Help recovering my 80's abandonware

8ball · Post by **8ball** » Sat Sep 01, 2007 5:32 pm

In the early 80's as a teenager I wrote a dozen VIC-20 video games that were published in the US by Program One Inc. A handful of them were ported to the C64 (Distance Demon, Keyboard Kaos, Jewel Raiders and Lunar Rescue) and I've found them as abandonware around the Internet and played them using VICE.

Unfortunately there are no signs of my original VIC-20 games anywhere. I know I have a VIC 20 floppy disk with some of my games in my files, plus a couple of printouts of BASIC and assembly code.

What are the chances of the floppy disk being readable after 20 years?

Worst case, what would be the best way to scan and enter a an old printout into VICE?

It would be cool to put them out there for people to enjoy again!

Thanks!

p.s. I will warn people ahead of time that my game programming skills were quite non-l33t! I was 98% complete on a cool game called Saboteur that was mostly assembly code but ran out of RAM to fit the game along with the assembler!

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Sat Sep 01, 2007 6:43 pm

If the floppy disk has been stored in reasonable conditions, I think it still is a good chance it survived. The scanning process would involve OCR and a bit of hand editing. Once you get a good text file, you can use the command line utility petcat which comes with VICE to convert a text file to a Basic program loadable into the emulator or a real computer. It can be a bit picky, but eventually you will learn the syntax.

8ball · Post by **8ball** » Sat Sep 01, 2007 7:33 pm

Thanks Anders.

I looked through some of my old files and found a VIC 20 game I'd written called 'Alien Plague'. Sure enough, it's out there - published by some company in the UK called "Bubble Bus" I have never heard of and without my name on it! I'm 110% sure it's mine though because I found my typed copy of the original instructions in my files!

Bubble Bus also published another game of mine under the title 'Mars Mission'. My original name for it was 'Descent'.

Wonder-Boy · Post by **Wonder-Boy** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 1:19 am

Bummer!

A high school class-mate of mine did some of the music for Agony, an Amiga game. He was credited but never paid.

PaulQ · Post by **PaulQ** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 8:38 am

8ball wrote:Thanks Anders.

I looked through some of my old files and found a VIC 20 game I'd written called 'Alien Plague'. Sure enough, it's out there - published by some company in the UK called "Bubble Bus" I have never heard of and without my name on it! I'm 110% sure it's mine though because I found my typed copy of the original instructions in my files!

Bubble Bus also published another game of mine under the title 'Mars Mission'. My original name for it was 'Descent'.

I'm positive that this sort of plagiarism happened a lot in the early years of home computers. The programmers always seemed to be the ones who got the shaft, while some parasite made the profits. That's probably why computer viruses were invented; some programmer probably got pissed off that some parasite was stealing his work, so he added a nice little surprise.

8ball · Post by **8ball** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 9:29 am

I'm in good company! The publisher who bought my games also ripped off a Jeff Minter title. I was just playing his new Space Giraffe game this week.

Does anyone have the Alien Plague instructions? There was a PDF out there but the link is broken.

d0c · Post by **d0c** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 9:37 am

i didnt know bubble bus was pirating other peoples work

its sad to hear that they made millions and you didnt get one dollar for the hard work....

anyway i found the bubble bus game you talk about. with screenshot,cover and tap file...

http://www.timsplace.plus.com/0to9taps.html

8ball · Post by **8ball** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 9:53 am

I got paid - I got a VIC-20, Arfon expander and I believe $50 per game. I have the original contract somewhere - it's written on the back of a receipt!

The company I sold the games to may well have licensed them to Bubble Bus, but it's weird they took my name off it.

The PDF I was looking for was this one.

http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.2883

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 1:39 am

First I read that as you got $50 per sold copy, which would be very lucrative... I don't know about Bubble Bus, but I remember Bug-Byte had multi-page advertiments in Your Computer, and actively looked for new talents to strike contracts with.

Post by **Jeff-20** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 2:46 pm

How much money do you think they made off of that game?

8ball · Post by **8ball** » Sun Oct 14, 2007 2:09 pm

The VIC-20 sold a million units in 1982. I imagine even a mediocre VIC-20 game in a large market like the UK could easily sell hundreds of copies.

How much did they charge for games on tape? $20?

bokvamme · Post by **bokvamme** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 9:46 pm

About £4.95-£7.95 I think.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 12:21 pm

Bug-Byte advertisment in Your Computer, March 1984 wrote:FREELANCE PROGRAMMERS STILL NEEDED
Despite setting up in-house programming teams, Bug-Byte are still interested in dealing with freelance programmers, either individuals, groups or smaller software houses. Either a royalty contract or an outright purchase of copyright will be offered. The programming department offers as much support as possible to good freelance programmers, including the loan of any additional equipment necessary for speedy completion of a program.

WHAT IS IT WORTH?
Royalties are paid at a fixed rate per cassette rather than as a percentage of sales. Beware - smaller companies may offer what appear to be high royalties on nett sales, but they may offer very high discounts for dealers, and in any case they will not sell in anything like the quantity that Bug-Byte games sell in. For a fairly good selling program, the author can expect to make between £5000 and £10,000 in the first year, and for a game that is a top 20 hit, between £10,000 and £40,000 in the first year of royalities. These are not wild claims - the figures are based on recent experience and can be supported.

Although both companies start on B, I suppose Bug-Byte and Bubble Bus were two quite different ones, in particular if the first advertised for new games to sell and the second simply stole (?) them from lesser known participants on the market.

8ball · Post by **8ball** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 12:37 pm

Wow. I really got ripped off! Luckily the game sucked.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 1:05 pm

The question is whether Program One Inc bought your rights for $50 per game and then could do whatever they liked, or that you got a $50 royalty but would co-maintain your rights in case they exported the game. It remains to find out what "fairly good selling" meant in 1984.

Let's take a few contemporary examples from Bug-Byte:

Twin Kingdom Valley (C64 & BBC): £9.50
Manic Miner (C64): £7.50
The Bird and the Bees (ZX Spectrum 48K): £5.95

Let's assume they paid on average £2 royalty per copy. That is probably a bit too high, given the costs for marketing, duplication, distribution and dealers' profits. To get at least £5000, they would have to manufacture (but not necessarily sell) 2500 copies of one particular game. It may not sound like a huge figure, but not trivial neither.

Now, these figures are from the first months of 1984. I suppose your games rather were written in 1982, when the market was even smaller and more experimental. There should be documentation elsewhere how much money known and lesser known game programmers received. Take Tom Griner for example, did he cash in enough to pay his college studies plus a new car?