On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 00:44:02 -0800 (PST), RichardH wrote:
> After a quick heads-up from Angus, I thought I'd pop my head in here
> and just give a few insider facts on The Tower of Babel.
>
> The game was written by Pete Cooke, who did wonders on the Spectrum
> with games like Tau Ceti, Academy (Tau Ceti II), Room Ten, Micronaut
> One and the Spectrum conversion of Stunt Car Racer. He had already
> coded a few games for Telecomsoft including budget titles Brainstorm,
> the Spectrum conversion of Zolyx and a shoot 'em up called Earthlight.
> The Tower of Babel was his first 16-bit game.
>
> Tower of Babel was originally offered to Telecomsoft, but was
> rejected. MicroProse signed it up instead (not that surprising really,
> as 3 or 4 ex-Telecomsoft staff had joined MicroProse) and then when
> Microprose bought Firebird and Rainbird from BT, they published it on
> the Rainbird label (which is the label it would have been published on
> had Telecomsoft signed the game to begin with).
>
> Some of the levels in the full game were designed by staff at
> MicroProse (e.g. Paul Coppins, Tim Roberts and probably Pete Moreland
> but I'm not sure). I had the chance to design a level or two as well,
> but I left MicroProse before I had the chance to complete anything. As
> far as I remember, the demo disk version wasn't any harder than the
> full version.
Many thanks for sharing this information with us :)
I completed the demo level today - what appeared 'impossible'
changed into doable after I started to think out of the box. Even
when I knew what had to be done it still took me several goes -
you had to interleave the moves at least two robots to shave
off several seconds from execution time which took some nifty
mouse clicking :)
> As has also been mentioned here, it's quite hard to source an original
> boxed copy of the full game, except for the 'bundled' version that was
> released a year or so later for the Amiga (and possibly the ST as
> well). That is usually the sign of a game that didn't ****ft in any
> large numbers, which is a shame as Babel had a lot going for it.
After playing the demo I fully agree and shall look out for the full
game - hopefully a boxed copy can be found from some internet
auction site.
There seems to be some sort of programming interface
for the robots - can you please explain what is its purpose
and how it works?
Cheers,
Seppo
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