[Coco] ASM Coders - Round two!

[Mark McDougall]

Brian wrote:

> James said. I'd really love it if the source to the Spectral
> Associates or Intracolor (Intercolor?) games would come out.  I'd
> love to update those for the CoCo3.  Time Bandit would also be a good
> game to update.
	(snip)
> But having the source code
> to these brilliant games would be even better, That way, If or when
> we become more proficient at Assembly, We could do the updates
> ourselves.

I've always been surprised at how *little* of the source code to
commercial software ends up in the public domain. I guess it's not that
surprising for arcade video games, but for home computers I would've
thought that it would be at least not uncommon, if not usual, to see the
source *eventually* end up being public?!? And I'm talking about games
from 15-20 years ago, mind you...

I guess the rights to bed-room coders' software ends up with some
publisher who has long since disappeared and never had any interest in
releasing the source - if indeed it still exists at all!?! I'm also
shocked at tales of 'lost source code' from various arcade game
manufacturers as well!

It'd be interesting to see the quality of code in some of the games. By
all accounts the original DOOM source is pretty crappy code! Goes to
show what you can do with an infinite number of monkeys banging away at
their keyboards... ;)

FWIW Time Bandit was also a damn good game on the TRS-80 Model I/III!

Regards,
Mark