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This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Mark Lemmert, co-founder of 6502 Workshop. Him and his partners (Mike Reimer, Bill Giggie, Robert Padovan, Gordon Mackay, and Galactagog) have been building Nox Archaist, a brand new story-driven tile-based role-playing game in the classical Ultima style. They’re pushing the hardware as far as they can with this new engine, working to break new ground in scope, story, animation, sound, and music. Early builds look great, and we’re really excited to see more!
Mark’s journey with the Apple II parallels a lot of us. The machine sparked an interest in programming, and a fascination with RPGs and tile engines in particular. Nox Archaist is the fulfillment of that childhood dream to build such a game from scratch. Mark shares his war stories (that many of us can relate to) of strewing our childhood computers with half-baked game engines that were doomed from the start. As he and his team are proving, it’s never too late to revive and achieve that dream.
KansasFest 2017 registration is now open! Early bird rates in effect as of this posting, so don’t wait. Attendance is limited to 100 this year. Sign up now! Mark will be there and likely demonstrating Nox Archaist, so you won’t want to miss that.
Meanwhile, Mike and Quinn yammer on about new hardware, new old games, old new games, and of course Woz. Also back this month is the controversial Softalk segment. Read along with us in issue #4!
More information on everything discussed in this episode, after the jump.
- 6502 Workshop – The team building Nox Archaist.
- Using Assembly Language (PDF) – By Randy Hyde, the book that got Mark started.
- Hi-Res Graphics and Animation Using Assembly Language – Does not appear to be online.
- Dogfighters of Mars 2 (demo) – Get it now before his dropbox limit is hit!
- Manila Gear 2soniq – Now distributed by ReactiveMicro.
- KansasFest Registration – Early bird rates in effect. 100 person limit! Go now!
- WozFest PR#6 announced – If you’re on the bottom of our blue rock, you should go.
- Light Cycles 3D – A game killed in 1977 is finally released! Better late than never.
- MIDI to Mockingboard – Tom Porter has a nifty conversion tool.
- Woz on why he likes computers – It’s Woz! He’s saying stuff!
- Softalk #4 – Follow along with us as we re-live 1980 one periodical at a time.
- SFX Audio – Promo for Tom Porter’s Apple II sound library.