Retro GIDing

#1 British leftist hippie tree-and-long-forgotten-hardware-hugger you!

#2 No interest from here, but sounds like you're into game dev S&M

GID'ing for me is all about testing a game idea - not about exotic ways to tickle my brain on old hardware/old software

But if it turns you on Tom, then go ahead :-)

#3 I agree with Thomas.
A lot of us don't have old machines that are still working. My old 8088 stopped working around 2k.

Although, it's your call. Maybe do it as a side GID or something. No reason to start putting in practices that alienate one group over another.

#4 What's so different about trying the idea on, e.g., an Amiga then a PC ? If the idea is sound, thats all you need to know. GID code would end up getting rewritten regardless of what you prototyped it on. Why not have a little extra fun ?

I wasnt suggesting it replace the main GID, just an additional challenge to those, like me, who no longer find GID much of a challenge. It started simply because I wanted to know if it could be done, and now I've done it so often that it's too easy.

Maybe the next logical progressions are polished game in a week and shipped game in a month, or some equally ludicrous periods of time.

GID is first and foremost about having fun. Rapid prototyping is just something additional that gives it some kind of point beyond that. I just thought the retro GID would be a good way to relive fun had in the past, but I guess I'm the only one that sees it that way :)

T.

#5 Tom, you asked a question and didn't get the answers you where looking for I guess :)

I haven't had time to do a full game in the day although I have tried to pop in this last one and help people out here and there. The idea of themes is cool and all but if you put more restrictions on it, it's going to pass the realm of "about having fun" and enters the realm of work.

I personally like the whole retro theme and wish I had been involved with one in the past. But using old, retired machines seems like way to much of a creative restriction.It's just not something a lot of people keep laying around.

But like you just said, it's not something you plan on doing that will over rule the regular scheduled GID's so I would roll with it, if I was you.

That's just me though.

#6 Damnit! I accidentally pressed back and lost the post ... ohwell, here we go again ...

Charlie,

Quote:Tom, you asked a question and didn't get the answers you where looking for I guess :)

Nah, I was just trying to provoke discussion, but I'm tired and didnt do it so well :)

Quote:I personally like the whole retro theme and wish I had been involved with one in the past. But using old, retired machines seems like way to much of a creative restriction.It's just not something a lot of people keep laying around.

I don't think its in any way a restriction. The same machines and tools were used for dev in the past, and were damn good at the time. As long as they still work, I think its not much different to current dev, just with a different toolset.

That said, I think both our views are jaded by the old hardware that we posess. I am looking at a fairly beefy Amiga loaded down with tons of dev tools and in fully working order, complete with a large proportion of my early source code to reference. The only thing that I would miss would be an editor that has syntax highlighting. Oh, and a decent monitor. You are looking at a broken 8088, there is no contest there, really, I wouldnt want to GID on a broken 8088 either ;-)

I do hear what you're saying about those without the hardware or software to do it. That's why I mentioned emulators and the other things I did in the first post. It was just a rough idea to get a discussion started more then anything set in stone.

I was looking at it from the view of "yeh! this is where I learnt real programming, would be fun to use it again!" ... if you (not saying you in particular) cut your teeth on modern hardware then I suppose its going to be infinitely less interesting.

T.

#7 I think it would be pretty damn fun to see what people could come up with.

Bob

#8 The thing is - from my perspective - today's tools and hardware allow us to "whip out" retro-style games MUCH more quickly than our counterparts (or, in some of our cases, we ourselves) 20 years ago. I remember all too well dealing with the 6502's rather... er, unique ... arrangement of registers in order to get fast rendering of 2D graphics on the screen.

While I did go back recently (for the sake of a BLOG) and do some BASIC coding on the C-64 just to make sure I had the syntax right for an adventure-game, I'm not sure going back and hobbling myself to the sheer technical frustration of the day really thrills me. Sometimes it's tempting, sure. But I somehow expect that I'd spend most of the day just figuring out how to get the hardware pushing pixels again, and not actually creating a game.

#9 SO basically, we will be making Wing Commander 3/4 clones.... the best 3d games of the era.

#10 I've always wanted to learn Assembler, esp for the C64, so I'm interested in the idea, though I agree with Jay -- it's probably more enjoyable to create retro-style games with modern tools than be frustrated with the old toolset.

OTOH, when you don't have much to work with, you have to be creative. I think today's tools are so powerful that it causes people to take on way more than they can handle and lose sight of the fun factor, which can get buried in all the bells and whistles. That's one reason I like GIDs or any other challenge where you have to work within self-imposed limitations.

I too am feeling a bit too familiar with the GID format, which is why for GID13 I will be following through on my threat to do 24 games in 24 hours.

#11 You could always split the difference. Have GID on the same day as retro GID. People can decide to try to just do a GID on platforms/apis they're familiar with, or go for a retro GID on some old hardware or emulator. Overall it would still be one GID, but with an extra explination on the entry pages that went retro.

That way even if only one or two people try to do a retro GID, they can still post screenies (if you work out a way to do that :P) and feed off of the work of the rest of the GID'ers.

GID is a nice loose concept that people should be able to add their own additional constraints on how they GID. Many will be happy to just try their first or 2nd GID, whilst others may come up with ways to challenge themselves further.

#12 Jay,

Yeh, there is that. That's what makes it a challenge :) One thing I have found whenever going back to old computers is that it's like riding a bike ... you never forget. After a few minutes to an hour it all comes rushing back and you find yourself doing things that you vaguely remember doing before but have no idea how you remember it. Old habits really do die hard. That may just be me, but im fairly sure it applies to everyone :)

Gary,

That's basically what I meant. Interesting observation on constraints, though. See below.

Joe,

Good points. There was actually going to be something along the lines of your 24 games idea in GID11, but due to the fact it never got properly announced, we just went with a quiet normal GID. If I remember rightly, the changes I made to the idea were only along the lines of getting more people involved, but I'll dig out the info I wrote for it and see if there's any interesting changes.

All,

I initially started this thread because I had what I thought was a cool idea that others may want to join in with. What's turned out happening is we've highlighted a problem in that the current GID format is becoming a bit old and worn out for some people. When time ceases to be a challenge, the only challenge left is making something that fits with the theme, and with that some of the fun goes.

Perhaps we should start running more side events. The GID we all know and love would remain the same, but the side events would add additional challenge to those that want it. Perhaps some events, like GIW, would prove popular and become a regular occurance. Perhaps some events, like the retro GID suggestion in this thread, would become esoteric one-off personal challenges that only very few take part in. Like the theme gives guidance in thinking up a game idea, this could give guidance to thinking up weird and fun constraints. Perhaps a way to do it is have two themes, one for game ideas and one for side events/constraints.

As the GID community grows, I think this is only going to become a greater problem for the GID regulars. The above is just a suggestion, and I'm always open to more suggestions. I think that this is one the GID community is going to have to sort out as a whole, rather then me just think up ideas and try them out til something fits.

T.

#13 Well, I don't feel like it's old and tired yet - but I've only been able to officially participate once, and unofficially twice (with one unfinished product I only had 6 hours to work on, and once with the "Game In A Week" idea).

I know that for ME, participation more than once every three or four months is pretty much out of the question. Regardless of themes & so forth. My family has expectations for me on the weekends, and taking the time out to do GID is a bit of a commitment. Maybe if I participated every month it would be different.

The other point of GID for me is to experiment with ideas I wouldn't have time / gumption to work on later. Ideally, I might whip out a prototype during a GID weekend, decide it works, and then spend the next three months improving and polishing it as an actual commercial release (haven't done it yet, but I did find it to be educational and useful to me all three times).

The idea of challenging people with a little side-theme or whatnot is really cool - I didn't want to totally slam it or anything, I just wanted to point out the reasons I might not be interested in participating. I like the idea of having these additional challenges out there (like GIW, or the obsolete-hardware game, or .kkrieger's "Game in 96K" challenge, etc), so long as they don't interfere with my chance to just jump in from time-to-time and showcase what I can do in one day.

#14 Jay,

No need to walk on eggshells matey, if an idea of mine totally sucks I'd rather be told it totally sucks then have someone tell me its good. I know thats not what you were saying but thought I'd point it out :)

GID is different for everybody. That's the point of this discussion, really. To be absolutely clear, the current GID format will not go away. It's tried, tested, fun and bigger then is possible for any one person to interfere with.

Something along the lines of a "Game in k in a day" would be pretty interesting to do. It's all food for thought... i think some experiments are in order for GID13 and 14.

T.

#15 We could write it in Spectrum BASIC:
http://www.spectrum.lovely.net/Basic.html

I have thought about pulling out my Jaguar homebrew kit, though. Not that I've been able to schedule a GiD so far anyway, but it might kick me in the pants once my show goes up in July.

#16 What might be interesting is a GIT (Game In a Theme). Rather than having a word as the theme for the GID, assets are available (artwork, sound effects and so-on) and the game has to be made using those assets.

Admittedly the assets would need to be in various formats (3D models, 2D sprites and so-on), but it would be interesting to see how various people take the same assets, and produce different games.

It might also jump start the whole GID resource library that I've seen mentioned a few times.

#17 Does anyone watch Project Greenlight? It's an internet contest where they choose a script and director from online submissions and let the winners make a movie under the studio system - lets the new guy break in. Then they make a documentary of them trying to make their film.

Anyway, this season, they restricted their directing applicants to direct a 5-7 minute film with a script dialog given to them in advance. This dialog was the same in every film, and had no stage direction - just dialog. The end result was vastly different movies, based on how the director worked that dialog into a coherent movie. It was interesting to see how different visions of the same dialog came to life.

I don't see why the same thing couldn't be done in a game. Present everyone with a standard set of assets in a given theme and see who creates what :)

#18 David,

Hehe, I was pondering spectrums when i started the thread ;-)

Philip,

Something along those lines has been on the cards for a while. The problem is one of creating assets in advance, since nobody really has very much time. One way to get around that would be to reuse assets from past GIDs, though that requires actually finding all the assets and getting permission to use them. It's definately something worth thinking about, though.

Rodney,

Not heard of that specifically, but something like that happened in GID 2, where a couple of people took the same idea and approached it differently. I really like it when that happens, actually, since you get some pretty funny stuff come out at the end. It has the same problem as above though, namely creating the assets.

Perhaps another way around the assets thing is to have a group of artists making assets during the GID and multiple teams using them. Actually, thinking about it, I'd prefer it that way since then the artists dont get left out :)

I think I'll put together some ideas for GID13 based on the discussion in this thread and we can try them out and see how it goes.

T.

#19 I've got Poser 5&6 and a shed load of content for it in various styles. Although I'm not an expert user by any means, I can render out some 2D images if it helps. Unfortunately the 3d models can't be used/exported so it will have to be a series of PNG/JPG images only.

#20 @Tom - What about something like the following GID from GID12 ? It's a revamp of an old (C64?) Barbie game.

http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/43889/7801

Its pretty neat. You oculd revamp an old game (NES rules) to play in T2D (or TGE depending) ... It would be really neat to see you revamp something like Metroid (original NES) in a weekend. Or something like Paperboy .