# Tribute to those who pay tribute

Julian Alvarez

► To cite this version:

Julian Alvarez. Tribute to those who pay tribute. 2012. hal-04722713

HAL Id: hal-04722713

https://hal.science/hal-04722713v1

Submitted on 5 Oct 2024

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entific research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.

L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents
scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
# Tribute to those who pay tribute

Julian Alvarez

Who knows *Alive* published by *Lankhor* in 1991? Probably very few people.

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>

This adventure game for the *Amstrad CPC* was developed by Arnaud Laplace and myself when we were still in high school. Inspired by films such as "*New York 1997*" and "*Planet of the Apes*", we imagined the game's story and then improvised as game designers, writers, coders, computer graphics artists and musicians to bring it to life. There were no dedicated studies at the time, so we were self-taught. Assembler and game coding were learned from *magazines* and a few *rare books* containing listings. Our graphics editor was carefully typed up by copying several hundred lines of code from such sources. Once we had the tool in hand, we were able to create the game's computer graphics. To compress the game's thirty or so images and get them displayed quickly, we developed an image compiler in assembler by reading the principle in a book that explained how to create an adventure game. The game interface, which simulated a mouse pointer, was inspired by the *Macintosh* interface and its icon system. We tore our hair out to program this on an *Amstrad CPC*. After less than two years of development, we proposed the game to a number of publishers at the time.

It was *Lankhor* who showed an interest. Invited up to the capital to sign the contracts, we met Bruno Gourier, one of the founders of the publishing company. He came to pick up the two provincials, fresh from Toulouse in an old white 104 pitted by rust. With his girlfriend at the wheel, he explained the terms of the contract and asked us how we'd made the game. When we arrived at Lankhor's premises, we discovered a small team driven more by passion than by the quest for financial success. Moved, my first action was to spill a cup of coffee on one of the publisher's very important contracts. Without prejudice, we are invited to visit the premises, which boil down to a room of around 60 square meters. It's amusing to note that at the time, to communicate about games in the pipeline, the publisher used to shoot CRT screens with film cameras. The "screen capture" function didn't yet
exist.

After signing the contracts, we went for lunch at a local restaurant. The menu was modest, but the exchanges rich: Bruno told us the secrets behind the making of the *Manoir de Mortevielle*, one of the first games to use voice synthesis. It was impressive for its time. A wonderful day, followed a few months later by the distribution of the “Alive” game. The joy of reading the *reviews in the press* and seeing the *game box* on the shelves of stores like FNAC or small micro-computer stores is indescribable. Although we were paid very little - around 1,200 euros each for 2,000 copies sold - it was a very memorable experience. The game came out too late for the Amstrad, which was about to give up the ghost in the face of the 16-bit generation represented by the *Amiga* and *Atari ST* in particular. Lankhor invited us to develop on these new computers, which were really catching on. But we were changing scale. Development required more resources, time and skills. It wasn't until 1994 that a team of 14 people got together to make a PC version of the game, “Alive behind the Moon”. But that's another story...

Today, *Alive* is available as *Abandonware* on sites such as *Lankhor.net*. There, you'll also find *images of the game*, *tips*, *instructions*, *the game box* and *press reviews*. So, even if the application didn't make its mark on video game history, the heritage lives on somewhere. A number of blogs, such as *GrosPixels*, have also published reviews of the game. It's funny to note that some of them probably didn't actually play the game to write their post. Among the gems discovered on the web, one Internet user recounted the fact that this adventure game dealt with the story of the Uruguayan rugby team who, following a plane crash, had to survive by eating the corpses of the accident victims. Having made the connection with the film and the book “Alive” recounting this true story, he deduced that our game dealt with this subject and concluded that he didn't understand how such a subject could have been the subject of an adventure game!

Thinking that, after more than twenty years, Alive had now definitively fallen into limbo, it's amusing to note that a *Youtube video* made by Mr POE was put online last April. For 77 minutes, this (courageous) tester reads aloud the game's introductory story and completes the adventure from start to finish. Thanks to him, it's now possible to live the adventure and see just how many constraints gamers in the 80s and 90s were prepared to accept in order to be entertained: constantly flipping their floppy disk in the drive and playing without being able to save the game along the way. Unthinkable nowadays. Over time, we sometimes forget these things. Thanks to Mr POE for this test, and sorry for the youthful programming errors: in this video, we're taking the brunt of it ;) But it's deserved. We hadn't done a play test! Above all, we'd like to say a big thank you to all those enthusiasts who pay tribute to all those videogame titles from the past by bringing them back to life. Without their work, these games would have been forgotten. So it's our turn to pay tribute to them, and hope that their actions will continue for a long, long time to come!