Ex-Atari ST Folk

[JGOware]

Following another thread... ;) Anyone ever code any Atari ST games? PD, Shareware, Commercial? I never did any commercial titles but did a bunch of PD games, clones of classic games, etc. (Berzerk, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, etc) All in good ole GFA Basic with a nice 68000 game support engine I coded. Did several games for ST Review and got paid a bit. I did 2 shareware games which I thought were decent, Square Off and Frantick. I think I had 2 registrations total. :) But man the ST was a joy to code with. So clean, so easy, etc. 68000 Assembly is/was so nice to code in. To this day I have a version of Choplifter sitting on my ST's hard disk waiting for me to finish. lol..

My Atari ST Legends Page:
http://www.atarilegend.com/interviews/interview.php?interview_id=19

[Ratboy]

I built the palettes for Mechcommander & Mechcommander Gold on a Falcon030. Apex Media, besides being an excellent pixel pusher, had one of the best palette handling setups I've ever seen.

[Oaf]

Yeah I did quite a bit - jeez, that's 20 years ago! - a few (unreleased) games, but I spent my time mostly hacking the protection systems off my friends' games so I could copy them. :o

[princec]

I wrote 3 games for the ST, none released - Mad Lunatic and the Quest for the Holy Grail, a roguelike; BOTS - a game where you programmed robots to blow each other up or complete missions and such in a BASIC like language; and Blob, a game which shares many of mechanics with our current WIP, Treasure Tomb. Again the remake theme rears its head ;)

Cas :)

[Pelican]

My first 16-bit game "Erik" was published on the ST - I used some of the cash I got to buy an Amiga, and then converted the game to that too (see Amiga thread)

http://www.atari.st/view.php?id=529

I think it generally got slated, though a few people actually realised there was a bit more to it :o

[Oaf]

I'll have to give that a go - looks my sort of game.

Graphics look quite Bitmap Brothers / Xenon 2 (that's a good thing!) :)

Edit: When's Vex coming out then?

[Adrian Cummings]

Paid a 68k coder mate (Rob Brooks) to port Doodlebug (Amiga) to Atari ST for me in '92 and again published by Core Design, also poprted Bug Bash in '90 also - first ever commercial game that one :)

[lakibuk]

Graphics look quite Bitmap Brothers / Xenon 2 (that's a good thing!) :)
Yea, looks cool. I am dreaming of making a game with similar graphics nowadays.

[Midnight Synergy]

Did several Shareware and PD games for the Atari ST (Superstition, DungeonLord) and one title for a Disk Magazine (Colony - which was converted to a 3d version for the PC a few years later).

Most of the work done with GFA Basic with a few Assembler tweaks here and there.

Some screenshots of our older stuff here: http://midnightsynergy.com/ancient.htm (near bottom of page)

Someday I hope to get my old C64 games running again - those should be a laugh to see again. :)

[princec]

GFA Basic - totally awesome. Why does nothing like that exist any more?

Cas :)

[Pelican]

I'll have to give that a go - looks my sort of game.

Graphics look quite Bitmap Brothers / Xenon 2 (that's a good thing!) :)

Edit: When's Vex coming out then?

Thanks! I must admit there was definitely an influence from all sorts of other games around at the time.

I've not had much time to work on Vex recently (deadlines with my day job), but the game is basically done. Just got to put together a bunch more levels & enemies, tart it up a bit more, and then it's good to go. My current contract finishes soon, so I'll be putting some solid time on it then and hopefully finally get it finished.

[Oaf]

Cool, look forward to it :)

[robleong]

I used to program in 68000 assembly language (HiSoft's Devpac ST was excellent!) back then, and had a few games on Budgie UK Licenceware, such as Annihilator, Space Invaders, Pacman ST, and Missile Command. Budgie UK was a sort-of cooperative of programmers that sold budget, shareware-type games as a collective, and then we divided up any sales equally between the group of us. Those were the fun, good ole days!

Here's a link (http://www.gamerblitz.com/AtariST.htm) to my Atari ST games.

[Bad Sector]

Budgie UK was a sort-of cooperative of programmers that sold budget, shareware-type games as a collective, and then we divided up any sales equally between the group of us.

That's not a bad idea :-)

[Midnight Synergy]

Here's a link (http://www.gamerblitz.com/AtariST.htm) to my Atari ST games.

Hey, Annihalator looks familiar - I think I might have played that one in its day.

[robleong]

Hey, Annihalator looks familiar - I think I might have played that one in its day.

Good to know! :D

[robleong]

That's not a bad idea :-)

The cooperative idea was such that every programmer with games in Budgie UK got one share per game accepted for sale. There is, however, an 'inequitability' such that if you submitted a great game and I submitted a poor game, so long as both our games are accepted for sale, we both shared in the overall profits equally. :)

[Bad Sector]

Well, yeah, but i assume that you could take my awesome engine and make a much better game while i make an ever better one, right? :D

[Jamie W]

I wrote Nitro (published by Psygnosis), originally for the Atari ST, and also the Amiga version of the game. I also developed numerous other unpublished games for the ST (I couldn't be bothered to tout them round publishers). A couple or really cool shoot em ups, and a gauntlet style adventure game with split screen scrolling.

Very nice platform to develop for, more so because you had to rely on your own ingenuity to code efficient sprite and screen scrolling stuff etc etc.

[lakibuk]

I wrote Nitro (published by Psygnosis), originally for the Atari ST, and also the Amiga version of the game.
Very nice platform to develop for, more so because you had to rely on your own ingenuity to code efficient sprite and screen scrolling stuff etc etc.
I liked Nitro (Amiga).
It will always stay a mystery to me how some developers squeezed soft scrolling and big sprites out of the Amiga. I mean, these ridiculous 16-pixel-width sprites. And the Blitter was not as fast as stated everywhere, in my experience.

[Adrian Cummings]

The Amiga blitter had some really nifty cookie cut features tho along with the barrel shifter, and you could squeeze 32 colour parallax scroll out of it on OCS chipset at about 7-10fps rather than plain old 8 colour hardware parallax. Also handy for 5 bitplane scroll (bit tricky in practice) i.e. Robocod and Doodlebug - the later my own :)

But the much touted ST blitter chip was even more disappointing from what I saw of it if anybody remembers the ST flying bird demo heh :)

[Spaceman Spiff]

Never did much with my Atari ST, but I did sell a few copies of some games and a utility I made for the Atari 800/8-bit machines.

Being a poor teen still in high school, I found a guy a couple hours away who was selling software with ads in the back of Antic (or was it Analog?), and got him to handle my games. Also got some copies put on consignment at the bit computer store in the city. In the end, I don't remember how many sales I had, maybe 30-60 across 2 games and a utility program.

I think the high point was a review of my RPG / hack-n-slash in the M.A.C.E. Journal that they liked better than the offerings from Epyx. Woo!

I should have stuck with games, but got into the BBS scene, making and selling BBS software, and then into the big University where I discovered nerdettes (previously unheard of in the podunkville small town I came from), and games went by the wayside for a number of years.

I still have my 8-bit disks, hardware, and a stack of Indus GT Drives. I wonder if I could pull my games into a PC emulator...

[JazzieB]

I also did a fair bit of programming on the good old ST. Most of it was the Rockfall series of games written in 68000, but I did a few other things in GFA BASIC as well. Here's a link (http://www.sos-software.co.uk/emulation/emulation.html) to my ST stuff.

The Rockfall series has since seen a PC release and I'm currently working on a complete re-write that will also be available for the Mac.

[Phil Newton]

I never released any games, but I made a few text adventures that were quite poor. I remember a lot of the games being mentioned here, and I'm pretty sure I have some original disks hanging around - I've definitely got the Munsie collection from Floppyshop.

[Applewood]

I did a bunch of ST and Amiga budget games for a company called "Byte Back" :o

I learned the trade on spectrum and C64 but the ST and Amiga era was where I really learned how to make stuff sing. Heady days!

[robleong]

I also did a fair bit of programming on the good old ST. Most of it was the Rockfall series of games written in 68000, but I did a few other things in GFA BASIC as well. Here's a link (http://www.sos-software.co.uk/emulation/emulation.html) to my ST stuff.

The Rockfall series has since seen a PC release and I'm currently working on a complete re-write that will also be available for the Mac.

Good to see you around here, Jazzie!