Not many changes in this version 1.0.3, mostly some quality of life improvement to let players have more time to read long texts or examine pixel art details:

List of changes:

• Fixed an accent error introduced in the previous version
  
• Improvement: Added some key press waits after elements that take a long time to read
  
• Improvement: Added Scotland to the map

It's been 11 days since the game launched, and the feedback has been great, with quite a few of you actually playing on their real Oric which is quite awesome!

On this last day of 2024 I decided to push a new version with mostly tweaks to texts and images which should help some people to notice some of the things they've been missing!

I wish everybody a good year 2025 :)

1.0.2
- Misc: Did some internal code cleaning (should not impact the player experience)
- Fix: The acid should not reappear anymore
- Fix: The message about fishing should be more coherent with what the player can do
- Improvement: Did some touch ups to the Austin mini doors graphics
- Improvement: Added a small gate to the rear of the house to make the way more obvious
- Improvement: Added a bit of the well and zen garden to the wood scene
- Improvement: The sleeper can now be heard sleeping
- Improvement: Inspecting the window now mentions the warning label
- Improvement: Searching the car, bag, trash can and bin now inspects them
- Improvement: Going backward on the intro increases the duration time of pages

Hello everybody, and thank you if you bought the game, much appreciated!

I got some feedback regarding some typos, some sentences that could be worded differently, some interactions which could be added, also some of you tried the game on their real Oric and found out that their TV did not like the 60hz frequency set-up by the game.

In addition to that, there were some mentions of the keyboard input sometimes missing some keyclicks.

So here is a new version that fixes most of what was signaled, there are some additional minor issues, but these will be fixed after Christmas.

Merry Christmas everybody!

This is launch day! A day which is both exciting and full of unknowns!

After working on this game for so long, it feels like a scary milestone, but hey, not much we can do at this point. Players will hopefully enjoy the game, and for those who don't, that's okay because this is not a game for everybody!

No change log in this message. Let's just say that the current version would not have been as good without the active participation of a few individuals (known as Dom, Lukas, Phreak, Retroric, and Symoon) who have been reporting numerous issues ("If you do this and that after having done that, then this happens, is that on purpose?"), typographical and grammatical errors, and making suggestions regarding colors, the position of things on screen, etc.

So yes, I (Mickaël) created most of the game as it is now, but without their contribution (as well as Per, who composed the music for the game and trailer), it would have been a much less enjoyable piece of software.

I'm sure some people will find some issues, and there will be new versions to address these, but hopefully, the game is in a state solid enough to be enjoyable as it is!

Personally, I'm interested in knowing what the modern Steam PC audience will think of this game. In a world where most games now require SSDs and dozens or hundreds of gigabytes of storage, fast CPUs, and dedicated GPUs, releasing a game that limits itself to what you can achieve with a 1 MHz 8-bit processor, 64 KB of memory, and 360 KB of disk storage is probably kind of crazy... but hey, it was an interesting experience anyway.

No matter what you think of the game (good or bad), please leave a review so I have some interesting stuff to read!

Merry Christmas, everybody!

It's the final stretch!

The game release is planned for next Friday (the 20th of December) at 18:00 CET (or Oslo time).

Most of the current work has been spent on:
- Fixing typos, missing accents and generally speaking improving the French version of the game
- Fixing some minor issues (like incorrect messages in some situations)
- Making the computer feedback more useful to the player
- Adding some small images and music and tweaking colors here and there

I did deploy versions 0.9.3 and 0.9.4 for the testers but did not publish events for them because this stuff takes time, so here is the change history for the last three deployed versions:

0.9.3
- Hardened the startup of the game by making sure the keyboard buffer is emptied and the skip stream pointer is cleared.
- Formulated differently the way the computer is locked and cannot be accessed.
- Implemented the container check and keyword highlighting in assembler. Added a check for the error code to highlight all the interesting words in case of mistyping.
- Fixed a bug in the action mapping search (forgot to check properly for the end marker) that resulted in the game crashing if you just typed the name of an item without a verb before

0.9.4
- Changed the way the time out condition is detected by using a separate flag instead of detecting the hours moving back to 9 to avoid some temporary glitches on the time display.
- Fixed an issue with the basement window where inspecting it would not show it from the inside.
- Fixed the collateral damage text in French
- Many French localization fixes from Retroric.

0.9.5
- Fix: The "You already frisked it" text now properly cleans up
- Fix: Dropping the protection suit now properly reset the "attached" flag
- Fix: Trying to use the protection suit twice now shows a message
- Fix: Correct a few French typos
- Fix: Renamed "vitre" into "carreau"
- Fix: Inspecting the window when the girl is gone now says the room is empty
- Fix: If the rope or ladder is already installed the game now tells you it's already in place
- Fix: Dropping the petrol or the water now properly clear the text window before showing the message.
- Fix: When dropping the petrol it properly stays visible in the car tank
- Fix: When the girl is outside on the patio, the "inaccessible window" is not shown anymore
- Fix: When examined in the inventory, the dove is not reported as chirping on a branch
- Tweak: Reduced the volume of the 1hour and 2hours beeps
- Tweak: The text area now switches to red when facing the dog or the pit
- Improvement: The roll of toilet paper now disappears from the image when taken by the player
- Improvement: When using the dove the success music is played

Tonight (Thursday, December 12) at 9:00 PM, a technical interview video (in French, but possibly with close captions) about Encounter will be broadcast on the YouTube channel Génération Micros!

It will be a “premiere” with live Q&A, so the chat will be available, and I will be there to answer questions.

On the agenda: the history of the project, the differences between the 1983 and 2024 versions of the game, how the scripting system works, the sound, etc.

See you tonight!

(And if you read this too late, the video will still be available, but without the possibility to ask questions.)

And for a preview of the content:

We are now less than two weeks before the game launches, so the current focus is to optimize the performance, fix eventual typos and missed translations, but also to make the launcher easier to use and forget.

Here is the new version of the launcher which now has links to the documentation, support, etc...

Here is the change list for version 0.9.2 of the game:

• The game now loads a bit faster
  
• Added a check on the bomb presence when using the matches to avoid triggering the safe explosion without the bomb being installed.
  
• Added a second page of documentation to the intro sequence.
  
• Added an experimental blinking message on the title picture to indicate that it is possible to use the left and right arrows to move between pages in the intro.
  
• Text changes: Changed the "sweet dreams" message to something more palatable, the French version of the typewriter intro text now matches the shorter english version, swapped around the French and English version of the fridge door description, fixed a non translated french text ("watched the intro").
  
• Fixed typos: "Dissolving" takes two "s", "Family" only takes one "l", "metallic" takes two "l"
  
• Fixed a problem with containers disappearing when the SET_ITEM_LOCATION command is used.
  
• It's now possible to build the bomb by combining the fuse with the tin as well as with the powder.
  
• Pressing ESC in the game now brings the HELP panel

The silence in the last two weeks did not mean the project was abandoned. On the contrary, numerous bugs have been fixed, some interactions have been added pretty much all over the place, and the French version is almost complete.

Obviously you are reading the English version of the text, so you don't really care about the French version, but since the plan is to launch with both languages simultaneously, it was quite important that the French version got some love as well.

So anyway, the game is on track for the launch on the 20th, so far so good!

Here is the complete patch notes for version 0.9.1

• French localization is now almost complete, for both the texts and images ("digicode message", "recipes", "tombstone" and saved" image at the end), kerning and comic bubbles placements have been adapted to the different lengths
  
• Added quite a few item descriptions and interactions.
  
• Fixed a bunch of things that can be opened and closed so the game reports they are already open or closed instead of just doing a weird refresh of the screen.
  
• Fixed an audio glitch when trying to play musics with music disabled caused by the channel mixer being modified anyway.
  
• Fixed some typos, improved the display of error messages so they are on purple background with the large font instead of the small red text.
  
• Fixed the pipe character in the font to be a ô in French because I use the word "Plutôt" somewhere and it was showing as a vertical arrow.
  
• Fixed the set item location command to make sure it drops the contained item if a non empty container is dropped (or thrown).
  
• If the dove fly away, the chirping sound stops in the wooded avenue
  
• Inspecting the acid shows the description image again
  
• Inspecting the alarm panel now informs there is a hole for a key
  
• Inspecting the black tape now suggests it's possible to remove it
  
• Inspecting the bomb now shows some comment instead of "nothing special"
  
• Inspecting the book shows the usual message and then goes on reading it. (and same thing with the recipes).
  
• Inspecting the girl now tells the player that she is unharmed and quite relieved.
  
• Inspecting the note now makes you read it instead of saying "nothing special".
  
• Inspecting the window up stairs is now possible.
  
• It should not be possible anymore to use the hose if it's already in use, instead an error message is displayed saying it's already installed.
  
• It's now possible to just press enter if we don't have a valid container, before you would get stuck there until you entered something invalid.
  
• Looking at the front entrance now suggest to look for a back entrance.
  
• Made sure that using the wrong container shows a message telling the user they should use something more adapted.
  
• Modified the gun powder so it can be transported in any adequate (for powder) container.
  
• Modified the pit message to make it clear that without a rope or ladder you are not going to be able to go up again.
  
• Modified the script to code to ensure that we can't create a bomb in a plastic bag or cardboard box.
  
• Moved the "hose" from the zen garden to the fish pond
  
• Moved the "fishing net" to the tennis court instead of the fishing pond and renamed it to just a "net"
  
• Opening and closing the parts of the car will now properly report that they are already opened or closed.
  
• Removed the complicated pause logic with double achievement, simpler, and more memory available, the second achievement is now hooked to closing the fridge
  
• Removed the Microdisc/Jasmin achievements and instead hooked them to the invoice and tombstone.
  
• Replaced the "Don't be ridiculous" by "That will not work"
  
• Updated the scores to include information about if a score was pre-made or made by an actual player.
  
• Using the matches with petrol or gunpowder around will result in an explosion: Kid: Don't play with matches!
  
• When building the fuse the petrol and the roll now vanish forever, that was just confusing.

It's difficult for an emulated game to access things like the Steam API, but I did promise that I would try my best to get the in-game achievements onto Steam if I could find a way!

The method I used is kind of wonky, but it works.

Basically the game launcher (I know, everybody hates them) tracks changes done to the virtual floppy containing the game data, and when it changes it loads the modified content which happens to contain the player score and any unlocked achievements.

After that it's just a matter of matching these with the Steam achievements and trigger them.

Unfortunately there are 48 achievements, and it takes a lot of time to create them and then test them, but here is what the 24 25 first achievements look like!

None of these achievements are hidden, but I kind of obfuscated what their represent to avoid making it too easy to know what they actually represent.

(If too many people struggle to unlock some of them I will consider making these more obvious)

Another thing to keep in mind is that the game only saves the achievements at the end of a play session, so they will not trigger immediately, this will only happen when you reach the credits - which happens as soon as your reach an ending condition such as victory or one of the many game over events -

Hopefully that's an acceptable trade-off, there's so much magic I can do with 64KB of RAM!