This was a bi-directional SEU with some nice graphics by Simon Probert (Simes of Cosine, currently in Australia) and code by Jason Kelk with no sound, although Simon was to do this.
The game progressed from some early code by Jason, whom is most famous for his work now with Cosine, and his Reaxion games.
The game was being developed for Firebird and their budget range, after someone at the company showed interest after seeing the previews they sent.
When a more complete preview was sent up, Firebird were not really interested and wanted games with BMX and Skateboards. Firebird suggested various changes to the game, and Jason didn’t want to make these changes. He felt the game would distance too much away from what he really wanted.
The game itself is quite good, and something which would have faired well on the budget range. It was a little hard to play, and probably needs a lot more, but Jason i’m sure would have had the ability to do so with the final version.
This is it of the game, and case closed. All you will see of a game which Firebird wanted to change too much for Jason’s liking.
Jason gives an account in his own words in Creator Speaks, extracted from his webpage, where he first released this game.
Grab it and check out a piece of Firebird history…
Contributions: Jason Kelk, Andre for bug fix
Supporting content
Available downloads
- Preview_Protocol.zip (zip)
Gallery
Creator speaks
Jason Kelk speaks about work on Protocol...
Extracted from TMR's webpage...
"This is probably the best of the unreleased bunch, Protocol was progressed from the source of Orbyt with the addition of upper and lower border removal, bi-directional parallax scrolling and a far more solid game concept.
It was originally being developed for Firebird (for the budget range) by myself and Simes after someone there showed an initial interest in the previews we sent. But when I traipsed up there to show them the more complete preview, the most we got out of them was "can you do anything with a BMX or a skateboard?"
S'a bit sad really, everybody wanted to add guns and stuff to it but I liked the whole alternative weapon idea too much to ruin it... The sky is red because we were both Status Quo fans. This preview has been patched and cleaned a little, to make it up to the version we showed Firebird."
Jason Kelk.