Death Saw Dungeon

 23rd - 27th October 2020

During the weekend, I took a little break from the usual projects (theC64 Power Pack challenge, an upcoming C64 game for Christmas time) and I decided to work on a brand new game. The idea was to make a game for Halloween. The good news is that it is finished and will be released on Saturday 31st October 2020. Spooktactular.

Last week in the evening I was browsing on Twitter for C64 related content. I tend to have a general interest on seeing what new games are being made for the machine. I stumbled across a game jam on itch.io called the "Disc-Room Jam". A game jam in which involves an arena and flying discs. This gave me an idea. Halloween is coming closer and closer. How about a fun little game project to kill some time? Yes! Most definitely. Behold the:

DEATH SAW CHALLENGE

With the cross development software I had available for this project. I designed and developed the graphics and screen data using Char Pad V2.3.0. The sprites were created in C64Studio's sprite editor. Which both the charset and sprite graphics got exported my project folder as raw binary. Music and sound effects were made using Goat Tracker V2.72, where the instrument sounds were converted into sound data for use in the cross assembler. 

Only the main code was required. I started by linking and relocating all of the graphics and music files to the correct memory address. Then I started the main code. The first part was getting the C64/VICE to display the game graphics correctly. Once I was happy with the graphics, I added the sprites and then started programming the main game engine. The idea was simply to have a player sprite running around the arena dodging spinning saws. Only to find what the fate of the player could be :).

After I got all of the sprites in place. I added additional routines in which allowed the sprites animate move around the screen. The player was able to move via a joystick control, via a single subroutine. The death saws were able to fly around the screen, via multiple jump subroutines and macros. The final saw was to do nothing, but be based in the middle of the room. 

The main game engine was working quite well, so I decided to work on improving the game. A score routine was added and only the player is allowed to score when moving about. The saw appearance also was setup in a table. A timer was set in order to make each saw appear on screen and bounce around the screen.

After the main game engine and saw timers were in place. I added the GET READY and GAME OVER scenario. This made the presentation more interesting before playing the game. The GET READY and GAME OVER also ended up with jingles and flashing. Pressing fire allowed the player to get back into the game.

Things really shaped up. It was time for me to design the title screen. I used Charpad once again and designed the main title screen. I wanted to use the sprites for the logo, so the title screen was to be quite basic. However, just before I was going to program the new title screen. I came up with a little joke idea. That was to create a joke design team label "The Ministry of Death" just for a bit of one-off fun.

Once the design was finished. I exported the new character set and the title screen data into my C64 Studio project and then I worked on the code for it. It turned out great. The final thing I did was the hi-score saver routine (for disk version). This is because Death Saw Challenge is a fast paced high score attack game with no levels. Just score as many points as you can before you lose. Once I was happy with everything. I put the complete project through Exomizer and compiled it into a compressed executable. Prepared the TND Deathtro intro and linked it to the game. I then passed the game to my regular beta-testers who helped me test and fix issues with the game. Then the game got mastered to D64 and TAP images (With the Red Border, and Zap'N'Load tape loader game)

I will be releasing the game this Saturday 31st October 2020 approximated 11:00am GMT+0 if all goes according to plan.

The site to download the game for free is:

Death Saw Challenge [c64]

For now, please enjoy this video I have recorded from my Ultimate 64 

I will be porting this game to Unity 3D possibly winter time. If all goes to plan that is.