Rich Mellor wrote: > >> a video with a download link on this QL game. URL is: > >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_Q0sTLhqKw > >> > >> Play the game and enjoy the weekend! > I am not quite sure I understand the background to this game.... > > Am I correct to understand that it was a public domain game > written in 1986, but only just licensed for release? There's a readme_txt in the ZIP package which tells a few things on this game. Well, and...
> So where was the film taken, and what is Urs' link to it? The film - a coWo multimedia production - is one of more than 90 QL related videos available on QLvsJAGUAR. coWo is my label for all sorts of services. QLvsJAGUAR is my alias for both my QL and JAGUAR related web-site(s) and YouTube video channel. So that's my link to it. Advertisement: Follow links below to view the videos. ;-) The story behind the game re-release is: The game has always been around and was public domain from day one. Due to the fact that it was (only) published in a German high street magazine and in the PD library of the German QL user group may have lead to the point that it may not be well known in Britain and other countries if known at all. It was one of my favourite QL games at those days. At least for some days after getting it. Now to the video: Being a young teenager and geek in the 80's, it's about clear that I also liked (and still like) the original TRON movie. Sometime last year I've heard about the upcoming TRON sequel to be called TRON LEGACY. It reminded me the above mentioned early loves. I had the idea to make something around it with the QL, maybe a parody, a funny trailer, an animation, a (new) game or the like. Something funny, at least something which should make fun for me in the making. Finally I set a task in my lengthy QL task list called "TRON LEGACY QL game & movie". As often (I'd better say always) time was running to fast and it was 2 days before the theatre premiere of TRON LEGACY (Dec 17th 2010) and still not much done about my task. Well I already had found the Floppy Disk with this game and some other TRON related games (another story), I had the German magazine "68000er" to hand and also had the Wikipedia articles about TRON. I also had an inspiration for the plot. So I've spent almost the whole day (Dec 15th) to copy and paste pictures for the games splash screens (done on the PC with PAINT then converted for the QL using Dilwyn's bmp2scr2_bas), writing the loader (BOOT) programs for both FLP_ and N1_, edit and print the disc case label, setup and test two QL systems in my Retro Lab, link and test those two QLs by the QL NETwork and finally shoot the various video sequences based on the plot. The next days evening (1 day before the movie premiere) I've spent some hours for the cut of the video footage. Finally the afternoon before the premiere I used my movie maker application on the PC to edit and then finally publish the video on my YouTube channel. All this took much more time than expected and I had to catch up with both family and work issues before Christmas. So even the video was uploaded just in time (before the premiere) I did not had the time to announce it and spread the word. So there I had it, another Sinclair or ATARI alike launch disaster: Product (video and game) is available, even in good quality this time (at least in my opinion), but public is not aware of it and ignores it. Compared to the rush on TRON LEGACY in general (non QL related of course) my video got only 54 views on YouTube and 0 downloads for the QL game (in 6 weeks). Poor! So I gave the whole thing a limited re-launch last Saturday. My post in ql-users and Rich's echo in qlforum brought some 90 video views and 23 game downloads up to now. At least it's no more unseen. ;-) Lessons learned (my interpretations of what the QL community can take out of this story, related to the general FUTURE and QUANTA discussion on this list and based on my experiences since the communication I did for QL-IS-25). 1. The QL or "open-minded-for-QL" community is so small that without a good communication flow information will not reach the members at all. With selected communication (e.g. "QL TRON Light Cycles", "SANDY FUTURA prototype") you hardly reach more than 100 guys. Even with good and intense communication (e.g. QL-Mac-Show, QL anniversaries) you hardly reach more than several hundred people. 2. Even there are so many (good) software titles around most of them are unknown today (I'd better say forgotten). Take Dilwyn's CD-ROM collection as an example. On one of those CD's, the above mentioned game is in a deep sleep. 3. Even binaries of the programs are available (see 2), sources are in most cases not. This makes it very difficult to adapt titles for current QDOSMS platforms. I can tell you by experience how time consuming and work intense it is to find original authors and try to find source code. Think about how much easier it would be to write a (new) device driver if the sources of earlier work would be available. That's just 3 points. I stop here (for now). Rich made a simple question "So where was the film taken, and what is Urs' link to it?" and in good company of recent posting I made a long reply. Cheers anyhow, Urs (had a lazy and long lunch break) ----------------------------------------------------------------- QLvsJAGUAR - Much more than retro! - Always remember: QL forever! Website: http://www.qlvsjaguar.homepage.bluewin.ch Videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/QLvsJaguar Pictures: http://cid-c250d8748980ce5a.photos.live.com/albums.aspx _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
