Making certain games run on systems which were never designed to run such games (or any games at all) is a favorite hobby of some, with [deater] being no exception. His latest creation involves porting Myst to the Apple II, or ‘demake’ in his own words. This means taking a game that was released in 1993 for MacOS and later for Windows 3.1 and the original PlayStation, and creating a version that works on an 8-bit system from 1977.
Obviously the graphical fidelity has been turned down some compared to the 1990s version, but at this stage much of the game’s levels have been implemented. For anyone who has ever played the game before, much of the visuals will be instantly recognizable. According to [deater], the game should run on any Apple II/II+/IIe, with at least 48 kB of RAM, but 64 kB needed for sound effects. If a Mockingboard sound card is installed, it will even play the intro theme.
On the project page the (currently) three floppy disks can be downloaded, with the source available on Github. While one is there, one can also check out [deater]’s ‘Another World’ port to the Apple II which we covered last year.
Hah! I love it. I could tell where he was going and what he was doing from my memories of playing the original, but if I had to play it for the first time on an Apple IIe, I don’t think I’d be able to figure anything out. Those are some potato graphics for sure.
This is what I hate about the games written for these old systems from 70’s and early 80’s. If you don’t already know what it’s supposed to be, it’s totally incomprehensible. I don’t know Myst, and to my eyes the longplay video looks like a blocky kaleidoscope interspersed with barely recognizable pictures of buildings.
It’s not just this game. You can take something like Raiders of the Lost Ark on Atari 2600, and you really need the manual to tell what everything is supposed to be. People often say “Oh, it’s the gameplay, not the graphics”, but what I think is happening is the imagination of a 10-year-old seen through nostalgia. I mean, look at it:
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/h9VA48PG404/maxresdefault.jpg
In order to play the game, you need to have seen the movie to understand the references, and then you need this map to understand what’s happening on the game screen:
http://www.atarimania.com/2600/boxes/hi_res/raiders_of_the_lost_ark_silver_1986_i.jpg
Plus the rest of the manual to recognize what the symbols on the screen mean, because when you’re playing it on a real TV it’s gonna be fuzzy.
You have to have played it on the Mac and made a map as you went – more like a graph structure – and various diagrams and tables of symbols and family tree plus where in time clues are from. Hmm. That is part of my brain I’ll never get back.
What is wrong with needing a manual? ;-)
Unfortunately, you run up against the hard limits of those ancient graphics. You want potato graphics, take the TRS-80: 128 x 48, 1:2 pixels, B/W only, “world’s worst graphics” of those machines back in the day. George Phillips, aka “gp2000”, who is an absolute Z80 wizard for wringing the last bit out of these machines, wrote an technically-amazing full-motion video player for them. It works, but you have step REALLY far back to see it.
http://48k.ca/trsvid.html
That is really cool.
Cool work! Looks like it’s pretty playable :) Reminds me to the ‘demake’ of Myst that my brother did for the TI-89 graphing calculator: https://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/439/43990.html .
I know the Apple II doesn’t have much for graphics but I’m sure it can do better than this. What happen to Apple II hires mode?
Page-flipped hi-res graphics mode takes 16kB, which is 1/3 of your RAM budget on a II+. Hi-res graphics are also 8 times bigger than lo-res, so it would take 24 floppy disks which seem a bit much. You also get 1/8th the frame rate and much more frequent access to disk.
Very cool. Understand why you went with Lo-res (but hey, double-lo is tempting right? ;) It’s cool that you’re using Qkumba’s routines. ProRWTS is part of the secret sauce for Lawless Legends too.
Considering the hardware the game was written for is so much more powerful you have to give him props, he really put a quart into a pint pot (1.13652 l in a 568.261 ml pot for you metricoids.)