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Archive
January
27, 2002 - March 23, 2002
�
I just got a new template set up to redo my game
pages to match the new site design.� The first game that I
have reformatted is Alien Attack.
�
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Overclocked
Remixes - FullSail - Subnodule!
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Mar 23 2002
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I recently found out
about a really cool music website,
http://remix.overclocked.org.� It's just full of remade
or remixed versions of a ton of videogame music.� You need
to check it out if you really like game music like I do.�
There's so many great ones, but one of my favorites is the Team
Gato song that's a remade version of Chrono Trigger's Gato Song
("My name is Gato/I have metal joints/Beat me up/And win
15 silver points")... but they go so far with those 4 lines!
Heh.
They
have remixes of just about every game you can think of - check
it out now. Other remix recommendations on the site: Monkey
Island (AmIEvil), Lounge Lemmings (mazedude),� Kid Icarus
Funky Dungeon (mazedude), F-Zero Mute City (JD), El Rolling
Thunder Salsa (DJ PRETZEL), Christmas Nights Merrylittlechristmas
(Dale North), aarrg - there's too many!
�
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�
A couple weeks ago,
Stevie and I were treated like VIPs by Full Sail College in Orlando,
Florida.� They were holding a Success Seminar and asked us
to speak for a couple sessions.� What an amazing place!�
I never knew a place as high quality and professional as Full
Sail existed.� Go to http://www.fullsail.com
and get an idea of the quality... and you will still not truly
understand how amazing this place is - you must actually see it
for yourself.
Full Sail is a fully accredited university and
right now you can get an A.S. degree (they're working on a B.S.
right now) in several subjects. My favorite, of course, is Game
Programming.� The university has 3,000 students attending
right now and graduations are held every single month - yes,
the school year starts when YOU start!
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And what a year it is - 14 months
to be precise, from entry to graduating.� If you are taking
the programming track, you will graduate with 900 hours of coding
experience - incredible!� Basically, you live with
your laptop the entire year.� When you leave, you take a
massive tome of your work with you that you use as a pretty
cool resume.
One of the instructors at Full Sail is none
other than the legendary Dave Arneson,
co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons!� (read
about D&D here)� During the evening on Sunday,
a bunch of us played Ghost Recon deathmatch for several hours
(with Dave), and then to end the night we played a couple hours
of D&D with Dave as the DM (dungeon master).� Wow -
I'll never forget it!� Oh yeah, the game ended with us
all getting killed by zombies.
�
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�
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So I somehow found some random references
to an old Apple II game that I wrote back in 1984-85 called Subnodule.�
One guy even made a song based on it!
Check this out first.
This is where the song is located.
Then check out
this link - they named their site because they could never
say Subnodule correctly!� Heh.� Here's an email I
got from Nick (he runs that site):
"Well, about Subnodule... to be quite
honest, besides King's Quest 4 and Wheel of Fortune, it was
the only fun game I had for my old Apple II. My buddy Andy and
I always used to play that game just because of the sheer weirdness
of it, and our ability (or lack thereof) to
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�pronounce the title sort of evolved
into an inside joke with us. We just thought it would be a cool,
memorable name for our little site. The reason I remembered to
include your name in the history of our site is because Subnodule
was the only game I had with credits. I remember busting out the
old Apple a few years ago and thinking as the title scrolled down,
"Damn! That's the guy who did Doom!"
The Melvin stuff is pretty weird, dude. And you were an
adult when you did these? Hehe. Thanks for checking out the
site, and of course, feel free to swing by every now and then,
and tell every living soul how awesome the Subnoodle is and
how you're not going to sell your Ferrari and instead donate
it to us... okay maybe not."
So, now I feel like I should make a Subnodule game page since
I dredged it up from the sea of forgotten games...
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�
Website Redesign - HDB
PC
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Mar
10 2002
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Well, I finally got tired
of the old design and tried out a new look.� Simpler and
no flash menu (which incidentally doesn't even load on my machine
when accessing it over the net!).� I'm still going to keep
the flash banners for the game stuff, but I won't use it for a
critical navigation feature.
�
We're close to landing a couple
Gameboy Advance contracts, so I'm really excited to be learning
that little machine.� I can't say what the titles are (of
course), but as soon as they're done I'll let everyone know.�
It will take almost a year before you see either of them though,
as the development time will be about 8 months.
�
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So, yes, I'm almost done with the PC version of Hyperspace Delivery
Boy!� Here's a screenshot of the PC version.� If you've
played the Pocket PC version, you'll notice a number of differences.
First,
since there's no stylus on the PC, you use a mouse cursor (the
blue circle) to point and click your way through the game.�
Directional keys are also supported and there's a new Controls
screen that allows you to configure them to your liking.
No longer
do you need to bring up your Resources and Deliveries as they
are on-screen at all times.� You can click on an item or
delivery and get specific information on it as you would expect.
The sound
effects are now at 44khz and the music has been lengthened and
now plays at high quality as well.
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Click for full size
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There's been a REALLY cool update
to the AppleWin Apple II emulator.� This has always been
my favorite Apple emulator but the damn thing would NEVER run
in full-screen mode - it was always a little window.�
Well, the source code has been updated by a
different guy, Oliver Schmidt, and he's done a fantastic job
adding DirectX support and FULL SCREEN mode!
I'm going to be putting all my old Apple II
stuff on the site at some point and this is definitely the emulator
that you should be running it in!
Get
it here.
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�
So as I'm fixing up my site, you'll
notice more links appearing.� Right now, most are disabled because
I need to reformat those pages to match the new design.
�
Hair, Car & Random Trivia
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Jan
27 2002
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I CUT MY HAIR!
�
I started growing my hair
in April 1991, just after starting id Software.� Two companies
later, I have cut it.� Tom Hall shaved his head bald, too,
so we're LOCKED & LOADED!!!
�
It's
so much easier to take care of and never gets in my way - YES!�
I donated it all to Locks
Of Love.� I'm sure it'll find a nice home.� AARRGGG!!!!�
Someone will be wearing a John Romero WIG!!!
�
Time to redo the PlanetRomero
banner....
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I'm sure it's no surprise
at this point that I'm finally selling my Testarossa.� Since
we moved out to the country over a year ago, I have only driven
it about 3 times or so -- it's just not a practical car out here
where everyone drives trucks and the roads are bumpy.
�
It's pretty damn fast, though,
at 625hp right now.� Oh, it can be turned up to about 750hp,
but I prefer to keep the engine intact! :)� It's on eBay
right now in the eBay Motors section / Ferrari.
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�
I decided to start popping
random trivia bits on my page as they crop up.� And I just came up
with one after scanning the net for a bit...
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Back at the very
start of 1989, I was between jobs having just left a company I
co-founded called Inside Out Software.� I was living in New
Hampshire at the time and had visited Infocom in Massachusetts
a few times for software development meetings.
�
My friend Lane Roathe and
I had a good contact at
Infocom that we talked to about doing some contract work for
them.� They told us they needed an operating system for their
Apple II games that was as small as possible, 1k total if we could
do that.� We told them we could and we got the job.
�
It came very close to 1024
bytes (Lane's RWTS routine was a little over 256 bytes and my
high-level ProDOS-like code was less than 768 bytes).� The
result was called InfoDOS and was the OS used in Steve Meretzky's
next game, Zork Zero!� It was also used in 3 other Infocom
titles.
�
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Lane and I put a little
easter egg in there, too.� If you hold down both the
Closed-Apple and Open-Apple keys when the game boots, you will
see a crazy, random line that Lane came up with: "I was
running around the house sleeping!".� Here's a screenshot
of it in action.
�
You'll notice in the screenshot
that Lane and I had a little company together called Ideas From
The Deep.� I'll talk about that in a future !RANDOM TRIVIA!
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Copyright (C) 2002 John Romero - All Rights
Reserved
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