PROJECT
The Commodore 64 Version
Produced by Jon Wells
THE WILD BUNCH PROJECT - THE C64 CONVERSION
THE STORY SO FAR.......
It was back in Nov 1987 when I got mitts on a shiny new C64! Having been a Classic on the good old Spectrum (which I also owned) and Amstrad, and a firm favourite of mine, I was very surprised when I found that Firebird hadn't made a C64 version!
By early 1988 I was increasingly getting more interested in the programming side of things and so started to learn 64 Basic. What with The Wild Bunch being mostly written in Basic I quickly decided to do my own conversion as a sort of pet project and learning curve. Having aquired the full Spectrum Basic listing of the game
it placed me in good stead to undertake what was then a mammoth task.
I learned a lot during the conversion, but unfortunately I could'nt finish it as I needed Assembly experience to handle the Gunfight bitmap sequence and music. Also, around then I had limited time due to starting college and also getting contract work with Cult/D+H Games. Around the time the work was put on hold (mid 1988) The Wild Bunch project was completed to around 80% and fully playable.
Now 20 years later, following an email from Frank Gasking of GTW regarding the project and after finding the lost disks with my original conversion work on, The Wild Bunch Commodore 64 conversion has been resurrected and is to be completed once and for all!
With the original Wild Bunch approaching its 25th birthday at the end of this year the intended deadline is scheduled for a New Year 2009 release.
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THE WILD BUNCH COMPETITION
Pre-order early to be entered into a FREE prize draw courtesy of Binary Zone Interactive for a chance to win an exclusive full colour professionally produced Wild Bunch Audio CD! We have 20 CD's up for grabs, this competition is only for pre-orders made before the release date.
20 people will be picked at random to receive the prize along with their copy of the game
and all winners will be announced on the website following the release date.
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ORDERING INFORMATION
The Wild Bunch will be made available as a one-off Special Limited Edition tape for the Commodore 64 and will cost only £3.99 + £1.00 UK P&P, outside the UK Overseas P&P is £2.50. Once all copies are sold there wont be any more duplication runs so to guarantee your copy, you should pre-order securely using PayPal. Please click the PayPal banner below.
If you'd prefer to send a UK cheque or postal order by mail,
make these payable to 'Jon Wells' and post along with your address to:
The Wild Bunch Project
Jon Wells
9 De Grey Road
Kings Lynn
Norfolk
PE30 4PH.
UK.
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NEWS - 28th June 2008
New diary entries added. Check out what Kenz has been upto over the last few months in KENZ's diary.
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NEWS - 10th June 2008
**** Pre-order Competition announced! ****
To encourage more pre-orders for the professional C64 Limited Edition duplication run, Kenz has produced 20 commercial quality soundtrack audio CD's for The Wild Bunch Competition. This competition offer is exclusive to pre-order customers only. Check out the competition details in the ordering section.
To be in with a chance to win this great prize and guarantee your limited edition C64 tape version of The Wild Bunch, pre-order early! Good Luck!!
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NEWS - 10th/17th May 2008
New Title and in-game music composed, check out my diary entries!
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NEWS - 13th April 2008
The Gunfight street scene is completed! Check out my diary below for screenshots!
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NEWS - 12th April 2008
Work has started on the Gunfight street scene today, keep an eye on the diary over the next few days as I'll be attempting to complete this scene over the weekend!
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NEWS - 8th April 2008
The Wild Bunch Loading screen is complete. See my Diary entry for more details!
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NEWS - 6th April 2008
The Wild Bunch has now been made available for overseas pre-orders. I Have also added Kenz's Diary entries in a new section below.
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NEWS - 12th March 2008
Kenz to contribute to the project!
Following a few emails to my buddy and all round C64 hero Jason 'Kenz' Mackenzie of Binary Zone, BIT Live and BITS fame he has agreed to contribute to the project! He will be helping in various areas and designing the full colour inlay and label packaging using the original Spectrum's into a fully authentic Commodore 64 version!
Our intention is to produce a one-off special limited edition small duplication run on tape with full colour authentic packaging for Commodore 64 collectors. These will be closely based on the original Firebird Spectrum & Amstrad packaging to make it as authentic as possible.
To cover production/duplication costs this will be sold for £3.99 with £1.00 postage for UK and £2.50 postage for Overseas orders.
There will only be one duplication run of this product so to reserve your copy you should pre-order using the UK or Overseas paypal payment link below.
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DEVELOPMENT DIARY
14th June 2008
Today I'm trying to create a suitable track that will accompany the actual gunfight scene. I spent a few hours trying to do several variations on the original Spectrum single channel jingle that plays. However this is proving very tricky, it just doesn't seem to work as a 3 channel track. The problem with this is that as a 1 channel tune it's ok, but there's not much I can do with it to make it sound really good in 3 channels. I don't want to settle for second best so I have a change of heart I try out a different theme altogether! I decide to try
and do a short jingle based on a part of the theme from the final gunfight scene in A Few Dollars More... This ends up being a good move as it's ideal for doing in 3 channels! After about 3 hours of editing and tweaking it's sounding really good, I tidy up the loose ends and it's finished! As a quick test to get the feel of how it'll be alongside the scene I create a quick demo which shows the scene, fighter and plays the track.. It sounds perfect and adds to the atmosphere very well. I will at a later date have another try at the Spectrum original, if I have better luck next time I might randomly pick between the 2 jingles to accompany the gunfight. We'll have to wait and see how that goes.....
25th May 2008
A very early start today in an attempt to finish off the 2 channel Journey track and source code to handle the SFX channel. I spent a good couple of hours tweaking and fine tuning the instrument sounds, notes and extending the track and managed to finalise the track which loops around 2 and a half minutes.
Click here to download and listen to an mp3 snippet of this very track!
Now this is complete I loaded in the full track into the CCS64 Emulator and started to look through the USA player source code for ways in which I could adapt it to play the SFX sequences into the unused 3rd channel. It took around 30 mins to work out a method and create the code to handle exactly what was needed. I tapped in the last piece of code and tested it out - yep, works a treat! Now during your travels the 2 channel music will play alongside the spot effects.
As a final extra I spent the next 4 hours re-composing a full 3 channel version of the Journey track. This version will not feature in the game, but is instead a special for something else which you'll find out about very soon!
23rd - 24th May 2008
Over a couple of evenings I started working on the journey music part, this is the music that will play during your travels between the towns. I want this track to be 2 channels leaving the 3rd channel for sound effects which will be in the form of the Spectrums spot effects, only revamped a little. Firstly I needed to decide on a theme, after listening to a few classic Western film themes on YouTube I decided to go for
the theme to 'A Few Dollars More'.
I spent a few hours on Friday evening setting out the foundation of the track and opted for a fairly mellow theme as with only 2 channels this would suit best. I spent most of Saturday improving and adding to this track, while creating various effects that I could use within the music player itself. The Dutch USA player doesn't actually have the ability to play SFX, but I'm going add some code that will use part of the channel music sequences to simulate the sounds I need during play.
After a lengthy session I decide to tackle the finishing touches of the track and the SFX code tomorrow!
17th May 2008
Another musical stint today having decided to take on the Game Over theme. I wanted this track to have a sad, mellow feel so opted to do a remix of a theme I'd heard on The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. After a good 4 hours work this morning and trying different styles I've come up with something that sounds just right. I'm quite pleased with how this track has turned out!
11th May 2008
More music today, this time I recomposed and improved the gunfight interlude jingle that plays on the Spectrum version just before and following a gunfight when you take the gunfighter to the Sheriffs office for identification. This has been much improved from before.
Click here to download and hear an mp3 snippet of this track!
10th May 2008
I fancied tackling some more music for the game, so decided to try and knock up a suitable title theme. I opted for attempting to remix one of the themes from the classic Western "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly". This was composed in the ever faithful Dutch USA Music Assembler. Over several hours playing around with different ideas, I ended up with a track that starts off mellow and builds into the theme. It's not quite finished yet, but it's something I'll come back to later as I want to add a mellow style ending.
12th-13th April 2008
I started work on The Wild Bunch Gunfight street scene. I used the Spectrum screen that Kenz had sorted out for me on a c64 disk, which I converted onto PC first. Using Congo I converted this straight into multicolour mode to see how it looked in 64 multicolour form at its most basic. As you can see from the screenshot below a lot of work would be needed to enhance this fully!
The other problem with this screen is that it’s smaller than the 64 screen size. The spectrum screen is 256 x 176 pixels, whereas the 64’s screen size is 320 x 200 pixels. I decided the best way would be to keep the original size of the Speccy’s and just add the extra border around the outside and continue the buildings into this area. I did this using Photoshop and a half an hour later the original Spectrum screen looked like this:
Following this I added in some brickwork effects on the buildings in Photoshop before the initial conversion was to take place in Congo and upon doing this it actually wasn’t too bad at all, but it still needed a heck of a lot of work to optimise it for the 64. I spent the next 3-4 hours editing and tweaking, but still a lot of work left to do. I decided to spend most of the next day (Sunday 13th) finishing it off.
I continued more work on the Gunfight scene today, but before I began I coded a quick routine in the CCS64 emulator and loaded in the existing bitmap to get it to display on the screen. This was saved for later use. I proceeded with the bitmap in Congo doing a good 3 hours more worth of tweaking, changing and playing around with various looks and eventually I managed to get it to a stage I am happy with.
Now during the development of the bitmap I had an idea to make the most from the bitmap in which I can change the colours of the building, sky and ground in-game. About 4-5 colours were not used so I colourized each building using any unused colours including purple, green, red etc. Following this I adapted my code so I can use a lookup table and replace the red, green, purple colours with any colour I like. The great thing about this is that I can use the same bitmap, but make the scene look different by mixing the 16 colour palette and building colours. I can also darken the ground and sky to make the scene look like nighttime or dusk for example which will give each Gunfight scene a more varied look!
Once this was complete I downloaded Sprite Pad on the PC and started work on the actual Gunfighter sprite. I simply magnified the original Spectrum Gunfighter and copied him pixel for pixel into 64 sprites, but I added an additional multicolour sprite for underlaying behind the Hi-res black outline. This gives the Gunfighter full colour for his face and clothing and I can vary these colours in the game depending on who you are having a gunfight with. This will again add some variety to the scene. As an additional extra I created a Hi-res cactus for the background. Finally, I bolted all this together into my code and tested it for various scene styles, two of which you can at last see below.
I have a few plans for the Gunfight sequence which will add something extra for the 64 version compared to the Spectrum and Amstrad, though I'm not saying any more as that'd spoil it for you. You'll have to find this out yourself when you play the game!
8th April 2008
The Wild Bunch loading/title bitmap screen has been created! This was developed over a 3 hour period last night. I used the original Hi-res Spectrum loading screen which I opened into Photoshop on the PC. From here I added a rainbow effect on the red sky, I then saved and loaded this into the Congo PC graphics tool, this allows you to convert an image into any Commodore 64 bitmap form.
Before I started I had to resize the image into 320x200 pixels for the full 64 screen. Following this I used the dithering feature to convert the rainbow effect and hi-res picture into C64 multi-colours and spent some 2 hours tweaking the rough edges and adding my own colouring to the sun, cactus, and wording. I may come back to this at a later stage to see if I can improve on it further, but for now you can see the results in the screenshot below!
5th April 2008
The Wild Bunch project website goes live!
27th March 2008
Kenz produces The Wild Bunch website layout for me to modify and use for the pre-order, news and diary of the game.
26th March 2008
I have created more music for the game, the jingle which plays when the map is shown. Also the music that plays when you take a shot character or prisoner to the sheriffs office following the gunfight sequence.
22nd March 2008
Kenz finishes first proof version of The Wild Bunch inlay. See below! Wow, very nice!
21st March 2008
The story so far intro music has been composed. I'm using the Commodore 64's Dutch USA music player tool on my PC running the excellent CCS64 Emulator to handle all the audio music for the game.
Click here to download an mp3 snippet of the track!
18th March 2008
The original Spectrum inlay and tape label is scanned and sent to Kenz for re-designing and development.
16th March 2008
Using some handy emulation tools the original Spectrum 48k Basic listing is re-printed and my Commodore 64 conversion listing printed for comparison and reworking to ensure the conversion retains the same strategy elements and formulas as the Spectrum. With these in hand I can make any changes to my old source to bring it much closer to the original. It'll also make it easy for me to read through and pick up from where I'd left off 20 years ago!
2nd March 2008
I find my lost C64 work disks with the old Wild Bunch conversion source on! This was no mean feat, what with well over 500 work disks to sift through it took me quite a few days to actually find all the disks with the Wild Bunch source on. There were so many different snippets of source and work data that I've done across many disks over the years that it was very difficult to label and keep track. I use my old Windows 98 PC a CBM 1541 disk drive and PC to 1541 cable and convert the Wild Bunch disks into .d64 images on the PC. Now I can work on this project using the CCS64 Emulator on my modern office PC!
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KENZ's DIARY
1st June 2008
Jon has been sending me more completed soundtracks from the game
recently so I recorded them to the C64 for inclusion on the Soundtrack
CD. The tracklisting is now pretty much finalised which meant I could
complete work on the rear CD label and the main CD on-body design - this
will be printed directly onto CD in full colour which looks pretty
darned cool! It must be said Jon has done a great job with the music
for the game. He has supplied me with a special 3 channel remix of the
"Journey" soundtrack from the game (the one going in the game will only
feature 2 channels - leaving a channel free for spot FX). Anyway, the 3
channel mix is superb and is one of my favourite tracks on the
soundtrack CD! To finish off the CD artwork I designed a special
"obi-strip". This is a bit of card that gets included in imported CDs
(usually the Japanese version). It doesn't serve much purpose other
than to look pretty but I really like them and they add that little bit
of extra magic to a CD release. :)
6th May 2008
Jon made some suitably enthusing noises about the CD inlay and proposed
tracklisting so I got cracking on the artwork for the rear of the CD
today. Once again I copied the style of the original tape sleeve and
came up with a pretty neat looking inlay. Techno-Trivia:- With
Photoshop you can give each image "layer" that you work with its own
name. I called the layer that contained a picture of the cowboy on the
back of a bucking bronco "Roy" - named after "Roy Rogers". :)
5th May 2008
After a bit of a brainstorming session me and Jon came up with the idea
of giving away a gift to 20 people (picked at random) who have
pre-ordered the game. The prize we decided on was a specially produced
soundtrack CD featuring music from the C64 version of The Wild Bunch
along with soundtracks from other C64 Western themed games. In order to
do this I waded through the HVSC collection looking for Western themed
tunes and then put together a list of possible tracks for the CD. As it
was a bank holiday weekend this weekend I had a bit extra time on my
hands so I spent some time recording music from C64 Western games in the
Binary Zone studio (from a real C64, of course!) and started assembling
the tracklisting. I left some room on the CD for soundtracks from the
Wild Bunch game that Jon would be producing at a later date. I also had
a doodle with the CD cover artwork today which will be based on the Wild
Bunch tape inlay artwork.
29th April 2008
Now that the tape inlay is complete it's onto my next job - the tape
label! Jon had already sent me some scans of the Speccy tape label to
work from but in order to get the optimum quality I decided to create
all-new labels at 300dpi based on the design of the Speccy labels. To
start with I created I tape label template in photoshop with masked
areas to show where the spools will go. I then overlaid the Speccy
inlay and retype the inlay text in exactly the same position - altering
the text accordingly to suit the C64 version. I then used some elements
from the tape inlay (the Wild Bunch logo, firebird logo and Telecom
logo) and positioned them on the inlay. To finish off I applied a grey
coloured gradiant to the label to match the classic Firebird design.
And that's it! You can see a picture of how the tape label turned out
below:
14th April 2008
Now that Jons conversion has progressed a bit more I decided to update
the tape inlay to include screenshots from the C64 version of the game.
This meant ditching the Speccy screenshots in favour of the rather fab
new loading screen and gunfight screen that Jon created for the C64
version. I also altered the text by the screens to read "Screen
pictures shown from Commodore 64 version of game" - just to make the
inlay 100% C64! I also changed the silver badge on the front to read
"SPECIAL EDITION" - just to make it that little bit more extra special.
While I was doodling around with the inlay I thought about making a new
banner to promote the game. I decided to make quite a big banner so
that it would be eye-catching and then proceeded to drop elements from
the tape inlay onto it. I think I kind of got carried away in the end
and created what I call a "kitchen sink" montage where I threw
everything possible onto it! You can see the end result below:
22nd March 2008
My next job was to airbrush the front of the inlay to change the yellow
border from the Spectrum version to a red border to show it's a C64
game. Using the C64 Firebird game 'Arcade Classics' as a guide I
noticed the bottom section of the border on the C64 game was still
yellow but the top section was red so I carefully airbrushed the top
section of the Wild Bunch inlay to match. I then lifted the COMMODORE
64 / 128 text from the Arcade Classics inlay and placed it onto the Wild
Bunch inlay. I then produced a red box to go on the spine of the inlay
to show that it is the CBM 64 / 128 version of the game. To finish off
the inlay I retyped all the instructions and added C64 loading
instructions. I also changed the credits to suit this new version of
the game. And voila! The C64 inlay was complete. I then printed a
test inlay, took a few photos of it in a tape box and emailed them to
Jon for his feedback.
21st March 2008
I began working on the Wild Bunch inlay today! My first job was to
remove the creases where the original tape inlay had been folded. This
took a good few hours as I had to rebuild the pictures of the cowboys
shown in the background on the inlay. I also had to carefully restore
the sky and ground so it all blended together nicely. Ironically, this
was the hardest part of the inlay to produce and you probably won't
notice any of it as the inlay will be folded once again when it gets put
into the tape boxes! After that I removed any remaining blemishes,
creases and small marks from the inlay and then set about getting rid of
the two holes from the back of the inlay. These were the holes that the
'tape lugs' on the tape box went through to keep the tape secure in the
box. Nowadays you can get clear tape boxes with no lugs (which I think
look much nicer) so I got rid of the holes. This meant more artworking
to restore the background images and I also redid the screenshots as one
of the holes was punched right through where the screenshots are
illustrated on the inlay. I used nice cripsy clear screens from the
emulator on the inlay which look much sharper than the ones on the
original Spectrum inlay.
18th March 2008
I received the tape inlay scans from the Spectrum version of the Wild
Bunch from Jon today so I set about creating a tape inlay template in
PhotoShop to ensure my artwork prints at the correct size. I then
dropped Jons scans into the template and worked out what needed to be
done to the artwork. Jons timing was perfect as it's Easter in a few
days which means I'll have a bit of extra time to work on the inlay artwork.
12th March 2008
I received a very interesting email from Jon today which mentioned he
was resurrecting his old conversion of the Speccy / Amstrad budget title
'The Wild Bunch'. I was rather excited by this news as I used to LOVE
that game on the Speccy as it was one of the early Firebird budget games
I bought. Anyhoo, Jon mentioned he would like to produce a special
edition of the game on tape complete with authentic artwork so I offered
my photoshop services and requested that Jon send me hi-res scans of the
inlay to have a fiddle with. It looks like me and Jon are now
collaborating on a C64 project after all these years. COOL!
27th February 2008
So there I was minding my own business when **SHAZAM!** an email arrived
from my good C64 chum Jon Wells. I had tons of fun working with Jon
(along with Alf Yngve, Paul 'FeekZoid' Hannay and Jason 'TMR' Kelk) on
various C64 projects back in the 90's so it was great to hear from him
again after all this time. I was also really pleased to hear he had
been working on a new C64 release - the Sideways SEUCK Project - so I
crafted a little banner for him in order to help promote it. But that
was only the beginning ... !
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Now Available - Jon Wells' Sideways SEUCK for the C64!
Webpage produced by
Jason 'Kenz' Mackenzie
and Jon Wells
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