Exclusive Games Only For Pandora


streak

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Many people knows that exclusives makes handheld selling good, so i have a little bit insane idea to port some games that never comes out but they have a source codes avaible [ on internet ]

My first choice is:
Corridor 8 -> http://pcgtw.retro-net.de/index.php?id=games:corridor8
Download sourcecodes -> http://pcgtw.retro-net.de/lib/exe/fetch.ph...Acor8_proto.zip
Download design doc / manual -> http://pcgtw.retro-net.de/lib/exe/fetch.ph...cor8_desdoc.zip

some pics:
http://pcgtw.retro-net.de/lib/exe/fetch.ph...c%3Acor8_02.jpg
http://pcgtw.retro-net.de/lib/exe/fetch.ph...c%3Acor8_01.jpg

some info about game / proto:
Corridor 8: Galactic Wars was to be the sequel to Corridor 7: Alien Invasion, a rather poor first-person shooter based on the Wolfenstein 3D engine. For the sequel, they were going to use the “Build” engine from 3D Realms. But the game never left the prototype stage because Intracorp Entertainment went bankrupt during the development in late 1996. That was also the end of Capstone, as it was only a distribution label, not an independent company.

A few details are known about the game. The plot was set one hundred years after Corridor 7: Alien Invasion, but it was just another “bad guys are trying to conquer the universe” thing, so it is not worth mentioning. The player would have been able to choose to play with one of several different characters on either the allied or enemy side. Furthermore, Corridor 8: Galactic Wars was to offer 20 weapons and 60 levels divided into 6 episodes.


Fortunately, the prototype version and the source code survived and were made available indirectly by Les Bird in mid-2005. Les Bird did all the programming for this and most other Capstone games. Even though the prototype has a lot of placeholder graphics and sounds, and does not represent what the final product would have looked like (same for the screenshots you see here), it is still fun to play around with. It comes with an integrated map editor that allows switching between edit mode and game mode at any time, a very unique feature back then.

The design document was made available as well, but the image quality of the existing PDF files is terribly bad. However, Les Bird kindly provided us a printed copy of the design document. It’s not fully scanned yet, so for now, you have to make do with the low-quality ones.

-------------------
second game:

shenandoah

some pics:
http://pcgtw.retro-net.de/lib/exe/fetch.ph...enandoah_01.gif
http://pcgtw.retro-net.de/lib/exe/fetch.ph...enandoah_02.gif

and info:
"Here we have a nice-looking shoot’em up, which was to come out on Amiga and PC but sadly never saw completion. The developers promised the game to feature 16 different ships, more than 30 upgradable weapons, over a hundred enemies and end-of-level bosses, randomly chosen enemy attack waves, raytraced graphics, animated cutscenes, and even a 4-player mode using a custom joystick interface. The 4-player mode would have allowed different modes of play: four small ships, each controlled by one player; two big ships, each controlled by two players (cannon/movement); or the combination of two small ships and one big ship. Sounds too ambitious? Indeed, it was.

Being only a small group of young people, Exceed Productions could not handle their projects within reasonable development time. Moreover, Shenandoah was a spare-time project without any budget. The programmers got tired of having no money, so they jumped ship. Unfortunately, only a buggy-but-playable preview version containing the first level was done at that time; you can download it below (thanks to Krister Karlsson for making it available). For best results, especially with modern operating systems, use DOSBox 0.65 and start the game with “GAME2.EXE”.

and teh best part is:
... I'm in contact with Krister Karlsson, and I'm one of the volunteers. :) The Windows version, which I'm working on, is already quite advanced. More information will be posted at the GTW portal soon.
last I know, Krister Karlsson(christmas 2006) was going to release all source code etc to some volunteers who were going to complete the game. We'll see...


// StreaK
 
I don't think exclusive games are a good idea. That's not the incentive when buying an open system.
 
I am for bringing these old and uncompleted games into the present. I am quite happy to see some "new" old games.
 
sindbad said:
I don't think exclusive games are a good idea. That's not the incentive when buying an open system.
Also to add if you can get the source why cant they be compiled for multiple platforms?
 
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sindbad said:
I don't think exclusive games are a good idea. That's not the incentive when buying an open system.
If the source is available they won't exactly be "exclusive", well the levels, models and artwork would be I guess.

I think he means "exclusive" as in the way Mario is only on Nintendo products, thus if you want to play the Mario 64 DS you need a DS (or a powerful PC with an emulator).

I don't think it is a bad idea, why not have games that other handhelds can't do? I am sure other handhelds can do or will do Quake3, even if they ruin the textures and severely lower the polymodels, most people don't know the difference and don't care to find out.

If we have a slick super awesome game that runs on the Pandora then people will just go "wow, that is a cool product", instead of "it's crap, my cellphone can run Quake3 too".

I realize it isn't an entirely honest thing to do, preying on peoples lack of knowledge, but it isn't that malicious and all the other companies do it.
 
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nubie said:
If the source is available they won't exactly be "exclusive",
I mean if somebody makes it on pandora before any other handheld / console / pc .. it will be temporary "exclusive", right?

The source codes are availabble from many years [ for example corridor8, but noone wants to touch it, so if pandora could get this, then it would be "real exclusive", right?

Anyway, it is always good a start-point to interest gamming-community [ psp / nds owners ] with pandora.

sindbad said:
I don't think exclusive games are a good idea. That's not the incentive when buying an open system.

Remember, that not everybody gets pandora only for "opensource". Some people waiting only for PSX emu, some people loves wifi and want only to "net-chatting" using small portable pandora and many others wait only to get new homebrew games that are not accessable on another portable systems [ like Ruckage games ].
Looking only in one direction its not an option for open-minded people.
 
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For the record, Deathtrap Remix is a GP2X exclusive. I have compiled it to run on the PC, but never released it. I don't think anyone else has bothered to to port it away. So, there you go. :p
 
StreaK said:
nubie said:
If the source is available they won't exactly be "exclusive",
I mean if somebody makes it on pandora before any other handheld / console / pc .. it will be temporary "exclusive", right?

The source codes are availabble from many years [ for example corridor8, but noone wants to touch it, so if pandora could get this, then it would be "real exclusive", right?


Start working on getting it to work for Pandora, but I would keep it open for other platforms. It sounds like corridor8 is missing a lot of content which would be my guess no one has done anything with it.
When I think of an exclusive game, im thinking is being built to use specific features only found on the Pandora like the dsp.
 
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Hi there,

If you take information from my website, please properly quote it. Second, hotlinking isn't allowed, you have to link to the article(s) instead. (and then you don't have to quote anyway)

As for the two games you menioned. No idea about Corridor 8, no one probably cares, but you can't do a port of Shenandoah without permission. You need to talk to Krister Karlsson. I'm the person doing the Windows version, by the way. :)
 
So the long and short of it is that generally, people completing an incomplete game like this want it to get maximum exposure - either for love of the game, ego, or just plain love of porting. As a result, it's very unlikely that you'd find a team of people willing to:

A) Finish designing the game
B) Finish coding it
C) Finish making the art for it
D) Port the game's existing code to ARM
E) Test it
F) Distribute/host it

Who were also content to release the game to a super limited audience - AKA whoever chose to download and play it on a system whose install base numbers in the thousands, a percentage of which would be exposed to it unless you aggressively marketed the game to homebrew websites, forums, etc.

Not that I'm trying to poo-poo your idea - I think that getting as many games/homebrews ported to Pandora as possible is a great idea, and I'd love to see something like this happen, but I'm also a realist, and it's just plain not likely that either of these games would be Pandora exclusive, and even less likely that either would be a "Killer App" that would boost system sales - both titles are a bit too niche for that.

I work in games - so my apologies if I sound a bit jaded about all of this.

However, I encourage you to prove me wrong - get a team together and finish and port the games. That is the way of the homebrew community, after all...
 
its all about the concept. I know corrodor8 its not killer app, and i know that it will not get enough audience The main purpose of porting it is to "make pandora visible to other computer subcultures" like old-games enthusiasts or retro-freaks. In other words: opening the doors for other communities is not so easy task, you'll need to give them something to think about. How to get more audience from old-retro-freaks to pandora? Give them dosbox on handheld? No, because PSP has got this aswell . Give them something unusual [ like releasing the game which was never released ]. This is the concept of making pandora popular in other than linux-handheld communities. Many of you will say: "this is completely waste of time". i say "no, because, this way we will get more-and-more people to our pandora's community. Some of them will be completely useless for others, but someday we will get more serious dev'ers and that will be the real thing". Thats what we need, now - many people from different computer subcultures to spread the word about pandora.
 
I was planning for Ny Iht to be Pandora exclusive for the time being. None of the other handhelds can handle what I'm trying to do with the game.
 
Well I think the concept itself isn't bad. Have a look on lostlevels.org, some of the programmers of those ill-fated games would probably welcome the idea of getting paid to complete theirs.
 
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