Latest News

March 9th 2005: Ah Diddums Released
Hurrah! Finally after much playtesting Ah diddums is now available to download. The dev diary has been updated with the remaining bug list and final entry.

March 5th 2005: Booty Bug Fix!
I can't belevie it - but recently I hade 2 emails reporting the same bug in Booty. I thought we had tested this game fully, but there is always one that slips through! Anyway - the bug caused a pirate to become stuck in a door and so not allow the screen to be complete. I have fixed the bug and now offer 2 downloads. The first is the full Booty 1.04 complete Zip (1.6mb), or you can just download the fixed exe file Booty104exe (417k). Nip over to the downloads now....

February 23rd 2005:
Put the remaining bits (some from a while back) into the dev diray for Ah diddums and added another screen shot. The beta 1 version is now been tested and hopefully there won't be too many problems, which means a release very very soon... (fingers crossed).

February 18th 2005:
Its been a long time since the last update, but for a reason. Due to personal circumstances things have not been moving along as quickly as I had hoped. That's not to say things have not moved at all, but right now I have other things to contend with.
Ah Diddums is complete and needs final testing (Dion, get in touch) and tweaking - but when I find time for this is anyones guess. The Amiga Demo's DVD has undergone a total re-vamp and details will be available sometime soon - again, this is not top priority. Sorry to those who were looking forward to Ah Diddums - I was hooping to have it out by Xmas :-/
Hopefully things will improve soon and normal service will resume. Thanks for your patience.

UPDATES 2004

December 3rd 2004:
Wow - real progress at last. Lots of toys added and preliminary playtesting has begun on the extended version of Ah diddums. Check out all the details in the dev diary. Still no new work PC, and I have been told it will be next week sometime. This is bad news because i'm on holiday for a week and the IT fools will no doubt try to install it! Oh well - keep my fingers crossed...

November 25th 2004:
My new PC at work still hasn't arrived, so I have been coding on the temp one, and making lots of back ups!
Got quite a lot done now including some sound effects and an intro screen. Check out the full update in the dev diary.

November 11th 2004:
Boooo! My new PC at work has just exploded! Did I loose everything? Is the Ah diddums source code safe? Did I loose any limbs? All is answered in a rather large and sprawling update to the Development Diary.

Otober 23rd 2004:
Hurrah! My new PC at work finally arrives and after spending ages setting it up, backing up my old system and restoring all the stuff back - work can at last continue with Ah diddums. Level 1 is now fully playable - read more in the dev diary.

October 9th 2004:
Work carries on. There has been a lot of small additions to Ah diddums - read about it in the dev diary.

September 24th 2004:
Tried and failed to fix the flicker problem but made progress with some of the game code for my new remake Ah diddums.

September 9th 2004:
More work done on Ah diddums.
Also managed to get Video Ease across into ADF format and have added a screen shot of how it looks. Yuk! bloody crap - no wonder noone bought it :-)

August 26th 2004:
More work to Ah diddums and a screenshot for you to look at.
Also found myself offered a bargain - an Amiga A600 for a tenner. I couldn't refuse such an offer and spent ages setting it up and connecting it to my PC. I then spent a whole week capturing demos - the end result being a nice Amiga Demo DVD. I do know that other people are doing or have done this before, and no doubt at full DVD resolution. I opted for standard VCD resolution - the final result is pretty dam good. I managed to squeeze 28 full demos plus an intros montage I whipped up. The menu system is a bit pants but hey! If anyone is interested in getting a copy, drop me an email - and if its popular I will post details here.

August 8th 2004:
I finally got round to doing some work on Ah diddums, so check out the small update to the diary.
I also managed to get some temporary hosting for the downloads, so they are back on line for while.

July 1st 2004:
Diary update for Ah diddums.
By a freak coincidence I found the long lost (thought to have been deleted) Baldy II zip and so I can finally add some details and images from the game. Check out the 'About CabiSoft' section for the full story.

June 18th 2004:
Diary update for Ah diddums.
Also still having some problems trying to get the uploads back online, but I am still chasing it up. I want to close down the account that is associated with the web space they are on, and have a new place ready for them to live. But like all things you want to happen straight away, they go wrong. I can not access the web space and so can not upload the stuff!

June 10th 2004:
So, here at last, a new remake, and a new site design to go with it.
First a quick note about the design changes. There is an extended 'About Cabisoft' area now, with detailed descriptions of my previous work, with pics and magazine reviews.
Now onto the real news.

Ah Diddums - new remake. Well, its not all that it seems, and infact this is not the remake I really want to do. It may seem a bit strange to do a remake that you don't want to do, but the one I really want to do is causing me some headaches. Its one of those situations where you start something and it goes wrong. You have another go and it goes wrong again. Then when things seem to be going well - it goes wrong again. So why carry on you may ask? Its a game I have always wanted to do since first playing it, and its a different style of game from the normal remake. I have done so much background work on it that I am determined it won't go to waste.

So, the remake of Ah diddums is a kind of break from the hassle, and also because it's ages since I actually released anything. I am hoping it will be a quick fix, and that once it is done, I can again concentrate on the other one.

So, until then, the diary for Ah diddums is open...

April 16th 2004: Still here
Just a quick note to say i'm still here and havn't been abducted by aliens or anything. Been doing some test work on possible projects, and hopefully there will be an announcment sometime soon. I have started and abandoned about 5 games since Booty, but there is one I keep going back to - fiddling with the code and graphics etc. Once I am happy that I can actually produce the thing, I will announce it as my next project.

UPDATES 2003

October 27th 2003: Booty 1.03 released
At last the new version of Booty is finished. I would recommend anyone that downloaded the original to get this, as there are many many bug fixes that not only improve gameplay but also make various screens easier and more playable. My thanks again to Dion and Becky for their hard work over the last month (is it really that long!) The fix list is quite long only some of which appear in the readme file in the game. Most of which I have left out for fear of embarrassment !

October 25th 2003:
10 days have passed, 10 days of coding, debugging and almost constant liaising with some very dedicated playtesters. (thanks Dion & Becky). The good news is we are nearly there. All of the work up to 1.03 is complete, and even some previously unknown bugs have been found and killed. Additionally, there are a few new sounds in the game, a new animation and the big bonus is that the game is smaller ! just 1.6mb zipped. We are now into the final testing so a release should not be too far away.

October 15th 2003:
Well what a rollercoaster ride...
I initially got some feedback about a bug in Booty, and at about the same time I was testing out some code for the next project. To deal with things in order, the bug revolved around the collection of the 5 key on the first level. I had thought that this was impossible, but was assured it was not. I tried for ages, and eventually managed ot get the key. I then had to make the changes to Booty, to keep it as close to the original as possible. Before I did this I was testing some code and discovered how to stop that annoying flicker that sometimes appeared at random in Booty. Armed with all this, I went to load up the source.. argh! no source.

Somehow it had been deleted from the compile directory. I quickly checked my hard drive for any signs of it, only to find an old 0.99beta version. I then loaded up an undelete program, but again nothing. I searched through all my back-ups, but because the code was not in my source folder, it was not backed up. Panic, depression and an utter feeling of despair swept over me...

After a few days I plucked up enough courage to load up the 0.99 beta code to see how far it was into the game...

Being a beta there was still a lot left to do, in particular the end game and death routines. Also some of the logic was missing from the aforementioned death and endgame routines. Some collisions were not detected and Jim had a habit of standing on a platform doing the 'death dance' just after a collision on a ladder.

I drew up a list of all the missing things; 20 large chunks of code to take it back to version 1.02. Some of them were not amazingly hard, such as adding the cursor control, but some I have forgotten how I fixed like the falling off ladders and the mysterious game completion at random !!

With a large bottle of wine I sat down and slowly went through the code line by line, making changes and gradually ticking off the things that needed to be done.

At the moment there are a few things left to do before I can begin to play test it again. On the bright side, the flickering has been fixed (so far) and some of the fixes are more optimised than before.

As soon as the coding is complete I will then have the arduous task of changing all the image and sound load commands to use the packed data file...something I am not looking forward to doing.

Then I will add the last fix (key 5 collection), re-compile and play test for a while before releasing it. The keen reader may have picked up on the fact that before this I was testing code for the next project. This has now been put on hold until Booty 1.03 is released, which hopefully will be soon......

August 23rd 2003: Booty V1.02 Released.
There has been several bug fixes including falling off ladders under certain conditions, collecting booty whilst falling and the music not switching on and off properly.
With this version having all fixes and mods, the other version (1 and 1.01) have now been removed from the site.
For those of you (me included) who are using Opera to view this site, I have made a few changed to style sheets, so it actually looks like it should now !

July 19th 2003:
Check your version of Booty as there seems to be an old 'play test' version out in the open, complete with bugs! To check your version look at the bottom left of the intro screen where it says Booty version 1.0. After this should be a series of numbers (the date of the release). The correct and bug free version is 140703 (190703 for the cursor enabled one)
If you have a different version, please download the correct version from the downloads section.
For those who are not familiar with the game play I have added a game guide as well. Click here.

New version available:
I have released a different version (v1.01) of Booty. The only difference is that this version allows the use of the cursor keys ( as well as the standard keys) to control Jim.

July 14th 2003:
Booty version 1 is now available to download so go and grab it. Remember, any feedback is appreciated.
It was a long hard slog to get this game out, but at last its complete (unless any bugs crop up!) and I can have a long rest and plenty of wine.
Then its on to the next project... oh yes, its already been planned .... but until such a time as I can drag myself to the computer long enough to begin coding, enjoy Booty.
Many thanks to Hitman from RetroRemakes for help with playtesting.

June 23rd 2003:
The game (hopefully) is now complete and I just have a lot of play-testing to do. I set about this task recently and discovered a whole host of bugs and miss-types.
With these well and truly squished, its now time for the final compile and check before its released.