Date   : Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:29:01 -0500
From   : jules.richardson99@... (Jules Richardson)
Subject: Retro Software - Repton game discovered &

samwise wrote:
>> I think Repton's in my all time "top five" games list... I was really annoyed
>> back in the day that there wasn't a version for my humble Speccy (I used to
>> play it on the beebs at school during lunchtime)
> 
> ooh ... bad time to point out that there was (and Repton 2)?

Heh, actually yes - I meant to mention that in my email... or at least that 
there was a Repton 2 (I don't think I knew there was a Repton), but it came 
very late on.

R2 was bloody awful compared to the beeb version though - the scrolling and 
keyboard response was just nowhere near as smooth. The only saving grace was 
that it was much better* than that 'Boulderdash' Repton-a-like clone that 
Speccy users had to put up with :-)

* one of these days I'm going to end up insulting the game of someone who 
inhabits one of these mailing lists...

I did actually work on a Repton clone for the PC with a few friends back in 
the early 90s, but unfortunately I don't think anything of that survives. As I 
recall, we had the 'feel' almost identical to a beeb, and got as far as 
getting all the levels done, but were lacking any sound - then we all went off 
to uni and other things became more important ;-)

>> Will someone be posting here when it's done? (I could do without yet another
>> site login :-)
> 
> You only have to login once to the forum and it remembers you.  :)

Hmm, I'll think about it! (I'm old-school and kinda anti-forum, too - I much 
prefer a mailing list... ;)

> Sure can post back here, tho.

Good-o!!

>  I just wanted to make sure there was
> some interest before spamming the list with multiple mails on the same
> topic! 

Well the list has been a bit quiet of late, so we can use more stuff to talk 
about...


> The next evolution of the game, Cyroid-X, has also been
> unearthed - it's similar to the Repton game, but with completely
> different graphics and some gameplay changes ... There's still a lot
> to do on both titles like filling out the number of levels, but it's a
> pretty interesting discovery, I reckon.

Y'know, a follow-on to Citadel might be interesting, too. Or a port of the 
Speccy's Monty Mole series to the beeb (I don't think it was ever done...)

>> Hmm, I don't know if I've got enough free time right now - maybe when the kids
>> go back to school in a month or so. I used to do Java dev full-time (mainly on
>> the "low level" side rather than UI stuff), so wouldn't mind taking a peek.
> 
> Wow. Dave's gonna say I-told-you-so.  I said no one would pick up an
> emulator, just because I asked.  He assured me it wouldn't hurt to
> raise the question!

Heh.

Well my 'to-do' list tends to outweigh my free time by a factor of ten, but I 
would be interested to look at JBeeb if I can find time :-)

I'm always in awe of emulator writers, but they're so often a mix of C and 
assembler (understandably) - making following someone else's code that much 
harder. I might actually stand a chance of making sense of how JBeeb works :-)

Plus of course if the separate machine functions are reasonably modularised, 
there might be scope to make an Acorn System or Acorn Atom or CUBE emulator 
one day, too...

cheers

Jules