Homebrew Extra - Retro Gamer 269
- andrewrfisher
- May 13
- 16 min read
We have sad news to share, with the death of New Zealand-born programmer Mark Sibly in December. Mark was responsible for the original Amiga version of Blitz Basic, a popular language that helped create many games – including Total Wormage, the forerunner of the classic Worms. The language moved to Windows, while Mark would develop a similar language, Monkey, in the 2010s. Development of Blitz Basic continues under the new name AmiBlitz. Rest in peace, Mark.
QUICK LINKS:
FRESH ENCOUNTER - Interview with Mickael Pointier on Encounter HD (Oric/Steam)
What got you interested in coding for the Oric?
Back in 1983, I was looking at computers in shops and catalogues. I then discovered there was a local computer club which had a ZX-80, a Vic 20 and a couple of other obscure machines, where I discovered BASIC programming.
I got the Oric Atmos in particular because I was in a Boy Scouts troop at the time, and my squad leader had an Oric Atmos, and the machine looked stunning!
At the time, I had no real knowledge about the differences between the machines, and in the price range I could afford (I had to work during the summer holiday break to be able to buy the machine), the Atmos seemed like the most bang for the bucks.
I used the Oric quite a lot, until about 1987 (or late 1986?) when I had to sell it to buy an Atari ST.
There are, unfortunately, not many traces of what I did back then, because, stupidly, I sold all my tapes with the Oric.
The only trace I could find is a printed copy of an earlier version of "Panic Miner Mazer", an action game with about 30 levels where the player needs to collect all the pills in a maze (like in Pac-Man basically), but with a twist:
Some of the monsters just follow the maze like in Pac-Man, but some others are able to destroy walls over time, so after a while, you are in a hectic chase to get the last pills while all the monsters are just converging on you.
You can see the old listing here:
What is your development environment, and any major tools?
For the graphics, I've been using Paint Shop Pro for the last 25 years, still using Paint Shop Pro 9 from 2004 on Windows 10 and 11.
Regarding text editors, that has evolved over the years, from Visual Studio 6 to Ultra Edit to Sublime Text.
These days, I'm using Visual Code, because despite being written in JavaScript, it's actually much nicer to use than Visual Studio, which has gotten progressively worse over time.
For the rest of the tooling (compilers, image converters, etc), it's basically all relying on the Oric SDK (https://osdk.org)
I had to do quite a few updates to the OSDK for Encounter, but they have not yet been published, so nobody can rebuild the project without making significant effort!
What made you decide to remaster the 1983 game Encounter?
I had written quite a long blog post about that https://blog.defence-force.org/index.php?page=articles&ref=ART85
The short answer is that in France in the 80s, most people could not read English beyond very basic stuff, so the only non-localised games you would find in shops were action games, and even then, they would come with a small additional leaflet in French to explain the basic controls.
What that means is that finding a game like Encounter in a shop in Angers in 1984 was at best an anomaly: The game was 100% in English, with no additional note of any kind.
For some reason, I bought the game, and that became the way I basically started learning English, using a French-English dictionary to figure out what the heck was "a thug" or "some twine" or "a greenhouse".
But the game was 100% textual, there was not even an intro image (contrary to the ZX Spectrum version, for example), and the only sounds were the BASIC instructions like PING, SHOOT, and EXPLODE used here and there.
Came the summer of 1985, where I decided that this game deserved to have some graphics, so I spent some time adding some HIRES, CURSET, DRAW, CIRCLE, FILL, etc... commands to draw some trees, some clouds, a house, etc...
Of course, after a couple of weeks, I had only managed to get just a few scenes out of 40+ locations when the machine ran out of memory.
The project got buried, but in 2018, I decided to give it a shot at it again for a new series of videos for my YouTube channel, called "Upgrade Time" (see: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuBEOCYVlum9cOkshSXEkOxALYoe3LVXz )
I did 17 videos, from explaining how the original code worked, to how to optimise BASIC code, and how to improve the code by using the BASIC extensions provided by SEDORIC (one of the Oric disk operating systems).
In the end, there was indeed a working Encounter game, still in BASIC, but with saved high scores, an intro sequence, some proper graphical scenes for each location, etc...
But as usual, when you start improving the quality of something, the rest suddenly looks very barren: There was still no sound, no music, no animation, and it was still the same game at the core with the same syntax analyser.
I was in a bad spot and was not far from burnout (see: https://blog.defence-force.org/index.php?page=articles&ref=ART60 ) because I was doing too many things, helping too many people, and I could simply not do it anymore.
So nothing happened for one year, and then I decided to do things properly and reuse my demo system (which also had been used successfully by Chema for Blake's 7) and redo the game in C and assembler instead of BASIC.
Another decision was to stop doing the videos because they were taking a serious toll on my health (see: https://blog.defence-force.org/index.php?page=articles&ref=ART54 )
What have been the biggest challenges in making it a graphical adventure with animations and music?
Memory, both in the machine and on the disk.
To avoid making the game too slow, I need to cache a lot of data because a floppy disk is quite slow, but that means the memory is at a premium, and that's basically what has been slowing me down in the last few months of the project.
Size-wise, it's probably one of the largest released Oric games (Twilighte's Wurlde would have beaten that easily, but unfortunately, the game will probably never be finished).
A normal Oric 3" floppy can store up to 360KB of raw data, but a normal DOS floppy requires some additional data for the DOS itself, directory, allocation tables, etc...
The Floppy Builder system used on this game does not have a DOS at all, just a tiny loader that uses custom storage on disk, and everything is compressed on the disk and uncompressed on the fly, so ultimately there is about 751 KB of binary data on the disk.
The 2018 version of Encounter had just 50 images; this new version, with all the overlays, cut scenes, etc, has a total of 125 images, then there's the 20ish sound effects and the six music tracks from Per.
What games inspired this new style Encounter?
In the spirit, I think I did the text adventure equivalent of a Point and Click game like Maniac Mansion or Day of the Tentacle: The game has ever fewer words of vocabulary compared to the original Encounter, and instead the game uses more contextual actions to figure out what makes sense.
So basically, if you are at the right location and you use the right item, the right thing happens.
And if, for some reason, it's not possible because something is missing, the game tries to give you a hint about what the problem may be.
A large part of the testers' work was to find out which interactions I missed or which messages were not clear.
Are you planning a physical release as well as a download?
Kind of, it's difficult.
If the game was on tape, that would be a no-brainer: There are plenty of companies that can produce batches of tapes, complete with labels, inlays, record the audio, etc, with professional quality for relatively cheap.
For a disk game on the Oric, that's a whole lot more complicated!
There were many, many, many Amstrad CPC or Commodore 64 floppy disk drive owners, and it's not uncommon for them to use their physical machine with real floppies.
The Oric Microdisc was extremely expensive back then, so almost no software was released for it, resulting in very few people buying them.
A French alternative, the Jasmin by TRAN was much cheaper and sold in larger quantities, but it was not compatible with the Microdisc; it had its own DOS with its own syntax, and similarly, very few official releases were made for disk.
What that means is that in 2024, if you take the number of people who are interested in Oric stuff, you probably have 90% of people only using emulators.
Of the ones who use their real Oric, a vast majority of them only play the games from their childhood, which were all on tapes, either loading real tapes, using Tapduino, or the Erebus tape emulator device.
We managed to get some traction and a significant increase in the number of disk users because we released many demos and games on disk, so in 2014, "Retro Master" was motivated to build the Cumulus, which was the first disk emulator for the Oric.
Then, a few years later, we got some people building some Microdisc and Cumana controller replicas, then Zaxon started selling the Cumana Reborn (which is a combo Cumana controller board plus a Gotek drive all in one), and so on, which should have the LOCI device starting to be available.
So we have a hugely fragmented ownership, and to cover all bases, I would need to:
- Make a 3" version for Microdisc owners (knowing that it requires a double-sided drive, and some earlier microdiscs are single-sided)
- Make 3.5" and 5.25" versions for people who have controller boards but no 3" drives (because 3.5" and 5.25" are much easier and cheaper to find)
- Some SD card versions with the file in.DSK format for Cumulus owners
- Some USB versions with the file in.HFE format for the Cumana Reborn or Gotek/HxC floppy emulator users
That's a mess.
So my current idea is the following: A few years back, I made some professional prints of 20 labels and 20 inlays for some of the best Oric games (see: https://defence-force.org/download/oric/games/print/ )
I will make a small series of 20 games myself, using some floppies I found on eBay (and crossing my fingers that they format properly for the Oric without errors), a spare 3" drive and a Greaseweazle.
I will gift these homemade versions to prominent members of the Oric community who have been particularly significant by helping, making games, articles, tools, etc...
I will probably also have some kind of contest (possibly have them do a speed run of the game) after the game launch to give away a couple of games to the lucky winners.
In addition, people will have access to the label and the inlay pictures so they can print their own version if they want.
Obviously, if the game sells like pancakes and there's a real demand for physical versions, I could revisit that, but let's be realistic: It's still at the core an 8-bit text adventure game for a quite obscure system!
Are you working on any other projects?
When I started the second reboot of Encounter, I decided to freeze every other project.
I've done a couple of small demos or articles, I've given some interviews, etc, but nothing requiring a sustained amount of work.
Realistically, considering how much time I spend on a project, Encounter will probably be my last very big project on the Oric, which is why I'm investing so much time in it: When you do things, do it well, or else you will have regrets later!
So the current plan is to release Encounter, fix the issues that people will find (they always do), and there will be a couple of small surprise updates of the game for the weeks or months after the game launch.
After that, I'm probably going to take a few months' sabbatical in 2025: I've been working in the video game industry non-stop for almost 30 years (since January 1995), so I guess I could do with a break: See friends, family, a couple of countries I wanted to visit, etc...
What's next?
Well, I still have my Dungeon Master prototype ( https://defenceforce.itch.io/dungeon-master-oric ) as well as Quantum FX Turbo Ultra ( https://defenceforce.itch.io/quantum-fx-turbo-ultra-oric ), which I'd like to finish.
The Oric deserves a proper futuristic racing game!
LINKS:
- The Steam store page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3319780/Encounter
- The itch.io store page: https://defenceforce.itch.io/encounter
NEWS BYTES
Amiga: Electric Black Sheep blew our minds with the FMV game Star Dust Wars (Director’s Cut). https://bit.ly/stardustwars
Amstrad CPC: RetroSouls converted the rock-throwing Gommy: Medieval Defender, also available for MSX and Spectrum. https://bit.ly/gommy-cpc
Atari STE: Superb racing game FASTER from Jonathan Thomas - previewed in issue 265 – is now available free - https://bit.ly/faster-ste
Atari XE/XL: Vega released his superb Bubble Bobble conversion, which needs 64K, in disk or DCART format. https://bit.ly/bubblebobble-xe
C64: Try to save Santa and the Elves in the Lemmings-inspired puzzle game Santa’s Workout 4 from Vector5 Games (and check out the whole series). https://bit.ly/santasworkout4
eBook: Sean McManus released a free eBook collecting his articles from Crash and Amtix, along with Amstrad type-in listings. https://bit.ly/mcmanus-ebook
Game Boy Color: Mico27 produced a superb “remake” of the classic Super Mario Bros – with a second quest, randomiser mode, and more - in GB Studio, showing what the utility can do. https://bit.ly/mariomini-gbc
Lynx: Lynx Jam 2024 had its own custom tile set and theme of “Maximum Destruction”. https://bit.ly/lynxjam2024
Mega Duck: Three great Game Boy shmups were patched by bbbbbr – Nocptern, Genesis II, and Lunar Lancer (reviewed this issue). https://bbbbbr.itch.io/
PET: Wolfenstein 3D for the 32K PET – that’s what Jimbo achieved with Escape from PETSCII Castle. https://bit.ly/petscii-castle
SNES: Woodfrog revealed a two-level demo of cute platformer Till & Hat (pictured). https://bit.ly/tillhat-demo
CHAMPION CODER - 0xc0de
[Info]
From: The Netherlands
Website: bit.ly/0xc0de-games
Format: Acorn Electron, BBC Micro
Previous games: Soko-Ban, Python, Electrobots, Elementum
Working on: Electroniq browser-based emulator - bit.ly/electroniq
What got you into coding for the Acorn Electron?
The Acorn Electron was my first real childhood computer. By 1986, it was sold cheaply here in the Netherlands. I have fond memories of playing many games on it, together with my brother and our friends. Besides playing games, I was immediately interested in making simple programs and games on that machine. Mostly in BBC BASIC and later on, I dabbled with 6502 assembly. Assembly was like magic to me back then, and I couldn't fully grasp it at the time.
Fast forward 32+ years! I rediscovered the Acorn Electron, neatly stored away in a box in my loft. Being built like a bus, it fired up first try without any problems. I connected with other retro coders, mainly on Twitter and the Stardot forum. And soon enough, I found myself happily coding away on the Electron once more. With a little more experience and all the information you need on the internet, I quickly made progress in fulfilling my childhood dream of making my own 8-bit games on the Electron.
What is your usual development environment for making games?
I acquired quite a few Acorn Electrons and some old and new hardware expansions for it in the past couple of years, but I almost never code on the Electron itself. My development environment is a Windows laptop running VSCode and some tools I wrote along the way: a 6502-macro assembler, my Acorn Electron emulator, some tools for creating disk and tape images, etc. I also use other existing Acorn Electron emulators for testing and various modern tools for creating sprites (Aseprite) and tile maps (Tiled).
What made you decide to write your own emulator?
I am always actively looking for interesting hobby projects that broadly revolve around the Acorn Electron and its 6502 CPU. I enjoy a challenge, learning new things, using new tools and most of all having fun while doing it. It must not feel like a day job after all! This is why I relearnt 6502 assembly and created quite a few games for the Electron. And it is also the reason why I make free tools like my 6502-macro assembler (max65) and now my Acorn Electron emulator (Electroniq).
What would you say are the toughest parts of creating an emulator?
Depending on the machine you are trying to emulate, the toughest parts, in my opinion, are trying to get near-perfect timing for audio and video, supporting the many old and new hardware expansions and getting the timing and quirks of the CPU and supporting chips just right.
What particular challenges does emulating the Electron pose?
The Electron is a fairly simple machine with a few quirks. The only chips of interest are the 6502 CPU and the ULA. The Electron suffers from RAM contention between the CPU and ULA, which slows down the CPU from 2MHz to 1MHz when RAM is accessed. Additionally, the CPU is halted during the active part of each scanline in high-bandwidth graphics modes. This is because the ULA needs to access RAM exclusively while generating the video signal! In general, the ULA is not well documented at all. In fact, I discovered a way of exploiting a new hardware glitch not that long ago, just by experimenting with the ULA. These little things are notoriously hard to get right in an emulator.
How easy is it to support disks, tapes, and SD cards within the emulator?
The Electron has legacy and modern storage options. I wanted to support tape, disk, and SD card images in my emulator for storage. That means diving head first into the fascinating world of emulating part of the 1770 floppy disc controller and part of the SPI protocol for accessing SD cards. Again, I learnt a lot and had a lot of fun researching and coding it. It was also complicated and frustrating at times for a software guy like me. I can't really describe the joy of getting the first positive results when the emulation of these components starts working!
Your Electroniq emulator is web-based - was there a reason for working this way?
My very first unpublished prototype of Electroniq was written as a Windows application. Mainly because that is what I am comfortable with. I decided to rewrite Electroniq from scratch because the original code got ugly and difficult to maintain, but also because I wanted to experiment with WebAssembly (WASM). The idea is that an online emulator, written in WebAssembly and a small part in JavaScript, is easier to deploy because it should (in theory!) just work in any modern browser on any platform. Actually, Electroniq is written in my favourite programming language, which is C. I use emscripten to compile the emulator source code to WebAssembly. It is also still easy to compile to a standalone Windows application.
Electroniq has an interesting sound display, showing the waveforms as sounds are played - how easy was that to code, and why did you include it?
The Acorn Electron sound system is almost non-existent because it only has a simple beeper speaker, outputting something close to a square wave. Fortunately, this is very easy to emulate. The sound waveform visualiser is just a gimmick and very easy to code. I am basically just throwing features out there to see what is useful and fun. Don't get me started on sound buffering and synchronisation of audio and video, though... that is quite a challenge.
What software have you been using to test your emulator?
I use standard C development tools for debugging and profiling the emulator itself. By throwing all kinds of games and demos at my emulator, I test if it works correctly. Some of my very timing-specific Electron demos don't work well at all yet. 99% of the games work correctly, but some games use advanced techniques that aren't emulated quite correctly yet. No fun if there wasn't any challenge left, right?
What else do you want to add or change in Electroniq?
The user interface is basically just thrown together with every new feature I think of. That definitely needs a major redesign once the emulator is more complete. I would like Electroniq to work on mobile devices with on-screen controls. And I would like to expand the debugging and profiling capabilities. Besides all that, there are a thousand small improvements on my growing to-do list.
Which of your games should people try in the emulator, and what Electron homebrew would you recommend?
I recommend playing my most recent game, which is Flappy Bird for the Acorn Electron. It also works on the BBC Micro, by the way. I always develop for the Electron and usually make the extra effort to support the BBC Micro as well. If you like games like Citadel, you may want to try playing Electrobots. And if you like very tough platform games, try Elementum. I would also like to recommend checking out the excellent Electron games by Snuggsy187, such as Jetpac and Lunar Jetman. Make sure you don't accidentally abuse the Instant Rewind feature of my emulator to cheat at any of these games!
Do you have any other Electron or retro projects in development at the moment?
After a few years of coding for the Electron, it is getting harder to think of interesting things I haven't tried yet. I would definitely like to release a full demoscene-worthy production one day, though. And I think I have a few more games left in me. Also, there will always be new small or big things to research when I get inspired by other retro coders. I also quite enjoy improving old games and converting games from other platforms to the Electron.
(NOTE: Since the interview was published, 0xc0de is working on a new shoot 'em up...)
What would be your dream project?
I don't think I really have one yet. I am really just enjoying making new things for this humble and old 8-bit machine. And connecting with other retro enthusiasts on the internet and in real life who share the same hobby of keeping these machines very much alive.
DATABURST - REVIEWS
InfeZtation
Format: C64 (currently PAL only)
Credits: Monte Boyd
Price: $3.99 or more (digital download)
Web: bit.ly/infeztation
The Galactic Sheriff and her robot sidekick D3P-UT investigate what has gone wrong on a bio-research station. Tough going, even with the passwords, but plenty to get your teeth into, making this another great game from Monte.
[Score] 88%
Xeno Brigade Extinction
Format: Sinclair Next (1Mb)
Credits: Greenman Games (developer), Technoshed (music, publisher)
Price: £9.99 (download), £22.00 (physical)
Web: bit.ly/xeno-next
On Vadoom 3, Xeno Brigade marines are hunting down an alien queen. The menus take a little getting used to, and the difficulty level is high, but this is a competent and unusual strategy game.
[Score] 85%
Lunar Lancer
Format: Game Boy
Credits: Jonas Fischbach
Price: Free download
Web: bit.ly/lunarlancer
Fight through five vertically scrolling levels in this shoot ‘em up released to mark the Game Boy’s 35th anniversary. Unlimited continues and checkpoints will help you make progress in this great blaster.
[Score] 83%
PROCESSING - S.C.I.O.N. (ZX Spectrum)
Tom Potter talks about creating Special Covert Infiltration Operations Network (SCION)
How did you achieve smooth scrolling in S.C.I.O.N.?
As with my previous game, Knightmare, S.C.I.O.N is being created with MPAGD. I'm enjoying finding ways to push the development suite in directions it wasn't really intended to go, and MPAGD was never designed to facilitate scrolling. I've not seen scrolling done with MPAGD by anyone else (although I certainly don't have an encyclopaedic knowledge), and I think people would be surprised to discover how it was done. Once the game is finished, I'm planning to write a post on the MPAGD forum outlining how the effect was achieved.
What games have inspired SCION?
My ultimate aim is to use my scrolling algorithm to create a turn-based RPG reminiscent of Julian Gollop's Laser Squad and Lords of Chaos games, but it would be fairer to compare S.C.I.O.N to something like Alien Breed on the Amiga. Similar titles from the Spectrum's library would be Gauntlet or Rambo in terms of the multi-directional scrolling, although my game plays a little differently to those.
What more do you have to add?
The main things still to be done are to animate the enemy sprites, design the later levels, and balance the gameplay difficulty. I would love to add some boss fights, although this will be dependent on memory availability once the rest of the game is complete.
When are you aiming to finish it?
I predict the game has maybe two months' more work required before it's ready for release. I'm hoping that Bitmap Soft will once again publish the game in physical form, so with the turnaround time needed to bring the physical media to market, we might be looking at an availability date sometime in spring 2025.
NOTE: The game has been released by Bitmap Soft
(£1.99 digital download / £12.00 plus postage for physical cassette)
Issue 269 published on 13th February 2025
This blog was published on 13th May 2025
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