Article "Gamedev on Spectrum" - "Hacker" magazine, March 2005 (pp. 82-83)

> Gamedev on Spectrum Source: http://www.xakep.ru/magazine/xa/075/080/3.asp Yo nigga, it's mindw0rk. While my author tells you about Russian gamedev on PC, I want to throw in my two cents and add something about gamedev on Spectrum. Yes, yes, the good old ZX, which, if you were lucky, you shot at Silk Worm and chopped up baddies in Target Renegade. History of game development on this platform damn interesting - throughout the 80s, dozens of companies produced their games. Making them at that time was simpler; creating one game took about on average six months, and the development staff consisted of a dozen people. But I won't now tell stories of ups and downs, remember the immortal Dizzy, Elite and other toys that a whole generation of geeks grew up with. All it has only historical value. I’ll only tell you about the Russian ZX game dev mid-90s, when it was at its peak. The first games from our guys on the Spectrum began to appear in 1990. All they were clones of Tetris, snakes, columns and other simple games. In 1993 Vyacheslav Mednonogov, better known as Copper Feet, wrote "Adventures Pinocchio" - the first Russian adventure, the Russian answer to Dizzy. Despite the fact that the storyline was simpler than borscht, and Pinocchio was more like Pierrot, the beginningit was supposed to. That same year, the guys from the Energy group made their first attempt port the PC game to ZX, King's Bounty was the victim. In 1994 the game "Field of Miracles" appeared on the car of almost every happy person Spectrum owner. The author of these and other games were one or two people, they were distributed free of charge and were usually created for the soul. The first major commercial project was the game "Star Legacy", published in 1995. Its developer, the Step group, was already widely known for its Spectrofon disc magazine. Heritage represented was an adventure of a new type, in which each action had to be chosen from menu, and to figure out how to get out of trouble, it took a fair amount of use your brain. The game also had action sequences where you had to fight with monsters. The game was developed for quite a long time, it was made by a whole staff talented people. It is not surprising that “Heritage” became not just a hit, but truly a cult game. The game was sold through distributors and mail (it took up one floppy disk), and the price for it was not that high. But It soon became clear that the average Spectrum user does not like to pay for software. And there was no need to pay, since there were a lot of crackers on the spec, which quickly got rid of the protection and released pirated versions into the public domain swimming.Further ZX game development developed together with the demoscene. Almost everything The games were written by scriptwriters. The magnificent adventure "48 Irons" was released under the label Galaxy, the Winnie the Pooh adventure was released by Softland, and Speed Code released to the delight of fans, the Russian continuation of Dizzy - Dizzy X (Return to Russia). Oh every new game project was written by the Spectrum press: discmags and e-zines interviewed the authors, kept them informed of the process and encouraged the developers, if they delayed their brainchild too much. In 1995, "UFO 1: Enemy Unknown" was released - the Spectrum version of the pisish UFO by Copper Feet. The port was made very well, and the game was a huge success among spektrumists. I remember I went through it myself twice. let's binge :). When Slava announced work on the second part, it was the most expected product on ZX. It was released in 1996, meeting expectations one hundred percent. In 1996, the famous demo group Digital Reality announced in the discmag ZX-Format about the Megaball project, which was supposed to be the most sophisticated Arkanoid in the entire history of the Spectrum. In the same issue ZX-Format in the application contained a demo version of a new adventure game, where the player acted as a special agent and must was to investigate some matter. Both games promised to be hits, but neither they didn't come out. The guys from Digital Reality, it seems, Arkanoid was not enough, andthey decided to port not just anything to the Spectrum, but Doom itself. The news spread the entire Spectrum world, and the people waited with bated breath. Soon the demo came out, which really resembled Doom (let’s close our eyes to Spec’s graphics), and You could even wander through the labyrinths and shoot in it. But no matter how much you asked fans, no matter how much the press kicked DR, the release of the game never happened. Too there was still a lot of work to do, and the prospect of raising it with this was too dubious money. While the unreleased "Doom" was being forged in the forge of a large DR team, the one and only Slava Copperlegs was slowly whittling out a new game. She walked under codenamed "Black Raven" and was the first full-fledged realtime strategy on the Spectrum (however, there was also Nether Earth, but let’s not talk about that). Black Raven was essentially a Warcraft clone with some plot changes and gameplay. It’s easy to imagine the delight of spektrumists who, during the the second Warcraft had to go through Dizzy for the tenth time and which, Finally, we got a kind of analogue of a piss hit. "Black Raven" squeezed out Spectrum resources are all juice. It had an introductory and inter-scene video, high-quality track music, graphics that were far superior to everything previously seen on the ZX. Spectrum players didn’t just play CV, they idolized itgame, and the press was choked with delight. Despite the unconditional success, the author The game failed to make a fortune from its masterpiece. What programs are on Spectrum, no matter how successful they may be, cannot bring big profits, it became clear back in the early 90s. By the end of the 90s, this was confirmed dozens of times. Authors of games and other commercial products (system utilities, for example) appealed to potential buyers through disc stores, argued that the developer needs to be supported, otherwise you'll be screwed instead of fresh software. There were also angry ones tirades with the promise of punching the crackers in the face. However, all this read like a fairy tale. night. And if anyone had doubts, they immediately disappeared after how a friend brought me to rewrite the free, cracked version. In the end, those who expected to earn at least some money from their work, gave up on this disastrous business and left the stage, giving way to youth. And the youth continued the work of their ancestors. She didn't need money, she you just had to create. That's why the games continued to come out, distributed through disc stores and friends, and later - through the Internet. Big role the feed echo ZX.SPECTRUM also played a role in the distribution of software on the Spectrum, where many frivolous programs were posted in UUE encoding. Slava Mednonogov, who by that time had earned the title of game developer no.alone on the ZX scene, began creating the sequel to "Black Crow". I can Imagine how many fans of the first part asked for this. This time for The basis was taken from Star Craft. The process of creating the game was thoroughly covered in leading disc stores, screenshots and scraps of information were published. But time passed, and the release it was not visible even beyond the mountains. To be honest, I don't know what was the main reason closing the project. Probably family life (Slava got married) played a role, or the new job took up all the time. But the fact remains - the first "Black Raven" was the last one left. There were no more releases from Copper Feet. But there were other games. They were already made by new people, a new wave of spektrumists, many of whom worked on PCs through emulators and used the Internet with all their might. Of course, they were no longer done for the sake of money or fame. The authors just this way unleashed their creative potential. Games on the Spectrum continue to be released to this day. Both discmags and even system programs that can be downloaded from the same http://trd.speccy.cz. Of course, I didn’t talk about all the projects. Left behind the scenes "12 Secret books", "Empire", "Plutonia", Pussy and other games that deserve to be told about them. But my place is coming to an end, and all I can do is thank you for your attention and express regret that you, ratherIn all, I didn’t catch those distant and turbulent Spectrum times. Author: mindw0rk(a)real,xakep,ru Magazine: http://www.xakep.ru/magazine/xa/075/ Article: http://www.xakep.ru/magazine/xa/075/080/3.asp http://www.xakep.ru/magazine/xa/075/080/4.asp http://www.xakep.ru/magazine/xa/075/080/5.asp http://www.xakep.ru/magazine/xa/075/080/6.asp << www.livejournal.com/~copperfeet <------<< FRESH every.day >> [Ketsujin Studios] >>------> Warm greetings, Slava!