8 ms·

The making of Dark Castle (2018)

74 points by AntiRush 6y ago

klingon78 6y ago
I used to have the original version on a 3.5” floppy that I kept even when I could no longer play it. I also got to play Beyond Dark Castle[1] at one point- also a great game. (Tangential: I was in a user group that may have tended to share pirated software for pretty much every version of computer that Apple made. If I could go back today and give each of those developers and businesses what they were owed, even with inflation, I would want to. I don’t remember anyone being aware this was illegal, and it might not have been back then. It felt sneaky though, like taking a cookie when you weren’t supposed to. I didn’t understand copyright, not that ignorance is an excuse. These kids were not intending to be criminals by any means. I know one became a cop. Duplication helped spread those games that parents probably would not have bought and they helped the kids learn and care about slightly more technical aspects of the technology they were using, such as what a sector was on a floppy, and the physical noise and behavior of the drive when things were written or read from the disk in a certain way, and how that would sometimes relate to whether the duplicated game could be played.) There was a later color remake version of the original[2] for the Mac. It’s strange that old B/W Mac OS is being used in the video; my Color Classic’s desktop was in color. I’m also unfamiliar with the ports of Dark Castle, but it looks like a color version of Beyond Dark Castle was made for the Amiga[3]. I eventually got Return to Dark Castle[4] for macOS many years later, which was a good bit of fun also. [1]- https://youtu.be/ISP9su7okHo https://youtu.be/ISP9su7okHo [2]- https://youtu.be/ZVSm6pexOWA https://youtu.be/ZVSm6pexOWA [3]- https://youtu.be/1ZfEbqhb_Mc https://youtu.be/1ZfEbqhb_Mc [4]- https://apps.apple.com/us/app/return-to-dark-castle/id410703154?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/return-to-dark-castle/id410703...
- ec109685 6y ago
  Loved Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle. Only problem with those games it really raised the bar on graphics. As someone just learning to program, it was frustrating not even getting close to their quality. Wow, didn’t realize the main programmer ended up writing Flash: “Jonathan Gay (who we should note went on to create the Flash multimedia software) owns a family-operated cattle ranch”
  - klingon78 6y ago
    What did you use for programming games? I wrote games for the Apple ][ in basic and created some with The Arcade Machine, but my Apple Machine Language book was largely unread, due to my impatience. Someone at the time that did have the patience was Jordan M., who wrote Karateka[1], which I thought was pronounced “kah-RAH-tic-a” but is “CARE-ah-TAKE-ah”[2], and please don’t ask me to change. The making of that game was one of the greatest things in the recent history of humanity, at least in my limited experience. [1]- https://www.amazon.com/Making-Karateka-Jordan-Mechner-ebook/dp/B00AEH0EDM/ https://www.amazon.com/Making-Karateka-Jordan-Mechner-ebook/... [2]- https://youtu.be/QDaFte42odA https://youtu.be/QDaFte42odA
    - ido 6y ago
      also creator of the much better known Prince of Persia series!
    - technothrasher 6y ago
      What did you use for programming games? I used a Basic compiler, but for the life of me now I cannot remember the name of it. There are several different AppleSoft Basic compilers (such as TASC and Beagle Compiler) but this one used its own variant of Basic, not AppleSoft Basic. Dang, now I'm going to spend all day trying to remember the name of it. That and reminisce about the space exploration game I was developing that was going to take over the world, but mostly just ended up getting my middle school teachers to yell at me for working on it instead of the class work.
      - ec109685 6y ago
        I used Microsoft QuickBasic, then tried pascal and then C. The latter two were much harder to do any type of graphics programming (for me as an elementary school student). With basic, I could basically draw, xor out what I drew and then draw again and it worked well enough. With C, (at least the way I remembered back then), you had to deal with QuickDraw, double buffering, etc. which was more complicated than I could deal with versus just being able throw up a game to play with.
    - 6y ago
- the_af 6y ago
  As for your tangent: don't sweat it too much. Obviously no kid is a criminal because of pirated games. When I was a kid, you bought C64, Amiga* -- and later, DOS -- games at shops, and every game was pirated. This was the norm in third world countries. I didn't even know there was anything out of the ordinary. I don't think I owned a single legit C64 game. As for my first legal PC games, which a relative from abroad bought for me: I didn't really make the connection; to me they were "boxed games" because they came with a fancy box and a manual. I don't feel the need to "repay" anyone about this, or feel any guilt. Of course, a real C64 boxed game is probably a collector's item today, and I'd like to own an original of the games I loved as a kid. * though nobody I knew owned an Amiga. I marveled at the color graphics on display at the pirated games shop, and wondered who owned one!
lolive 6y ago
This article summarizes most of my gaming experience in the late 80s. (ok, add also Sierra On Line to the list to be fully accurate). This is marvellous to remember those times!!!!
- lolive 6y ago
  There were also Crystal Quest, a labyrith game in a pyramid and a helicopter where you had to fly in russian-named cities. Oh my god, that article opened a pandora box in my memories.
  - User23 6y ago
    Armor Alley was a great LAN game too. Nettrek[1] was another popular LAN game. And Spectre was a wireframe tank game. [1] not the same thing as Netrek.
  - theNJR 6y ago
    The helicopter game was Apache something. Crystal Quest was awesome. My mom loved that game too. I don’t recall a pyramid game.
    - MontagFTB 6y ago
      Apache Strike
      - theNJR 6y ago
        Yes!! Apache Strike!
    - Jetrel 6y ago
      It was probably this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarab_of_Ra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarab_of_Ra I was going to link screenshots, and then I realized, holy jesus, I can just link the actual running game to you on the web archive: https://archive.org/details/ScarabOfRaMacintosh https://archive.org/details/ScarabOfRaMacintosh
- 6y ago
Al-Khwarizmi 6y ago
> the DOS and Mega Drive versions, actually did Dark Castle a great disservice. They offered garish, blocky, color renditions of Pierce's detailed, hand-drawn, black-and-white artwork, and they paired this with an inferior animation engine and awkward, slow gamepad and keyboard-only control setups that muddied the precise and idiosyncratic mouse and keyboard controls of the Mac original. Indeed. I remember playing the DOS version on an 8086 (an Amstrad PC-1512 DD) when I was a kid (thanks to this article. I had totally forgotten about it, but this brought the memories back!). I remember being intrigued by the ambience and setting, but finding the game quite unplayable. Probably not only because it was the DOS version and the controls were terrible, but also because the computer was not up to scratch, it lagged a lot. I very rarely could pass the first level I encountered (and I wasn't a bad player, I completed various games in the DOS era, but it was just hard with so much lag and bad controls). I still played quite a bit more than the experience on that version/setup deserved, which goes to show that I found something special in it. Time to find an emulator and play it as it was meant to be played once and for all, I guess!
HenryBemis 6y ago
Reminds me of Saboteur 2 :)
skohan 6y ago
I have not thought about dark castle in years, but just reading the name I can hear all the sound effects
coldcode 6y ago
I met Charlie in 1986 at the Apple Developers conference (at the Hilton on Nob Hill in SF); while we were all out on a boat Apple had hired for all the developers, I heard the whole story, including a hilarious bit about recording a cricket to use in Airborne. Charlie became a real mentor/inspiration to the other young developers starting little companies to build Mac software (including me).
JoeCoo7 6y ago
An engaging journey into the heart of darkness...
logbiscuitswave 6y ago
I remember as a kid when DC came out. To this day is remains one of the most beautifully crafted games I’ve ever seen - all with low res 1 bit graphics. Sadly I could never really get a hang of the controls and found them incredibly clunky. I’m continually amazed at the skill of the people that are able to speed run this game.
pbw 6y ago
I vividly remember playing this game on my friend's older brother's Mac. We loved the sounds, but I had no idea there was so much work behind them, or that they were that ground breaking. The article is great writing. Looks like he has a podcast The Life & Times of Video Games [1], I will have to check it out. [1] - https://lifeandtimes.games/ https://lifeandtimes.games/
gwern 6y ago
"The kind of shooting he did in the Marine Corps Reserves was different to the one done internationally at events like the Olympics, however. In order to get good enough to compete internationally in that other style, he knew he'd have to train full-time for a year or two. But to do that he needed more money....He switched the company focus wholly to graphics software and utilities. Two years later, in February 1990 Jackson sold the company to Aldus Corporation for exactly the amount he needed in order to train in international style rapid-fire pistol shooting full-time. A year later he started training, and by the middle of 1993, at forty-three years of age, he made the US team." Incredible that sometimes the "I'll get rich first so I can X fulltime!" plans actually do work out.

74 points by AntiRush 6y ago

I used to have the original version on a 3.5” floppy that I kept even when I could no longer play it. I also got to play Beyond Dark Castle[1] at one point- also a great game. (Tangential: I was in a user group that may have tended to share pirated software for pretty much every version of computer that Apple made. If I could go back today and give each of those developers and businesses what they were owed, even with inflation, I would want to. I don’t remember anyone being aware this was illegal, and it might not have been back then. It felt sneaky though, like taking a cookie when you weren’t supposed to. I didn’t understand copyright, not that ignorance is an excuse. These kids were not intending to be criminals by any means. I know one became a cop. Duplication helped spread those games that parents probably would not have bought and they helped the kids learn and care about slightly more technical aspects of the technology they were using, such as what a sector was on a floppy, and the physical noise and behavior of the drive when things were written or read from the disk in a certain way, and how that would sometimes relate to whether the duplicated game could be played.) There was a later color remake version of the original[2] for the Mac. It’s strange that old B/W Mac OS is being used in the video; my Color Classic’s desktop was in color. I’m also unfamiliar with the ports of Dark Castle, but it looks like a color version of Beyond Dark Castle was made for the Amiga[3]. I eventually got Return to Dark Castle[4] for macOS many years later, which was a good bit of fun also. [1]- https://youtu.be/ISP9su7okHo https://youtu.be/ISP9su7okHo [2]- https://youtu.be/ZVSm6pexOWA https://youtu.be/ZVSm6pexOWA [3]- https://youtu.be/1ZfEbqhb_Mc https://youtu.be/1ZfEbqhb_Mc [4]- https://apps.apple.com/us/app/return-to-dark-castle/id410703154?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/return-to-dark-castle/id410703...

ec109685 6y ago
Loved Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle. Only problem with those games it really raised the bar on graphics. As someone just learning to program, it was frustrating not even getting close to their quality. Wow, didn’t realize the main programmer ended up writing Flash: “Jonathan Gay (who we should note went on to create the Flash multimedia software) owns a family-operated cattle ranch”
- klingon78 6y ago
  What did you use for programming games? I wrote games for the Apple ][ in basic and created some with The Arcade Machine, but my Apple Machine Language book was largely unread, due to my impatience. Someone at the time that did have the patience was Jordan M., who wrote Karateka[1], which I thought was pronounced “kah-RAH-tic-a” but is “CARE-ah-TAKE-ah”[2], and please don’t ask me to change. The making of that game was one of the greatest things in the recent history of humanity, at least in my limited experience. [1]- https://www.amazon.com/Making-Karateka-Jordan-Mechner-ebook/dp/B00AEH0EDM/ https://www.amazon.com/Making-Karateka-Jordan-Mechner-ebook/... [2]- https://youtu.be/QDaFte42odA https://youtu.be/QDaFte42odA
  - ido 6y ago
    also creator of the much better known Prince of Persia series!
  - technothrasher 6y ago
    What did you use for programming games? I used a Basic compiler, but for the life of me now I cannot remember the name of it. There are several different AppleSoft Basic compilers (such as TASC and Beagle Compiler) but this one used its own variant of Basic, not AppleSoft Basic. Dang, now I'm going to spend all day trying to remember the name of it. That and reminisce about the space exploration game I was developing that was going to take over the world, but mostly just ended up getting my middle school teachers to yell at me for working on it instead of the class work.
    - ec109685 6y ago
      I used Microsoft QuickBasic, then tried pascal and then C. The latter two were much harder to do any type of graphics programming (for me as an elementary school student). With basic, I could basically draw, xor out what I drew and then draw again and it worked well enough. With C, (at least the way I remembered back then), you had to deal with QuickDraw, double buffering, etc. which was more complicated than I could deal with versus just being able throw up a game to play with.
  - 6y ago
the_af 6y ago
As for your tangent: don't sweat it too much. Obviously no kid is a criminal because of pirated games. When I was a kid, you bought C64, Amiga* -- and later, DOS -- games at shops, and every game was pirated. This was the norm in third world countries. I didn't even know there was anything out of the ordinary. I don't think I owned a single legit C64 game. As for my first legal PC games, which a relative from abroad bought for me: I didn't really make the connection; to me they were "boxed games" because they came with a fancy box and a manual. I don't feel the need to "repay" anyone about this, or feel any guilt. Of course, a real C64 boxed game is probably a collector's item today, and I'd like to own an original of the games I loved as a kid. * though nobody I knew owned an Amiga. I marveled at the color graphics on display at the pirated games shop, and wondered who owned one!

lolive 6y ago

This article summarizes most of my gaming experience in the late 80s. (ok, add also Sierra On Line to the list to be fully accurate). This is marvellous to remember those times!!!!

lolive 6y ago
There were also Crystal Quest, a labyrith game in a pyramid and a helicopter where you had to fly in russian-named cities. Oh my god, that article opened a pandora box in my memories.
- User23 6y ago
  Armor Alley was a great LAN game too. Nettrek[1] was another popular LAN game. And Spectre was a wireframe tank game. [1] not the same thing as Netrek.
- theNJR 6y ago
  The helicopter game was Apache something. Crystal Quest was awesome. My mom loved that game too. I don’t recall a pyramid game.
  - MontagFTB 6y ago
    Apache Strike
    - theNJR 6y ago
      Yes!! Apache Strike!
  - Jetrel 6y ago
    It was probably this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarab_of_Ra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarab_of_Ra I was going to link screenshots, and then I realized, holy jesus, I can just link the actual running game to you on the web archive: https://archive.org/details/ScarabOfRaMacintosh https://archive.org/details/ScarabOfRaMacintosh
6y ago

Al-Khwarizmi 6y ago

> the DOS and Mega Drive versions, actually did Dark Castle a great disservice. They offered garish, blocky, color renditions of Pierce's detailed, hand-drawn, black-and-white artwork, and they paired this with an inferior animation engine and awkward, slow gamepad and keyboard-only control setups that muddied the precise and idiosyncratic mouse and keyboard controls of the Mac original. Indeed. I remember playing the DOS version on an 8086 (an Amstrad PC-1512 DD) when I was a kid (thanks to this article. I had totally forgotten about it, but this brought the memories back!). I remember being intrigued by the ambience and setting, but finding the game quite unplayable. Probably not only because it was the DOS version and the controls were terrible, but also because the computer was not up to scratch, it lagged a lot. I very rarely could pass the first level I encountered (and I wasn't a bad player, I completed various games in the DOS era, but it was just hard with so much lag and bad controls). I still played quite a bit more than the experience on that version/setup deserved, which goes to show that I found something special in it. Time to find an emulator and play it as it was meant to be played once and for all, I guess!

HenryBemis 6y ago

Reminds me of Saboteur 2 :)

skohan 6y ago

I have not thought about dark castle in years, but just reading the name I can hear all the sound effects

coldcode 6y ago

I met Charlie in 1986 at the Apple Developers conference (at the Hilton on Nob Hill in SF); while we were all out on a boat Apple had hired for all the developers, I heard the whole story, including a hilarious bit about recording a cricket to use in Airborne. Charlie became a real mentor/inspiration to the other young developers starting little companies to build Mac software (including me).

JoeCoo7 6y ago

An engaging journey into the heart of darkness...

logbiscuitswave 6y ago

I remember as a kid when DC came out. To this day is remains one of the most beautifully crafted games I’ve ever seen - all with low res 1 bit graphics. Sadly I could never really get a hang of the controls and found them incredibly clunky. I’m continually amazed at the skill of the people that are able to speed run this game.

pbw 6y ago

I vividly remember playing this game on my friend's older brother's Mac. We loved the sounds, but I had no idea there was so much work behind them, or that they were that ground breaking. The article is great writing. Looks like he has a podcast The Life & Times of Video Games [1], I will have to check it out. [1] - https://lifeandtimes.games/ https://lifeandtimes.games/

gwern 6y ago

"The kind of shooting he did in the Marine Corps Reserves was different to the one done internationally at events like the Olympics, however. In order to get good enough to compete internationally in that other style, he knew he'd have to train full-time for a year or two. But to do that he needed more money....He switched the company focus wholly to graphics software and utilities. Two years later, in February 1990 Jackson sold the company to Aldus Corporation for exactly the amount he needed in order to train in international style rapid-fire pistol shooting full-time. A year later he started training, and by the middle of 1993, at forty-three years of age, he made the US team." Incredible that sometimes the "I'll get rich first so I can X fulltime!" plans actually do work out.