Introduction

[Ccook67357]

Hi everybody! I stumbled across this website a few days ago while in the process of looking for some Deadlock sprites to use as placeholders in a Deadlock-inspired Android/IOS game I am designing/developing in my free time. Ever since the stumble I've spent quite a lot of time (not too much time though) lurking these forums and considering making an account on this charming website! I've never really understood the lack of love and credit given Deadlock (being one of my family and I's favorite series of games growing up) on the internet at large. It gets me really excited to see the excitement and enthusiasm this community has for the games that so few others I have met have had any exposure to or appreciation for! Anyways, I'd reckon this wouldn't be much of an introduction without much of an introduction so here goes nothing!...

My name is Chris and I am a young guy (currently a sophomore in college pursuing a degree in computational mathematics) that enjoys developing software, playing video games, playing music, and reading recreationally. I keep myself fairly busy between working full-time as a junior software engineer and systems and network technician at a cytology and anatomical pathology lab and going to school. ! My dad and my two brothers (all three characters of whom are substantially older than I) likely introduced me to Deadlock 1 around the time of my first few legitimate memories (I have more than a few early 'memories' of which I have doubts in regards to's authenticity), growing up we all spent many evenings playing Deadlock in one of it's two iterations or another. I really like the idea of getting together some seriously demonstrable content (I think many of Deadlock's mechanics would suit a cross-platform social application miraculously (which is why I am currently in the process of emulating many of them in my own design)) and a petition and sending someone at Atari a heartfelt letter in an attempt to salvage the possibility for this hidden gem to make a glorious entrance into the modern social-app saturated culture. Then again I am probably overly-excitable and overwhelmingly naïve.

I'd love to hear a little bit about some of you guys so that I may be able to better familiarize myself with you all as I'd really like to become an active member of this community!

[Tggtt]

Hello Ccook67357, good luck on your game.
I came here in a similar quest, so I think we could share several things.

At first, I'm sorry to say that no one can fully decode the original sprites, I spent several hours trying to do it myself without being able to decode more than one picture (which was probably not inside the sprite files).

"The thing" here is: the developers (read this thread) have answered Grunt's questions about deadlock and they don't have a decoder or the source code anymore.

1 - The sprites file uses a compression which they aren't very sure how to decode, but one of them gave us hints on how to do it;
2 - The sprites file has no signaling on when a sprite ends or starts. There was a offset table or a set of defines in c++ that was possibly compiled into immediate values (values that are compiled into constant instruction parameters) scattered all around the binary object code.

I have tried decoding, trying every possible combination of codes that would fit the developer's description (which is a bit ambiguous), but I couldn't find a visible indexed graphic inside the (several) decoded files. If I had a known decoded sprite it would be easier to run several codes and make them check if they find the known sprite within them. Also, I would also be able to search the memory allocated by the game while it's running and grab the sprites from there.

I have an alternate solution described here.

[sdu754]

I think that the "lack of love" for deadlock has to do with the fact that it's an old game (1996) and only had one sequel. SimCity and Civilization have had several sequels, offshoots and advertising money poured into them, that's why they are more popular. If both of those games had stopped after their second release, they'd be relatively unknown as well. Turn based strategy, and even real time strategy, are also a small markets as well. I would probably rank deadlock as the best game in these two markets (at least for SP) but most people have never heard of it.

[Tggtt]

I think that the "lack of love" for deadlock has to do with the fact that it's an old game (1996) and only had one sequel. SimCity and Civilization have had several sequels, offshoots and advertising money poured into them, that's why they are more popular. If both of those games had stopped after their second release, they'd be relatively unknown as well. Turn based strategy, and even real time strategy, are also a small markets as well. I would probably rank deadlock as the best game in these two markets (at least for SP) but most people have never heard of it.

I was going to say that this comment would better fit into another specific topic, and I thought it would generate a very heated discussion, but actually this is weeks old and without comments. This is sad.

[sdu754]

I think that the "lack of love" for deadlock has to do with the fact that it's an old game (1996) and only had one sequel. SimCity and Civilization have had several sequels, offshoots and advertising money poured into them, that's why they are more popular. If both of those games had stopped after their second release, they'd be relatively unknown as well. Turn based strategy, and even real time strategy, are also a small markets as well. I would probably rank deadlock as the best game in these two markets (at least for SP) but most people have never heard of it.

I was going to say that this comment would better fit into another specific topic, and I thought it would generate a very heated discussion, but actually this is weeks old and without comments. This is sad.

This is a very small community, posts are actually rather rare. I wish it were more active, but people don't tend to discuss games this old.