Golden Drake Studios

Indie game dev studio founded by David C. Drake

[op-isopoly]

"repulsive"

[goldendrake]

Behold, the birth of a new video series highlighting games from the wonderful world of FOSS (free and open source software)! 💻

We begin with a focus on text-based games and the genre known as "roguelikes," so our first topic is none other than the original Rogue. 🗡️

[pixeljeff]

Year of the Dragon .2024

[renegadecut]

It's only June, but I'm calling it. Felvidek is the best game of 2024, at least by my own standards. Support on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/renegadecut

[goldendrake]

Year of the Drake

Happy Lunar New Year! As we enter this Year of the Drake, or Dragon, we’re excited to announce that we’ll soon roll out the following simple yet significant releases: An updated installer for Golden Drake Linux. Early screenshots (and perhaps even video footage) from our first major game project: Adventures Unending, proudly developed using the Godot game engine! We know many of you are eager…

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[abueloretrowave]

-They are here

[pixelartjourney]

Forest Spirit's Sword!

[charleshuettner]

Poster I made for SCAVENGERS REIGN.

[8pxl]

my new magic the gathering cards got announced! really excited to have done another secret lair drop 🖤

[abueloretrowave]

-Where are we going?

[brianfargo]

My first game.

My first exposure to video games was like many others, in the arcades and eventually onto home consoles like the Magnavox Odyssey, a machine so primitive that you had to pretend to have the cursor follow the lines. And If you wanted a theme such as a  haunted house or a roulette wheel, you would put a Mylar overlay on your TV that would use static electricity to hold it up.  “Back in my day, we didn’t even have color for our game systems”, shouts the old man.

I had no idea how the game magically appeared on the screen until I started to gain access to computers.

The first computer I ever had access to was an old mainframe called a PDP-11, this was in the day before there were monitors. Every command and piece of feedback was printed out and you backed up your code using paper tape, a technology similar to the tickertape that went back to the 19th century. I remember how amazed I was when they brought a CRT/Monitor in and I no longer had to print every command. Gaining access to the PDP-11 could only be done at nights and on weekends at my high school through permission of the school. It was a great opportunity to meet a group of guys that were much smarter than me, a lesson that would serve me well.

I was very fortunate that my parents could afford to buy me an Apple II computers in the late 70’s, this is when the light bulb really went off in my head that I could learn how to program and eventually make games. I spent every waking hour I could playing games and learning how to code.

After playing enough games, I decided that I would set off to do it myself. I decided to make a graphic adventure since it was one of the few genres I could program, BASIC was not a problem but my 6502 Assembly coding was not up to par. In fact, I needed one piece of code called a recursive fill that would quickly fill in the enclosed blank areas with a color. The only way I was going to get that done was to pester the hell out of my friend Randy Walsh, one of the guys I met in the PDP-11 rooms. I had no money so I had to just beg him for 6 months straight until he did it. Once his part was completed, I was able to finish the rest and hand duplicate 500 copies of the game “The Demon’s Forge”. It was a very amateurish effort by a high school kid but it was critical in all the lessons it taught me.

I took my first game to completion and learned about the need for marketing, I was off to the races.

 * Below is an ad for the game. I only had a few hundred dollars for package art so I had to buy a finished piece and this was the only fantasy work I was able to find. While it captured the mood, there were no guys flying on great eagles or women to rescue. I was teased quite a bit about this. My favorite bullet point from the back of the packages was “16 entirely different colors”. The word “entirely” really made the concept pop in my teenage mind.

[davidcdrake]

I had so much extra footage of Link riding Master Cycle Zero in Zelda: Breath of the Wild that I decided to create one more musical motorcycle montage, this time a darker and more atmospheric video set to one of my favorite Pink Floyd songs: "One of These Days," opening track on their 1971 album Meddle.

[davidcdrake]

Riding a motorcycle (Master Cycle Zero) in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild inspired me to create this montage set to "Legacy" by The Gone Jackals, an epic song famously featured in the classic point-and-click adventure game Full Throttle!

[goldendrake]

With the release of Golden Drake Linux v1.1.0, we've created a video to demonstrate the use of our custom Arch Linux installer: https://youtu.be/t83a5YwL_KQ Please check it out and consider supporting our ongoing work through Patreon: patreon.com/theDrake https://www.instagram.com/p/CdqWPVmrjr5/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[goldendrake]

"Canvas Quest" is an excellent source for retro game art, including prints, magnets, and pins such as these from the first two entries in The Legend of Zelda series, now adorning the backpack of our founder @davidcdrake! Check out their store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/CanvasQuestArt https://www.instagram.com/p/CP_2Yz4ngVV/?utm_medium=tumblr

[goldendrake]

Hope all of you are having a lovely holiday season and finding time to rest, recuperate, and reflect. 2020 was a uniquely difficult year for many of us, but as always, the possibility of a brighter future propels us forward. Take care and keep striving to be your best self! (Image cropped from a 1988 Sierra On-Line Christmas Card.) https://www.instagram.com/p/CJQDsruHNes/?igshid=gdo5bt9881ro

[goldendrake]

Happy All Hallows' Eve, fellow lovers of roleplay and adventure! Join the creators of #QuestForGlory NOW for a marathon livestream of games, epic prizes, and fun, inc. commentary on Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness! twitch.tv/transolargames #HappyHalloween https://www.instagram.com/p/CHBT_jsHsis/?igshid=9mwdwh4254ma