Thursday 16 January 2014

Darker than Light

16th January 2014

Back in 1991, when I bought issue 11 of Commodore Format magazine, I loaded in the cover tape and was hooked to a classic game called "Light Force" by Hewson. Anyway, travelling to the future, to the end of the year 2013. I remembered doing some huge enhancements for a SEUCK game by Anthony Burns called "The Huntress of Midgard". I had another idea. I set myself a challenge, in which was to write a new C64 game within one week, using the Shoot Em Up Construction Kit, and a bit of additional programming. So I could have the first ever C64 game launched in 2014. - Mission failed. Eventually I got the game finished 2 weeks LATER :)

 


I was thinking about which sort of game I could work on during the week's project. I decided "Light Force" was a perfect candidate for this challenge. So I used the SEUCK to design the game, graphics, Goat Tracker to write the music, but the result didn't turn out too well. The game was just too short, and the attack waves were pretty naff. I also ran out of units for the enemy sprites. Fortunately, when I showed the work to Alf Yngve, he stepped in to tweak and improve the game, which took about a week or so. The overall result last Friday was stunning. All I had to do were add the final touches to the game, including the front end and hi-score routines, a certain amount of generators detected (As the game has 2 endings, as you will see). This took about 2 or 3 days or so. The result turned out pretty well, and finally the game is finished and released:


You can check the game out for yourself at http://tnd64.unikat.sk 

2023 at a glance

2024 is here, and 2023 has been a really quiet year on the production front due to everything that had gone back to normality. The year has ...