Encounter HD (Oric)

Quick Information
Encounter is an hybrid text/graphical adventure game for the Oric range of computers from 1983. (But it's playable on PC with an emulator)

You can read more on the project on my blog.
The game is in active development, and the source code is regularly updated on GitHub, the release date is set to December 20th  2024.

The details
This game is a remaster of a game originally released in 1983 by the company Severn Software.

The original game written 100% in BASIC language, and did not have any graphics or sound (other than a few "ping" and "shoot" now and then).

Here is what that game originally looked like:


It's kind of rough, but it was actually quite an interesting game. Back then everything was fantasy or science fiction, that one was happening in our current universe, that could have been happening in a city or village not far from where I lived.

First Upgrade Attempt
Back then I was learning programming in BASIC, and I gave a shot at adding graphics to it, but I was young and did not know better, so after a few scenes I ran out of memory (and patience)

Second Upgrade Attempt
In 2018 I tried again, still in BASIC, but using the floppy drive to load images, that did work quite nicely and got the entire game working with nice graphics, but BASIC was still not making it possible to have any form of advanced sounds, so after a while I did pause, but after having done quite a significant amount of graphic work!

Third Upgrade Attempt

This is the current attempt: I've rewritten the entire game in a mix of C and assembler, I reused all the graphics and design choices from the second attempt, and used the power provided by assembler to add proper transitions, visual effects and animations, the high-scores are saved, there are achievements and an intro sequence with sounds and music.

Most of the important technical elements (game engine, scripting system, music and sound player, intro and credits, etc...) have been written and are at least 90% finished (with the exception of the music), what remains at this stage is mostly:

• Finish scripting the rest of the game ("make the game"!)
• Have the French localization complete (it's only partially done)

So there you go!