Ambrosia Software Web Board: Cythera X? How about Cythera II - Ambrosia Software Web Board

Cythera is probably one of my most favorite games of all time. Not many RPG's allow you to do in depth stuff like make butter or bake bread. Even if it's graphics aren't up to spec of current gaming technology, Cythera will always have a place in my heart. Now porting Cythera to OSX may give a small life boost to Cythera, but it doesn't make the game any more attractive then Aperion X compared to Aperion. And it wouldn't solve it's problems unless the devs relooked at the files. Even then Cythera would still have a lot of problems, so why not make a new Cythera, bigger, better, and more in depth then the OS 9 version. Some ideas I have (excluding the obvious like 'fix fetch spell')

- Boats and other lands
- Different kinds of ruffians (Brigands, bandits, warlords etc etc)
- More characters that can join maybe mercenaries that you can hire for a small price, but they aren't that powerful and don't have any noteworthy skills, and there you go.
- Guards that will attack Ruffians (Rather disappointed that they didn't and got my character carved like a thanksgiving turkey once)
- Allow player to mine (Use pick ax on rock > X% chance of finding rare, uncommon, common gems, or nothing at all > sell to merchant on surface)
- Magic runes in ancient cities (Put a use to remove rune spell)
- Teach player to farm (Buy seeds > use hoe on ground (creates farmland) > wait specific amount of time > harvest)
- Wandering merchants and townsfolk (Beggars in Cademia)

Other suggestions are welcome, maybe if this thing gets enough posts Ambrosia will consider it

I think you want Harvest Moon.

Hi, IT 000, I'm happy to see you!

I like your ideas, especially the boat thing. Unfortunately Cythera's problem isn't lack of ideas. This is a good thread to read for more information. It's not that the guys at Ambrosia aren't willing to consider it, it's just that converting Cythera to the present operating system would be entirely too much trouble for anyone who knows anything about programming. If they were able to do so, I think adding new features would probably be comparatively easy?

Hello, IT 000

Interestingly enough, Gandreas has discussed Cythera II various times, although it's been years now since he's shown any interest in it. Look at:

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php...=&pid=46257
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php...amp;#entry48720
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php...amp;#entry46607

The short of it is: he had a plot, wrote some code, and planned to at some point release Cythera 2 and possibly other Cythera related titles. But none of it ever happened, sadly. I suspect the fact that Cythera was released in 1999 and Mac OS X in 2000 had something to do with it; only a couple of years after he had finished work on Cythera, it was already outdated and unable to run on the newest operating systems. And as we know from the Cythera X thread, the work required to port Delver to OS X is too much to be worthwhile.

I think what you're saying is that instead of wasting time porting Delver, Ambrosia and Gandreas should just make a Cythera 2. I agree, the only reason I mention the problem of porting Delver is that Gandreas planned to make Cythera 2 using the Delver engine. The only other option would be to create an entirely new engine or use another one already in existence.

Like I said, I agree that I'd rather see a "Cythera 2: Shattered Realm" over a Cythera X at this point, but I don't think Gandreas or Ambrosia have the interest any more. . .

The Ares X and Avara (even the EV and EVO) ports are something to give hope at least to those dying OS 9 games. I say never give up, but don't go relying the highly improbable.

Aha! I found the post I've been looking for where Gandreas gives a little more information about Cythera 2:
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php...=&pid=57848

It looks like he actually was planning on using a different engine for Cythera 2. Given that another engine would avoid all the problems of porting Delver, I think the only thing keeping Gandreas from doing a Cythera 2 is interest.

And I doubt we have enough money on this board to give him interest.

Ultimately, it's gandreas who decides if another Cythera game ever gets made, and, as Wizard pointed out, he doesn't seem interested at the moment .

There was recently some talk of trying to get an open-source engine together to attempt to revitalize Cythera X (hopefully renewing interest in the game), but school started for quite a few people and not many people volunteered.

I don't think we had any volunteers who actually have any programming ability, which was the problem.

I agree with Shorty that this board probably doesn't have the, um, resources to interest Gandreas. But, it couldn't hurt to ask him if he'd consider it.

We should start sending GAndreas subliminal messages via dangerous electromagnetic waves to make him feel inspired to make a sequel without realizing the source...

I'm willing to offer the as-of-yet uncompleted Apollo engine (the engine under which Ares' reincarnation Xsera is being built) as a nice option for a Cythera X. You'll just need to get somebody else to program Cythera X / II for it, as I wouldn't have the time to do such a thing. I'd even provide tech support, seeing as I would be interested in getting an OS X port / remake of Cythera.

EDIT: As a side note, some changes would need to be made to Apollo to make it work for this type of game versus a top-down space shooter, but lots of the hard parts are already in place.

This post has been edited by adam_0: 30 November 2009 - 10:52 PM

Gandreas never even finished Cythera 1 (note all the plotholes and glitches), so by that notion I think a Cythera 2 made by him is sadly completely out of the question.

However, for whatever it’s worth, he commented on the difficulties of Cythera X and Cythera 2 as late as 2007 quite in depth on his own forums—http://boards.gandreas.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=225.

That's a really generous offer; my thanks.

Unfortunately, I don't really have the coding experience to evaluate the engine, but I can try to get into contact with those who might. Hopefully, some of them will have the time to look into this possibility.

Actually I believe after looking over the ending speech by Omen again I noticed that it seemed to forshadow the return of the undine. In fact I remember seeing a little submessage on the bottom of the talk screen stating 'you have a feeling you two will meet again' or something along the lines of that. That and a few other statements in the speech that made me believe that they purposely left a door open to a sequel.

Hm, if we did decide to use the Apollo I'm totally gonna go mad with imagination and think of some cool new features!

Multiplayer!

I mean, Apollo's gonna support multiplayer Ares games, so why not Cythera?

People could create dungeons for their characters to fight through or , maybe even gladiator tournements.


With the possibility of a level editor I guess it would leave the option for unofficial sequels and expantions as well, heh.


It's fun to speculate, keeps interest alive anyhow.

I've looked into this and been told that Apollo and Ostendi (the engines offered for a Cythera X port) would both require quite a bit of work be done before either could be used for something like Cythera. Personally, I'm still somewhat concerned about whether there are enough people with coding experience, as well as enough time and interest, to form a team to work on either (not that I mean to discourage anyone from trying).

Forming a team isn't that big of an issue, adam_0 offered to mentor, Avatara would fit great into the team leader spot (since he has a degree and has a CS job); the bigger issue will be getting access to the source.

If you compile it, they will come.

This has been discussed a lot, and Glenn has serious doubts about the practicality of porting the source at all. Although it would undoubtedly be helpful as an implementation reference, and the code for the scripting virtual machine might be salvageable for instance, anyone undertaking a port of Cythera needs to be prepared to either rewrite most of the engine from scratch. (Or, portably emulate considerable parts of the classic Mac OS that are not available or work differently in Carbon.)

That being considered, I think the most important thing here is getting Glenn and Ambrosia's official blessing for such a project, and the original media files (unencrypted data file to get the text/logic from, sounds, standard format images of the tiles and props, etc).

Multiplayer Cythera: It is much, much harder to write a networked game than a single-player game. Especially a multiplayer game that can run in the high-latency environment of the Internet. (Speaking as someone whose honors project in computer science was a framework for writing multiplayer games in Python. Not an easy thing to do.)

As someone who has done plenty of game dev, I can confidently say that this is the understatement of the century.

Quite a bit of work will be required anyways, Selax, regardless of whether you start from scratch or pick up an engine*. I am very confident that Apollo would reduce the time needed versus building an engine from scratch, especially considering that you can even modify Apollo for working with Cythera-specific stuff.

Bryce is right, though. You're not going to get anywhere without Ambrosia's (and Glenn's) blessing or approval, so I would bring it up to them before we get too hyped up about this - nothing's going to happen otherwise.

*Of note, if you were able to find an RPG engine it might save you some time over Apollo, but Apollo is better than starting from scratch, to be sure.

Not to mention it'd be pretty cool if Apollo became this engine that was used to revive all of ASW's old 2D mac games! Ares, Cythera... Ferazel and Harry! Heh, I'll never lose hope as long as there's people interested.

Regarding the amount of work required, I'm aware that it will be considerable regardless of which engine (Apollo or Ostendi) is used. I was just trying to inform people that a team is still required.

Regarding gandreas' and Ambrosia's approval, I think that the idea (discussed somewhat in past topics) was to assemble a team and petition gandreas for the source (possibly having completed some work on an engine that might be suitable for the task).

Do we have any experienced coders interested in helping out and possessing enough time to do so?

He might feel a little more willing to let us remake Cythera if our TSs weren't so crazily incompatible with the spirit of the game.

Hey, we're all just bringing a part of our imagination to the Cythera world, and unofficially expanding it.