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Archive 1

Isometric

Is this really the first game to use isometric projection? --Mmartins 08:33, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Definitely not. I know that 3D Ant Attack (name might be misremembered) came some time before Knight Lore. What's more, it was scrolling rather than flip-screen. Anyway, I'm in the process of updating all of the Ultimate game pages, so when I get to this one I'll fix this (obviously feel free to correct it yourself though). Thanks for pointing it out. --Plumbago 08:51, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

You were right about the name. Also, check out Trashman - another one of the firsts with the isometric view. --BACbKA 16:50, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Trashman was never isometric. You can see from the screenshot that it's almost, but not quite, top-down. There were other isometric games preceding Knight Lore though --82.45.163.18 18:00, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

NPOV

I take issue with this conclusion, pulled off a website and presented as a straight fact by Wikipedia:

"While this routine has been found to be optimised in all of Ultimate's games from Knight Lore onwards, the optimisation is not present in Sabre Wulf. Given Tim Stamper's chronology for Sabre Wulf, one would expect otherwise if it had truly been completed after Knight Lore"

The only fact that's suggested by the variations in the keyboard routine is that the keyboard routine for Sabre Wulf was written before the corresponding keyboard routine for Knight Lore. Since it's obvious that a number of Ultimate's games were being written in parallel at any one time, there's no reason to extrapolate that the entire Sabre Wulf game was written before Knight Lore. I'm not sure how to take the bogus conclusion out without necessarily removing the whole of the (interesting to a saddo like me) factoid. --82.45.163.18 18:00, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it has been presented as fact (it uses the word "disputed" after all), but you're right in that there are several reasons why the keyboard routine thing is by no means proof of chronology. For a start Tim Stamper never said that they didn't start Sabre Wulf before Knight Lore, just that they completed it afterwards. If that's true then it's not difficult to imagine the coders of a title as revolutionary as Knight Lore dropping the comparatively bland Sabre Wulf temporarily to concentrate on completing Knight Lore. Knight Lore also pushes the hardware to its very limits and frequently seems on the verge of creaking to a standstill, so every code optimisation Chris Stamper could wring out of the Spectrum would be vital. However the same is not true of Sabre Wulf, so if work on it had already begun, there would be no pressing need to go back and implement the same small optimisations - if it ain't broke etc. Obviously there's no proof either way, so unless the Stampers ever change their story we'll have to take their original word for it. And why shouldn't we? Miremare 06:51, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Importance

I don't know if I disagree with the change in importance, but I certainly disagree with the reasoning behind it. Winning awards does not make an article important. Interesting, maybe, but not important. This is not a review site, and importance should be graded on impact and notability rather than popularity and ratings. As far as I know, Colossal Cave Adventure never won any awards, but it was 100x more important to video games than Twilight Princess. I'd rather play Twilight Princess, but that doesn't make it important. Articles shouldn't be rated by how cool the game is. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 22:29, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Um. Okay? It doesn't matter. It's not of high importance based on any discussion on this talk page or any link on the article. - A Link to the Past (talk) 22:31, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
As far as I can tell I'd agree with that. The fact that it was British 8-bit computer game that was ported to the Japanese Famicom would seem notable (as I don't believe this was ever anything like a common occurrence), but the article doesn't seem to be written in a way so as to point out the notability. Possibly the Isometric aspect is notable too, but again the article does not play that part up. Reading the talk page, it appears that it used to claim Knight Lore was the first isometric game (which could well-qualify it for High), but another game seems to have now taken the title. As it stands I would agree that Low would make sense until the article can be changed to point out a greater importance. I was merely objecting to the specific logic pointed out with the change, not the validity of the change itself. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 22:45, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Knight Lore is (as far as I know) the first isometric game which allowed the player free movement about the environment; earlier isometric games like Zaxxon were restricted in what the player could do, and things like Ant Attack allowed only "character based" (8 pixel) scrolling. Yes, the article doesn't show this at the moment, but that's why we have separate importances and ratings. To quote from CRASH in 1988, "Knight Lore deserves some recognition for having started off the isometric-arcade-adventure genre proper". I have restored the high importance. --Pak21 07:55, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
I'd second Pak21 - Knight Lore is easily one of the most notable games of its era. Aside from its 3D environment (which 3D Ant Attack had previously pioneered; though in considerably less detail), KL allowed the player a degree of realistic interaction with objects in this environment unknown at the time. This sort of thing we take for granted in games today, but it was almost unheard of in 1984. Furthermore, aside from the awards and prizes it received at the time, the innovation and success of KL is underscored by the wide range of titles that essentially cloned it (e.g. Batman, Spindizzy, Head Over Heels, Fairlight, The Great Escape, etc.). All that said, I also agree that the article could do with being beefed up to support this notability - I'll see what I can do. Anyway, just my two cents. Cheers, --Plumbago 08:15, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
Okay, discussing - there's no rationale to show that Knight Lore's "first" is all THAT notable, and I don't see that it is. The way you talk about it, Knight Lore's isometric style is as big of an advancement as 3D is. - A Link to the Past (talk) 18:30, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, isometric games are without doubt a genre of their own (e.g. moby games or my mame emulator have it as category - or WP for that matter). So if this game is considered to have defined a whole genre of computer games, then I'd say it makes it quite important in an encyclopedic sense (I have no idea what this rating is about though.. so not sure that matters). Also five minutes of google tell me it shouldn't be hard to write a bit about notability of the game, e.g. an IEEE Computer Graphics paper (text leaked into google cache) says "Knight Lore was said to be the second most cloned piece of software after the word-processing program Word Star", and here's another CRASH article about isometric games which e.g. says "Filmation 2. An Ultimate invention, this allows graphics of Knight Lore's quality to be scrolled smoothly over a large playing area.". --Allefant 09:30, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

As well as Allefant's Word Star quote above, there's the following from GamesTM:
What was to come next though, would make the industry sit up and take notice of the small Ashby-de-la-Zouch based firm. The seminal Knight Lore arrived towards the end of 1984 and, thanks to a technique known as Filmation, provided gamers with an interactive isometric world to explore. Nothing like Knight Lore had been seen before on a home machine and it was hailed as revolutionary -- the fact that it was running on a humble Spectrum 48K was even more impressive. A slew of clones (including various efforts from Ultimate) followed.
The words "seminal" and "revolutionary" here pretty much cover it I think. Miremare 16:49, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Do you have an issue/page number etc for that? It's the sort of quote which would be wonderful to have properly cited in the article. Cheers --Pak21 17:00, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
I've added the reference to the article. Does anyone know the original source of the WordStar quote? I know I've read it before, but that page doesn't seem to say where it's from... Miremare 17:14, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
I can add a reference to the paper above.. the game very certainly was not "the only one to be cloned more often than WordStar" really - but we have a secondary reference saying that it was said to be :) Also this one looks nice: "At the time when the Hemicube method for radiosity and distribution ray tracing were being developed, the pinnacle of graphical achievement in the games scene was some clever visibility determination in the seminal KnightLore" ("Game Graphics During the 8-bit Computer Era - Steven Collins" in SIGGRAPH computer graphics newsletters). --Allefant 17:57, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
Another good quote. Blimey, it's turning out to be even more notable that I thought! Also, while we're here, what do people think of the importance of Sabre Wulf? It was rated Mid before and has not been changed back. Miremare 18:04, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
I'd say Mid is ok. It has a certain place among the most notable ZX games, so Low would be too.. well, low in my eyes - but it also didn't define a new genre like KnightLore. --Allefant 11:24, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

conversions

I found this interesting project, where the developers use the original game and a modified spectrum emulator and visualize the game in perspective 3d using opengl by bypassing the display routines of the original game. It might worth to mention in the conversions section. http://ima.udg.edu/~dagush/Projects/KnightLore2006/ 80.98.10.245 (talk) 10:27, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

GA Review

GA toolbox
Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:Knight Lore/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Ritchie333 (talk · contribs) 12:59, 20 August 2015 (UTC)


As requested, I'll take this one. Never liked it as much as later things like Sweevo's World and Head Over Heels, but it is historically important. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 12:59, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

General

  • A number of spellings were US English. As this is an article about a game produced by a British software house, I think it should use UK English and have changed things accordingly.

Lead

  • General convention is for a 15K article to have about 3 paragraphs, so some stuff might need to go. I think the technical description of Filmation could be dropped and the final two paragraphs combined.
  • The prose in "Reception" suggests contemporary reviews of the game have been mixed. That should be mentioned in the lead.

Gameplay

  • "Some of the castle's monsters only attack Sabreman when he is a Werewulf" - I seem to recall this is mainly the cauldron in the Wizard's room that you had to enter as Sabreman - what else?
  • "The castle consists of a series of 128 rooms" - as this is cited to an Amstrad magazine, can you confirm it was 128 screens for all formats?
  • "Sabreman jumps higher when in werewolf form" - really? I didn't know that!
  • "the player must return 14 objects" - worth mentioning the order changes every game?

Development

  • "and released the other two [Knight Lore and Alien 8] soon after" - I seem to recall there was about a six month gap between them
  • "Prior graphics drew one image sprite atop another" - I believe the technical term is "planar sprites", here is Crash giving Ultimate's earlier game Jetpac as an example
  • "[[logical conjunction|combining]]" - while I realise this is running bitmasks against several planes, another term for the link might make this more understandable to non-techies. I can't think of anything off the top of my head, though.
  • "Ultimate did not circulate screenshots of the game in its press materials or cover art" - do we know why they did this? To avoid people copying the idea, to increase suspense and excitement at playing the game for the first time, both or something else?
  • "Knight Lore was later released for the BBC Micro (unofficial)" - I'm sure there's a better way of writing "(unofficial)" but I can't think of anything off the top of my head

Reception

  • Can you explain what a "Crash Smash" is - not everyone will understand the term
  • "They noted how the game's masking technique addressed issues of flicker and attribute clash" - this sounds like repetition, the "development" section already covers this
  • "Amtix noted the colour additions over the monochromatic original" - noted what, exactly?

More later.... Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 13:50, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Legacy

  • "Edge branded their version of Filmation" - what does this mean?
  • "it [Gunfright] was more robust than its predecessor" - meaning Nightshade?
  • What does the source "Rare Gamer n.d." mean?
  • "They sold Ultimate to US Gold in 1987" - I thought it was earlier than that
  • "The developer of The Great Escape saw Knight Lore as a rival that spurred him to work for nine on Where Time Stood Still" - what does this mean?
  • Did the release of Doom help kill off the Knight Lore clones for good, I wonder?

Images

Summary

  • I've gone through the article and can't think of anything else to report. I've done some copyediting of the minor issues. It doesn't look too far from meeting the GA criteria, so I'll put the review on hold. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 14:07, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

@Ritchie333, thanks for the review! I think I've covered everything, but let me know if there's anything else.

  • I tagged the article to use British English when I wrote it (British coverage of major British-made game in Britain—otherwise I would not have bothered), so feel free to convert whatever I missed.
  • Lead length should be a rough guideline here. I think it's still condense enough to the guideline but I'm happy to trim what you think might need trimming but since Filmation is the technical advancement that gave the game the lengthy Legacy section, I thought I would be remiss had I not explained its basic technical function.
  • Retrospective reviews are already in the lede (found its controls outdated and frustrating in the thirty years since its release) unless you wanted something else.
  • Re: attacking Sabreman in werewolf form: I went with the source, which indicated a plurality.
  • Re: 128 rooms—earlier mags didn't indicate and I have no reason to believe the port was different in content except where noted, so the citation should be fine. If I recall correctly, only one source of the whole lot alluded to the random sequence of the 14 items, so I think it's fine as put. Actually, I went with what the source said on the rest of these. They're mostly online, if you want to verify that I paraphrased correctly, but let me know if you need help verifying a statement or need me to provide any offline reference.
  • I'll just add here that the items weren't random, but were in a looped order, and starting at a random point. Once you'd collected three of the items you could compare them to a list and know in what order you had to collect the next eleven. This was similar to the not-in-fact-random locations of the amulet in Sabre Wulf. ISTR that the sequence was noted on a KL map - CRASH, I think. If WOS plays ball, I'll try to find it later, or mention elsewhere - YS's Hack Free Zone may also have listed them. Again though - is it necessary to make this point, as the current version says "14 objects in a specific order" Chaheel Riens (talk) 13:04, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
  • I don't recall any source talking about planar sprites (tried to minimize jargon with these technical areas).
  • On the nondescript box art—I haven't read an official answer. Anyone who has commented just called the Stampers hardworking and private people who possibly enjoyed their more secretive demeanor.
  • I had tried to explain Crash Smash the first time around. I think it reads straightforward that it's a recommended title of that issue of the magazine, let me know if you think more needs to be said.
  • The Reception section repeats the attribute clash because it's one thing that the devs said they addressed it and another thing that reviewers at the time noticed and called it out specifically. Also the reviewers called out how they addressed flicker, which wasn't in the dev source material.
  • "noted the colour additions" I don't think they said anything non-obvious about it, but they both noted that the game had more colors (so I thought it worth reiterating).
  • Re: Nightshade, yes. "Rare Gamer n.d." is "no date" as in the interview has no listed date and I still wanted to give it a short footnote for consistency.
  • Didn't see any Doom connections in the legacy pieces, but perhaps it's waiting for you to write it? Thanks again – czar 15:43, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I've condensed the lead down a bit - have a look and see what you think. I'll also have a look through the comments above and check I'm happy with all of them. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 16:32, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I think it puts the events/importance out of order but if it works for you and the purposes of the review, it'll do – czar 17:27, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I've gone through a few more things, but basically we now have a comprehensive and well-written article that describes the game and its background in detail, so I'm happy to pass the review now. Well done. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 18:52, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

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Family Computer Magazine preview

Jaleco is following the trend of the times and finally releasing Disk System versions of their games. This strange game from England was already pretty popular on personal computers here in Japan. In this 3D RPG Action Adventure, what's interesting is the protagonist turns into a werewolf at night. In order to rid yourself of this curse, you must collect 14 different items and bring them to an old wizard. Explore the maze quickly and become human again! Right panel: Release date / price TBD. Caption 1: This is a 3D maze. You need to use your head to get to the top. The protagonist is a soldier during the day and turns to a werewolf at night. Caption 2: The protagonist turns into a werewolf. They call it a werewolf but it looks more like a pig. If you can't meet with the wizard in 30 days, the curse will never disappear. (photos are the PC version)
— Article; translation

czar 06:58, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Chart History

As Retro Gamer and Martyn Carroll are falsely claiming that Knight Lore was the best selling game in January 1985, these are the actual chart positions:

Personal Computer News (compiled by RAM/C):

#1, week to 22 Nov (https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerNews/PersonalComputerNews089-01Dec1984/page/n5/mode/2up)

#2, week to 28 Nov (https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerNews/PersonalComputerNews090-08Dec1984/page/n5/mode/2up)

#1, week to 5 Dec (https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerNews/PersonalComputerNews091-15Dec1984/page/n5/mode/2up)

#1, week to 12 Dec (https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerNews/PersonalComputerNews092-22Dec1984/page/n5/mode/2up)

#4, week to 3 Jan (https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerNews/PersonalComputerNews094-12Jan1985/page/n5/mode/2up)

#7, week to 10 Jan (https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerNews/PersonalComputerNews095-19Jan1985/page/n5/mode/2up)

#5, week to 17 Jan (https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerNews/PersonalComputerNews096-26Jan1985/page/n7/mode/2up)

#4, week to 24 Jan (https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerNews/PersonalComputerNews097-02Feb1985/page/n5/mode/2up)

#11, week to 31 Jan (https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerNews/PersonalComputerNews098-09Feb1985/page/n5/mode/2up)


Home Computing Weekly (compiled by Gallup):

#7, week to 12 Dec (https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/page.php?issue_id=2659&page=8)

#7, week to 31 Dec (https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/page.php?issue_id=2661&page=43)

#13, week to 8 Jan (https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/page.php?issue_id=2662&page=8)

#13, week to 15 Jan (https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/page.php?issue_id=2663&page=45)

not in Top 20, week to 23 Jan (https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/page.php?issue_id=2664&page=4)

not in Top 20, week to 30 Jan (https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/page.php?issue_id=2665&page=4)

In both the RAM/C and Gallup charts, Ghostbusters is the number one game for every week in January 1985. Stooob (talk) 08:30, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

For posterity, here is the source quote we're discussing:

Knight Lore unsurprisingly topped the UK all-format charts in January 1985 (knocking down Ultimate's own Underwurlde down to second place) and it was just a matter of time before similar games started to appear.
— Carroll 2014, p. 22

Thanks for that research. My only question is whether the author might have been referring to another software all-format chart, given that the two you've shared also differ in conclusion. czar 20:35, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
The RAM/C and Gallup charts are slightly different but the conclusion is exactly the same - Knight Lore was number one in late November/early December.
The author has most likely simply failed to take into account the time difference between the charts being compiled and the date on the front of a magazine. As an example, the chart where Knight Lore knocks Underwurlde down to 2 is the RAM/C chart printed in Personal Computer News on 1st December 1984. Now, if you look at the Personal Computer Games monthly chart where Knight Lore knocks Underwurlde off (https://archive.org/details/Personal_Computer_Games_Issue15/page/n12/mode/2up), that has February 1985 as a cover date, it was published in January 1985, but the chart is from weeks before that.
Here's a modern source showing all the Christmas Number Ones since 1984:
https://metro.co.uk/2022/12/21/39-years-of-uk-video-game-christmas-charts-what-was-your-number-one-17977882/
confirming Ghostbusters was already at the top before January.
and finally, if you check the Activision article in Retro Gamer 29, page 57, it states the Spectrum version of Ghostbusters was released in 1985. Retro Gamer is not a reliable source!
Stooob (talk) 15:00, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
That seems plausible. For other discussion on reliable sources, best suited for elsewhere but just for the record, Metro is an unreliable source on Wikipedia and WT:VG/RS is the best place to have a formal discussion on the general reliability of Retro Gamer. A publication getting a fact wrong is different from being altogether unreliable. czar 17:56, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
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