theC64 Challenge #6 - Para Lander DX - Part 3/3

 16th April 2021

This is the final chapter. So what happened then? Well, in part 2. I assumed the game was perhaps ready, but there had to be a couple of adjustments made to the game. Here is what happened:

Levels - now what happened?

I had a test of the game and it appeared that the level counter wasn't working. I had forgotten to increment the level pointer to read the next level. Thankfully it worked. There was also a suggestion that I removed the two digit counter from the screen. This level counter was indeed meant to be for testing that each level was working and should have been deleted after the levels were working. I removed the digit counter.

Unreadable character found

The letter "Q" in the text on the title screen / hi score looked too much like the letter "D". Rather than use theC64 and Multi-Screen Construction Kit just to fix up a character set. I decided to export the character set to my PC and re-import it into Charpad V2.7 then I re-imported the charset into the game code in 64tass as a raw file. The letter looked much better.

Flashing status looked a bit off

The Well Done and Game Over sprites looked off with the grey pixels around them, so I set the colour for each flash as just a single colour. Like with the Charset, I imported the sprites into Sprite Pad to do a fix up of the sprites. Although the "well done" and "game over" text were still displayed as multi colour sprites, they both looked much better and more readable.

The count down was unfair

Para Lander DX had scenes where the player was jumping for joy, but it appears to be unfair for the player. This is because the clock was still ticking down while the player was jumping for joy. The problem was solved by stopping the timer.

I wanted to be oldschool, but I felt had to use Exomizer

With the test build of "Para Lander DX" I had to put up with having to link, pack and crunch several times while using ECA Compactor V4S and Cruel Cruncher V2.5. The oldschool packing and crunching was a lengthy process. I decided at the end to just use Exomizer and disguise the de-cruncher as some of the old favourite crunchers from back in the 1980's. I went for disguising the Exomizer depacker as the Matcham Speed Packer V1.2 (pictured). Considering that I used Future Composer V4.1 to do the intro music (Or ripped it from my previous intro for Ray Fish) ;). I thought it should have an 1980's feel to it :)

Finally the game is finished and mastering is done. I will be releasing the game next week. For now, here is a video of the final production. This is the digital tape version:

The game is intended to be released next week on 23/04/2021 at The New Dimension or Para Lander DX page