itch.io

The music track "Prockressions" was written while fiddling with the RETREAM guitar after it got fixed and overhauled. It was not made for Hertz Overload, but rather Hertz Overload was made to find a use for it.

Thinking of a way to let others enjoy the music brought the idea of making an Amiga production, which immediately suggested the creation of a CPU-based player to achieve a sufficiently high quality. In the past, I had never tried CPU-based audio playback, but a quick experiment showed that it was doable and quite easy. That led to the development of a set of tools that process and play WAVE files. They also proved that the Amiga can reach remarkably high frequencies (much beyond 70937.9 Hz), which pushed me in another direction: making something more artistic than a player, and that simply meant... a demo!

Hertz Overload was being made for no specific demoparty. When it was almost finished (May 21st, 2024), I decided to check out which demoparties were about to come and found out that the 68k Inside 2024 was only a days away! It looked like I could meet the deadline (May 25th) easily, but, of course, on the last day all that could go wrong went wrong, so I could not make all the little changes and additions that I had planned - but those may come in the future.

OK, thanks! If you can, please play the game from the beginning, as the duplication of the item makes me suspect that an incompatible savegame was used.

In realtà non ho inventato niente: semplicemente uso la CPU per fornire i dati a Paula (tecnica menzionata persino sull'Amiga Hardware Reference Manual) - però lo faccio bene ;)

Comunque, grazie mille per l'apprezzamento!

Thanks for the report.

1) That window is intentional. The conversation explains it all.
2) There is no place in the game where an item duplicates when picked up: can you provide more details, please? Which item, exactly? If you can reproduce it, could you provide a screenshot or, even better, a video? Does the issue happen when resuming the game from a v1.0 snapshot (savegame)?

Hertz Overload is a demo (i.e. demoscene production, a piece of software that combines technical prowess and art) for AGA Amigas that focuses on delivering very high quality music also on those old machines. "Very high quality translates" to: 2 true stereo channels, 14 bit resolution and 70937.9 Hz sample rate.

Who can't run the demo on an actual Amiga can see it in this video (beware: due to technical reasons, the audio of the video has a sample of rate of just 44100 Hz):

https://retream.itch.io/hertz-overload

At the end of 2017 I derived the graphics engine at the core of the demo from another engine of mine. Since then, I have been occasionally tinkering with it while trying to come up with a game that would make use of it, but I failed: the engine was too stressful for the eyes and unsuitable for small/medium-sized graphical elements; it was clearly more suited for a demo (in fact, some people proposed to make a production of such kind with it), but I kept on ruling that out because I prefer making games.
Until, one day, what was happening around the world changed my mind: I just had to say something - and that could be rather effectively and relatively quickly done with a demo. In the past, I had already tried through a book, but, since I'm Mr. Nobody, my message reached only very few people. With a demo I could reach somebody else - very few people again, but still some more people. Therefore, although part of my motivation was to make use of the engine, to have fun doing so and to give the Amigans a little something to enjoy, the demo's main purpose is to say something.

Ciao Allanon71,

beh, meglio tardi che mai!

Comunque, sono felicissimo che ti sia piaciuta e ancor più che tu condivida il messaggio :)
Grazie!

My pleasure!
And thanks for appreciating and underlining the educational side of the project :)

Thanks for the appreciation! I hope you enjoyed / will enjoy the demos on your machine.
Somebody else in the past mentioned Magic Carpet and, since I didn't even know the game, I checked it out on YouTube: the game's engine is so much more advanced than PVE that honestly I can't see where the vibes come from (well, OK, both are voxel-based - at least, MC seems to use voxel as well - but that's all there is to it) - that said, you're totally entitled to your own vibes, of course ;)

Thank you.
A suggestion to actually enjoy the game: first of all, learn how the various cells work! In the SkillGrid part in your video, you've been avoiding carefully key bonuses like weapon power-ups and speed-ups ;)

Thanks!

Always happy to hear you enjoy my games :)
Thanks!

Have fun!

You're welcome!

Glad you're enjoying the game and thanks for the report!
A freeze like that never ever happened, neither during the development nor during the countless hours of testing (both on emulator and on a real Amiga). Also, nobody ever reported such behaviour before (or any other bug).  Therefore, I'm quite surprised and clueless.
Could you provide some detailed information, please?
What is your machine?
What is your emulator?
What are the emulator settings?
What version of AmigaOS are you using?
Did you run the game from floppy, CD, shell or Workbench?
Which OS patches do you use (if any)?
If you did not boot from floppy or CD, what other software was running at the same time?
Was it the first time you talked to the lady?
Did you talk with other characters before?
Did audio keep playing?

Hi stechman, glad you like the game, and thanks for letting me know :)
Sorry, but porting is not happening - please see the AGA version next? discussion here on this board.
That said, please note that the game runs also on Windows, and should work also on Linux and MacOS through Wine, so you should be able to enjoy it anyway.

Now that you've finished also all the other missions, please contact me by email: there's a secret about the Babel mission I can tell you about ;)

Congratulations! It's a great pleasure to know that you've finished all the missions, and I'm glad that you submitted your records to the online standings :) I see that you've set the best time on several missions/phases, so congratulations also on that!
The fact that you've finished the game is a huge compliment itself,  but thank you also for the spoken compliments!
If you feel like, spread the word about BOH and my other games ;)

Edit: almost forgot... did you see the ending as well?

Good luck!

Weird: the translation is there. Which text do you get (you can post a screenshot, if you want)?

Edit: ouch, the text is there, but the label is wrong! Will upload a newly updated version immediately.

Edit2: done.

No problem. It's released now.

Bug found and fixed. The updated version will be released tomorrow (hopefully).

Confirmed. Thank you for the report. I'll have a look as soon as I can (though that might take a while).

Congratulations on completing the mission! That's quite an achievement. Thank you so much for not giving up. I hope the feeling rewarded your efforts.
Indeed, this mission is a combination of huge size, tough puzzles and dangerous layout ;)

You're welcome!
Enjoy :)

As promised, here's the complete answer.

SPOILER ALERT: WHAT FOLLOWS EXPLAINS ALL THE CLUES GIVEN BY THE MESSAGE POINTS.

INNER AREA

At the beginning, there are 4 automatic passages, so the player has to decide which one to take. There are also two message points that say:

• «The right direction is x degrees.»
•  x = 5/4*pi

By exploring the accessible areas after picking up the automapper and without taking any automatic passage, the map layout reveals to be X-shaped and the 4 automatic passages are found right at the end of the segments that the X is made of. The x = 5/4*pi clue tells us that x is about 3.927 radians. The other clue suggests to use degrees, though: x also equals to 225 degrees, from which it is easy to see that the right automatic passage is the south-west one.

MIDDLE AREA

The passage leads to an area that surrounds the areas explored previously. This is X-shaped and has 4 automatic passages as well. Beside each automatic passage is a message point. The message points say:

•  A
   «You need x/75+A-2.»
•  B
  «You need x/75+A-2.»
•  C
  «You need x/75+A-2.»
•  D
  «You need x/75+A-2.»

Given that x is 225, the expression is 225/75+A-2 = A+1. The mission briefing says "Maths and... imagination", and this is where imagination has to be used: "A+1" is to be interpreted as "the character after 'A'", i.e. 'B'. Therefore, the passage to take is the one whose message point says 'B' at the top.

OUTER AREA

Finally, the scheme repeats once more. The 4 message points say:

• 500
  «You need 1000*cos(x-pi/4).»
• 1000
  «You need 1000*cos(x-pi/4).»
• NEGATIVE
  «You need 1000*cos(x-pi/4).»
• POSITIVE
  «You need 1000*cos(x-pi/4).»

The result of the formula is -1000, so the automatic passage to take is the one who message point says "NEGATIVE".

Thanks a lot for defining BOH a "gem" and for playing it with so much dedication!

I designed the mission X almost 6 years ago, so I didn't remember anything about it: I had to play it to provide an answer ;) I have it, but I'll make a complete walkthrough and post it later today (no time at the moment).

Thanks!

In 2003 I wrote a Copper-based screen flipping effect (like the one used to introduce the levels in Project-X) for a new cool game called Cymbix that was being developed with AMOS. Writing the effect gave birth to a whole bunch of ideas, which little by little transformed into a collection of procedures that constituted a small graphics system called XPF (Cross PlayField).
The development however, having started from an effect and having proceeded spontaneously, lacked the necessary rigour that a proper system requires, so I decided to rewrite everything from scratch and created CSS (Custom Screens System). It turned out to be a clean, feature-rich system and worked nicely. I even wrote a few tutorials for it.
CSS did not support sprites, though. While pondering on how to add them, I realized that actually the core design was not good enough and that an alternative one would have allowed sprites and have been more efficient, too. Therefore, I wrote another system: AVS (Advanced Video System). When I was at about 80-90% of the development... I lost the sources. I cannot remember how that happened, but for sure I could not recover them, so only the sources dating back to some days before remained - and a lot of important code was no more. The anger and the frustration, which made me hate the idea of reimplementing what had been lost, coupled with the fact that I was about to move country, killed the project.
The idea of rewriting an old game of mine using CSS - which was good enough for the purpose - kept on lingering in my head through the years. I kind of promised myself I would do that sometime, as a smaller project between bigger ones - provided I could swallow the idea of using a suboptimal system, that is. In fact, in a few occasions, I considered completing AVS first... only to drop the idea immediately: I just could not bother getting acquainted with that old code, maybe discovering that, after all, I would do things differently once again.
Through the years, the ghosts of those systems kept on haunting me. In 2019 I presented CSS to the world with a video preview: it was an attempt at doing justice to the system (and thus hopefully making peace with it) and at forcing myself to complete the work by exposing publicly the waste it represented. It did not work, as I kept on working on other projects - but the ghosts never vanished.
The time to get rid of them came in July 2020 (as they say: better late than never): I designed and implemented a new and proper system from the ground up, and ALS was born.

:)

MeMO was born in 1996 as a programming exercise. The inspiration came from the Memory Station sub-game of Deluxe Galaga.

The first playable version was made in quite a short time. Regrettably, at that time, the focus was not on the gameplay, but rather on fancy effects (multiple resolutions, dynamic color changing, screens/cards flipping, scrolling texts, etc.) that would let me learn about and have fun with the Amiga hardware; in fact, when the idea of adding the 2 players mode came, the already messy code became even worse... and buggier. Anyway, despite being very simple, the game turned out to have a certain appeal (especially thanks to the aforesaid mode).
Later, at some point, the game was proposed to Vulcan Software as a freebie to bundle with one of their forthcoming Christmas titles. They showed interest, but after some nice talks they requested changes that there was no time nor willingness to do; in the end, the idea was friendly folded.

The first public version (later tagged Original Edition) was released through Aminet in 1997.
In the following years, every once in a while, I made the program a bit more robust by improving the custom framework it was built on, although the updated versions were never released.
In 2003, while doing that same kind of maintenance activity, I could not help but feel disturbed at the sight of the original code: such a horror did not deserve to exist. So, the game was rewritten from scratch. In two weeks, a brand-new version (tagged Quick Edition) was ready, with totally new graphics... and without sound. For some reason, though, the game was released only almost one year later.
Finally, 2011 came and brought one more radical rewrite, again with totally new graphics and music. It was in this occasion that the game turned into a tribute.
From 2012 onwards, the game received various small udpates that fixed it and improved it further.

Back in 1994, my 17-years-old self started making his third game, inspired by Empire Software's game DreamWeb (whose demo he had deeply enjoyed) and by Kim Stanley Robinson's novel A Short, Sharp Shock (whose Italian translation was titled Anello intorno al Mondo, which Ring around the World is the literal translation of).

Like the previous two games (one of which has been remade from scratch and released in 2021 with the name Follix), it was made with AMOS Professional.

It remained unfinished: it was just too big and beyond my capabilities. The graphics looked ugly, the code was even worse, there were only a couple of horrible sound effects, only one map was (kind of) complete and two other maps were basically placeholders.

However, that game always held a special place in my heart.

Fast-forward to the fall of 2022 and one evening, while talking about books, I mentioned the novel and then the game to a friend (a former Amigan). The next day, a gust of nostalgia prompted me to fire up the game and wander around the playable - and terribly sparse - map. Immediately, the memory of a shameful graphical bug returned: after a few steps, I performed the action that would bring it up. Through the years, such scene repeated quite a number of times, but I never got around to fix the issue because it was caused by the conceptually wrong graphical system, so a solution required a major rework - not something an unfinished game was worth. Actually, in 2000, I did start a remake, but I stopped quite soon before completing the new scrolling routines because, when compiled, the game would crash - the AMOS Professional Compiler did not get along with the custom equates I had defined for the game. Disappointed (to put it mildly), I refused to remove the equates (which would make the code less efficient) and I simply abandoned the project. This time around, I could no longer suppress the urge to fix the defect for good, so...

Fighting the disgust, I waded through the entangled code, figuring out how it worked, reimplemented the graphical system and finally got rid of the bug. But I did not stop there: I fixed also other issues and refactored, optimized, cleaned up and made error-proof the code - and even standardized the naming conventions and removed the pieces of Italian scattered here and there.

I could well have been happy with that, but the ball was rolling and I could not stop it. I pushed things further and replaced the scrolling engine several times until I settled for one that moves the world view by tiles and substituted the quasi-real-time mouse-driven movement with automatic destination targeting - given that the protagonist's movement was locked to tiles by design since the beginning, the original 2-pixel per update scrolling was just a drag. Also, I redesigned entirely the interface - promising myself I would not touch the rest of the graphics.

Once again I could (and should) have stopped, but there was still a major issue: the graphics were in 32 totally wasted colors! There were two blacks (one for the screen border color and another one for the non-transparent black pixels of bobs), a color was reserved for the main bob, a color was unused and many colors were very close to one another. That annoyed me so much that I broke the promise and decided to reduce the colors to 16. I carefully defined a palette of handpicked colors, redrew the interface (multiple times) and recolored the rest of the graphics by means of an automated process.

The automated recoloring results were worse than expected - and that started one more iteration of the remake. I had to repixel the graphics: I knew it would be a lot of work, but it could not be avoided. While at it, I changed the screen layout entirely by making the inventory vertical and moving it to the right side of the screen, so that the world view could be bigger and square - previously, in fact, moving vertically was uncomfortable due to the limited height of the view.

Countless improvements and additions followed, until the game reached the current state - and became suitable for public release, which had not been even contemplated when the work started.

In the end, nothing remained of the original material and the last challenge was to answer the question: where to stop? The remake was not planned, stole time from other (and way more important!) projects and, to become a sufficiently large game, would have required months (or even years) of further development. Therefore, I decided to make it a mini-game restricted to the (questionable) map of the original work, keeping its spirit intact.

Thank you, your appreciation is, well, much appreciated ;)

Funny picture :)

Thanks a lot for the compliments and having taken the time to read the (silly) backstory of the game(s) :)

Congratulations on completing it!

I'm happy to hear you liked it and that it's going to get a review on your mag :)
Thank you!