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zebracadabra
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Wrong info

Sun Jan 12, 2014 8:55 pm

I am the creator, designer and programmer for Hotel Alien, although Jeff Schneider was hired to work on the C64 version by me. After 30 years, I see he has the credit on this site for the game and I'd like my name to be there, since I designed the game from A to Z, including ALL of the original code. Who do I contact?

Alan Newman

Thanks!

Also designed and programmed Tutti Frutti (Atari), Domination (Atari) and a couple of others.
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Mayhem
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Tue Jan 14, 2014 10:06 am

Hi Alan :)

The programmer credit in the database goes to the actual person (or persons) who physically programmed the C64 version. So in this case, if Jeff Schneider was the sole programmer, he'll be the one credited in that field.

There are other fields in the database that aren't represented on the website, including designers, so that may well be featured in the available MDB file for Gamebase (I don't have it in front of me at this moment so I can't check).
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zebracadabra
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Thu Jan 16, 2014 8:41 pm

I hear you, but you fail to understand that much of the code in the C64 version was nevertheless written by me in the first place. The game is written in BASIC and I still have the printouts from each version and if you'd like, I'll be happy to email you examples where the code is totally identical, code that I alone wrote.

C64 and Atari were not all that different. What was different was Jeff was a single student living at home with hours to kill, whereas I had a baby at home and needed to work all day and program at night to make a few extra bucks.

I really think it would be proper to recognize the guy who actually programmed the entire game, not just the guy who did a conversion of the parts of the code that needed to be adjusted for C64.
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Mayhem
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Fri Jan 17, 2014 5:15 pm

Well, that's different then. Without knowing that Jeff merely adapted your code and didn't write it from scratch, we can only go by the programming credits in-game/on packaging. So a co-authorship shouldn't be outside the bounds of correcting for the next release.
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zebracadabra
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Fri Jan 17, 2014 6:17 pm

Fwiw, my name is on the package, the title screen and the opening graphics screen. The game and the programming was 100% mine. Jeff is listed only for "translation" for the C64 version, which still largely uses the same BASIC format as for Atari and in many cases, the exact same program line numbers I used for commands, routines, subroutines, etc.

Thanks and I look forward to finally being credited with my own work.
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Mayhem
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Sat Jan 18, 2014 1:11 am

FWIW, I fired up the game and it says on the loading screen: "Hotel Alien by Alan Newman. C64 version by Jeff Schneider". Most of the time with ports, the original programmer had nothing to do with the C64 version (hence only crediting Jeff because that's technically what it says), but in this case, that's not correct. I hope you can see where we were coming from here.

Anyhow, it'll get added to the corrections thread and hopefully picked up for the next release.
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zebracadabra
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Sat Jan 18, 2014 2:00 am

Thanks for the explanation.

Regards,

Alan

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