| Posted By
Luca
on 2016-06-18
14:04:37
 |  Micro Projects' Sourcefiles Galore
 Just few days before the first publishing of his long awaited book about the history of Gremlin Graphics, Mark Hardisty has launched a dedicated blog full of memorabilia, pictures, stories, whatever, about the famous software house. Among all, there are some source files (click to download!) nested in few D64s donated by Anthony J. Clarke, mostly regarding C16/Plus4 games developed under the Micro Projects label.
We managed to handle those disk images, just to see if something of our interest would have jumped out...and that's really the way it went!
The weird or just known material that has been discarded is: final versions of some C16 games just as we know (Tycoon Tex), some chars and sprites editors for C64 coded for personal usage, a slice of code about "Thing on a Spring" on C64 and one uselessly single uncompiled text regarding Sword Of Destiny.
Let's go on with the juicy stuff, then. There are some early stages versions of games from Anthony J. Clarke and Micro Projects in general to add to our archive with some notes where needed: Dork's Dilemma, Xargon Wars (a sort of gameplay testing one), Xargon's Revenge and Kung-fu Kid (with missing animation for the big boss at the end, and different sfx).
Again regarding Xargon's Revenge, two different disk versions have popped out from the disks, built up in distinct ways, one with PETSCII loading screen.
 Apart of the interesting older versions of the games we just know, two other programs has been saved from the dusts of time. Micro Projects Sales is a really interesting document about sales and revenues regarding all the Micro Projects games which have been sold in 1985. And the author's personal Dork's Dilemma Editor has come to the light too, revealing that those 24x24 chars rooms are actually stored as Y-mirrored 12x24 chars ones!
At the same time, two surprises were asleep into those D64s. Here come the C64 test versions of Dork's Dilemma and Tycoon Tex, arguably coded before being passed to the C16, in order to have quite comprehensive assembler and compiler which were available on C64 only at that time: though the games have badly implemented or missing sound, it's clear that the code is absolutely the same as for the C16 version. Luca has managed to release the both of them on the C64 related sites under the label of his buddies in Hokuto Force, with trainers: Dork's Dilemma Preview +2 and Tycoon Tex Preview +2.
We want to see thanks once again to Anthony J. Clarke for his donation, and to Mark Hardisty for having put'em online available for anyone.
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2016-06-19
14:04:37
| Re: Micro Projects' Sourcefiles Galore
Amazing stuff, congrats to all who contributed. One small question: is it just me or the source code package misses a few games (like Xargon Wars on DISK7 A and B) despite being mentioned in the READ.ME file?
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Posted By
Luca
on 2016-06-19
16:14:23
| Re: Micro Projects' Sourcefiles Galore
Actually the contributor has forgotten several particulars about his own disks, although I don't remember exactly which and where. Just to give an example: somebody did argue that the file ULTRA.TXT was related to an unreleased game; what the news don't say, is that I also added several trivia here and there, and reading the notes about Xargon Wars reveals what Ultra really is 
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Posted By
anthonyjclarke
on 2016-06-20
16:41:40
| Re: Micro Projects' Sourcefiles Galore
Correct and for info... before I wrote for the C16 it all started on the Oric.... I worked with a good friend of mine who wrote The Ultra - http://www.oric.org/software/ultra__the-582.html and I write Light Cycle and Hopper  we then moved onto the Cxx platform...
Its been a long time some things are just coming back to me now!!
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2016-06-20
17:10:13
| Re: Micro Projects' Sourcefiles Galore
Awesome! Those Gremlin games were one of the firsts for me and those you never forget I hope we can still fix the graphic glitch in Xargon Wars some day
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Posted By
Luca
on 2016-07-19
03:43:37
| Re: Micro Projects' Sourcefiles Galore
Litwr: the author told us
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2016-08-08
16:37:06
| Re: Micro Projects' Sourcefiles Galore
@Litwr: the explosions remain on the screen after having shot a baddy.
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