Many people have this illusion that home computer games were written on the systems they run on, but the more serious devs/publishers had setups like the one here with a host PC.
There were stories of Sinclair game devs using CPCs in a similar way simply because they couldn't stand the Sinclair keyboards.
While some of the professional development probably was on host systems, not all of it was.
Especially since the release of Turbo Assembler in 1985, serious development on the C64 was quite comfortable.
Years later in the 90ies, Fairlight enhanced Turbo Assembler with REU support, which made development on the machine itself ridiculously comfortable. Basically the only thing missing I can recall was there was no concept of version management back then.
Of course, this came too late for professional development but it's basically what the demo scene ran on till cross assembling from PCs came in vogue.
The C64 was being actively developed for for a decade or more, and Blood Money came in 1990, towards the end of that period. The Amiga was reaching its peak popularity by then.
By that point, more powerful development machines and tools will have become much more affordable/available than in the early 80s.
I remember reading a story about writing games in the 80's, and the programmers were all using some powerful timeshare system, but during the workday it slowed to a crawl as everyone compiled their code.
It was far more productive to just write/run code on a dedicated Atari/C64 or whatever the target system was.
Ron Gilbert (of Maniac Mansion / DOTT / Monkey Island / SCUMM fame) speaks to this in an interview he gave at Handmade Con, you can find it on youtube.
IIRC he says they used UNIX workstations to develop Maniac Mansion/SCUMM for the C64. Complete with hot loading of levels, presumably they had a similar hardware interface to what's shown in TFA for manipulating C64 memory contents from the UNIX box.
Great to see these technical retrospectives. I remember David Jones wrote a similar one for the original Amiga game and it was published in a magazine around the time of the release. It included a description of how the scrolling works and the code was on the cover disk.
It was actually this code that really kick started my own Amiga game programming of demos and games and lead to a two decade stint in the game industry, so I am forever grateful.
Blood Money was a good game - way too hard for me as a child but it had an atmosphere and soundtrack that gave it it's own following at the time and place in my memory banks as an extremely well crafted game. Thanks to OP for the article, appreciated!
The PDS sounds like a fairly typical console devkit of the time: basically just a larger, more powerful system to host the build toolchain and an in-circuit emulator you plugged into the cartridge slot. I remember an interview with the Mega Man devs in which they mentioned they used an HP 9000 workstation with an ICE simulating a Famicom cartridge to develop the game.
Fancy devboxes with custom console builds, like the PS2 TOOL, would come later (probably necessary when cartridges were phased out).
Games like Blood Money, Xenon 2, Mr. Heli gave me a lifelong craving for shoot em ups with shops: Games where you want to hone each run to get the most money possible and experiment with different upgrade loadouts, making for an inherently repayable experience.
The problem with these games was that you tended to lose all your upgrades if you die, and later levels were essentially unplayable if you lost all those upgrades. So you really only had one life.
And you'd quickly figure out a fairly optimal upgrade sequence and stick to it.
Still, I enjoyed them back then too. X-Out was another one, with a particularly interesting shop/ship configuration system for its time.
Youtube example of it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Igevw8PRRY
Amiga example with intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxciUa4YmeY
Parts 2 and 3 are password protected, with no obvious hint how to obtain a password. For patreons only or something like that?
Many people have this illusion that home computer games were written on the systems they run on, but the more serious devs/publishers had setups like the one here with a host PC.
There were stories of Sinclair game devs using CPCs in a similar way simply because they couldn't stand the Sinclair keyboards.
While some of the professional development probably was on host systems, not all of it was.
Especially since the release of Turbo Assembler in 1985, serious development on the C64 was quite comfortable.
Years later in the 90ies, Fairlight enhanced Turbo Assembler with REU support, which made development on the machine itself ridiculously comfortable. Basically the only thing missing I can recall was there was no concept of version management back then.
Of course, this came too late for professional development but it's basically what the demo scene ran on till cross assembling from PCs came in vogue.
The C64 was being actively developed for for a decade or more, and Blood Money came in 1990, towards the end of that period. The Amiga was reaching its peak popularity by then.
By that point, more powerful development machines and tools will have become much more affordable/available than in the early 80s.
I remember reading a story about writing games in the 80's, and the programmers were all using some powerful timeshare system, but during the workday it slowed to a crawl as everyone compiled their code.
It was far more productive to just write/run code on a dedicated Atari/C64 or whatever the target system was.
Ron Gilbert (of Maniac Mansion / DOTT / Monkey Island / SCUMM fame) speaks to this in an interview he gave at Handmade Con, you can find it on youtube.
IIRC he says they used UNIX workstations to develop Maniac Mansion/SCUMM for the C64. Complete with hot loading of levels, presumably they had a similar hardware interface to what's shown in TFA for manipulating C64 memory contents from the UNIX box.
From the domain, I was hoping for Lemmings info. They have it! It is here: https://lemmings.info/lemmings-gamehistory/. In its own submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45679873
Man I'm still waiting for a modern (2D) Lemmings remake or spiritual successor :')
A spiritual successor would be Zombie Night Terror [1].
I find it even better in some ways (atmosphere, dark humor, gameplay). Highly recommended.
Edit: it has also an editor and community made levels.
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/416680/Zombie_Night_Terro...
Last I checked it wasn't even really possible to buy Lemmings anywhere. I think Sony owns the license nowadays.
Companys remake every game that has some nostalgia but not Lemmings.
Any good suggestions for tools for writing C64 programs in Linux and running them in Vice ? I only found a couple of guides that cover Windows, alas.
Take oscar64 [0]. So far the best C compiler for the C64 with a lot of extra options, good library and a good documentation.
[0] https://github.com/drmortalwombat/oscar64
I am using ca65 / cc65 for all my Commodore programming. Should run under Linux just fine.
Prog8 requires 64tass (for which a .deb package exists it looks like) and a Java runtime: https://github.com/irmen/prog8
TRSE should also work on Linux: https://lemonspawn.com/turbo-rascal-syntax-error-expected-bu...
Thanks a lot, I will check it out.
Great to see these technical retrospectives. I remember David Jones wrote a similar one for the original Amiga game and it was published in a magazine around the time of the release. It included a description of how the scrolling works and the code was on the cover disk.
It was actually this code that really kick started my own Amiga game programming of demos and games and lead to a two decade stint in the game industry, so I am forever grateful.
Blood Money was a good game - way too hard for me as a child but it had an atmosphere and soundtrack that gave it it's own following at the time and place in my memory banks as an extremely well crafted game. Thanks to OP for the article, appreciated!
It is even harder for me now. I found such games easier as a child.
Yeah, it was hard. Then again, many C64 games were hard, but I remember my brother and I really struggling with Blood Money.
The PDS sounds like a fairly typical console devkit of the time: basically just a larger, more powerful system to host the build toolchain and an in-circuit emulator you plugged into the cartridge slot. I remember an interview with the Mega Man devs in which they mentioned they used an HP 9000 workstation with an ICE simulating a Famicom cartridge to develop the game.
Fancy devboxes with custom console builds, like the PS2 TOOL, would come later (probably necessary when cartridges were phased out).
Games like Blood Money, Xenon 2, Mr. Heli gave me a lifelong craving for shoot em ups with shops: Games where you want to hone each run to get the most money possible and experiment with different upgrade loadouts, making for an inherently repayable experience.
The problem with these games was that you tended to lose all your upgrades if you die, and later levels were essentially unplayable if you lost all those upgrades. So you really only had one life.
And you'd quickly figure out a fairly optimal upgrade sequence and stick to it.
Still, I enjoyed them back then too. X-Out was another one, with a particularly interesting shop/ship configuration system for its time.
Yeah, played both of these on the ST, absolutely loved blowing up weird alien squid things and collecting loot.