Post by Jason Emery on Jun 5, 2009 6:02:56 GMT
Seeing as how I'm turning 35 in a few hours, I thought it might be a good time to see how Tyrian has fared and just say a few words. I have to admit to a kind of strange mixture of shock and excitement to see just what people have done with the game over the past handful of years once I opened up the game.
I like to just think that everyone else is crazy and it can't possibly be that important a game, but what do I know, right?
Tyrian was a strange project. I originally wrote it because I loved making games and honestly I couldn't afford to buy very many. So instead I kept writing and adding things to it to keep my attention while developing the game over three years. That's why so many strange things went into it - if an idea seemed interesting at the time it went in and if it stuck, great. (Danc probably thought I was crazy for asking for a carrot spaceship, but nevertheless he did it with aplomb.) It was also a time of experimentation and learning for me, which shows in all the strange assembly-language routines and graphical filters that kept getting added and hacked in everywhere.
Since all I had was a 386-20 laptop, well, you can imagine why it had to run with a tiny amount of ram and processing power. It's hard to contemplate such limited power now, isn't it? I mean, the DSi system I'm writing games for is probably a good 2-4x more powerful than my decrepit old laptop. I remember having to come up with a compressed sprite system to take less ram, as most everything had to fit into 640k. I actually have to stop and check my facts to believe it was that little in an age where four gigs is peanuts.
In a way I'm a little sorry for all the excessive text I put in the game, but not hugely sorry. Perhaps I went overboard on all the background text for the planets, but I did try to make as much as possible funny. Perhaps some people were right that I was going a little crazy after so many years of working nonstop on a shooter. Still, I do miss being able to polish games as much as we did. We can develop a lot faster now but there's no substitute for actually playing and iterating on gameplay (and crazy endless secrets, right?) To his credit, Alex did come up with the original text, but we never could say 'stolen at birth' without cracking up. I bet I could call him up now and say that and he'd be laughing uncontrollably!
You might wonder about some of my inspiration, and honestly a lot of it came from playing many hours of Hudson Soft shooters (and Zanac). I had a TurboGrafx 16 and an NES while growing up, which lasted me many years. In fact, when the power line melted inside the TG16 I sawed the bottom part of it off and wired up an RC battery in series with some D cells. Coupled with a hardwired input into an early pocket color TV, well, it was a poor man's portable system in an age before those existed (later on they did make one, yes). No wonder I was enamored by the DS, right? (I have to admit there was one embarassing incident in high school when one of my rechargeable batteries exploded in my backpack.
For anyone who likes Tyrian, check out Zanac (and maybe the bizarre 'sequel' Guardian Legend) and Blazing Lazers. Boy did I spend a lot of hours playing those. Later Hudson Soft shooters were great, but strangely they didn't have the same long-term appeal. Still, there's something about Soldier Blade's music that I could listen to all day. I could go on, but anyone on these forums probably knows so many shooters already.
If anyone is interested, I'm still at Amaze (Foundation9, Griptonite, whatever you want to call it) and this past month I've been pounding away at my tools and the like so we can more efficiently make games. (Yes, I get credit for just about everything we do here 'cause they all use my scripting system and lots of other things. Yay!) And yeah, I've got stacks of game ideas sitting around, but game ideas are a dime a dozen. They don't matter unless you have the time or funding to code them. At least I can be consoled by my last game (Mystery Case Files) being pretty much the top game in the UK and the Women's Murder Club DS game getting press at E3 (most of it good so far). (Also, MCF has some of my jokes. Hehe.) No, I don't normally play object searching games, which is a bit of a puzzle in and of itself, but mom does. I can't tear her away from those things! They're crack for women.
But no matter what, Tyrian is the game I did that everyone seems to stick with, like a zombie always in need of more brains. Hehe.
And that brings us around to what I really wanted to get at.
We can debate the merits of games or I can go on about wholesome fun and endearing things like that, but one thing has always struck me as quite possibly the most important contribution to come out of all this. You (I'm talking to just about everyone) not only enjoy it, it's been an inpspiration to so many people to do more than they otherwise might have. To hack it, rewrite the source code, port it to other platforms, think about it, and, well, it's kind of hard to describe. People seem 'changed' after they play it.
To be the inspiration for so many people to learn to code and come up with their own things is kind of awe-inspiring and actually is nothing I would have ever expected.
I'd stick my nose in, but it's almost more about you people enjoying this on your own terms now, and in a way it's kind of fun to watch at times. (Those YouTube videos by DeceasedCrab in particular made me alternately laugh like I haven't in years and actually cry a little about it all.)
For years I didn't tell anyone at work I wrote Tyrian, as, well, who wants to go around yelling about what they did before? But eventually I did and now I get the occasional email like 'Hey, is that your game on the Wii?' Which cracks me up. I can't believe it's on that, or the PSP, or half the things you have ported it to (which gets back to the whole crazy thing, but I digress!)
(Mind you, it does make me wonder what would have happened if I stuck with it more over the years, much like the Dwarf Fortress guy. However, I ran out of money a few years back after those disasters in NY and, well, I think some of the odd 'quality' of the Episode 5 in Tyrian 2000 speaks for itself. 'Nuff said.)
So, congratulations. Somehow you've turned what was an old fun little game into, well, I don't even know quite what to call it. Perhaps it's more like a community. A kind of escape from our world and obviously an inspiration to many people to put aside their picks and shovels and come together to write code to make it live just that bit more.
Maybe that's a bit melodramatic, but Tyrian is more than it ever was intended to be. And that's something.
Note that in the years to come I expect to be able to play it on my watch, then on my glasses, then on my retinal implant, and maybe, just maybe, I'll try it one last time when I'm 80 and have a chip in my brain. Of course I'm pretty sure Trent Hawkins is already cursed with that in his cryo-sleep mega sound chair, right?
Jason
I like to just think that everyone else is crazy and it can't possibly be that important a game, but what do I know, right?
Tyrian was a strange project. I originally wrote it because I loved making games and honestly I couldn't afford to buy very many. So instead I kept writing and adding things to it to keep my attention while developing the game over three years. That's why so many strange things went into it - if an idea seemed interesting at the time it went in and if it stuck, great. (Danc probably thought I was crazy for asking for a carrot spaceship, but nevertheless he did it with aplomb.) It was also a time of experimentation and learning for me, which shows in all the strange assembly-language routines and graphical filters that kept getting added and hacked in everywhere.
Since all I had was a 386-20 laptop, well, you can imagine why it had to run with a tiny amount of ram and processing power. It's hard to contemplate such limited power now, isn't it? I mean, the DSi system I'm writing games for is probably a good 2-4x more powerful than my decrepit old laptop. I remember having to come up with a compressed sprite system to take less ram, as most everything had to fit into 640k. I actually have to stop and check my facts to believe it was that little in an age where four gigs is peanuts.
In a way I'm a little sorry for all the excessive text I put in the game, but not hugely sorry. Perhaps I went overboard on all the background text for the planets, but I did try to make as much as possible funny. Perhaps some people were right that I was going a little crazy after so many years of working nonstop on a shooter. Still, I do miss being able to polish games as much as we did. We can develop a lot faster now but there's no substitute for actually playing and iterating on gameplay (and crazy endless secrets, right?) To his credit, Alex did come up with the original text, but we never could say 'stolen at birth' without cracking up. I bet I could call him up now and say that and he'd be laughing uncontrollably!
You might wonder about some of my inspiration, and honestly a lot of it came from playing many hours of Hudson Soft shooters (and Zanac). I had a TurboGrafx 16 and an NES while growing up, which lasted me many years. In fact, when the power line melted inside the TG16 I sawed the bottom part of it off and wired up an RC battery in series with some D cells. Coupled with a hardwired input into an early pocket color TV, well, it was a poor man's portable system in an age before those existed (later on they did make one, yes). No wonder I was enamored by the DS, right? (I have to admit there was one embarassing incident in high school when one of my rechargeable batteries exploded in my backpack.
For anyone who likes Tyrian, check out Zanac (and maybe the bizarre 'sequel' Guardian Legend) and Blazing Lazers. Boy did I spend a lot of hours playing those. Later Hudson Soft shooters were great, but strangely they didn't have the same long-term appeal. Still, there's something about Soldier Blade's music that I could listen to all day. I could go on, but anyone on these forums probably knows so many shooters already.
If anyone is interested, I'm still at Amaze (Foundation9, Griptonite, whatever you want to call it) and this past month I've been pounding away at my tools and the like so we can more efficiently make games. (Yes, I get credit for just about everything we do here 'cause they all use my scripting system and lots of other things. Yay!) And yeah, I've got stacks of game ideas sitting around, but game ideas are a dime a dozen. They don't matter unless you have the time or funding to code them. At least I can be consoled by my last game (Mystery Case Files) being pretty much the top game in the UK and the Women's Murder Club DS game getting press at E3 (most of it good so far). (Also, MCF has some of my jokes. Hehe.) No, I don't normally play object searching games, which is a bit of a puzzle in and of itself, but mom does. I can't tear her away from those things! They're crack for women.
But no matter what, Tyrian is the game I did that everyone seems to stick with, like a zombie always in need of more brains. Hehe.
And that brings us around to what I really wanted to get at.
We can debate the merits of games or I can go on about wholesome fun and endearing things like that, but one thing has always struck me as quite possibly the most important contribution to come out of all this. You (I'm talking to just about everyone) not only enjoy it, it's been an inpspiration to so many people to do more than they otherwise might have. To hack it, rewrite the source code, port it to other platforms, think about it, and, well, it's kind of hard to describe. People seem 'changed' after they play it.
To be the inspiration for so many people to learn to code and come up with their own things is kind of awe-inspiring and actually is nothing I would have ever expected.
I'd stick my nose in, but it's almost more about you people enjoying this on your own terms now, and in a way it's kind of fun to watch at times. (Those YouTube videos by DeceasedCrab in particular made me alternately laugh like I haven't in years and actually cry a little about it all.)
For years I didn't tell anyone at work I wrote Tyrian, as, well, who wants to go around yelling about what they did before? But eventually I did and now I get the occasional email like 'Hey, is that your game on the Wii?' Which cracks me up. I can't believe it's on that, or the PSP, or half the things you have ported it to (which gets back to the whole crazy thing, but I digress!)
(Mind you, it does make me wonder what would have happened if I stuck with it more over the years, much like the Dwarf Fortress guy. However, I ran out of money a few years back after those disasters in NY and, well, I think some of the odd 'quality' of the Episode 5 in Tyrian 2000 speaks for itself. 'Nuff said.)
So, congratulations. Somehow you've turned what was an old fun little game into, well, I don't even know quite what to call it. Perhaps it's more like a community. A kind of escape from our world and obviously an inspiration to many people to put aside their picks and shovels and come together to write code to make it live just that bit more.
Maybe that's a bit melodramatic, but Tyrian is more than it ever was intended to be. And that's something.
Note that in the years to come I expect to be able to play it on my watch, then on my glasses, then on my retinal implant, and maybe, just maybe, I'll try it one last time when I'm 80 and have a chip in my brain. Of course I'm pretty sure Trent Hawkins is already cursed with that in his cryo-sleep mega sound chair, right?
Jason
. Having a pocket Tyrian is just wonderful, I just need my phone, but if there's a TV nearby (or anything with a video input or whatever), and I got my wiimote, it's just amazing 
