Captain Blood

[Harrison]

Did anyone else play Captain Blood back in the Amiga days?

This was a game I was hooked on at the time, not least because it's music score was by the famous musician Jean Michel Jarre who I had become a big fan of at the time! I even managed to eventually complete the game which felt like a huge achievement at the time. :)

I've just written a review on the site if any of you are interested in reading it. The biggest feature of this game, apart from the great music, was the icon driven communication system you used to communicate with the inhabitants of each planet you visited. A great and complex game of space based detective work.

Playing the later game of Dune by Cryo many may instantly notice it has a similar feel to Captain Blood in terms of control and design. This is because Cryo was founded by Exxos, the developer of Captain Blood.

Also at the time of it's release I owned the Atari ST version (and later the Amiga version). I discovered that the Atari ST version had an open file structure and that all of the in game music was stored in standard sound sample files. This allowed us to load the music into an ST or Acorn Archimedes Sound Sampling program so we could listen to the music outside of the game. :)

[Demon Cleaner]

Never heard of that one. I just had a look at the screenshots and it looks rather complex and difficult, especially if you have no manual.

[Harrison]

It's not actually that complex once you start playing it. But I will stick the text version of the manual on the site tonight just in case you fancy trying it out at some point.

[Blue Jedi]

I played captain blood it it was awsome.

[Tiago]

I just read this post know,

I played Captain Blood in Atari St in 89 i think. I played it later with winuae.
I found it fantastic.

I have the Captain Blood PDF PRE Story of the game. Tells what happend before the game.

Did you know Blood was a programmer, and he was creating a full galaxy system called Captain Bllod , he was at his home, and when it was done he insert the commands :
edit...compile...run
and then ... the monitor went blank for a moment and.... then, he was inside the ARK...

I think the story is part of the original Box.
You should read it. If you want give your email i send you the pdf.

[Harrison]

That PDF would be great to include on the site on the game's page. If you can email it to me I will include it. :)

[Tiago]

That PDF would be great to include on the site on the game's page. If you can email it to me I will include it. :)


It's in your mail box !
Cheers



That PDF would be great to include on the site on the game's page. If you can email it to me I will include it. :)


It's in your mail box !
Cheers


I found a larger document, full story about Captain Blood. I didn't remember this one, this one is fantastic.

"The Ark According to Captain Blood.doc"

I will put in your mail box this one too.
cheers

[Harrison]

Great. Just received them. :thumbs:

I will add them to the site today. :)

[Harrison]

OK, I've now added the two documents to the site. You can see them here. (http://www.classicamiga.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1185&Itemid=96)

I've added the classicamiga cover page to both. I also had to edit the novel quite a bit as the OCR software used to scan the original created a lot of messed my words. I think I worked it all out though. :)

[Tiago]

Great Work !!
I'll see if i get more stuff

[Bloodwych]

As posted in another thread, I played Captain Blood on the Atari ST. Never had the Amiga version. Can you remember - was it better, or a direct port?

Very unique and quite creepy game that oozed atmosphere. Unlike Harrison, I never had the patience to complete it and for some reason it scared the hell out of me as a child. It created an atmosphere like the Aliens films!

I may go back now and confront my fears...come on Bloodwych, be brave.

[Tiago]

As posted in another thread, I played Captain Blood on the Atari ST. Never had the Amiga version. Can you remember - was it better, or a direct port?

Very unique and quite creepy game that oozed atmosphere. Unlike Harrison, I never had the patience to complete it and for some reason it scared the hell out of me as a child. It created an atmosphere like the Aliens films!

I may go back now and confront my fears...come on Bloodwych, be brave.


some months ago i read somewhere that C.Blood in Atari has better sound but Graphics are similar in atari and amiga

[Harrison]

The game was originally developed on the Atari ST and later ported to the Amiga, along with many other platforms.

Sadly it is true that for once the Atari ST version is the better game! :(

Why? Some elements were removed from the Amiga version which is mad when you know what they were. The graphics are all but identical, as is the gameplay. But the Amiga version suffers in regard to audio compared to the ST original. Apparently the audio samples are not as clear in the Amiga music tracks and these sound better on the ST. But the worst part is the speech. On planets when talking to aliens, the original Atari ST version actually had audio speech when the aliens spoke using the communication system. On the Amiga version their is no audio speech at all! Why? Who knows.

[Bloodwych]

Thanks for that.

Very strange, especially since the Amiga had more storage space on its DD disks, as opposed to the early ST's that had SD.

This gives me a good idea for a thread. ;)

[Harrison]

Very strange indeed. Also the fact that the Amiga also had much better audio capabilities than the ST. The ST only had 3 channel mono, compared to the Amiga's 4 channel stereo.

[Teho]

At a guess, I'd say they used synthesized speech in the ST version, which would perhaps have to be re-programmed from scratch for the Amiga. They may simply not have had the time for it when doing the conversion?

[Bloodwych]

At a guess, I'd say they used synthesized speech in the ST version, which would perhaps have to be re-programmed from scratch for the Amiga. They may simply not have had the time for it when doing the conversion?

That's very possible.

However, they should have just quickly rigged something up like the "Say" utility from Workbench 1.3! The one that sounds like Stephen Hawking. The Amiga could easily synthesize speech too.

Then they could have typed in some gibberish text for it to "Say" and hey presto - Alien speak. :)

[Harrison]

The ST version used standard sound samples for its music. At the time I looked at the ST Captain Blood disks and found the music files were stored as plain sound sample files. I could listen to the music in a standard sound sampler wave force editor on both the ST and Archimedes.

Not sure about the speech. Maybe that was synthesized. Don't forget however that the speech wasn't English or a known language but made up for the game and was just gibberish really, although apparently it was a designed audio language for the game.