It was 1999. As part of my second year university course work I made a few little games. The first was "The Hypergalactic Adventures Of Diz", a gravity based platform game. It looked a bit like this...
The design wasn't bad and the pixel popped artwork was ok considering I hadn't done any pixel popping since my teenage Amiga-Deluxe Paint days. More importantly, it was my first go at any kind of programming and I'd definitely bitten off more than I expected to be able to chew. As you can imagine, the controls were very ropey but to my own surprise, I actually got the game finished.
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Fast forward a few years to 2005, I was between jobs and in need of a project. I decided to have a bash at redesigning the Diz character in 3D. I'd never really got to grips with 3D software and it was distinctly lacking in the courses available back in my day so I saw this as an opportunity to improve. While I was at it, I honed my skills with regards to programming controls.
After a couple of drafts of the game, I'd pretty much made a quite faithful reboot of it, opting for the simpler title of just "Diz". The same three planets were each seperated into almost the same three-levels-and-a-huge-boss formula, making for a twelve level game in total. Although my modelling skills weren't all that, I didn't let it stop me from blasting out some basic rendered 3D assets of varying quality. To my satisfaction, I actually made a generally well balanced game.
Perhaps the most out there thing I did was to ramp up the difficulty, speeding up the pace and removing the continue screen which meant that the player had only 3 lives to complete the whole game! But I feel that this is where a lot of the replay value is. It's hard!! ...but but the controls are now slick enough that with enough practice you can just about get through to the game's ending sequence.
Amongst other improvements, I took out the clock, added original music, sound, etc and generally smoothed out transitions and animation sequences. This version is missing a few details: An in-game loading bar at the beginning, a company logo, a few bits of graphics here and there that I meant to put in but never got around to adding. I probably will one day, but for now here's the fully playable ...and maybe slightly buggy remake of Diz.
Enjoy...
PLAY DIZ
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