Larry the Dinosaur 2: Nine Years Later

It was Halloween evening, October 31st, 2002. A game I had been working on since the summer was almost finished. I wanted to released on this day, for some odd reason. Honestly, it still needed a ton of work; it had many bugs, and it had some poor design issues that needed to be addressed. But at the time, my programming skills weren't too great and I had enough of the project. I played through the game several times that night, fixing up what I could, and then I submitted it to various sites. The game was Larry the Dinosaur 2.

The title screen.

It received fairly good feedback from the then Qbasic community. Amongst other 2d platform games developed in Qbasic, Larry the Dinosaur 2 held up well. It mixed action and puzzle elements and had a progressive story line that rewarded you with cut-scenes at certain points throughout the game. You could pick up and drop items; mixed items with other items (shotgun shells mix with the shotgun to increase your ammo supply, for example). You could fight enemies with your fist, pistol, shotgun, machine-gun, or desert eagle. There were non-playable characters that served the narrative. There was a villain, a friend, and a could-have-been-worse script.

The story is revealed through in-game dialogue.

Outside the world of Qbasic the game received positive feedback as well. It was posted on the front page on freedownloadscenter.com (http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Reviews/r912.html). Somehow my game fell into the hands of someone there and it hit all the right notes with him (or her), and so he gave it a pleasant review. It was really a surprise to find my game on the front page of a non-programming related website.

In addition to the online review, I was contacted by a representative of a German game magazine, who wanted to publish a blurb about in their next issue. I don't remember what it was named, but I couldn't find the magazine online. I had to sign a disclosure agreement, so that makes it true right? Well, maybe. I don't think anyone would waste their time if it wasn't real, so probably. If I ever find it I'll have to post about it.

The weapons locker.

I also had another representative call me, but this guy was trying to promote an anti-spyware program and wanted me to place an ad. Here's how it worked: when anyone clicked on the link to download the game, it would first direct them to an offer page, giving them the chance to buy the anti-spyware program, or to continue and download the game. A bit annoying if you are just trying to download the game. However, if anyone bought the anti-spyware program I'd get like half the profit. The ad page tracked stats and I was able to see just how many downloads my game was getting. Heh, it was actually what made me decide to stop the ad placement and just go back to a direct download. I got about (or over) 3,000 hits. Holy shit! But...the stats showed how many people made it to the ad page versus how many people continued on to download the game versus how many people bought the anti-spyware program. About a third of the people who made it to the ad page gave up and didn't download the game. So yeah, 2,000 downloads is still a lot. But man, I lost a thousand downloads! The good news is that one--yes, just one--individual out there (out of the 3,000) bought the anti-spyware program. I received a check in the mail for eleven and something dollars; I should have framed it, heh. My brother joked at how that meant that it averaged to about fractions-of-a-cent per hour of the time I spent making the game. Whatever, that was an exciting time. At least I made something! And after seeing those stats, it just wasn't worth it, I wanted more people to download my game! So I removed the ad-placement and just made it a direct download again.

There are a total of 24 areas to explore, all accessible through the elevator. If I did this again, I would have locked most of the floors at the start, only allowing you to access them via key cards you collect as you progress throughout the game; you'd be introduced to new places progressively instead of all at once and having that confusion of "where the hell do I start?"

Unfortunately, the game download was hosted on a server of a shotty ISP. Back then I was using dial-up. The terms of the contract stated that if I went over 90 hours (or some number) per month, my account would be deactivated and I'd have to call in to reactivate it; this means downtime--no one can download the game when my account is deactivated. The downtime wasn't the bad part. The bad part was that they wouldn't just reactivate my account; they have to create an new one with a new user name, each time! Part of the URL to download the game had my user account name as part of it. The original download link, when my user name was joeking1, was http://users.sisna.com/joeking1/deltacode/downloads/dos/ld2v10.zip. So the first time we went over the hours and my account was deactivated, the download link became invalid. I could reactivate my account but those bastards wouldn't give me my old user name back, so the new download link was http://users.sisna.com/joeking2/deltacode/downloads/dos/ld2v10.zip. Only the user name changed, joeking1 to joeking2, but that's all it took to kill the traffic my game was getting. Then the user name changes went on and on, to joeking3 and so on each time we went over the limit. I couldn't control my brother's activity--yes, I blame him!

Halfway through the game you meet this nasty guy.

If only the ISP was the issue; but no, no matter how many times I contacted freedownloadscenter.com to update the link to the new one, they wouldn't do it. Instead they just posted the text from my email on a new page of their site. Who does that? (it's still up: http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Games/3D_Action_Games/Larry_The_Dinosaur_2.html)

So the awesome downloading spree was over. No one could download my game from there anymore. The excitement was short-lived. Another drawback about this whole experience is the compatibility of the game. You could run it on Windows 98 and only Windows 98. It was a DOS game at its core, but the sound drivers were written for Windows, so you needed a Windows 9x system to run the game; you couldn't just run it in DOS alone. If you had Windows XP, you could run it, but without the sound. I've tried on Vista and 7 and I can't get it to run at all. And DOS emulators don't work because of what I said about the sound drivers (though you can still play it without the sound). It's like a catch-22. And Windows 98 was already an obsolete system by the time it was released anyway, so the game didn't have much of a life span.

You can view a detailed description of each item you collect.

Though some few years later it came back into the spotlight for a brief moment and received an in-depth review on Qbasic Express (http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/express/issue9/index.html#larry2). It was much appreciated. :)

The final boss. Look out, Larry!

Every once and a while I'd google the game and find some discussion of it pop up hear and there. Nothing substantial, but any talk about it made my day. Even with all its issues, it was still well-made enough that quite a many people were able to enjoy. So happy 9th anniversary, Larry the Dinosaur 2! You will live on in my mind as a glowing achievement of someone who had way too much time on his hands.

You can still download the game of course! I'm not hosting it; however, you can find it on any of these pages (or just do a Google search):

• http://www.phatcode.net/downloads.php?id=114
• http://kentauri.digitalblackie.com/articles/larry2.html
• http://www.qbasic.com/games/dumpbyinput.php?input=Larry%20The%20Dinosaur%202&mode=3

A special thank you goes out to all who are hosting a download of the game on their site.

Definitely NOT Larry the Dinosaur 2.

Hold on one second! What about Larry the Dinosaur 1 or the uncompleted Larry the Dinosaur 3? Good question! Those are each a story of their own. I'll post about them soon. Until then...

The end.

Game design ain't everything

I've done a lot of talk lately about planning and design. It is an important step in the game development process; but if you struggle with this part of the process, don't let it become an obstruction. It's meant to help, not to get in the way. Like all things, it takes practice. You do your best with what you can and then you move on. You may not have the greatest design, but at the very least you have a clearer picture of the game you are trying to develop. So whenever you are ready, move on to the next step and have fun! That's what it's all about, right?

Game design on one piece of paper

Can you fit your game idea onto one 8.5x11 piece of paper? I think you should be able to show a good idea of the game with many of its core concepts, from the story to gameplay mechanics to concept art and even some mockups. A stranger should be able to understand your vision of the game by only looking at this piece of paper. Is your game idea strong enough for that? Does it have enough solid ideas and a unified, focused theme? Does it have enough content to go beyond a simple one or two-level demo? If it doesn't meet all of these points, then would it be wise to start coding the game until you do?

When you get down to it, making a game takes a lot of time. Brainstorming ideas of paper takes virtually no time in comparison. It's fun to jump in and start coding something, but having a good idea of what you want to see at the end will save you countless amounts of hours from redesigns of code, graphics, levels, and sound.

The rule of thumb is that the more time you spend designing your game, and the more complete that design is, the more smooth the game development process will go. You realize problems with your design early on; and when you catch them in the design phase, all you need to do is cross them out, so to speak. It doesn't take a massive overhaul of the code, depending on how complex the problem is to fix.

Something I run into when designing is that I realize how incomplete my game is. It challenges me to think about content and ideas to keep the game interesting through to the end. Sometimes I realize that I don't like my idea or the direction I'm taking with the game, so I stop there, and it only took a couple hours of my time as opposed to hundreds of hours developing the game to the point where I realize the same problem.

It does take practice. If you're used to jumping in with both feet and coding your way along, learning to think about the game in the design process can be frustrating. You don't "see" your game in action, but only what's on the paper. However, every problem you encounter along the design process you'd encounter in the implementation (coding) process anyway. Designing your game beforehand allows you to tackle all these problems head-on and sort them out beforehand so you have a less frustrating (and more fun) time implementing your game, and a much better chance of following through to the end and releasing a quality game.