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Post by gamer89 on Aug 15, 2007 8:15:39 GMT -5
Hello everyone,
In the late eighties, I spent hours playing “The Great Escape” on a CPC 464. I would therefore be happy to know in which language (C, Z80 assembly...) this great classic was written and which tools were used to design its graphics. I loved to play this game, because its atmosphere was very realistic. The gameplay was excellent and the plot was ingenious because I thought the area was huge although it actually was not (there was always a locked door or a fence that had to be opened). Could someone here provide me with some technical information on what was at the time my favorite game?
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Post by Gary on Aug 15, 2007 11:58:10 GMT -5
Hi.
Don't know if anyone on this board will be able to help. You see, Great Escape was written by Denton Designs (coded by John Heap, IIRC). You may have a long wait for a reply. Sorry.
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Post by Mark Jones Junior on Aug 15, 2007 13:22:55 GMT -5
I heard it was written by casting spells every night for 4 weeks up on yonder misty hill.
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Post by gamer89 on Aug 16, 2007 2:07:11 GMT -5
Thank you for the hints. I thought Ocean had the source code of this game. The isometric 3D game engine is very interesting. It was reused in “Where Time Stood Still”, also known as an Ocean game. It is somewhat similar to “Head over Heals”, which I also used to play. What was the development environment of “Head over Heels”? Was it written in C, C++ or an assembly language? Which tools did you use to design the graphics?
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Post by Paulie on Aug 16, 2007 15:53:54 GMT -5
Whilst I don't know for sure, I can't imagine WTSS or Great Escape being written in anything other than Z80 assembler. C/C++ compilers weren't really an option back in the late 80's what with limited ram and naive optimisers.
Certainly Head over Heels was written in Z80 and ported to 6502 and 68000 by Colin Porche for the C64 and ST respectively. HOH was a nice bit of code - I remember going through the Z80 listings with Colin when he was porting it - Jon commented code like a demon!
IIRC HOH graphics were put together in Melbourne Draw with the actual map construction from the isometric blocks being typed directly into the source code by Jon Ritman!
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Post by gamer89 on Aug 17, 2007 3:45:58 GMT -5
Do you mean to say that most of these games were written in assembly languages? I find it amazing and demanding great skills. I thought they were written in C. I had never heard of Melbourne Draw, but I have found its manual on cpcwiki. As for Denton Designs, the only technical information I came across on the Internet is they used a Sage computer system to develop their games. I have no idea of how they could possibly work with this equipment.
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Post by Paulie on Aug 17, 2007 17:36:30 GMT -5
Heavens yes - we only really started using C on the early 286/386 PC products - using a high level language was almost unheard of on home computers / consoles until the PSX.
Even back on the ST and Amiga the C compilers were woefully inadequate - it wasn't until Borland came along with Turbo C/CPP that compiler back ends started generating remotely decent code.
Funny you should mention the Sage machines - Head Over Heels on the C64 was written on one! Colin P and most of the Denton crew were ex-Imagine and they did everything on Sage systems.
Melbourne draw was great for the time - Ocean had its own patched version of it that allowed you to grab sprites off the screens amongst other bits 'n pieces.
- P.
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Post by gamer89 on Aug 18, 2007 8:06:43 GMT -5
Thank you for this information. I spent hours playing these games about 1989 on my CPC. I especially loved the isometric 3D view featured in such games as "The Great Escape", "Batman" or "Head Over Heals". I was not aware of the technical limitations of my computer at the time, thanks to their ingenious design. Since I was often stuck asking myself how to enter a new room, I could imagine anything behind and the games seemed very huge. What is behind this door? This was the question working on my mind. I dreamt of customizing the games, adding new characters and designing new places. This was not so easy indeed with mere Locomotive Basic, 64KB and a tape recorder. I am happy to understand better how it works. I came across interesting web sites giving a more accurate idea of what the development environment actually looked like : Z80 assembly and Sage systems.
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