstrate it where a layman to all these things (such as myself) can kind of grasp - it’s seriously awesome.I admire anyone who does something just to do it - basically a really enjoyable hobby. I’ve been watching your videos lately and I notice the same thing among all of them - you’re so into what you do, and you want to share it with the world.Really though, it’s awesome. Thanks for the 2 hours or so of entertainment I’ve gained from watching your videos
I have been waiting for a new video about this THANK YOU THANK YOU 8-bit guy!
When you start to look for Beta testers I'd love to sign up. I finally purchased a working Tandy 1000HX with external 5.25 floppy drive. It does have the 640K ram upgrade and mouse. :-)
I really enjoy not only the content and the production of your videos, but I really like the explanations and reasonings displayed. Great work! Thanks for producing these gems.
Eventhough I didn't have any of the computers or play any of the games from the 70's/80', getting to see and learn about all this stuff through channels like yours is so cool. I absolutely love it. Seeing your process for making this particular game is really interesting stuff.
You know you want to make a Roland-32 Midi soundtrack.
Also Adlib, General MIDI and Sound Canvas modes pls
I personally prefer SB 16 / OPL-3
And PC Jr./Tandy 1000 sound!
it should support pc speaker, adlib music, and sound blaster sound effects. (sound blaster can use the same adlib music to not make things too complicated with a different set of opl3 tracks, let it use the same opl2 tracks)
General Midi would be nice for newer systems, basically any modern machine can run it.
Adlib would be nice for the older cards.
The Toshiba T3200 was EGA. It had a greyscale plasma display. Pretty typical of the era. I'm sure there are more. EGA was actually pretty popular. It was all I had for a long time with an old Zenith Data Systems XT clone. At one point it looked like someone had upgraded it to a 286 somehow. I haven't seen that machine since I was a kid, but I'm pretty sure the 286 was sitting on a daughter card. Haha when my 20mb(!!) MFM drive died all I had was two 5.25" floppy drives. I played so many DOS games with disk swapping and EGA. Kings Quest V was TERRRRRRIBLE to play off a floppy drive, but it was possible. Man gamers now have no idea what we were willing to put up with. I played so many Sierra games on that computer. Good times.
I'm also recalling there actually were quite a few 286/386 laptops with EGA chips inside. That just doesn't always feel as obvious, if the display is still monochrome.
Yeah, lots I think!
These Toshiba Laptops had gorgeous orangescale displays, not boring greyscale. :-)
Thank you 8-Bit Guy for your videos. I was born in '89 so I missed a lot of early technology. My family's first PC was a Windows 95. But I got into Retro Gaming for a while when I was around 16 to 20 years old, so your videos are really great to watch and see the history of computing. Best of luck on your game.
Fascinated to watch the rest of this series! And that 256 colour VGA art is beautiful. Kudos to the artist!
It's always good to see homebrew software still being done today and I'm more of an indie game supporter these days as triple A games/developers/publishers are becoming scumbags these days.
Roll on the work by indie developers and sod off EA and other rats!
that being said some indie devs are legit lazy
many are just making a cheap derivative puzzle platformers with pixel graphics
I agree.
Like, come on. Let's make some cool artwork, great soundtrack, and a very original plot.
Banana Mustard - You can often tell the difference between the quality indie devs and the slack handed ones tho.
Some are doing derivative projects and opting for 8-bit/16-bit GFX but the good indies devs will strive to produce good standard and then improved work and not handcuff themselves to a style/genre unless they really have rewritten the holy grail for that genre and people are shouting 'TAKE MY MONEY!'
The thing is that old games, styles and genres are also being rediscovered, and with triple A developers also getting lazier by the day, maybe the leading indie devs are just the right thing to offer other people games, corner the market and at a reasonable price where you don't feel like you've been robbed and then queue up again to get robbed again when you're expected to pay more for triple A games.
Most of the time, you can tell, but also some devs like to test things out (what are the challenges/are my thories on how to solve said challenges good, if not I might be screwed here.../how the language actually works/etc). A crappy mario clone might actually be someone's first attempt at making a platformer. Key word here being "might" XD...
Anyway, I agree that alot of AAA games don't seem to respect their fan base anymore and I'm amazed at 8-Bit Guy's motivation on making the planet X series :P
will the code for X2 be in the next issue of COMPUTE! so I can type it in?
Shelby It's not basic
wooosh
@@generaltechnology8250 woooosh
Just type in the assembly or the machine code ROM :^)
Your channel pic looks like a piece of hair I was like why isn't this coming off when I blow on it
Amazing work on this, as well as on Planet X2. I love seeing how detail oriented you are, how much thought and careful consideration you're putting into the development of this game. Shame you weren't doing this 20-25 years ago - You would have make a massive impact on the DOS gaming market back then. Even now, I can see this came developing a hardcore following.
that pixel art is incredible. great breakdown video. your passion for this is insane!
you didn't call it "planet x86", *WHY!?*
or planet x16
Holy fuck, this
Nintendo REALLY liked naming their games like that
Cause according to it's trailer,some space marines heading to a unknown planet code named planet x3
@@Beansman-gp3ws Yes, because for the Nintendo 64 there was Super Mario 64, Excitebike 64, and more.
That "size does matter" shirt cracks me up! The irony is strong. Go team tiny! Lol
Looks great! I really love the story art! Very cool to see those artworks between different display modes. The concept of these videos is fun too, very interesting to follow the development of an "old" game. Keep up the effort
Another great vid, its cool seeing the progress on the game. Looking forward to the Kickstarter!
had to go back and watch from 15:43. Was waiting to see cat's reaction to Tandy modes.
cat doesn't give a ehm..... cat or was it something else ;-)
I was secretly hoping 286/EGA would be the target machine, because that was my first desktop. I miss gaming on that machine! I need to find an old PC to relive those days....
I'm actually now thinking a fun alternative graphics mode for it could be 640x200 16-fixed-colours. Only a few games ever tried it (and generally then, like with Monkey Island, it was in an attempt to recreate the VGA graphics on a CGA/EGA monitor, and generally looked like crap), but maybe it's time for another shot? With a more sympathetic pixel-arting approach it could look pretty lush. And be an interesting alternative on VGA (where it would actually still be as high as the resolution/colour combinations could go... just with line-doubling and more flexible palette).
Or indeed even 640x350 16-colours-from-64, which is actually more common...
AirborneSurfer CGA mode should work with EGA, because of backwards compatibility, but no special graphic for EGA.
DDavidonetwothree You meant that EGA is backwards compatible with CGA, and not that CGA is backwards compatible with EGA..
+DDavidonettwothree ... well yeah, that's fairly well known. Although the compatibility is a bit limited, as it only supports the RGB monitor and a lot of the special tricks that could be pulled off by directly messing with the CGA registers won't work (and at worst could end up damaging your EGA monitor if you tried them)
+SuperMushroomy ... er, yeah, that's kinda what I understood by what he said. The basic 4-colour CGA mode will work on an EGA machine, without any need for a special EGA mode. Nice as that would be, as an in-between step between CGA and VGA (or even _instead of_ VGA, especially if it was 640x200... enough old games simply used the EGA graphics with some extra hardware acceleration, or an altered 16-colour palette, if you chose VGA mode).
I'm so glad you're making videos about the development process, and so glad you're doing this project! Thanks!
I really REALLY LOVE that you are making these and all your decisions exactly as you would have decades prior... Its exactly how I would want it done now, I'm going to check your games and stuff out!!
This is so beautiful, always wanted to see how people made games in the 80s
This is so cool! I still have my first computer, an IBM PC with 4.77 MHz 8088 (and 8087 math coprocessor). It has CGA but I don't have a monitor so composite mode is the only option for now, so it's great you're supporting that mode. It has an AST Six Pack Plus card so it can have 640K of RAM and it has ROM chips from 1984 and a 20 MB seagate hard drive. I used to have a Sound Blaster but took it out at some point in time. I hope that my 4.77 MHz computer will be sufficient but I understand if you don't. I am used to things working slowly or poorly on this computer because I used it long after it was practically obsolete: 1987 - 1993! It's the computer I learned all my first languages on: BASIC, assembly (not very well), and Borland Turbo C.
The goal is the game should play full speed on a 4.77 Mhz XT, as long as you are using CGA mode. Now, VGA may be a different story.
It'd be rather amusing if you managed to throw in some routines that could detect an x87 copro and speed things up somehow using it... I think that's the one an only time I've ever heard of anyone having a 5150 with an 8087 in it (I didn't even know they came in 8-bit-bus compatible flavours...) so it would be essentially optimising the game for that one particular computer out of the whole world :D
This channel just keeps getting better and better man.
Impressive seeing such dedication for the development! I was surprised you got this far already :O
Man, that is some sweet CGA art.
ALREADY!?!? Wow! Nice
The graphics and the soundtrack are fantastic. Good job, man. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product.
This is amazing work! Seriously! Please keep up all the wonderful videos, and I wish all the best in the future of the game.
I missed out on X2 because I don't have a machine that can run it, and I'm excited to play X3. I will totally back a kickstarter.
He also distributed a disk image for PX2, so you could have played it in VICE or Frodo or what-have-you.
Quite interested to see your work process. As someone who dabbled in DOS programming back in the 90s, I do have one little suggestion for the VGA mode: Since there are actually two separate blacks in the 320x200 VGA mode (0 and 16), you can use one as a transparency color, so in VGA mode you can have the game engine render the edges of the tiles around the vehicles while still only using 1 byte per pixel.
And yes, even when using assembler to take some shortcuts (I used PASCAL for most of my game code, but all of the graphics routines were assembler), in the VGA 320x200c256 mode (Was that mode 13? It's been so long, I don't remember) it's hard to refresh the entire screen on any processor under 40 mHz without seeing massive flicker. Of course, I was also an inexperienced teenager, and I was just writing byte arrays for each sprite/tile straight to the section of memory that was the screen. I'm sure there were faster/better methods, especially if you're using any additional software drivers that may be more readily available now than I had access to back in the days before the internet was ubiquitous So have fun optimizing! I usually just cheated and only redrew the tiles that changed. :)
Chicken Scratching(.com) partial screen updates aren't cheating; that's called being smart. And VGA doesn't limit you to the default palette in _any_ mode; you can easily redefine any on-screen colour to any one of 260,000 possible colours, even in text, CGA, or EGA modes.
The accelerator functions of VGA, along with its multiple pages, should allow you to do full screen writes without any flicker (something which should only be an issue on CGA and maybe MCGA cards; even Hercules allows two pages). Just have two copies of the screen on separate pages, and write to one whilst displaying the other. When complete, set a flag to switch to your newly completed flag at Vblank and raise an interrupt so that your code knows to start drawing again, just this time on the other page.
Bank switching / page flipping / double buffering was a fairly common technique for avoiding flickering and tearing back in the day. It lets you make a reasonably smooth, break-free impression even if your code can't run fast enough to score a perfect 50/60/70hz (or even 25/30/35hz) every time.
And, yeah, that "second black" is just an artefact of how, by default, the first 16 colours of the VGA palette are set to those of CGA/EGA TTL. After that you get a larger default gamut whose exact contents depends on what VGA BIOS is in use, but it generally restarts from black, and may run through, say, the 216 colours of the 6x6x6 web-safe cube (duplicating at least a few of the first 16 along the way, and adding up to 232 total) then finishing up with an additional spread of greyscales or the like to fill it up to 256. There's no real magic to it, it's just so that the CLUT is initialised to _something_ other than all black or random noise after startup, in case a program flips to an 8-bit mode but forgets to initialise its palettes. In actual use, most programmers would be expected to completely overwrite that, from index 0 to index 255.
However, the wider colour palette itself is useful; it cramps one's style rather less than to sacrifice one colour of 256 to be always transparent (generally set to some glaring colour not otherwise present in the main set of colours, often primary magenta), or one out of a 16-wide sprite palette when you've got 16 different palette banks (or more) to pick from in the first place (only losing 16 colours total, so leaving 240 behind - and as they only need be transparent for sprites, the "missing" 16 could be reused for backgrounds anyway), versus 1 out of a fixed set of 16, or worse a fixed set of 4, which are the circumstances where you'd probably want to use bitmasking instead.
I do believe that VGA's default 256-color palette is same for every properly compatible VGA card... and that 6x6x6 RGB cube + grayscale colors sounds actually like the default 256-color palette of xterm ;) But the VGA-palette is different:
th-cam.com/video/-9QnckzyYvs/w-d-xo.html
sorry about the HORRIBLE finnish computer generated speech - there's textings in the video in english... anyway, you should get the idea from this video. It's kinda a palette for HSV (Hue, Saturation, Value) color set (instead of RGB).
This will be great to follow! Also, that new artwork looks really atmospheric!
You don't come across quality content like this very often. David, thank you so much for sharing. I am really excited to see where this project goes in the future.
I really adore your intro jingle
3:27 Wait, what!? There are *plenty* of games made by either a solo dev, or a small team of two to four people that have been grand successes!
But anyway, yeah, this is really cool. I'd love to play it once it gets off the ground...
It isn't so much a matter of success as it is just a matter of polish and features. I can't be expected to produce motion-video intros and things like that. I would need 2 years of working on this straight and a team of artists to do stuff like that.
That single VGA screenshot sold me - I'm in!! Excellent work so far!!! Can't wait to fund this kickstarter!
Just want to add - you also just gave me a reason to finally build a vintage dos machine!
Fantastic work David, I'll be supporting your kick-starter for sure!
I was carrying a Faberger egg from one room to the other when my gf told me that this vid was up, so I straight dropped it and rushed to the tv to watch 8-Bit guy
Hey David, big fan. Are you going to go into your development workflow? I'd be interested in seeing what your write->assemble->link(?)->run cycle looks like and what the parts you use are. Thank you for consistently great content.
I find this kind of work very interesting, having a inside view of how games works its just fantastic, really love how the game looks, in my opinion the transition between the different types of grass can be improved, congratulations, looking forward to that kickstarter campaign.
I don't understand how you can make all these youtube videos and also have time to create + market a game, and on totally different platforms! Bravo!
Love your opening music!!
Me too!
What's the music starting at 2:00? Is that an own track? Sounds like an old Eye of Beholder Track. Sounds great!
Kordanor's Reviews It’s the sound track from PX2 he released. Themes I composed with this release in mind, based on Dune2 from Frank Kleplacki. It’s available as a download under the PX2 lite version we’re selling: eox.no/product/planet-x2-c64-box-set/
Ah, cool. Thanks alot!
This is absolutely amazing. I love this series already.
thanks man for posting these awesome interesting video. They are so informative about old technology and new . I am in school for CIT just started tho. I really have enjoyed these videos. I stumble across your channel and never looked back. I have binged watched for hours on end and now I have ran out of videos lol. KEEP THEM COMING I LOVE IT!!!! and thanks again PS you have even got me thanking of buying a keyboard lol.
I'm curious; is there a way to make the unused space in the tiles (at least for the units) transparent instead of completely black? I think it would look nicer overall.
That's the plan for the VGA version.
Thought about the same. @David, I'm assembler man too. I think you can code two tiles blending routine for CGA gfx. Can't see any problems nor significant performance hit there for vanilla 8086 (at least, if you'll cache the blended tile somewhere, probably in round robin buffer).
OH MY GOD IT IS HAPPENING
*_screams in joy_*
Awesome work. Very interesting to see this come together.
Damn! That's looking super great!
Especially the 4colors CGA version!
I really hesitated to propose you my help on the pixel art part, since it's also my job; but I sure I think it would not be looking so great!
Really neat job!!
8086... eighty eighty six... eeghte eighty six.. aeeete eighty six.. aaaeee eighty six.. ae86!!
*LOUD EUROBEAT PLAYS*
Would it be possible to make an "alpha" layer for the tiles so that the ground could be drawn around the player on the fly instead of leaving that black square? I'm sure the implementation could look something like generating a temporary tile during the render and then using the temporary instead of either of the source frames. I'm curious whether that'd be too much work for these old DOS machines or not.
I plan on adding transparency on the VGA version. Not only will it be easier to do in a 256-color environment, but most machines running VGA should have the CPU power to handle that. Doing transparency on these old XT class machines just isn't feasible at the speeds I want to run things.
Makes enough sense. It'll be really cool to see how the game turns out and it'll be fun to see these development logs for sure.
The 8-Bit Guy EGA has hardware support for bitmasking, making it well worth the effort to support its planar graphics mode. As an added bonus, you can reprogram the palette registers on VGA to give nicer colours while still enjoying all the hardware acceleration features EGA has to offer ;-).
The 8-Bit Guy you coded this in asm? haven't watched the entire vid yet, if you mention it, you don't need to reply
yup, asm
Man, Reno is more than a pixel artist, he's quite a famous comic book artist first and foremost. That's great; you're lucky to have such a talented guy working with you.
This is absolutely fantastic. I'd love to see into the source code some, maybe even a video on the sped-up drawing routine. Also, that Tandy is a beauty.
Dave, you could sell for now digital versions of Planet X2, then you can get an idea of how many you are going to need for the hard copy that the people will get at a later date. Also I'm defintely going to see if I can throw in a pound or two for Planet X3.
Will the full versions of Planet X2 ever be in stock again?
Watch the video to the end.
He said they require 500 at minimum what i did not hear him say was if he would actually order those 500.
While the answer is most likely "never", David didn't actually directly say when or if Planet X2 would be in stock at any point in the video.
This is why I’m relieved I decided to purchase 10 copies of the game. Now to list them at $200 a piece on eBay!
$180?
8 bit guy, I really adore your videos, and your work. Keep it going, and also very much thanks to the background of everything.
Great Video, Interesting to see and appreciate all the work that goes in to the game!
You should add a multiplayer mode. Like humans vs aliens.
Fun fact: Rollercoaster tycoon was made in Assembly code, too!
Wow
Awesome work so far, I'm certainly impressed! I'm glad you went with Assembler even if it seems crazy from a modern perspective - you are totally right that it was the norm for the time.
This is looking very good so far. Your hired artist has done some a great job so far too. Once you get around to making the VGA tile editor, maybe you should try and have the option to generate CGA and composite CGA tiles from the VGA tiles, that you could then tweak in CGA tools so that they look just right. Maybe it would help and save time with the task of making the different graphical modes look alike. The Kickstarter is a great idea, however don't forget to print some additional copies for people who would stumble upon the game after the campaign has ended. Great job! :)
Why not mix C and assembler? Seems like most the game logic could be in C and the graphics drawing routines optimized in assembler.
Blake my thoughts exactly
One could do that - I'm betting, though, that he is using a fairly modern assembler that supports functions and such to do the actual coding so there is not much reason to use C IMHO. It would be cool to know what assembler is being used - I'm betting $5 that he isn't typing it in using debug.exe ;-)
It's not just the language, per-se, it's the associated tools that also influence such a decision: compiler (for C or Pascal), assembler and linker. In addition, "3rd party" libraries might play into one's decision of programming platform. The "standard library" for the C compilers of the time offered little, so you'd be using other libraries to implement core graphics features and other I/O features. Or you'd be writing all of those libraries yourself in 808x assembler.
Yep exactly!
This is just more heroic in assembly. In assembly you are the master of the world (at least a small silicium silice of it)
Awesome work. I know you are really busy but would you consider doing a few getting started videos on assembler? This video really inspired me to try and create something and you have a great presentation style that is easy to follow. I would even be willing to pay for this if you offered it as premium content via patreon.
Yoooo the cga composite looks amazing! Like an early nes or late colecovision game (which I suppose would be the fictional age of the engine, lol) god, I can't get enough of how amazing this is, you're my inspiration to actually get up and try to learn dos.
Exciting stuff! Thanks for sharing. Good luck with the project!
The original Ultima for the Apple II was written in BASIC...
Yeah, but probably didn't _run_ in it. You can get BASIC compilers.
It's just that the closer to the metal you code in the first place, the more you can hand-optimise the code rather than relying on the compiler to do it for you, as well as the larger a program you can make with any kind of ease because the programming and particularly compiling side of things tends to need a lot more memory (which at the very least may mean more disc accessing, maybe even disc swaps) than the final result does.
With something like Ultima 1 where running speed wasn't really an issue even on a poor CPU (and the actual moving parts of the graphics were limited to a rather small part of the screen), and even memory maybe wasn't super pressing, you could get away with it. If you wanted to make a game which was signficantly more complex, and had more things happening on screen at a higher speed, you'd have to move into C or Pascal, maybe even Assembler.
(and remember even ASM isn't true machine code - it still uses a lot of human readable mnemonics for variables as well as opcodes, doesn't need you to have an intimate knowledge of where every last thing will end up in memory, etc... the compiler takes care of that for you, as well as auto-optimising some common routines if it detects you're using a sloppy version of them, etc...)
Some later versions of the language like QuickBASIC for DOS, or STOS/AMOS (and GFA Basic) for the ST and Amiga, added more low level features and commands and much more powerful compilers whilst still retaining their otherwise fairly friendly HLL interface, so you'll actually find some fully compiled programs and games, particularly shareware but even some commercial examples written using them.
Dune II mentioned! 😍
I'm always surprised to see what I thought was kind of an obscure game has so many fans.
Dune II, obscure ?!? LOL, dude did you live under a rock ? xD
So cool that enthusiasts are making brand new games for these historical machines. Artwork looks great too. Props to the pixel artist
Yes! I definitely wanted to hear more about the development of this game, and I'm stoked that there's going to be an MS-DOS version!
I'm really excited for the full development, David! How do you plan on distributing the game? Would there also be any sort of DRM-type thing? It would be just a nostalgia/throwback joke, but I'm interested to see if you planned on doing that as an optional type thing.
It will be distributed on 3.5" and 5.25" floppy disks, as well as digital download.
You could have that feeling if it ONLY asked about the 3rd word on page 11, and no other words on any other page ;)
So when does it release on steam?
whenever valve makes a version of steam for dos lol
you know there are lots of DOS games on steam, they just come packaged with a configured dosbox (GoG does the same thing)
I know
In a bundle deal with HL3? ;)
Hey David,
You mentioned that you didn't know CGA could display 16 colors. The first game i played (and found out to be able to display 16 colors on CGA) was Tunneler. It's a multiplayer game in a single computer, using only one keyboard. Look it up, it's great fun. The only problem with my Tulip PC compact II (with a NEC V20) was that when moving diagonaly and shooting at the same time, the keyboard couldn't keep up. When both players did that, the computer would have to react to 6 keys being pressed at the same time. One of the players would then just simply be unable to make that desired move.
You probably don't know Tulip by the way. It was a Dutch computer maker which sold really well in the late 80's. People could buy one through their work, and then they could sell working hours, without paying taxes. They even took back stock that was to be shipped to the UK, to meet the demands from Holland. When my parents got it, most of my friends still had PC's with 4.77Mhz processors, when as you know, the NEC V20 had 9.54Mhz.
Thanks again 8bit guy and looking forward to seeing planet X3!