The story of one game

I remember standing in the yard in 2002 (maybe even the end of 2001, who will remember now). Then we started making this game. On hand there were already some developments. I must say that these developments could not boast of some beautiful picture, grace, grace and even uniqueness. Everything that was in these developments of the simpotichny - chips. At that time my brother drew them to me. But in showing the game to the white light was still very early and not very good. It was still cheese, and apart from the mechanics, it could not boast of anything, except for bugs. I did it at that time alone and showed it only to friends and acquaintances, who, of course, really liked her. We will be honest with ourselves, friends always “like” everything from what you do. Not everyone is ready to lay out the truth, as they say, “on the forehead” and say that everything is terrible.

In those old days, many were obsessed with Fallout and his amateur crafts. They did (or rather tried more than did) the mods. I also monitored several forums with such an orientation. There were signs and I got into the team of Digital Geckos enthusiasts. After some time I was “allocated” the artist Weilard , with whom we ennobled the game. For my part, this did not take so much, add a couple of screens, and change the schedule. And the game is ready.

By the way, this is what it looked like after these simple operations:


Lines Tactics, 2001.

In game development, I was still completely green and incredibly impressed with the result. However weilardI didn’t want to stop on it and suggested to expand, supplement, make the game more beautiful. I would say that he proposed to make something incredible, grandiose from such a simple, casual game. Of course for that time. Then casual games with such a style and scope did not.

Such games always looked something like this:


Screenshot from the game Arcade Lines. Somewhat later than ours.

No sooner said than done. He wrote a whole design document, made an insane amount of graphics and 3D models (crazy for such a small game).

We made the game for almost 2 years. Either cutting out something, redoing something, then fighting laziness. Basically, of course, mine, programmer. However, the game did everything conceived and it looks to this day excellent. As in my opinion, it's so gorgeous.

“The desire to do something more or less correctly (caused by a total mess in the company I worked at that time) led to the development of my own game, in the evenings after hard working days. Well, the love of rust and Fallout determined the style ”- Weilard .

Weilard has since instilled in me some kind of perfectionism in the game dev business, as he worked out every detail in his pictures. Well, what is there to complain about? Is that to the fact that everything is typed in uppercase? No, because this is an imitation of some strange apparatus, and in such a technique they often do it. And you can only find fault with the repeating texture on the left block of buttons. See for yourself:



The first game was written on older versions of Delphi and used the DelphiX framework. In general, he suited us for almost everything except the absence of translucency (which was compensated for by software) and the fact that he used DirectDraw. The latter was in every possible way abandoned and thrown out by Microsoft, which complicated the launch of the game on new OSs.

A little later, it had to be rewritten to something newer. For this, I took PowerDraw 2.42, which already used Direct3d and allowed the use of transparency and all sorts of other joys of life. I had to rewrite, not least because our free game had a publisher who wanted to give money and release the game only in English and with its logo at launch. So a slightly cropped version of the game appeared, but it didn’t get on the network due to the fact that the publisher at the last moment decided to refuse, for reasons unknown to us, from releasing the game and paying a fee.

Since then, the source of the game has been gathering dust on my disk. While the game itself was walking on the network, slowly dying, since it could not start on win7 / 8 at all.



Alas, the size restrictions due to the Internet speed of that time did not allow adding 2-3 audio tracks to the game. Although I wanted to do it. But we did not spare the place on the schedule and even small, modest animations.

In the game, they even allowed themselves to mess a little, writing a couple of dozen different questions when leaving the game.

And we did not spare our strength and made a whole section in the rules of the game. A detailed description, jokes and animated pictures of the figures that you need to collect in the game.




How painful it is now to look at the layout of the text in this old version. Align text and discharge it will be another point in remastering. Surely, where without it!



What is the result? I categorically do not want to bury the game, so I decided to remaster it. As part of the remastering will be:

• Support Windows 7/8/10
• Transfer to the new quad-engine
• Enhanced Special Effects
• Widescreen Monitor Support
• Achievements

I must say that I would be very pleased to add to the game and music, which it was deprived of 12 years ago. Who knows, maybe by the time of the major changes Weilard will pull up and slightly update the schedule.

Why am I painting the whole story, showing screenshots and video of the process? Yes, everything is simple. This game was my first serious completed game. A lot of effort was spent on it and it turned out great. Now I want her to remain as such, but be accessible to people. In this connection, I opened a page on Steam Greenlightto vote on releasing a remastered version on Steam. Free of charge, without ads, micropayments or any other nuances. With pleasure to distribute it to all fans to poke “colored lines” for free. And all that is needed for this at the moment is to gain the missing couple of thousands of votes in favor.



PS: And finally, I want to give a link to the same, old version.

Download the 2003 version (5.9Mb)

Alas, it only works on older OSs and is far from being as good as we would like. In win7 / 8, you can run it by setting the launch in compatibility mode with WindowsXP in the shortcut settings. Like this:



Thank you for your attention!