About Cabi-Soft - Talisman
Talisman was a game of a game of a half-writen novel of a character of a game. Phew!
A very long story, but the original idea was formed in 1985 and included in a Spectrum game I wrote (but never published) called Crystal Crown. From this came another game and then a half-written novel (turned down by Unwin for publication).
I then wrote this game over a period of 8 months or so. Using a digitiser for the Amiga called (I think) Picture Palette, I spent ages grabbing graphics and images for the game - mainly from foreign satellite channels, but look closely and you'll find images from All Dogs Go To Heaven, the animated Lord Of The Rings and Time Bandits to name a few.
All crafted to work in the Amiga's medium resolution (640x480 - 16 colours) which I why there in grayscale and not colour. In between searching for images I wrote the user interface and expanded the idea further.
I then added a few computer driven characters like Orcs and Dwarves. I spent many long nights writing random things for them to do to make it seem like there were living their own lives. One example, if my memory serves me right, is is a Dwarf and an Orc meet close to the pit, they have a large fight, eventually leading to one of them being knocked down the pit. Another is that they look at each other accusingly after a strange smell lingers in the area.
Eventually it was released to 17Bit software for distribution, and received good reviews in various magazines - the best in Amiga User International. AUI Review. Amiga Mart Review.
Soon after the release I got a phone call from someone alleging to be from Games Workshop, demanding that the game be recalled due to copyright reasons. They stated two reasons - firstly they produced a Spectrum game of the same name in 1983 (nearly ten years previous) and secondly that the character images were their copyright.
I said that I was unhappy about this as my game was non-profit making and the terms Orc and Dwarf were not copyrighted by Games Workshop. They still insisted that the character images be removed from the game.
To buy some time to allow me to look into the legal issues, I asked them to send a letter to me, confirming their copyrights and requests. In the mean time I removed the characters from the game - replacing them with alternatives in preparation to re-distribute it. The letter never came - and so the game remains in its original form.
The follow up was planned and in fact half written, including a much better control method and colour graphics. This was abandoned due to my utter dismay at the feedback I got from games players. The game was in the top ten popular PD titles for ages and so a lot of people got it and played it. I got 5 letters. Only 5 people could be bothered to say how much they enjoyed it out of probably thousands. I spent 8 months of my life producing something that I gave away for free - and only 5 people said thank you. Enough said !
Interesting point: I make a guest appearance somewhere in the game, with a blanket wrapped around my head!