RetroBytes Portal
Programming => Other Games & Projects => Topic started by: flash on November 04, 2009, 09:02:24 pm
-
I just read that this may come to fruition, in the Fortean Times... Hmmm
:D
(And a little Piggie told me!)
-
Stranger things have happened.
I'm very happy with what I wrote last night so at least there's some progress. :)
-
;D I've just had a look through the level titles, crazy stuff. I think I'll borrow 'Horace the bouncer' for one level meself.
By the way, I was planning to buy Psion3 so I can play the HITMW but can't seem to be able to track the game anywhere. What to do with P3 without it? Soks, did you say you bought the actual game for it?
-
Yeah, I bought the actual game...and I bought the Psion just to play it. :)
Horace is part of the 'Games Deluxe" pack. There's one for sale here (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Psion-Series-3-3a-3c-Games-Deluxe-3a_W0QQitemZ180433060754QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_AudioTVElectronics_PDAsAccessories_PDAs_JN?hash=item2a02a60392) - this one is only being shipped to the UK though, but they're always for sale when I check (for fun) so I'm sure you'll find one.
-
Hey, thanks, at least I know that it's part of that compilation thingy. Can't find it on ebay yet but will be on the lookout as it might pop up someplace.
-
If you buy a Psion3 Lobo, I can upload the files (and more) for transfer to one, if you have a pc with a serial port?
-
Did someone mention Horace?.... :)
-
Yeah, sorry!
I remember somebody was once.... ZZZZZzzzz... er... whatever!
:)
LOBO, I may have a spare copy on card if I can find it, please pm your address, mobile, hat size, and golf handicap!
If I can find it I will send you one!
I also did a pack of games for Yellow Computing GMBH which sold over 20,000 units and have NEVER found a copy of, if anyone does I would love it (though I have the source to most of them)
I sort of found it
http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://passions.mettavant.fr/pda.htm&ei=wIaVS7-8J4Lw0gTyrejxDA&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CCoQ7gEwCQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dbalders%2Bpsion%2B3a%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-gb:IE-SearchBox (http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://passions.mettavant.fr/pda.htm&ei=wIaVS7-8J4Lw0gTyrejxDA&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CCoQ7gEwCQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dbalders%2Bpsion%2B3a%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-gb:IE-SearchBox)
Listed as games pack 5 (all mine) and I so wish I could find the original. :'(
-
Hold on, don't pm Mobile, I tend to call at the wrong time and wake the household.
(sorry HK)
-
Ok, send if you find, no mobile for you though (I do the same mistakes calling people at 4AM).
-
Ok, send if you find, no mobile for you though (I do the same mistakes calling people at 4AM).
LOL!!!
but... Golf handicap?
-
Lobo,
I have got a Psion 3a and the gamespack for you and will send it all as soon as I can get to the post office.
All I ask is a full review of both games, a picture of the Mona Lisa in blood, 3 Dodo beaks, a Griffin's feather, and 4 blades of grass from Antartica. Don't let me down...
Grrrrrr..
-
No Golf handicaps, I play baseball.. with bats.
Thanks for the pack, a piece of history is gonna land into my paws. I cannot give you the requested items but I'll look in the fridge, could be something equivalently tasty in there. 8)
-
Hmm...
Ok, from the fridge, Devilled Hamster eggs or, Rashers of streaky rapeseed oil.
-
None of them, I don't eat eggs, from devil nor chicken and only oil is...mm olive methinks.
You can get a burrito, the best on this side of Rio Grande (tacos and nachos per request included).
-
Nutters. :):)
-
Lobo,
The gamepack arrived today, as soon as the Psion3a arrives I will send it to you (both).
One little thing, have you got a serial port to connect the psion? I only say as I have a golf game (and some others) that I would like you to see, but these need to be installed on the psion.
-
Wxcwllwnt! (meaning excellent!)!
Yes I do have a serial so let's see what gives! Very excited, gonna let you know when it arrives!
Woo! :-*
-
<chuckle>
I will let you know as soon as it is posted..
In the mean time, anyone with wonderful searching skills?
There is a games pack I released by Yellow Computing containing 4 games,
Asylum - A breakout/arkanoid game with load of powerups.
Balders - One of my fave Psion games based on Boulderdash.
Blitz - A blitz clone with lots of options.
Wormz - A snake game with a TON of levels.
I think they were the 4 games.
I know I have it somewhere and will have to find it! It is slightly saddening that is sold over 10,000 units (12,300 odd) and I can hardly find a mention online (and Yellow Computing GMBH is no more either)
-
No luck here, searching for Balders Psion gives back 100000 Baldurs Gate results.
Can't even imagine what would happen if I searched for 'Asylum' (brrr...shudders). :D
-
Can't even imagine what would happen if I searched for 'Asylum' (brrr...shudders). :D
I did that...and it lead me back here. Who knew. :)
-
Shame..
I will find my original (somewhere) and post the bins and some scans for fun (at some stage), hopefully someone else will propigate it?
-
I did that...and it lead me back here. Who knew. :)
That's what I was afraid of. :)
-
Ok,
The Psion and Gamepack have arrived - I am just waiting for a link lead to arrive and then I will send it out ;)
-
Ok,
The Psion and Gamepack have arrived - I am just waiting for a link lead to arrive and then I will send it out ;)
:-*
-
Aw!...
-
In the post LobolobbyLoos!
Enjoy!
-
Exclllnnt! Will let you know when it arrives. Unless post office deemed the object as suspicious and hammer it for inspection! :)
-
Hmmm...
The package is in the shape of a Cross and draped in blood-soaked rags, but.. in your climes, perhaps it may not arrive because it is a little too nondescript?
If I get a letter with a free pen in it, the post office will not deliver. But... the bouncy walls here are great, soft, and oh! so white!
Wonderful!
-
No worries, Igor will make sure it arrives safe!
He ate a donkey once.
:)
-
Look what Igor brought today from the graveyard~
(http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/9664/orhaec.jpg) (http://img688.imageshack.us/i/orhaec.jpg/)
Wonderful mate, Horace is kickin' and the whole psion setup is putting my iphone to shame. 8)
There was a bit of a problem to clean all the blood and gibs from the screen but it works top notch, need to check the stigma as well later.
Thanks again, gotta send you that burrito man, definitely! :)
PS. Cool Wagga drawing on the package, btw. :P
-
LOL,
Glad it got there mate!
Sorry about Wagga, but even more sorry for the Curry loving Spider... Glad to pass him on to you - look afer him.
ps. Did you find the backup battery in the label? I almost forgot to send one so slipped it in there.
(If anyone is reading this and is a bit confused - well, that'll teach ya for reading things on this forum.. :) )
-
Holysmokes and I was just about to throw away the package! Yep, the battery is inside, saved! :)
(http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/2081/dingaloo.jpg) (http://img695.imageshack.us/i/dingaloo.jpg/)
for anyone wondering what the heck is that all about- :)
-
Thank god I mentioned it...
LOL..
(now I look silly)
-
Hey, congrats, and welcome to 'Club Horace' (as if we weren't members already). :)
-
Aye, very cool it is. Now I really think 'someone' <cough> oughta do something for the PC port. Heck, this should be ported to anything from wristwatches to old grandpa clock (analog version). :)
Btw, trying to find the manual for this particular series seems almost impossible. Also, is this PsiWin usable with 3a?
EDIT: Ohwait, seems like it is (compatible), goody. Hope that Win7 wont crap on it or something (Vista seems fine so it should work).
EDIT2: Ohwait, found the manual too. Now I know that huge button on the bottom is called 'Space'. Rockin' !
:)
-
LOL!
Yes, space!
Now wtf is that diamond one?
Not sure if psiwin will work in win7? If it does, let me know and I will post Nasty Golf for you if you promise to do me some screen grabs (shortcut is oblong key + one up there + that one over there)
-
Crap! Just tried and it doesn't work (psiwin) on Win7. Damn', what's the bloody difference if it runs on Vista it should run here as well. :(
Ah well, I will have to install it on the old comp with XP as soon as I find the computer (should be under the sink somewhere).
That diamond one seems to be rather important, together with U. All I need to know when entering To Do stuff.
If there was only anything TO DO actually! :)
EDIT: Waitaminute, where the heck did I see support for Vista anyway??
Now that I look at the page where I got psiwin, it only goes from 98 to XP.
Oh, darn, reading skills = - and imagination = + gives - .
-
PsiWin works perfectly under XP.
I hope you get it to work as I want to send you Balders also - another little mascot LOL.. And perhaps my fave game I wrote on the Psi3a. It is only bouderdash (without scrolling) but packed with things to play with.
-
Cool, AmA GonnA setup on XP then! What's the Balders like, any screens to share?
For some reason, every time I turn on this thing it looks as if it's gonna show the 'Tidemarsh' icon in there (I told you I like that one a plenty). :)
-
Yeah, I quite liked Tidemarsh.
Well, Balders is a boulderdash clone (ish) that plays to the strenghs of the p3a. It is all timedand stores a ton of records, and has (i forgot) about 100 levels?
I have no screens because when these were written we did not have the net as it is now and never bothered with promoting it (I need you for some captures mate ;) )
-
Ok, I'm gonna install it then to XP, you send me the game. If all works well then I'll transfer it and grab the screens.
What is the problem with capturing anyway?
-
There is no problem capturing,
the p3a has a screen capture build in and once the screens are captured, all that has to be done is to use psiwin to transfer to a pc and convert the mbm file to a file the pc can use. There is several bits of software for that.
Oh, you will love my little Balders ;)
I will send you some more games soon (there are 5 or 6) but at the moment, the pc is off while I work on this Yummy imac contraption.
-
Ah, Ok, I thought there was something wrong with your device. :)
Righty then, send the stuff or post it someplace, whatever games you got. I've found the mbm converter, hope all goes well. ;)
Heh, imac ey? Excllnt!
:)
-
Ok,
I will sort the stuff out and then email it to ya.
If you can do some nice screens perhaps I can do a nice release post?
-
Allright, as soon as I get the games ama gonna jump to xp and see what I can do with all this. ;)
Btw, currently on Level 2 in Horace. :)
What? The bloody inertia caught me off guard. I know Soks mentioned it but I totally forgot until Horace started bumping off the walls in level2. :)
-
Heh, imac ey? Excllnt!
I have to admit - I've considered getting a 27" iMac instead of that d*mn MacBookPro that nobody knows when will be updated - they're about the same price anyway.
Still waiting for my new windows to be mounted first though. They just began erecting the scaffolding today, so it'll be a while yet.
The reason for postponing the purchase is, as I've mentioned, to have a little less hardware in case someone uses the scaffolding for breaking in over the next couple of months...or however long it takes.
...not that the lack of it keeps the thieves away. The two apartments on the ground floor were burgled less than a week ago - on saturday. I'm two floors up...and a bit nervous. >:( :( :-X :'(
-
Still waiting for my new windows to be mounted first though. They just began erecting the scaffolding today, so it'll be a while yet.
Microsoft does the windows installations on buildings these days???
Wow, I guess they're moving away from digital to real world these days. Hopefully, they'll provide drivers (cops) once your Win crashes (due to robbery). Update Often!! :)
-
Microsoft does the windows installations on buildings these days???
Wow, I guess they're moving away from digital to real world these days. Hopefully, they'll provide drivers (cops) once your Win crashes (due to robbery). Update Often!! :)
I had expected to get this reply. :)
-
I have to admit - I've considered getting a 27" iMac instead of that d*mn MacBookPro that nobody knows when will be updated - they're about the same price anyway.
Still waiting for my new windows to be mounted first though. They just began erecting the scaffolding today, so it'll be a while yet.
The reason for postponing the purchase is, as I've mentioned, to have a little less hardware in case someone uses the scaffolding for breaking in over the next couple of months...or however long it takes.
I must admit that I love my MacBook much more than the iMac (at the moment). The iMac is lovelly, but I expect more for that kinda money.
I wish I had bought the larger MacBook rather than the 13" one - then I perhaps would not have needed the iMac.
-
I must admit that I love my MacBook much more than the iMac (at the moment). The iMac is lovelly, but I expect more for that kinda money.
I wish I had bought the larger MacBook rather than the 13" one - then I perhaps would not have needed the iMac.
Well, there's food for thought. Thanks for that.
I would also prefer the MBP to the iMac and if that's what I'm doing I'll probably buy the 15" version.
Still, let's see what happens.
-
I just get the iMac Mini, which still is a excellent little machine. Dont need any bigger yet.
For the PC version, which language do you write it? If it GLBasic, it can been converted to iPhone as well wrting that as a real PC game.
How do the original game is actuelly?
-
Hah, this one is for Sokks here, totally misplaced it before but finished it an hour ago! :)
(http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/7439/horace000.png) (http://img13.imageshack.us/i/horace000.png/)
-
Hah, this one is for Sokks here, totally misplaced it before but finished it an hour ago! :)
That is beautiful. I love it. Great colors. If that was a painting I would SO hang it up. :-*
-
Thanks, it was meant for the game menu or something. It would look cool on the wall or something. Only one thing is missing though..
..parky..
:) :) :) :)
-
Actually, that screen gave me an idea so try this out quick. Use arrows right, left to move, get close to the flower (until you can't move) but don't touch the ghost. Once there, hit the up arrow and press space.
Now gogerrit!
:)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3606583/monday.rar
-
Hehe nice one Lobo although couldn't seem to jump the flower to get the star?
-
Kinda have to step as close to flower as you can or for as long as Horace can walk. Then press UP arrow so Horace is facing the floating platform with star and then press space, should jump over there where the star is. After that, you can really quit cause it's all screwed up anyway. :)
-
Fantastic to find that people are talking about this classic game up here ;D
I worked at Psion's Repair Center in Greenford in the mid 90s and I remember that everyone went mad when Games Deluxe came out.
Those games rose the bar in terms of extracting performance from a machine with very limited resources.
I remember abusing my Psion.com email address by asking Melbourne House's Fred Milgrom if a 4th Horace game by the original developer William Tang had ever been commissioned and he said categorically that it wasn't. However the UK arm of the company produced a screenshot which I still have somewhere that illustrates that there was one! In those days the sound was broadcast in the morning on Channel 4 and this screenshot and a demo for Mugsy's Revenge appeared. Mugsy eventually appeared - Horace 4 did not.
The ARM7 used in the Series 3s successor the Series 5 was obviously a stronger processor, but access to video RAM directly was more complicated and nobody really managed to achieve the same level of performance relatively speaking - at least what I saw anyway.
I guess the Symbian SDK was the way to go, but it was not easy for somebody without a strong C++ background.
There was a port of Lemmings for the Series 5 by Psygnosis, but it was never released.
I really must find all my disks of this stuff if people are still interested.
Other ports of games were attempted, but never emerged - Jumpy, etc.
Around 2000 I was repairing broken database (.dbf) files, etc on a regular basis as we had access to the file specifications.
I dug a lot of people out of the doldrums by resurrecting what I could from a corrupt files and OPLDatabase files used in OPL were even simpler.
I was asked to look at the Horace level data file and convert it - which I did, but the game itself never appeared and nobody asked for anything else.
At that time an application called RevTran had appeared and people were reverse translating enmass. But despite all the blueprints there nobody finished the Series 5 port to the best of my knowledge.
I hope the new port will finally appear!
-
I just had to dig out my archive :-[
(http://www.fixater.com/images/horace1.jpg)
-
Thanks for all the info, really nice to hear all that.
I was a huge fan of the psion series in general, even writing games on the original 2 line organisers.
I was thrilled when I was asked to write a Horace game for the 3a even though I did cop out a little and to a platform game lol, but I was only given 2 weeks and really did not have time for innovation.
The code was post here somewher I believe?
I wonder what the spectrum Horace 4 would have played like?
-
Ah that was my first job at Psion - repairing Org II 2 line CM, XP, etc and the later 4 line LZ & LZ64s.
They were fantastic machines and I still have them all.
It's all coming back now ;D
We were amazed the Series 3 machines were in production for so long when you think about the shelf life of the average mobile phone today.
The 3mx was the final masterpiece. Much faster CPU, but we had to tune it down to continue to play Horace!
I honestly don't know much more about Horace 4 (although I asked everyone I could think of) than the screenshot from the Spectrum demos and it had originated from the UK arm of Melbourne House and not the original guys across the pond...but then again this would be circa 1986 and things get forgotten or distorted by the hands of time perhaps?
Maybe somebody, somewhere will dig out where that came from and share it someday.
You know, we really liked Stigma as well and there was another called Bomz that kept me busy for many an hour.
Stigma would also be a fitting candidate to port to something like an iPhone?
Yep - we were all in awe of HATMW and I have to admit that I was one of the first to do the reverse translate in order to obtain the defnitive list of "easter eggs" when you enter the names into the score table! - Sorry about that! :-[
-
RevTraning Horace - tut tut lol.
Bomz was a pretty good game - I must admit that I played that for many an hour as well.
One thing that is a shame is my inability to transfer anything to my 3a now. Nothing I have has com ports for the lead :( I have a few other 3a games that I did and am proud of, including a golf game with many twists and a puzzle boulderdash game called balders. Some were released by Yellow Computing and though selling many units (earning more than game 3a for me) there is no info on them online. I would love to change that.
I did send a member Lobo a 3a and the games pack and will send the games at some point. I have everything stll except the stigma5 source sadly. It would be nice to get some picture post and some box pics.
You must have had a lot of fun in the day! The psion series were wonderful machines and we still use 5mx's at work to this day for data management.
-
Have to admit that screen from the previous page is fantastic.
Wonder how would HITMW look on C64 (oh and the first one to say 'brown' gets punched in the pants)!
-
Blue!
(Then again I am colour blind)
-
Blue!
(Then again I am colour blind)
Well...you're yellow. :D
-
I really must find all my disks of this stuff if people are still interested.
I certainly am!
-
Me too.
-
I hope the new port will finally appear!
We were all hoping back in '76...
Seems to have gone the same way as the Spectrum port :) :)