Paradroid Remake
Community Forums/Showcase/Paradroid Remake
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 Remake of a classic c64 game Paradroid has just been released. Find the info and download link at http://paradroid.ovine.net |
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| Absolutely brilliant. Excellent choice of game to remake, and very well done indeed. |
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| This looks great. I'll try it later. My favourite bit was always the battleing subgame with the lines of power and triangles and stuff. Is it made in BMax? |
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| This is great! I use to love this game, allways wanted to do a remake myself! Love this game!!! |
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| Yeah!!!!!!!!! Nice one, Downloading RIGHT now. [edit] Or not, cos your website is down :( [/edit] [edit] Website is working again for me now, got this now, comments below) [/edit] A |
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| It's downloading for me AndyBoy |
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| Oh wow, this looks brilliant. Download quick quick quick... . . . ARGH! I keep getting a "500 internal server error" and can't download it :( What's going on? Ah, I see - it doesn't work with Opera. Works with Firfox though. |
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| Written in BLITZ3D. The web server is fine, no reports of downtime.....but yeaopera doesnt seem to like the download script we have. We have to protect from leeching im afraid. Just first up IE (/me shudders) for the download...... |
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| Just played it - absolutely brilliant! Love the spaceship-flypast intro - sort of a mix of Aliens and Halo. A few issues though - 1. some decks don't darken once empty of droids, which is confusing when you're searching out the last few populated decks. 2. transfer mode takes too long to engage - often I was dodging shots like mad waiting for the mode to engage, then it suddenly did just as I bumped into a lower class robot. The original game let you hold down fire to go into transfer mode which was simpler and more intuitive. Perhaps a rapid double-press-and-hold on the fire button to activate transfer mode, then you could do it in a hurry if necessary? 3. I kept activating nearby consoles when in transfer mode by accident - needs a hold-down delay before activating the console. Same with lifts. 4. the side view is confusing - it's very hard to tell which lift shafts link to which floors - you have to go looking for a lift on the deck to see if it exists. I don't recall how the original worked but it was instantly obvious from the side-view which lifts link to which floors. Apart from these small niggles the game is excellent. The feeling of inertia on the droids is just right. Brilliant stuff! |
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| Well I got it downloaded and had a very enjoyable first game. My feedback :- 1. Agree with Vorderman on his point 2. 2. Would it be possible to stick an option in there to merge the two buttons. If held down then xfer mode engaged, other wise shoot. If xfer mode engaged over lift or next to console then activate lift or console, etc. 3. When you shoot the standard lazers, there is no animation on them which looks a little like they are stuck on to the rest of a very animated and fluid scene. Can you stick a second frame of anim on the lazers or make them flicker or something? 4. Xfer mode, when engaging, can you make it so that the fire key skips the "this is you", "this is them" screens quicker :). 5. Xfer game: Nearly died first time round because I thought I was yellow (which was on the left in the original) which is now on the right, not a problem now I got used ;) Other than these VERY small things, I think you have done an absolutley STERLING job of remaking this game. I will be playing again without doubt and look forward to any updates you happen to do. Well done. A |
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| This was one of my fave c64 games. The remake is great. However: * really dislike having a seperate use key. I believe holding down fire is actually MORE intuitive as well as being faithful to the original. In this case, it's like less is more. Other than this, lovely job! |
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| Not sure why but it runs way too fast. |
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| Superb mate! It plays really well... |
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| You guys are getting too good at this, stop it this instant ;) Fancy doing re-doing Nebulus.... (pleeeeeze ;) ) |
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| Just noticed something - in the original Paradroid, during the transfer game, when you fired one of the doobries the next one would appear at the top. In the remake the next doobrie appears at the same position as the last one. This seems to make the transfer game easier as you can fire off a whole series of rows very quickly. Think I prefer it that way though. |
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| Vorderman: It is easier that way too (esp. against higher level droids, no real challenge), but NOT faithful, but perhaps that doesn't matter. OK, it was *really* good, well done. Ive just played it for ages and got no.2 on the Online scores EAT MY ELECTRODES DUDES! Got to the VERY LAST droid on level 2 who got in a lucky shot, bah! Some points I like to raise/ask: 1) How they hell do you know what your energy level is, I can never tell until I'm nearly dead so I just keep sitting on those recharge things and taking over droids. A cool idea may be to have the droid spin slower and slower as they loose energy, or maybe faster to indicate panic! 2) Some levels like E, M and N, don't dim when you kill the last droid: the Dim noise IS played though. But if you exit and go back they are dim. 3) Sometimes the droids don't bash, they go over one another, is this intentional? 4) sometimes the lasers (double esp.) seems to have dodgy collision detection. 5) Have you fixed the refresh rate to 60Hz or something because it is very smooth i.e. no delta timing or whatever? This may be why some people with VSync Off are getting too fast a game. 6) What reduces your power, baning into droids doesn't seem to. Walking round? Firing? Getting hit. Never could figure this out 7) If you overtake a droid you previously damaged will it be partially damaged once you win it? 8) Escape doesn't bring up an in-game menu it quites without any warning OH MY GOD, this is a bummer as you can only "pause" on the computer consoles or lifts. 9) Some weapons seem ineffectual against some droids so you have to change droid. Can you tell by looking at a droid or not? 10) An 800 series droid was moving right across a green light square that was solid and I couldn't pass through. 11) Please add a save game in. If you don't want it too easy, add it in after every level, but this would be too hard! 12) How many ships (levels) are there? 13) Done any other games? (Guess I should just look at your website) 14) How long did it take? Any idea in manhours? Sorry for all the questions/feedback but I thought it was great and wanted to show my appreciation by helping ou, plus I just HAVE to know stuff ;-) Blitztastic: Yeah, nebulus was cool. Also a very simialr game to this that was great was Ranarama! |
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| yup..have to say this is class :] - im crap at it..but its still fun. having a little energy bar would be nice..that way i could tell when im near dead....found the takeover thing slightly confusing..but thats probably jst a lack of practice.. anyway its a great little remake + probably the best bb game ive played for a long while.. |
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| Phew so many questions so here come the answers :) 1) Energy Level Indicator. The original never had an energy level indicator. We feel that it was one of the positive points from the original and kept that in. You got to admit you start to panic when your little droid starts to flash red. 2) Some decks don't darken once empty of droids, which is confusing when you're searching out the last few populated decks. there are 4 levels that have 2 parts to them. By looking at the deck levels you see the adjacent level that has to be cleared to complete that deck. 3) Sometimes the droids don't bash, they go over one another, is this intentional? yes, its when robots have no other place to go - rather than have them pause and wait for a route. This was prefered to them constantly bashing into you and quickly killing you. 4) sometimes the lasers (double esp.) seems to have dodgy collision detection. Hot spots are about the middle of each droid. 5) Have you fixed the refresh rate to 60Hz or something because it is very smooth i.e. no delta timing or whatever? This may be why some people with VSync Off are getting too fast a game. Yes its fixed at the monitor refresh rate (hence smooth scrolling). If people have turned their vsync off then yes the game will fly and become unplayable. - I suggest they turn it back on if they want to play. 6) What reduces your power, baning into droids doesn't seem to. Walking round? Firing? Getting hit. Never could figure this out a) Power is drained over time. The higher your droid the faster the drain. b) Bumping into other droids reduces your energy (but minimal) c)Being shot. 7) If you overtake a droid you previously damaged will it be partially damaged once you win it? yes 8) Escape doesn't bring up an in-game menu it quites without any warning OH MY GOD, this is a bummer as you can only "pause" on the computer consoles or lifts. I can put it on the suggestion list (inclusion of a pause button) 9) Some weapons seem ineffectual against some droids so you have to change droid. Can you tell by looking at a droid or not? It all depends on which class of robot you have and their class of lazer (single, double, red). The class of droid is the first digit of the robot ID. A level 1 droid will do no damage to a 7 series, minimal damage to a 6. Its all based on an equation (ripped from the original) 10) An 800 series droid was moving right across a green light square that was solid and I couldn't pass through. Sounds like a bug to me... or I could say a feature :) 11) Please add a save game in. If you don't want it too easy, add it in after every level, but this would be too hard! Never gonna happen :) - technically very easy but makes the game far too easy. 12) How many ships (levels) are there? 20 levels, 1 ship with increasingly harder levels (the class of droids changes, rate of enemy first etc) 13) Done any other games? (Guess I should just look at your website) Lots and all free. Check out http://www.ovine.net 14) How long did it take? Any idea in manhours? This was a quickie, including testing Id say about 40 hours. I coulnt say how long the GFX took. 15) Would it be possible to stick an option in there to merge the two buttons. If held down then xfer mode engaged, other wise shoot. If xfer mode engaged over lift or next to console then activate lift or console, etc. We had got the original single button method. It was only a couple of days ago that it was changed to 2 button. I'll put it to the other guys to see what they think. The only reason Mr Braybrook originally did a single button is that the C64 joystick only had 1 button. 16) When you shoot the standard lazers, there is no animation on them which looks a little like they are stuck on to the rest of a very animated and fluid scene. Can you stick a second frame of anim on the lazers or make them flicker or something? Im happy with how they are, but can see what the GFX guy thinks. 17) Xfer mode, when engaging, can you make it so that the fire key skips the "this is you", "this is them" screens quicker :). You will find the action or fire button progresses past the screens. 18) Xfer game: Nearly died first time round because I thought I was yellow (which was on the left in the original) which is now on the right, not a problem now I got used ;) :) 19) transfer mode takes too long to engage - often I was dodging shots like mad waiting for the mode to engage, then it suddenly did just as I bumped into a lower class robot. The original game let you hold down fire to go into transfer mode which was simpler and more intuitive. Perhaps a rapid double-press-and-hold on the fire button to activate transfer mode, then you could do it in a hurry if necessary? This is part of the stratagey of the game. 20) I kept activating nearby consoles when in transfer mode by accident - needs a hold-down delay before activating the console. Same with lifts. This is part of the stratagey of the game. 21) the side view is confusing - it's very hard to tell which lift shafts link to which floors - you have to go looking for a lift on the deck to see if it exists. I don't recall how the original worked but it was instantly obvious from the side-view which lifts link to which floors. This is the same as the orignal game. Its easy to learn once you have played the game a few times. We have had really positive feedback and some excellent scores uploaded already ! http://www.paradroid.ovine.net/paradroid-scores.php |
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| thanks for all the answers. |
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| Another top quality remake - I just wish you had remade Paradroid90 |
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| oh the Amiga one, what's different about it I can't remember? |
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| Grey- I haven't played the C64 version much, but one of the main differences was the different graphics for the different robots - made it easier to tell how tough they all were. On the downside- it only had vertical scrolling. Apparently Andrew Braybrook would have liked to do a 4 way version but was limited by the Atari's capabilities to do a port. |
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| only vertical scolling how naff. |
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| DLing now - I love Paradroid (I mainly played Paradroid 90 on the Amiga) and I've wanted to remake Quazatron (slightly different isometric version on the Spectrum) for ages! |
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| Apparently Andrew Braybrook would have liked to do a 4 way version but was limited by the Atari's capabilities to do a port. Heh, that's probably down to the way the Atari ST's VRAM was organized. I remember a work colleague telling me once how it worked - something about each RGB component being stored on a different 'layer', or something. Needless to say, I laughed... I laughed out loud! :PAnd there was me thinking the Speccy's vid mem was a pain in the arse! :) |
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| @10p - I bet you had an Amiga, right? Nothing like a good bit of friendly rivalry with the ST'ers back in the day. @Grey - True, but the gameplay was spot on. |
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| I bet you had an Amiga, right? Wrong. I just had a simple old speccy, at the time. Unfortunately, I worked with two people - one with an Atari ST, the other with an Amiga. Needless to say, time at work used to just fly by. :/ |
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| Andrew Braybrook was not very complimentary towards the ST in the Morpheus ZZap diary. In fact he reckoned the Amiga was far superior in every way, presumably apart from the MIDI port which seems to be the holy grail that every ST owner could fall back on, despite the fact they never used it. I owned an Amiga. A friend of mine had an ST. Side by side there was no comparison at all, the Amiga ruled, the ST was...erm...cheap. Also, I'm sure there was a Spectrum vs C64 thing also - never understood why - the Spectrum was great, I had 2, but eventually I upgraded to a C64 and it was infinitely better. |
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| Vorderman: I'm with you 100%. I bought a Spec at 8 cos I knew no better. I WAS good but one day it broke. By then I'd seen the C64 so I bought one of those cos it was clearly better in a number of ways, like having it's own tape recorder for a start! Then one day I saw an Amiga. When I could talk and think again, I knew I had to have one. But being sensible a friend and I check out Amiga 500 and ST 520 specs together. ALL the specs showed the Aimga to be better so I got one and it ROCKED. Later on got a 1200. My friend had an ST and it was OK, but at the end of the day, you could spot ST ported games a mile off. The only thing STs were good for was running Cubase and having a midi port. Were still used years later for that function. mrTricks: Yep I played Quazatron on the spec too, it was great. |
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| The ST was a little faster but the Amiga was superior in every other way, the custom chips more than made up the tiny speed difference. |
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| A little fast hey, well you live and learn. I never knew that. |
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| Yeah the ST's CPU was clocked about 10% faster - which noticed in 3D games where you werent making use of the Amiga's blitter. The speccy was no doubt the worst of the 8 bits - but you have to admire what it did for the price. Amstrad all the way for me... |
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| How did the Amstrad's graphics compare to C64? Oh dear we've gone off topic. Anyway the spec could only show 2 colours per square, hense colour clash. The 64 could show 4, but only if you decreased the horizontal resolution by half. How did the Amstrad handle it. I never programmed one in depth. |
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| Starting a new topic for those who want to reminisce about their old computers. Back to paradroid... |
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| Don't want to hi-jack this thread but for people that enjoyed paradroids here is a 3d version: http://www.jpct.net/paradroidz/ |
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| I have the problem that the game runs too fast. Unplayable fast. Start new game, 1 second, dead. Please add a frame limiter! |
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| The great thing with the C64 was all you could do with the hardware. The VIC-20 was an amazing graphics chip for its time, allowing smooth scrolling, 8 sprites per vertical line, mixed mono and multi-colored chars, and more... The sound chip was incredible, too. |
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| C64 graphics chip: VIC-II C64 predecessor: VIC-20 Picky, yes. :o) |
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| The Vic20 didnt allow all that, the c64 did. |
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| You're right. And picky. VIC for graphics and SID for sound. ;-) |
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| Didn't VIC allow 8 hardware sprites per horizontal line, not vertical? Reading the Morpheus diary it seems to get more than 8 sprites AB abandoned the hardware sprites and wrote a multiplexor to display software sprites. I think Martin Walker did similar in the Citadel diary, although AB's Morpheus diary had more of the excellent techie info in it. AB's diaries were superb - I still enjoy reading them now. In fact I have the Paradroid, Morpheus and Citadel diaries printed out so I can read them. I wish magazines would start doing such items today, and in such detail also. I've read some of their attempts and they just don't compare - very lightweight and lacking detail. For example the Gibbage diary in PCZone - excellent idea, but it should be 3 or 4 pages and packed with screenshots and techie stuff, not just a vague 1 page overview. |
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| I see this game was featured in the 2 page spread in Retro Gamer magazine. Nice one, Ovine team! |
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| I started programming on a c64. It's my baby and still in the celar... Though I doubt the discs will still work... :/ |
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