(c) Smoke/Clevers/Triumph
The history of the creation of '4x4 Puzzle'.
Thanks to everyone who is in one
the boat plowed the waves with us
life in Chelyabinsk and render-
provided all possible assistance in creating
in this first game of ours.
Hello and best wishes:
Blade, Ice'Di'Griz, Pastor,
Stelz, Vader, Wocen, Edison,
X-Raizor and of course Loki, Jam,
By7ic, Voodoo without which...
The history of the creation of this toy, generally speaking, is not very
original. Once upon a time in ancient times, like 1987 before
Spectrum era, my cousin gave me one
an interesting pocket toy - some kind of mixture of tag and something else
God knows what. What was its real name - say
difficult, but on the top cover it was painted: in two corners -
four, in the other two there are three chips and, for some reason, the letter 'P'. But
the most interesting thing was inside! 16 chips in four colors: blue,
red, yellow and green, and a little bluepartition,
which I subsequently lost. The point of the game was
to move the chips along the aisles to collect in each corner
four of the same color. You could make your life more difficult with
using the above-mentioned partition, closing one of the passages with it.
I played this game day and night. I played it
all the time! But having studied it thoroughly, I lost interest in it somewhat,
and it sat in my drawer for a good nine years. This
moment all my free and non-free time was absorbed
our incomparable Specky. 1996 was marked by a surge
activity on the Spectrum Gamemaking scene and
MagazineMaking'a, and we (Clevers group) then made our
shit magazine 'X-FILES #01'. But more had to be done
something more substantial. For example a game. But to write a game
I need an idea and a script. And it was painfully difficult to invent them! And
then my old steering-wheel pocket pocket caught my eye
toy...
It all started with how to name the new game. I thought, I thought
and suddenly I remembered that the letter 'P' was painted on the lid. What would it be
did it mean? And suddenly it dawned on me - Puzzle!!! (That is Puzzle -
puzzle). A '4x4' came together naturally. There are 16 chips in the game!
A scenario immediately formed in my head, but then the first ones went
difficulties.The first difficulty is graphics. What I tried
depicted in Art-Studio, it was so suxxx that the idea had to
discard... But the screen with the game field drawn on it and
chips, miraculously survived to this day, namely until the end of 1998.
And then one day at the birthday party of our incomparable artist
By7ic (at that time Clevers group already included
consisting of 5 people), I, being drunk as a pig, accidentally
showed By7ic his ancient daub. By7ic was delighted with
this idea and immediately began to insist on creating a computer
version of this game. I was not against it at all, and, literally,
the next day we clearly saw the design of the new toy. And through
Within a week, almost all of the game's graphics had already been drawn. By7ic just
bursting with ideas! He didn't give me a minute's rest -
constantly called and shouted everything into the phone in a broken voice
new and new ideas. To be honest, I would have abandoned everything long ago if
it wouldn't be him. But little by little I became interested in developing the game myself. Oh
how much time passed after that...And how many ideas never
was implemented... We were thinking: both support for General Sound and
3-color pictures, and the game score, and the leaderboard, and
mini video game after each level, and a lot of music and digital
sounds. But then, for various reasons, the release of the game
paused. For me like a stonethe stumbling block was the procedure
chip movements. I did it, I did it, but I couldn’t do it
to do, and then just went ahead and entrusted this task to Loki. Loki
was one of those who are called real coders. Big-headed
boy, that's all! He set to work energetically. What
I tried to do it, Loki rightly called it crap. In a couple
weeks everything was ready for use. The matter was left to me.
Believe it or not: while we were making this game (Me and Loki), we wrote
almost two hundred of its modifications! Much, as I said above, is not
was implemented in the latest version. We wrote it in Storm -
the most convenient assembler on the Spectrum. This is ours, purely personal
opinion. So don't sniffle in indignation! Loki in parallel with
writing intro & outro for a toy, peeing cool
video effects: chanky plasm, bump mapping, morph and so on. Our
super-renderer Voodoo, from the Amiga division, having seen these effects,
suggested putting them into the game. The idea seemed successful and we
approved. Subsequently it turned out that everything is not so simple. We
You've created another headache for yourself. The effects, for all their
beauty, caused a lot of glitches in the game. The fight against them has taken away from us
almost another month. Having decided to make the game only under 128Kb, we
faced new difficulties. The number of Mouzons had to
cut down to 5. Levels made 10. Accordingly, picturesbecame 10. 3-color pictures had to be rejected because of their
great length. I also had to remove the mini-rendering before
the beginning of each level. I (Smoke) decided to also make a sound
registration under AY, but whether it turned out successfully is up to you to judge. Case
was significantly complicated by the fact that Loki was temporarily
retrained as a hard worker and earned money on the iron
road. I was tired, of course, like a dog, but here I am with this game
climbed all the time. And finally...
And then August 19th arrived - a historic date! On this day
I came to Loki with the firm intention of making this damn game!
Loki supported me, and so we sat down to cast a spell on her. Since
everything was ready, we expected to 'link' the game in an hour, from
strength, for two. But we miscalculated. The game was persistently glitching. Moreover
the glitches were not so obvious, they were hidden, that is
appeared under certain circumstances. Yeah... these two hours
resulted in an endless sleepless night... For this night we
were so exhausted that they wanted to give up this matter and put it off
The game is out for another week. But the knowledge that they are waiting for us
flea market faithful Triumphants, forced to work further.
The final linking was done by Loki. He doesn't even think
wanted to entrust this important moment to me. I don't
I objected because I played Quake. Fornight, in between
coding, I completed almost all of it! Well, that's true, by the way...
Loki did the main work, for which many thanks to him! Overnight
we smoked one and a half packs of cigarettes, drank several liters of water
from the tap, ate a pan of cold pasta and spent a lot
many kilowatts of electricity. After global testing
game without finding any noticeable glitches, we wildly and
shouted joyfully and rushed to shake each other's hands and
congratulate on the completion of the project. We ported the game to PC and
We started testing the mouse under emulsion. Everything was OK! Afterwards we turned on
'4x4 Puzzle' on two computers simultaneously! Would you have heard this
wonderful quad sound! :) I got an honorable mission -
reproducing the game onto discs. After making 12 copies, we turned off both
computers, which worked continuously for about 16 hours, and began
get ready...
...About ten in the morning, having dispelled sleep, we directed our steps
to our favorite flea market, anticipating a cool party with the participation of everyone
Triumphant. Talking animatedly, we walked past the damp after
night rain of houses, inhaling the first smells of autumn, vaguely
assuming we won our first major victory today...
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