Is New 68000 Gaming Viable ? - Macintosh Garden

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2010, June 8 - 2:53pm

CaryMG

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Joined: 2009 Apr 14

Is New 68000 Gaming Viable ?

I look at the healthy amount of messages here.

And thank the guys who bring "Macintosh Garden" from the dead!
Apparently, the original mod didn't give a damn anymore & wouldn't even
extend the courtesy of an email reply to the people who *did*.
So it's readily apparent 68000 is revered.

Which makes me ask ....
Is 68000 gaming viable?
What I mean is: if: if new 68000 games are made for Macintosh, would anyone -- here,
particularly -- get excited & look forward to it?

I know about the RetroChallenge & how succesful *that* is, but it' doesn't involve only 68000 Macintoshes.
There're other machines & 8-bit ones included, too.

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2010, June 8 - 4:33pm

Mr. Ksoft

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Joined: 2010 Jun 8

Although I don't really have coding experience, I've considered putting together some new games using the ol' Mac port of Klik & Play. They'd be basic but at least new. It'd be fun to do something niche like that.

2010, June 8 - 5:09pm

CaryMG

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Joined: 2009 Apr 14

Well, that's a *start*. lol

2010, June 8 - 5:18pm

Innes

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Joined: 2009 Aug 19

68k gaming is very niche, i think its very unlikely that there would be many skilled people that decide to develop new games for it

However, games produced with game makers like Klick & Play, World Builder (i think thats one) or Coldstone might be plausible, maybe hypercard

2010, June 8 - 5:18pm

Bolkonskij

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Joined: 2009 Aug 3

I'd be very excited as I always get with any homebrew games. It reminds me of the days when people would sit down to create a game just because of an exciting idea - and not because of marketing research. I miss those days when games were less predictable and thus would even buy a copy - if it's a well-made game of course. So yes, my LC III needs new games

2010, June 8 - 8:42pm

CaryMG

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Joined: 2009 Apr 14

Excellent !

2010, June 9 - 1:37am

amatecha

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Joined: 2010 Mar 10

I would be totally stoked if new "classic" games were made! As for people to work on it, well, I made lots of pixel arts (tons of editing sprites in Realmz with ResEdit, and Hotline user icons), stuff like that. As well, I do a lot of music work. I guess the 68k machines would be mostly 11khz or 22khz audio, but that's fine anyways!

2010, June 9 - 7:51pm

(Reply to #7) #8

CaryMG

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Joined: 2009 Apr 14

@amatecha
Right on!

11 or 22KHz is around telephone/AM radio resolution, respectively.
22KHz is about half of CD quality.
"Super Studio Session" renders in that rez.
And on a boxmac, that's not bad at all !

2010, June 9 - 7:54pm

(Reply to #7) #9

CaryMG

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Joined: 2009 Apr 14

Sorry for the doublemessage.

2010, June 9 - 7:49am

#10

watchsmart

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Joined: 2009 Apr 10

I would love/play/buy new games for 68k Macs!

2010, June 9 - 11:35am

#11

MCP

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Joined: 2010 Mar 12

You'd be better off making games for newer hardware that utilize old-school graphics or sounds, etc.

2010, June 9 - 4:41pm

#12

bertyboy

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Joined: 2009 Jun 14

Gotta agree with MCP. XCode makes it very easy to write OSX native software, for OSX back to 10.3 and 10.2 if you want to. There's an insane amount of free code in XCode and the tutorials.

Of course, this cuts off those who use a Mac emulator under Windows or Linux.

Whatever, don't expect to make money from it. If you want to make money, write something for iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad. Apress have a couple of excellent books on doing this.

2010, June 23 - 9:57am

(Reply to #10) #13

MikeTomTom

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Joined: 2009 Dec 7

Gotta agree with MCP. XCode makes it very easy to write OSX native software, for OSX back to 10.3 and 10.2 if you want to. There's an insane amount of free code in XCode and the tutorials.

Of course, this cuts off those who use a Mac emulator under Windows or Linux.

Except for those running PearPC

PearPC running Mac OS 10.3x (Panther), goes pretty well on this Win XP lappy. Only thing that doesn't work for me is networking - it is supposed to with "a bit of work" but I can't get enthused enough to fix it.

2010, June 9 - 8:28pm

#14

amatecha

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Joined: 2010 Mar 10

Well, obviously no one would make a 68k game and expect to make any money from it. That said, I would still make artwork and music and possibly sounds for someone who was developing a classic game as such. ^_^

2010, June 9 - 11:35pm

#15

CaryMG

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Joined: 2009 Apr 14

AMATECHA
... no one would make a 68k game and expect to make any money from it.

I beg to *respectfully* differ.

Read this for the whole sad, sordid tale .... > http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2072&start=0&hilit=CaryMG

2010, June 10 - 9:06am

#16

bertyboy

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Joined: 2009 Jun 14

Ouch.

No matter how smart we are, we get caught out eventually if we're ever anything more polite than a sabre-tooth who's found all the dentists have closed for the next two weeks:

eBay trading. Can do quite well, and for a long time I always wondered why I'd see a lot of ads with "UK bidders only". You build up a good 100% positive feedback score, then you start to accept bids from eastern europe, and for the nice stuff too. You ask them if they want to pay for recorded delivery or insurance (advised when it gets to £40 or more). No they don't.

Everything, without exception, that is posted to eastern europe disappears. And they threaten to give you negative feedback if you don't refund them completely. So UK bidders only, but they still ask.

What makes it worse, I should have known. I used to work for a large US computer and IT services multinational (not Apple unfortunately), and the same thing happened when the curtain came down, they'd order millions of dollars of kit, mainframes, thousands of desktops, all high spec. But no payment was ever made, when pushed for the money, we'd get the "come and get it" response.

2010, June 10 - 9:17am

#17

Bolkonskij

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Joined: 2009 Aug 3

Well, 70 years of socialism degenerates people. I know what I speak of, first hand.

But its very sad if something like this happens in such a small community like ours. I assume there is no way to get it undone. Certainly CaryMG has learnt his lesson from that I suppose.

If I would be better at C or at least have more free time I'd love to help you out Cary, but right now it's unfortunately no option. Best of luck anyway with your project!

2010, June 10 - 2:19pm

#18

iig

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Joined: 2009 Jul 16

i would get excited if new games were made, but thats just me.
As for writing new games, that would be hard, as there are not very many drawing librarys(in fact, non that i know off) that support 68k machines.

2010, June 15 - 9:38pm

#19

CaryMG

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Joined: 2009 Apr 14

@Bolkonskij
Thank you for the kind words.
It's one of those things that you don't "forget", per se -- you just kind of/sort of
push away from your frontal perception & not dwell on it.

On the topic ....
I just finished watching SONY's E310 pressconference & I've got "Portal 2" fever!
Why ?
'Cause Gabe "I'll-NEVER-Make-Console-Game" Newell knocked everyone on
thier backsides by striding out onstage.
He showed the first footage ever of "Portal 2".
As an aside, 2 things ....
1] I'll betcha this is what ends up as "HalfLife 2: Episode 3" -- watch the footage & you'll see what I mean.
2] He says P2 on the PS3 will be the best version ever ....
... for consoles. lol
Which I agree with, but he *should've* said: "Best version *period*." since when making PC games,
you hafta deal with 55 different possible configurations, whereas a PS3's a PS3 -- it is what it is what it is.
When you program for *it*, you're programming for the same specs *everyone* who owns that machine has.
And, as such, you can really wring every last single drop of power out of it:
"down to the metal" as they say in the devbiz.

So watching the clip, I thought: "Y'know .... Colored portals aren't necessary.
Both blue & orange portals -- colored on both sides -- an be entered/exited into.
Sometimes, when having to make portals far from each other, like around a corner or whatever,
it'll slip my mind which portal I shot first: an orange one or a blue one,
and so I'll open the wrong one & hafta retrace my sometimes precarious steps to reset eveyhting.
With *colorless* -- or same colored -- portals, that isn't a factor.
And with altogether *noncolored* portal plus a flateshade 3D engine
ala "HellCats Over The Pacific", let's say, an idea grabbed me ....

Wait for it ....
"Portal" for 68000 Macintoshes !
You like ?

2010, June 20 - 11:03pm

#20

Euryale

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Joined: 2009 Jul 22

I don´t see why not,
I knwo some people who still make programs on Applesoft BASIC.

2010, June 21 - 11:38am

#21

IIGS_User

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Joined: 2009 Apr 8

Euryale wrote
I knwo some people who still make programs on Applesoft BASIC.

Me, not.
At least, since switching from Apple ][ to Mac.

2010, June 22 - 5:29pm

#22

CaryMG

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Joined: 2009 Apr 14

Yeah ....

I mean, there's a thing called "Progressive Rendering" or something like that.
Instead of storing artdata, the code's just a few draw commands & entire worlds -- *with*,
should you desire texturemapping -- can be displayed with *kilobytes* of binary.

And with from 400 to 1.044 KB to work with on a floppydisk, that makes it *perfect*.

2010, June 22 - 11:37pm

#23

Euryale

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Joined: 2009 Jul 22

I don´t do programming but I have fun tampering with BASIC programs
since some of them are easy to understand and still usable
specially the Math formulas you find in them,
for example there´s a calendar in BASIC that shows what day was on certain year
or days between dates, etc..
it´s incredible that those programs don´t use no more than 10 lines of code in BASIC.

I´ve inherently learned, some logic and Math just by tampering with that.

2010, June 27 - 3:10am

#24

lopaka1998

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Joined: 2009 Apr 22

I would love it - but only if a good team went into designing it - which today I don't think is practical. I would be interested in games like Quest for Glory, Tetris Max, Jewelbox, Carmageddon, Indiana Jones, Secret of Monkey Island, etc... Those types of games take a lot of resources to build - aka a lot of time, people and money - which today because of the vintage nature of these machines, isn't really practical, unfortunately.