Old Style Gaming compiled a video with his personal 20 favorite games released after the C64 ceased production. We are happy to find these Protovision games among them:

– No. 18: Outrage
– No. 17: Newcomer
– No. 14: It’s Magic II
– No. 12: Soul Force
– No. 1: Sam’s Journey

Thus Protovision titles take one quarter of OSG’s Top 20, including the top spot – what a pleasant result!

Full video:

We have received a short update notice for all those interested in Ultimate Newcomer. The project is taking longer than planned, but the primary goal is still to make this game as stable and bugfree as possible. Hoild of the Ultimate Newcomer Crew writes:

Frustration because of the huge amount of bugs inherited with the original code base made the project get stuck by late summer. Now we are gaining momentum again, I am doing research into new ways of optimization and tweaks that would let me insert the patches that until now I could not fit in because several parameters already reached their limits.

Thanks to everybody who did not lose hope in Ultimate NEWCOMER and is still interested, and for those who would like to know more details: the new issue 60 of the diskmag Vandalism News will have an article about the project.

Hoild, one of the autors of Ultimate Newcomer told us, that he is almost through with fixing all known script bugs of Ultimate Newcomer and that the next, hopefully final test phase will start in July.

The disk mag Scene World (issue 20) interviewed Zoltan Gondi (creator of Newcomer, amongst others) about his current and future (game) projects. They did, of course, talk about the upcoming new release of Newcomer. There’s no breaking news in it, but it is entertaining and interesting.

Download the diskimages of the English-language mag here:

csdb.dk/release/?id=114274

We receive dozens of requests for Ultimate Newcomer every month and we apologize for it taking so long, but hey – it is meant to be Ultimate.

At the start of this year, during what we thought were final tests before releasing the game, another issue was discovered: retreating from some of the many combat situations resulted in seemingly random errors, ranging from minor story or area glitches to full game crashes. Unfortunately, to fix all occurences of this combat reatreat bug, ALL SCRIPTS for EVERY COMBAT SITUATION must be verified manually, and then retested during gameplay. As well, the game features multiple  variations for most combat situations (non-hostile -> combat, already hostile -> combat, or stronger/weaker variations depending on specific factors), which further complicates the testing. By now, 269 out of 386 potential instances have been verified. With such a complex, non-linear game as Newcomer, thorough testing is difficult to say the least, and the obsession with fixing every potential bug before the release is an attitude that other game developers simply can’t afford and which makes this project truly special…

However, work is ongoing and all we can do is wait patiently, keep thumbs and express our respect to the guys in Creative Intuitive Dynamix and Soci/Singular who are making Ultimate Newcomer possible – with a tiny bit of support from Protovision.

Please understand that a hobby project, especially a huge one like Ultimate Newcomer, takes its time and cannot be hurried. Stay tuned. We will keep you updated through the Newsletter.

Issue 58 of the diskmag Vandalism News was released by Onslaught and Wrath Designs at Syntax 2011 in Australia.

Protovision wise you can find the following in this issue’s “Mini-Market” chapter:

• Ultimate Newcomer entering Independent Games Festival!
• Protovision soon in the pipe
• RR-Net MK3 PrototypeDownload Vandalism News #58 from CSDb.

It’s official! Ultimate Newcomer is entering the Independent Games Festival.
For more information see here.

At Function 2011 another Newcomer Remix has been released. This time it is “Newcomer Endsequence (Symphonic Rework)” by Orphy. The original SID track was composed by Zoltán Gonda aka Bassman aka Zoli.

You can tune in here:

• YouTube clip
• SoundCloud
• mp3

Enjoy! 🙂

Now there is a Ultimate Newcomer Facebook page with Hungarian and English information, forums, pictures, help screens, etc etc.
Come on and join: Newcomer Facebook page.

A new Newcomer fan made artwork called [U]se [N]eil [I]tem [T]rap was pixeled by Leon.
It competed within the multiplatform Handdrawn Graphics Compo at Function 2011 party and scored 6th (last place 😉 ).

A Newcomer tribute of a different kind is presented to us by Vincenzo with „Newcomer (Symphonic Rework)“. The Hungarian musician created an epic remix of the SID track from the Newcomer intro – originally composed by Zoltán Gonda aka Bassman aka Zoli.
This mp3 competed within the Remix Competition on the Arok Party 2011, where the votes of the event visitors catapulted it to the second place.
Recently, the title can be downloaded in high quality at remix.kwed.org for free.

The scene gives us two diskmags released on the same day:

In Scene World #17 the chapter „Game News“ features some facts on Protovision’s game projects. However, due to the issue being massively delayed, the chapter’s content is around one year old. Anyway, welcome back, Scene World!

Vandalism News #57 again offers a „Mini-Market“, an actually quite big chapter about new developments on C64 games and hardware. In there, Hoild explains some reasons about the delay of Ultimate Newcomer, and reveals some details about the massive amount of work that went into it.
In the Opinion Poll chapters you can read people’s thoughts about the „Gaming Renaissance“ on C64.
Last but not least, some Protovision titles are in the Game Charts.

During the first four months of 2011, the developers took the last chance before release to see what can be further improved and expanded. This resulted in an increased game size.
Ultimate Newcomer uses a compression method and disk system that made it possible to reduce the game’s size from the 14 disk sides that it was in the enhanced revision to 11 in the ultimate version. However, in the last four months the amount has grown to 12 disk sides due to the following changes:

• Over 150 expansions were made to existing events/situations
• More than 25 new situations and events were also added
• A few game mechanics were improved at the concept/implementation levelThe amount of disks for the 1581/CMD FD2000/CMD FD4000 versions did not change.

  There were reliability issues with CMD FD2000 disk code, but Protovision loaned test hardware to the developers, and the disk code was successfully fixed.

  The official Newcomer site www.newcomer.hu has moved to a new host and is back online.

  Also, a Release Candidate version was built on the 1st of May, and testing has started for it.

  Leon released another two Newcomer fan artworks:

• Sacrificial Dagger
• Find this place…„Find this place…“ competed within the Forever C graphics competition and scored 7th.

Ultimate Newcomer’s last build was sent to the 13th Independent Games Festival competition on the 18th of October. It was accepted, and is part of the Official Entry listing.

Competition finalists will be selected and announced later this year for various categories (Excellence in Design, Technical Excellence, Audience Award, etc.). The winners will be revealed in March 2011.

Leon painted another picture inspired from Newcomer, entitled „Hey NEWCOMER! The Island waits for You!“.
Get it from CSDb.

A Newcomer project history article made it to front page news at independent games portal
"Play This Thing", on the 20th of October.
Direct link.

Leon has recently published another multicolor image inspired from the game Newcomer:
„Eva-1“ is available at CSDb.

Almost all titles are available again. The only exception here is Newcomer. Ultimate Newcomer (English and Hungarian version) is still under development, completion is very close! See the updated Newcomer section for more information.

Online Shop Games Category

Issue 52 of the Australian based disk magazine VANDALISM NEWS has been released on 31st October 2009 at Syntax Party 2009.

"The Market" chapters contain information about game projects Protovision is involved in:

• GRUBZ
• PIECES II
• TANK WARS
• ULTIMATE NEWCOMER

Leech at: https://csdb.dk/release/?id=84122.