Over at the Amigospodcast, dreamkatcha posted a series of five posts on the defunct Italian software house Lightshock software. This post is about Black Viper, a game which I coded up back in the 90’s. The last post is about what happened to us afterwards. I have contributed to the posts the following (which you can also read there among nice pictures):
Black Viper is the second game I coded up, after Nathan Never. I vividly remember when I turned down an offer to work on Nathan Never 2. In hindsight, I think it’s been a mistake. True, my experience with Nathan Never had not been very pleasant. The producers did not pay half of what was promised on the contract (something for which I subsequently sued them, in vain). The person who most closely directed the works did not have much experience with games, but understandably was mostly interested in the publicity that would come from the title (Nathan Never is a popular comic book in Italy). I was also threatened extortion if I didn’t finish the game in time.
But on the positive side, after some difficulty they had shipped me an A3000T to complete the game. And most importantly of all, the game got down in six months! Black Viper instead took three ominous years.
But when I made the decision I was 15 and I really had no idea. I had always wanted to work on a beat’em up, and at some point Marco Genovesi and I even had a small demo. My impression is that we ended up working on a bike game because neither of us liked it. We did like the post-apocalyptic atmosphere though.
So we started working on this project again during our high school (the game finally hit the shelves during my first year of college). Our initial name was “Dark Blade” and the game had disproportionate depth, including bets, tournaments, and race against radioactive magma. It was again great to work with Marco, one of the most talented persons I have ever met. We were in the same classroom in high school every day (Italian high school has or at least had a rigid system thanks to which you spent all your time with the same people). Classrooms had desks for two people, and I think the first year Marco and I even shared the desk. If I remember correctly we were both somewhat timid and we naturally ended up together (but here I may be stretching my memory). We would exchange floppy disks in class and generally chat about the game and sketch ideas. Interaction wasn’t always easy, but it was always rewarding.
Our professors took note of what we were doing, and said nothing. I believe in almost any other environment they would have jumped on the students and push them hard to their full potential.
Soon, completing Dark Blade without a however horrible software house proved quite difficult. I don’t remember exactly how we got to Lightshock Software. I think it was through some personal connection. In any case, at some pint this software house materialized, they liked the game, and had some connection to sell it in the broader European market through NEO. So we decided to go with them. We had quite a few fun trips from Rome (where we were based) to Prato (where Lightshock Software was) to discuss the game and our subsequent expansion and world domination. It was also fun to connect with more game developers. They worked with us to make the game better, and to add some extras for the AGA and CD32 versions.
One fond memory I have is when I needed help to hunt down a bug. Basically, the game would occasionally hang up. I had never given that much thought, since it was quite rare. But, of course, the last version of the game systematically crashed exactly at the last level. It’s hard to imagine anything worse. First, reproducing the bug wasn’t the easiest thing. Second, the code was three years old, and it consisted of a single, colossal file in assembly, commented as thoroughly as only a 15-year-old can.
So it was arranged for me to go spend some days at their headquarters and work with Marco Biondi, another Amiga coder. He hosted me at his quaint house in Florence, and together we had a few days of intense debugging. He had no idea of the code whatsoever of course, and was horrified to see certain parts of it which reflected my complete lack of training (my only source had been the Amiga Hardware reference manual, brought to me years ago by Marco Genovesi when I had sprained my ankle jumping from the top of a swing). But Marco Biondi was quite helpful. Eventually, we were able to freeze the machine right before the crash, and we went through one assembly instruction at the time. Amazingly, at some point the instructions became complete gibberish. We exulted. Someone entered the room and proposed something, perhaps going out. I remember Marco Biondi saying no, now “lo teniamo per le palle” (we grab it by the balls).
We looked at how long the gibberish code was, and it turned out to be exactly the length of one of the rectangular elements that made the road. This quickly led us to investigate the code that builds the road. And there I found an assembly subroutine where the register d0 was used instead of a0, which would cause problems if I remember correctly with the carry-around when you increment it. We fixed it and the game didn’t crash anymore. Amazingly, that subroutine was one of the very first which I had written. Throughout the day, we had been playing continuously the same clip of about ten seconds of a heavy metal song.
I think the my share of the sales amounted to the equivalent of $500 today, much less than what I had made with Nathan Never.
Towards the end of Black Viper, and after it, I also worked with other people on a 3D engine. We used things like binary-space-partition trees, and had a demo working both on PC and Amiga. But then it quickly became clear that the only way to even hope to produce anything competitive would be to work on the project full time, which was also difficult because we worked on different parts of Rome and there was no internet. It had been much more convenient to share floppy disks in class with Marco Genovesi!
At some point I also got an offer from Lightshock software to move to their Belluno headquarters to work full time on programming games. They promised a hefty salary and considerable freedom. I thought about it, but in the end I did not go for it. I was in the middle of my college studies which were going well and I didn’t feel like abandoning them (my parents also advised me against). Again I remember the phone call during which I turned them down, perhaps another mistake. I had always wondered what had happened to Lightshock software!
Afterwards I was in touch with other wanna-be software houses, but it was clear that they did not have the capacity that Lightshock software had, and I think they did not end up producing any game.
So I completed my studies, I got interested in mathematics and theoretical computer science, and ended up doing a Ph.D. at Harvard University, and have stayed in the US ever since. I still program, and occasionally I toy with the idea of being involved again with a computer game (besides as a player of course, that has never stopped).
Thoughts 