*******************************************************************************
*                                                                             *
*   Demo:   Defender of the Crown Img Type:    Amstrad CPC Emulator DSK File  *
*   Author: Odiesoft                  Webpage: http://www.odiesoft.de         *
*   Size:   1 * 194816 Bytes          Date:    15. march 2003                 *
*   File:   Odiesoft Demos - Defender of the Crown (1989).dsk                 *
*                                                                             *
*******************************************************************************

Title: Defender of the Crown Image
Year:  1989


For a long time Cinemaware's "Defender of the Crown" set the standard in
computer game graphics on the Amiga. (Gryzor and Renegade were the CPC
counterparts for that...).

My friends and I were always hoping that somebody would do a conversion of this
game to the CPC. But for a long time nobody did. So at some point I came up with
the idea that I could mock my friends by copying the title image to the CPC and
then showing it to my friends claiming that finally a CPC version of Defender of
the Crown had been published.

I used a very crude image editing program to create the picture. I drew the
outline of the bricks with simple lines and then wrote a small BASIC program
that filled the inside of the bricks with color. Then I painted the text
"Defender of the Crown" pixel by pixel and had yet another BASIC program create
the diagonal color bars within the Defender font.

When it came to giving the inside of the bricks some texture I lost interest in
this idea. I had already spent some hours on drawing the rough outline and the
font and I didn't think that this joke was worth much more effort and time. The
only thing that I did then was create a short program that loads the image into
the screen memory and cycles the colors in the Defender of the Crown font.

Some years later I discovered that the French company Master Designer Software
had done a CPC conversion which looked pretty good (no wonder, according to the
TACGR nine computer graphics artists did the conversion of all the cool Amiga
graphics...). Though there is no color cycle in the title screen and the bricks
in the back are pink instead of grey.
  
Update 25th January 2004

Some days ago Laurent, a former French CPC programmer, emailed me to tell me
more about how Defender of the Crown was ported to the CPC. I asked him whether
I could add the information from his eMail to my webpage and he approved that.
So here it is:

I just want to tell you that I am the "nine computer graphics artists" :) At
this time, I worked from the Atari Version. We asked a hacker to extract the
images from this game (strangely, we were not authorized to get the originals
from the 1st company), then my favourite programmer, Brice, did a savage
conversion to CPC and then I started to work. The CPC palette is very weird,
that is why the bricks are pink (there is a (enough) cool range of color :
bright violet, violet, purple, maroon). I think I can provide you pictures of
this version if you want. (The picture can be seen on the TACGR page on Defender
of the Crown)

The company I worked in at this time is not "Master Designer Software", but "UBI
Soft".

Did I tell you that Brice (the programmer) also wrote a few CPC emulators (for
Unix and Mac)? We also made "EXIT", another game for CPC (not a conversion).


*******************************************************************************
*                                                                             *
* This program can be distributed freely and without the need of a written    *
* of a written permission by Odiesoft, as long as it is distributed free of   *
* charge!                                                                     *
*                                                                             *
* If you had to pay for this, you've been ripped off!                         *
*                                                                             *
*******************************************************************************

