It's been a while since we had a proper discussion thread so here's an attempt at starting another one, following on from the "Discuss: What is the Best 8-bit Magazine Type-In Game Ever?", "New to BBC Micro - Recommended Games?", "Best original BBC micro games?", "Most advanced BBC game?" and "Worst BBC games ever?" topics ...

Which game for Acorn machines was most in need of a hack or upgrade?

This could be a game that was so ridiculously hard you couldn't make progress without a hack of some sort (Nevryon or Barbarian?), a game which had one particularly annoying aspect which needed fixing (such as the bomb collision in Stryker's Run) or just a game which had a screamingly-obvious feature you wished Santa could code 6502 assember for, such as adding a high score table to Mr. Ee!

I'm fortunate enough that most of my Chuckie Egg wishes have been catered for thanks to it's popularity and the many contributions of this fair community. I also managed to encourage Jon Welch to work on a Z-Machine interpreter which is feature complete for v3 on the beeb. I think that if I'm pushed I'm going to suggest that I'd like to have seen a version of Killer Gorilla that didn't didn't require pixel perfection when I tried to jump on the lifts on level 3 ...

Anyone else?

Sam.

Not sure if it's quite what you mean, but I'd love to see a 2010 version of ELITE / Frontier - using all the latest DirectX graphics and high end video cards for some serious GFX.

Elite is still so damn playable in it's original form, but I'd also love to see a new version - it's been too long since Frontier II....

...as for original game in need of an upgrade - I'm going to give the same answer - ELITE - but playable over Econet, so you can PvP! I could have sworn I saw a competition BITD at a show with ELITE players playing against each other on a network, but I've never been able to find any evidence of a networked version.

Mark.

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, I'll have to say Stellar Rescue, to fix the sprite flicker. There's only one sprite on the screen! I've had a go but I know very little about Beeb programming, you seem to need to fight the machine to get it to do what you want.

Wallaby? The precision needed to hit jump and a direction and have them count as simultaneous, which is required to complete Level 5, was just way too unforgiving. It was a good game other than that one thing.

A version of the Electron version of Frak! for the Master 128 in Mode 129 (so it's four colours).

This sounds like a good idea! I've been toying with the idea of remaking old games with an app called "Unity". I'm pretty sure it's C++/Java based. Anyone know what they're doing with those languages? I could knock up some models of the spacecraft!

Anyone? I can provide the required tools if need be.

I would imagine that if you went anywhere near a new version of Elite that Dave Braben would be all over you like a bad rash!

Speaking of collision detection fixes, there's the occasional lack of collision detection in the Repton games.

Sometimes you push a rock and the monster goes through it, killing you!

I've been playing around with Unity for the last couple of months. The coding is quite easy to grasp, and the community is very friendly and helpful. From having not used it at all, I have managed to get most of the start of a game going in just under a month. (Very part time sometimes)

Unfortunately, that is probably true

I would love to see Plan B & Plan B2 made into iPhone/Android versions. Simple concept but hard enough to keep you coming back for more, and of course having accelerometers to move you around would be cool.

JCB Digger flickering issue

stupid keys on felix in factory/fruit monsters.

I contributed my idea for a redux here

Agree about JCB digger though - mentioned it before. Could use Rich's nice new HW scroller.

Repton Infinity using Rich's HW scroller would be nice too.

I would be more pissed off with the disc images and straight ports being freely available than with someone creating something from scratch! We would only have to change the names of things slightly. A 25-30 year old game is surely public domain now anyway?

If he moans about it, we'll bung him a small percentage of the no money we'll get!

Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. Although god knows I wish it did.
Copyright on software is anywhere between 50 and 100 years (not including trademarks) and quite frankly my understanding is that he doesn't take it lightly.

I would think that you would have to offer him more like 75% of the profit if you sold it, or a very large payment for the rights if you didn't.

So what about this oolite thing I noticed here? Has he been threatening anything over that?
That's pretty much what I had in mind so doesn't seem worth doing now anyway.

I don't know specifics, or how other projects may have (or not) approached it I have simply heard as Andy says that these things are not taken lightly when it comes to the IP that is Elite.

My guess is that it all stems from the follow up version that has never yet seen the light of day but I was under the impression that it has been in development for donkeys years. Again just stuff that I've read over the years!

Oolite was created as both a tribute to the original and also to expand on it with modern features - however the crucial difference, I believe, is that not only is it free software and makes no use of the Elite trademarks but it was also written from the ground-up from scratch and is not based on any of the original source code.

Sam.

You beat me to it Samwise
Oolite would be classed as a "clone". It's a bit of a grey area in law, but you can not copyright the idea, just the implementation. So for example if you did a new version of Repton, Superior Interactive would like to talk to you. However if you had a character that collects jewels and kills monsters with rocks, but was unmistakably not Repton (i.e. not green and a lizard), and you could prove that you hadn't used the graphics, sounds or code, you "should" be OK

That's pretty much what I had in mind. If Braben is ok with oolite, he'd be ok with what I did!

I notice though, that oolite starts up with Commander Jameson in the Lave system with a Cobra. Is that not a bit naughty?

Anyway, if anyone wants to try something with Unity as a personal, private project...please let me know!

No need for the quote marks. Superior know about Mole Miner and aren't complaining about it.

Sorry Kraken, no implication was meant. I was just talking in general.

Please God somebody bolt a high-score table onto Nightshade - one with a column not just for the score, but also a percentage of the game completed and maybe a graphic representation of how many of the four bosses you managed to take out.

Pretty please!

gc

In case anyone missed it, my graphics-upgraded version of Lord of the Rings: Game 1 has just been added to the BBCMicro.com archive:

http://www.bbcmicro.com/?p=28

..Kieran