Title: unknown
Disk: 11A
File Name: 'typuss' and 'typus2'
Category: Demo
Genre: experiment
Players: n/a
Date created: 1990
Completed? Yes
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Alias: Rapture Country: Germany Year of Birth: 1978 Date created: 1990 to 1993 |
Finished games: 19 Finished Movies: 14 Finished Demos: 10 Finished Utilities: 1 |
Unfinished games: 12 Unfinished movies: 0 Unfinished Demos: 2 Unfinished utilities: 0 |
When I first asked Fabian to send me his games, I had no idea what I was getting into. As I started testing and cataloguing his collection it began to dawn on me how many games there actually were. With almost 60 individual Gamemaker creations, Fabian has created more games than anyone I know. (Incredibly, there were a lot more created during 1991 and 1992, but they have since gone missing.) Like other people on this site, Fabian used GKGM not only for games but also movies, demos, and even a utility.
Many of Fabians games are faithful ports of existing games, either from the arcade or Atari 2600 system. Although GKGM was not designed for scrolling games (Shoot'em'Up Construction Set is ideal for these types of games), many of Fabians games are vertical or horizontal scollers!
One thing not apparent from the screen shots is the amazing music in these games. Fabian obviously has considerable talent as a musician, making some of the best music I've heard from GKGM. Much of the demo music included with GKGM is very simplistic, like Blue Danube, but Fabians music is closer to commercial music produced by famous c64 musicians like Rob Hubbard and Ben Daglish (English C64 composers).
The movies are great accomplishments, with some nifty effects and animation. The dialog is all German, so if you are like me you'll have a hard time making out what is happening. I notice a theme of dinosaurs in most of the movies, and a pair of advanced aliens seem to coexist with them. Often the aliens observe the dinosaurs, then there is a lot of talking. I can't wait to hear what Fabian has to say about these. :)
I also appreciated the gradual progression of Fabians games and movies. Not only in the different revisions of a game (for example, the improvement of Drivin' Thunders on disk 1A and 4B) but also the progression of his skills. His 1990 creations start out relatively simple and evolve in ambition and complexity closer to 1993 (I've attempted to list them in order). It reminds me of my own experiences with GKGM. Like myself, Fabian also tried creating a basic tool with GKGM, which is a testament to the robustness of Garry Kitchen's GameMaker.
A sincere and heartfelt thanks to Michael J. Schulke in Hamburg for transferring Fabian's disks to PC using his XE-1541 cable. Michael got absolutely nothing out of this and knew neither Fabian or myself prior to being asked to do the transfer. Thanks, Michael!
The nostalgia! When I first got Garry Kitchen's Game Maker back in 1990 I couldn't believe that I was holding a program in my hands with which you were actually able to create your very own games.. As a young lad of 11 or 12 years and as a C64 fanatic it was truly awe-inspiring to me. Instantly I had 1000's of ideas inside my head, jump'n'runs, complex platformers, adventures like Zelda, racing games like Outrun, shooting games like R-Type. Unfortunately, I Eventually realized that most of my ideas were not realistic since Game Maker only featured two swapable static screens with 4 colors, 8 sprites with 4 colors, a sound editor with a lowpass filter that couldn't be used in the program editor (!) to generate those fascinating game sounds, the music editor only had 11 or 12 different simple instruments and was very basic (from todays point of view), data couldn't be loaded while your game or program was running etc.. So many ideas had to be dropped. Nevertheless I was still amazed with GKGM.
From this site you can download all my GKGM achievements.. it may look like a big archive, but there was a time where I used to have hundreds of own Game Maker programs; Sadly enough I lost a lot of programs and games due to one of the following reasons; I lost the disks, the disks got broken, I forgot to save (argh!), the disk got overwritten with something else, the disk was formatted unintentionally, or Game Maker saved incorrectly (that happened a lot of time when you just overwrite an older version of a file or program too often, eventually the specific file got corrupted or the whole disk got broken over the tides of time.. I found out that you had to manually delete the old file and then save up your new version instead of overwriting it automatically via GKGM.) The funny thing about that is: Even today I use this method when I try to store important and sensitive data securely just like in my old GKGM times; delete the old version, then save the new one to harddisk, additionally create backups on CD-R/W's or DVD-R/W's... I'm more than sure that modern HD's won't corrupt your files just by overwriting them too often, but oh well - it just grew into an every-day habit of mine from the old C64 days...
Sigh, if I only had the ability to restore the destroyed data.. there were sooo many funny programs that were lost.. For example a movie playing in a Dinosaur Museum where the Dinosaurs came alive, only to be chased by police cars inside the Museum (*g*), or a movie where people tried to cross a street via the zebra crossing but got nevertheless crushed by the cars, turning them into a pile of blood (anyone remembers Street Racer on the C64?! Funny gory racing game...) and tons of other stuff.. I wonder what ever happened to the files.. maybe there are still some GKGM disks somewhere in the cellar or something, dunno... Now, where was I...
Like Brian correctly assumed, my personal favourite was the Music Maker (besides the sprite maker). I've always been fascinated by music and wanted to create my own music pieces. The GKGM Music Editor was my first music creation utility. Nowadays, I'm working professionally with Steinberg's Cubase SX 2.0 on the PC, and I'm a professional video- and computer game composer since 1995 (that's actually my main job). Game Maker has been a vital part of my early career, and I would dare to say that without the music maker, I would never have developed a fascination towards composing music, at least not in that way. 1995 was also the year when I used GKGM for the last time to create programs with it.
Unfortunately, I never was in the possession of an original GKGM manual, so I was forced to learn the program and the programming language ifself on an autodidactic way. And so it happened that I didn't know the meaning and function of every GKGM command until the day I discovered Brian's homepage in 2003 where I could download the manual as a word document. But it was too late - obviously! ;) There wasn't anything like the internet back in 1990, sigh (at least not for the public, more for the universities etc).
Commands such as "set value at ram + a", how to use the "data tables" correctly, "trace on/off" or even "screen update on/off" simply was beyond me... It's still a secret to me how something complex like Pitfall could have been programmed with Game Maker.. I've studied the Pitfall program code line by line for many hours, but all the subroutine jumping was just too irritating for me and left me unconcious. I'm sure that my own programs could have been much better if I ever knew how to program GKGM 100% correctly. Even my friends didn't have any clues...
I remember using GKGM like I was celebrating a kind of ritual... I used to have my C64 in a warm, comfortable, cozy, snuggly cellar room, and I remember programming with GKGM at night in winter time when the snow was falling outside.. sigh.. Inspiring moments. Those were the times!
I'll give more insight information and personal thoughts later on in the different game descriptions...
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Title: unknown |
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Webmaster Comments: Typuss and Typus2 look like experimental demo's. It shows a sleepwalker with good animation. Typus2 uses enlarged sprites and is a great demonstration of just how big C64 sprites could be. As a side note, sometimes C64 game programmers created large but detailed sprites by stretching them as shown here, but then adding smaller, more detailed sprites. For example, a stretched, low detail spaceship with smaller gun turret sprites on it. Or sometimes they used several detailed mono-color sprites, joining them into one single object, as in the Rupert Bear games for the C64.
Author Comments: Yeah, Rupert and the Toymakers Party for example! That was a great game, and one of the most nostalgic of all time to me. *sniff* The music was so depressive. :)
Anyway, this is a kind of walking animation just like in "parkin" (see below), but here with even bigger sprites. It would have been so cool to add more than 8 sprites simultaneously, for example 16, so that you could have integrated a second sprite of this time and doing some kind of Street Fighter Game (when this game came out, I was really impressed because of the gigantic sprites.. not on the C64, but on the SNES and in the Arcardes).
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Title: Action Disk: 11A File Name: 'action' Category:Game Genre: Combat Players:2 Date created:1990 Completed? Yes |
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Webmaster Comments: This 2 player game has players dueling each other. I'm not sure what the white thing in the center is, but you can destroy it. This game is very simple, like an early Atari 2600 game.
Author Comments: The block in the middle of the screen is just an obstacle,
don't touch it or you'll die ;). In some later levels, this obstacle begins
to move, and / or can't be destroyed. I wanted to create lots and lots of different
levels (like the 255 different Pitfall screens). But since I never found out
how to use the Data tables or how to read values out of them, I just copied
the whole code from level to level... and after copying the 5th level, GKGM
gave me an error like "too many if...then commands".. Damn GKGM, which
can only handle a couple of if...then commands in one program. "Skip next
if" also would have been a solution to this problem, but back then I didn't
know how to use it. Well, never mind....
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Title: unknown |
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Webmaster Comments: This looks like an experimental demo. It's just a physics test for simulating a gravity effect. The frog jumps up off screen into the stratosphere and realistically falls back to the ground.
Author Comments: Yeah, I wanted to develop a Game out of this jumping sequence. There, you could have been able to move the frog from left to right, getting some things and avoiding some obstacles at the top of the screen (just like in lmaa, the trampoline game seen later in the collection). Unfortunately, it was never finished. The background graphics are wrong too (just loaded in for testing issues).
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Title: Jungle - The Superarcadegame Disk: 11A File Name: 'dschub' Category:Game Genre: Platform Players:1 Date created:1990 Completed? Yes |
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Webmaster Comments: This game has a good concept that is quite original and unique. I'm not sure, but I think the player is supposed to try to move from left to right across moving platforms, but the twist is you can only jump straight up! This leads to interesting dynamic similar to fighting against a current. I must admit it is fun but it turns out to be a little too easy. It's one of those concepts that needs to be tried out and tested. I'm not sure if it is complete since once the player gets to the right side of the screen it doesn't seem to do anything.
Author Comments: This was actually coded by a friend of mine, Dane, who made a few other games below. NICE sidescroller! And features my first
composition ever *blushes* ;). It takes quite some time to get to the right
side thanks to the slow jumping routine. One mistake and you fall down into
the undescribably horrible depth, only to restart the game on thet left side.
the "b" in the file name again is just a placeholder for the second
revision of the game, the word itself means "Dschungel", which is
the german word for "jungle" (have a look at the background palm trees.)
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Title: Buggy's Disk: 11A File Name: 'buggys' Category:Game Genre: Racing Players:1 Date created:1990 Completed? Yes |
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Webmaster Comments: This slick little game does a good job at creating the illusion of side-scrolling! As you change your speed, the relative speed of the objects at the side of the road and the other cars changes appropriately. Great programming, Fabian!
Author Comments: This game featured my second music composition I've
ever done (after "The Superarcadegame"). It's quite difficult to dodge
all those little buggies at full speed! I really should have implemented a James
Bond Style machine pistol on the front of your buggy to shoot your way through
;)
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Title: Helicopter Disk: 11A File Name: 'hubsch' Category:Game Genre: Vertical shooter Players:1 Date created:1990 Completed? No |
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Webmaster Comments:This vertical shooter has a nice multi-layer scroll effect using the clouds to give an illusion of depth. In a way, its similar to Time Pilot or 1942, only with much more basic game play (I suspect it was not completed).
Author Comments: I was just testing multiple scrolling layers in a top-down vertical scroller. A few sound effects and sprite collisions, that was everything (incomplete). "Hubsch" is an abbreviation for "Hubschrauber", which simply means helicopter.
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Title: Game 67 Disk: 11A File Name: 'game67' Category:Game Genre: Combat Players:2 Date created:1990 Completed? Yes |
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Webmaster Comments: This is one of the ever popular 2 player combat games, this time featuring sword fighting. The swords make a satisfying 'ting' sound when they clash.
Author Comments: Game67 has been created by the same friend of mine who
created "Jungle - The Superarcadegame" (see above). It was fun fighting against each other.
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Title: Lizard Disk: 11A File Name: 'bechse' Category:Game Genre: 3-D Flight Simulator Players:1 Date created:1990 Completed? No |
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Webmaster Comments: This is cool! It's more of an experiment than a full fledged game, since there appears to be no objective and no way to get killed. It is joystick controlled, which is why it is in the game category. In the eighties, programmers wanted to create convincing 3-D games (Night Driver, Outrun, Power Drift, Space Harrier and Thunder Blade) but the hardware just wasn't there yet. So programmers used different sized objects to represent movement. This is a great example of how GKGM could do just about anything the programmer wanted.
Author Comments: This little simulator was about a small pteranodon flying
happily (-> music) over a landscape. The underground formerly has been green,
preventing the green leaves of the trees to be seen, so the landscape color
has been changed to a very realitic light red! ;-) The file name "echse"
means lizard in german, the "b" was just the placeholder for the second
revision of the program. . . The 3D effect was simply made by creating zooming
sprite animations in the Sprite Maker. As Brian states correctly, this technique
was used in games like Outrun, Power Drift etc, and this was the source of the
idea. Unfortunately, the directions of the trees have been programmed to change
randomly, resulting in a not-so-realistic zooming of the underground. Back in
the days when I programmed this little simulator I thought it was realistic,
I was young and innocent! But what the heck, it was still fun to program! ;)
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Title: War Up Disk: 11A File Name: 'warmup' Category:Game Genre: Arcade Players:2 Date created:1990 Completed? Yes |
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Webmaster Comments:War Up is very similar to the dueling knives mini-game in Beach Head II, where you throw knives across a chasm at the final boss. This game uses the ever-popular isometric view for gameplay, which many game companies called 3D, even though it was not true 3D. War Up features an option at the title screen to select music or sound only.
Author Comments: Nice 3D isometric perspective. Seldomly seen in a GKGM
game. But shooting the enemy 255 times was a bit too much, wasn't it? At least
it featured a two player mode. Brian mentioned the intro selection screen. In
fact you could also press the F1 or F3 buttons on your C64 to make your choice.
And yeah, I remember Beach Head II as well... :)
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Title: unknown |
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Webmaster Comments: This little demo allows you to walk in the park. What more can be said?
Author Comments: Uh, I was just testing some walking animation with a "gigantic" Sprite. Well, not really gigantic from todays point of view.. Damn :)
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Title: unknown |
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Webmaster Comments: This demo is like looking at a surrealist painting that suddenly starts fighting itself. I assume coolde stands for Cool Germany. Perhaps more puzzling German existentialism?
Author Comments: *lol* Hehe! :) Brian, its neither German existentialism nor patriotism. Coolde, if I remember correctly, just stands for Cool Demo. Anyone remembers those nice little sequences in Sesame Street between all the puppet scenes? I don't know if that's the same in Sesame Street USA, UK or Canada etc, but in Germany, there were those kind of surreal sequences inbetween the puppet sequences. That inspired me to do something similar I have seen in Sesame Street this time around. :) This TV Show really rocks, even today, for children's TV programe.
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Title: Doof Disk: 11A File Name: 'ooooff' Category:Game Genre: Arcade Players:1 Date created:1990 Completed? Yes |
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Webmaster Comments:This game seems like something from the old Atari 2600 days. It features a neat twinkling star effect.
Author Comments: Nothing spectacular here. Just a testing game for the
twinkle star effect. The file name ooooff originates from the german name "doof"
meaning stupid, silly. I'm just wondering what happend to the "D"
in "ooooff" ;)
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Title: Stars - The Ultimate Adventure Disk: 11A File Name: 'stars5' Category:Game Genre:Flight simulator Players:1 Date created:1990 Completed? Yes |
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Webmaster Comments:This is a pseudo 3-d space combat simulator. It's a little like the Star Wars arcade game, though not as advanced.
Author Comments: This was coded by Dane, who did "The Superarcadegame". Nice little
game! The goal is to move the circling enemy target into the cross-hairs of
your space ship cockpit display, press the fire button and destroy it. You got
5 tries. As soon as you miss the target 5 times, you will loose a life *gasp*!
Speaking of a very depressive space ship pilot, eh? ;)
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Title: Mr. Monster |
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Webmaster Comments: This strange game features a monster who throws its own eggs(?) at the player.
Author Comments: *lol* the monster looks so horrible (wrong colors)!
By the way, when you start the game, you end up confronting the final boss immediately
(displayed on the picture). I just forgot to set back a certain parameter or
value that makes the program jump directly to the boss... kind of developer
status , in this state the program was never meant to be presented to the public!
;) (not that it was ever meant to be shown to some kind of public *g*,
only to a couple of friends ;)... To correct this, find the code passage that
is located a few lines above the fourth label (L004), it states: "if s
> 24 then / jump to label 5". Just put in any value bigger than 50,
for example "if s > 51", and you're gonna enter the first level.
There you have to shoot down a couple of small monsters featuring a strange
joystick movement and button routine (hold the button to be able to move (and
shoot at once)). If the monsters are directly in front of you (i.e. same x-position),
you will magically loose enegry. As soon as you killed those little pescy critters
you will face Mr. Monster. He tries to draw his weapon and shoots at you, but
it's really easy to prevent this, since he will only draw his weapon when he
has the same x-position as your player (and this takes seconds). When he finally
succeeds (i.e. when someone is stupid enough to wait some seconds to let him
draw his giant weapon), he will shoot a ball at you to kill you.. Nice intro
screen complete with jingle music and moving logo sprite.
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Title: unknown |
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Webmaster Comments: This is a funny animation of an excited kid diving into a swimming pool.
Author Comments: Nothing really exciting, the design is very minimalistic.. This is one of my very first demos in Game Maker and was made for animation testing purposes.
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Title: Outbreak Disk: 11A File Name: 'break' Category:Game Genre:Breakout game Players:1 Date created:1990 Completed? No |
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Webmaster Comments:This is a good attempt at an Arkanoid style of game, complete with flashy background. I think it is unfinished since the bricks did not dissapear when hit. GKGM would be the perfect utility to make this kind of game. GKGM will detect a collision of a sprite with the background (in fact the C64 does this) so once a collision is detected, the engine would determine which brick was hit from the X, Y position of the ball. The bricks could be constructed of tiles, much like I used in my Zelda game. Since each brick is very small, GKGM could remove each tile very quickly when it is time for it to disappear.
Author Comments: I wanted to construct a break-out game with this. The
ball dodging routine went fluently, the background has been made, all the sprites
and everything, until I realized that GKGM had this damn limitation of displaying
only 8 sprites at once! And plotting dots for the bricks simply was too much
for me... so the game never got finished. One of those unrealistic ideas described
above. :)
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Title: Archon 3 Disk: 1B, 6A File Name: 'archo3' Category:Game Genre: Arcade Players:2 Date created:1990? Completed? No |
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Webmaster Comments: It's Archon 3! This game has a nice Freefall (Electronic Arts developers) type of intro. There's no tactical chessboard in this game, just one on one archon-type battles. The music is great and reminds me very much of Nintendo-style music.
Author Comments: I didn't know at that time that there was an Archon 3 around! I should have named it Archon 4 or 5 instead ;) 2 player mode. One of my first games!