Hi,

I've been thinking recently about what makes a good retro title and what everyone thinks should be considered when starting development of a new game.

I think it might make a useful discussion thread to hear what everyone's experiences are, in the hopes that we can learn from each other. I'm thinking less here about great programming tricks (feel free to start a new topic on those!), but the higher level game design - maybe stretching down to what bits of the game you might address first, or how much memory you might expect to allocate for various functions.

However, as well as that technical stuff, what features do we think are important to a game that should be aimed for. I'm a strong advocate of joystick support, as beeb games often suffered in that regard, and yet it's a hugely important feature for accessibility reasons. I've met several ppl at shows who have cited this. Our upcoming Hyper Viper title has had a high score table retro-fitted, which really crystalises the competitive addiction of the game. I also find good keyboard response really important, and is often the thing that can put me off completely otherwise appealing games (e.g. Stryker's Run).

Thoughts, anyone? I'm genuinely interested to hear what other people think is important in a retro game?

Sam.

Not "important" by any means but I'd love to see the ability to save the high score table to disc. Obviously that's a memory hogger and I realise that it's technically impossible a lot of the time due to code relocation but it's one of the things that makes arcade games MUCH more playable, and it would retro computer ones too.

Balloons

@MartinW. Interesting ... you're right that memory relocation usually makes saving to disc a lot more awkward. As discussed here, it should be a lot easier to do the first half - loading in a high score table before the relocation stuff happens. I attached a loader for Chuckie Egg to that topic which will allow you to load in a table from disc. I suppose one way to add the saving routine without leaving the DFS workspace untouched during the main game, might be to have an option to exit the game which restores the DFS workspace and leaves the high score data somewhere that won't be overwritten, then runs another simple program which takes that data and asks you for a filename to save to on the disc.

Sam.

Save states or password access for levels. Don't like having to play a game from the start to get to a place I'd got up to.

I'd add in my vote for savable high scores and joystick support.

What do I think about, if I think there's anything technically tricky that might be pushing limits or speed then I'd write some test routines first to see if it's technically feasible. If it's an original game I don't tend to go as far as story boarding but will sketch out main ideas, character interactions and screens. Beyond that I'd probably write down the properties of characters and how I'm going to store my levels efficiently. Still without writing any actual code.

A level or sprite editor in a game always extends the life of it - I still play with Repton 3, Infinity and Lost Realms, Magic Mushrooms, Pipeline, Impact! etc from time to to time as you can be creative with them. It's the reason I only ever play Electron Frak! these days too (that and the collision detection - I'd love a Master 128 version of Frak using the Electron game engine with the BBC Micro graphics and sound!).

I've never really cared about savable high scores - I always prefer to start from scratch each time I play - but I know serious gamers do value having them.

I think because writing a retro title is pretty much a labour of love, this is very much a personal thing. For instance some people like to do a conversion of a title not yet on that particular platform, yet others like to work with original content.

I have always wanted to do a BBC game for a long time, and the thing which sparked off me actually working on it was James Watson beginning his Two Towers game, although sadly now it looks like that won't see the light of day, which is a pity.

As often is the case, the idea for Mountain Panic came to me in the shower. I was thinking what game would best suit the BBC's rather limited colour palette, and since it has white,cyan and blue, effectively 3 shades of blue, I decided upon an ice-based game. The rest is history (almost).


Two things which were definitely lacking on the BBC in the day. The first one is joystick support, the second being decent graphics. Dave Moore was kind enough to send me a joystick to code with, and I have put joystick support into Mountain Panic and hopefully addressed the issue with graphics; primarily by getting someone else to draw them

At the end of the day there's little money in the retro scene, it's very much a personal thing so my answer would ultimately be - think about whatever you like when designing your game!

ahh, the colour palette available ... that's an interesting one I hadn't considered before.

Sam.