I'm thrilled to finally be releasing the first-ever physical media package from Orphantech! Dice Crash, Sixxit, and Dice Rack are combined in Dice Pak 1. Limited to 100 copies, this 5.25" floppy disk release comes bagged, with full color cover and labels, original cover art by Mark Bookwalter, an 8-page instruction manual, and even a 1" Orphantech button you can only get with this release.
I've always intended to release all my games on disk or tape, even though it's kind of a vanity project in 2021. With the pandemic and some other life changes, I've had more time to devote to retro game coding and my collection, and I'm going to try to make up for lost time and do some of these things I've always wanted to do. There's nothing quite like having your game in hand and playing it on "real iron," and this project has taught me a lot about putting such a package together. My hope is to release my next two big games - Enemy Lines and Knight Invaders - either together or as their own separate packages later in spring or early summer.
I'll put up ordering information as soon as we're 100% ready to ship!
I've always intended to release all my games on disk or tape, even though it's kind of a vanity project in 2021. With the pandemic and some other life changes, I've had more time to devote to retro game coding and my collection, and I'm going to try to make up for lost time and do some of these things I've always wanted to do. There's nothing quite like having your game in hand and playing it on "real iron," and this project has taught me a lot about putting such a package together. My hope is to release my next two big games - Enemy Lines and Knight Invaders - either together or as their own separate packages later in spring or early summer.
I'll put up ordering information as soon as we're 100% ready to ship!
I'm also excited about Knight Invaders, a project I've had kicking around in my head for a while now. The concept is more or less "chess meets Space Invaders" - you, as the King, patrol the bottom of the board, firing Pawns upward at descending Knights, Bishops, Rooks and Queens. You have a certain number of moves to clear the board, and the pieces can either kill you when they reach bottom, or crash and become debris you can't get around. You can hit them with Pawns or try to trick them into colliding with each other, but watch out for the Queen - she survives any collision, and can only be killed by a Pawn if it initiates the attack.
I'm still working on the basic mechanics of the game loop right now, and already running into speed issues, so it's possible I'll be rewriting it for compiling. I'm also trying to keep the code simple enough to make Knight Invaders my first real conversion project -- I'd like to rewrite it for several other systems.
The interactive fiction I mentioned in the last update, A Ghost Without Dying, is on the back burner until I finish this game and Enemy Lines (which is so stupidly close to done, but so intractably weird in its AI issues, that I may have to dismantle big chunks of it and start over). I hope to release Knight Invaders and Enemy Lines by summer, then clean up a few small game projects and get them out there, possibly as another "Pak" collection. I also want to get some more text adventuring under my belt as a player before I go back into that monastery -- I want to make sure that when I get mine put together, that it's got puzzles and prose in equal measure, and offers something interesting to experienced IF aficionados.
It's been a grim year but coding and retro gaming has helped keep me intact in a chaotic time, and I hope you find as much escape and catharsis in our shared hobby, or in something else that moves you, to keep you carrying on. Thanks for checking in!
I'm still working on the basic mechanics of the game loop right now, and already running into speed issues, so it's possible I'll be rewriting it for compiling. I'm also trying to keep the code simple enough to make Knight Invaders my first real conversion project -- I'd like to rewrite it for several other systems.
The interactive fiction I mentioned in the last update, A Ghost Without Dying, is on the back burner until I finish this game and Enemy Lines (which is so stupidly close to done, but so intractably weird in its AI issues, that I may have to dismantle big chunks of it and start over). I hope to release Knight Invaders and Enemy Lines by summer, then clean up a few small game projects and get them out there, possibly as another "Pak" collection. I also want to get some more text adventuring under my belt as a player before I go back into that monastery -- I want to make sure that when I get mine put together, that it's got puzzles and prose in equal measure, and offers something interesting to experienced IF aficionados.
It's been a grim year but coding and retro gaming has helped keep me intact in a chaotic time, and I hope you find as much escape and catharsis in our shared hobby, or in something else that moves you, to keep you carrying on. Thanks for checking in!
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