Alien Invasion

13th November 2015

Just to let you know that progress for Vortex Crystals is still under development. However, on Friday 13th November. Disaster struck on my HDD. When I tried to load the assembly source file of the Vortex Crystals, I ended up with a blank file as the main file. This happened after an update was installed, and the PC HDD was undergoing repairs by the Op System boot up. I tried copying the file from the backup drive, and sadly it was the older source file and incorrect. Damn, all is lost ... Well not exactly, here's what happened.

When I'm working physically, and feel tired, I can get myself lost in places, and the same with file organisation. I spent most of my time searching for the correct backup source of the missing code on that day. Thankfully, it got found, and I was able to continue doing more levels for the game. (grin). 7 levels were already complete, so I worked on levels 8 and 9. Level 9 introduces 'I-Droid', the eye type of alien.

16th November 2015

More progress with the level setup, but I came across a small problem with level 10. Alf forgot to add a door on to the stage. So in order to resolve this problem. I decided to disguise one of the alien spawn gates as an exit. Therefore making this level more challenging. Then I started on doing level 11. This level introduces two new and harder aliens, which are the Squidroid (10 hits to kill) and Robot (8 hits to kill). These later levels are planned to frustrate the player more, as the player only has a limited amount of ammo to fire. Shooting 3 aliens will give the player 10 extra ammo, if the power up box is picked up straight away. Later levels are also intending to get even more frustrating, when the simple aliens (from levels 1 - 10) will not be appearing on the later levels. :)


The deadline is about 2 months and a half away for this game to be entered to the compo, and I'm quite confident that it will be finished in time. :)

Stay tuned ...

The Cops Strike Back

9th May 2013

If you remember buying Commodore Force, and ZZap 64. You may have remembered Alf Yngve's Public Domain SEUCK games called Cops and Holiday Cops. Well, you'll be surprised to hear that planned over the past 2 or 3 years, was the "Ultimate Cops" series. In which was to feature enhanced versions of all of the COPS games, which Alf wrote back in time. Well, good news is that the overall project will be seeing the light of day soon with thanks to myself, Alf and Psytronik Software.

I have been very busy the past few weeks (or months) working on this compilation - which should have been produced a very long time ago. Anyway, what did I do for the games? Cops, Holiday Cops have brand new front ends and in game enhancements with music. All 3 games here will be featured on side 1 of the disk. Where as on side 2 is the last ever episode of the Cops series, "Cops the Final Chapter". The story sees Mike 'Mad Dog' McTavish, and Singh 'Big Bang' Kapoor about to be facing retirement. Bad news was that a criminal gang blew up a high security prison, and set one of the most evil criminals 'Maledict I' on the loose.  The commissioner called on Mike and Singh to recapture 'Maledict' in one of the biggest arcade adventures (Split into 3 parts). The game also features additional enhancements such as game options, in game music and also power ups, and background char animation. The overall result gives the game a commercial appeal.

A tape version for Psytronik is finished now. (I think), with a huge thank you to Mase for his awesome loading picture. I did a loading tune specially for this series. Which I feel suits the tape loader pretty nicely. Since the second part of  "Cops the Final Chapter". Although the mastering was complete. I felt that the disadvantage was that I tried to make the tape mastering system *much easier* so that after mastering one main file, it automatically loads the next file. Sadly this method failed as it interfered with the tape mastering code. So rather than just messing about with the code for the tape mastering. I created separate tape masters - which must be loaded straight after the tape mastering was complete (Sorry Kenz). A disk menu for the disk version is still under development, but should be ready in time for the end of this weekend. Mainly due to no major plans this coming weekend. So fingers crossed, the compilation should be ready. Then on to Shoot Em Up Destruction Set #3 (Another 5 new unseen Alf Yngve games compilation).

Back on track again ...

25th November 2012 (Some good news about Amazon Tales)

Yesterday I was stuck on the enemy shooting and felt that there was no way I would be able to get out of the mess. I also thought that I could end up withdrawing my entry for the 2012 16KB Cartridge Competition. Later on before I went out. I came across an idea ... Why have a huge list of tables where you can easily get yourself lost - and simplify programming the shooting routine - To check whether or not the enemy object is a Pygmy, Monkey or anything else that was supposed to shoot.

Well, I put my theory to the test, and tried programming a small routine for each enemy (Can easily be expanded) to check whether the enemy sprites are the objects hoping to be placed in the game, and I also set the firing direction of the chosen enemies. Guess what happened then? It worked :). I was over the moon that the tasks I made were successful today. Now that part of the shooting phase was out of the way, I worked on a few more in game routines. The first one of which will display Get Ready and Game Over sprites for the levels. When I played the game with the enemies shooting - it was hard to play. So it was time for me to simplify things a little.

I programmed a little routine in which allowed the player to have protection for a short period of time. This occurs at the start of a level - or after a life has been lost. It was also to minimize the chance of a multiple loss of lives after one enemy or bullet kills the player and the player gets re-spawned in exactly the same position it died.

Now that was a good result :) Here's a video (with a crappy temporary title screen) of the game in action with the new features.

Since things are now looking quite positive. A submission of Amazon Tales is highly likely for RGCD's 16KB cartridge game compo, this Thursday.

A week of disaster

20th - 24th November 2012

Over the week or so. The enemy movement patterns were being worked on. I thought that things were looking pretty good for this part of the project. Unfortunately I ended up getting myself completely lost with the enemy tables, and their behavior. I programmed a routine to allow certain enemies to shoot, according to their behavior table. The shooting turned into a big disaster. Wrong enemies were shooting, and on level 3 the enemy tables didn't work right. Perhaps I missed entering one or two of the values of the element for one of the enemies. Because of this fault the entire enemy table turned into a complete disaster.

I was hoping to get a 16KB cartridge version of the game finished this week in time for RGCD's 16KB cartridge competition. Unfortunately the overall result turned sour. Therefore, due to lack of time - because of work. I have made a decision that I shall withdraw my entry from the competition I am aware that it is very easy to fix, but it unfortunately takes a long time to process. The enemy tables will have to be restarted from scratch. That will probably take another 2 weeks. I am still determined to get this game finished, but sadly not in time for the RGCD cartridge compo.

Update 25/11/2012
After the success of fixing the problem with the enemy shooting, and nearly past the half way mark with this project. There is a positive side that there could actually be an RGCD 2012 entry of this game. I think it is possible that some of the elements will have to be ignored for the game, until after the competition entry has been submitted. Additional elements such as a high score table, a decent ending, etc. will have to wait longer. 

You Cheeky Monkey

15th-19th November 2012

Despite having less free time last week, I've gained more free time this week in the mornings, before my 12-8 shifts (Friday 10-6). I still have Thursday and Saturday free. Last week through to today I have been working really hard on setting the enemy movement pattern for the game.Mainly by creating byte tables to represent the enemy object type, start position (X and Y), movement speed, direction and their proposed behavior patterns. 

So far I have gone as far as the beginning of level 2 - but other levels seem to be somewhat shorter to play - but those will be a lot harder. Especially when I add the mean deadly spiders into that stage. So hopefully as soon as all enemies are in place, I can start getting them to shoot and have more of a proper game by next week.

Today, I added a new enemy to the second level. Take a guess what that one is? ... That's right it's a cheeky monkey. My target is to get all enemies in place by Friday, (I have all day Thursday and Saturday this week). I can work on the shooting tactics for the enemies, and also add some additional game play and a quick front end. Sadly it looks as if the game will not be 100% finished for the RGCD game compo, but who knows what could happen next week?

The Player Dies at the End

6th November 2012

Don't mistake yourself with Alf Yngve's latest Sideways SEUCK masterpiece, which I released on the TND web site on Wednesday last week. Nope. This is basically a blog update about what I have been doing this morning. Well, yesterday, I got the enemies to die when the player throws an object at them. Now today I did the opposite.

The Player Dies at the End by Alf Yngve

A few days ago, I got the collision registers programmed in (The usual box collision register). Yesterday was the bullet/enemy sprite. Today was the enemy/player sprite. I first added subroutines to check whether or not each enemy hits the player and test flash the player - if a collision was spotted. The routine sort of worked, but I thought about making a loop for all deadly objects to collide in any area to the player's sprite's X-Y axis. :) That was much shorter, compared to repetitive comparing values for each sprite. It worked quite nicely as well.

Now that I got the player's sprite to change colour when an enemy collides into it. I worked on building a routine that will check for the player, to see if it was already dead. Followed by adding a routine to do the actual death animation. All worked fine, and the player can die.

The player lies dead, after being bitten by a jungle snake

There were just two more things to be added to the shooting and death routines. Which were to add points to an enemy killed, and also a lives subtraction counter. I got those to work fine. Next came playing the GAME OVER jingle after a life has been lost. I was going to get the player to have a short term protection (flash) but I with the short amount of time I had, I didn't get round to it. So Thursday is a possibility. I might be taking a little break from programming tomorrow. We'll have to wait and see.



The game's engine seems to quite positive, but I can be sure that things WILL eventually turn much better when this Thursday or Saturday, I will be adding some more extra routines to enable some of the enemies to shoot - according to what object they are. Followed by additional behaviour of enemies. Some will walk across the screen in a straight line. Some will move up and down while slowly moving across. Some will shoot, and some will have interesting and quite impressive features.) More about it when I get round to doing exactly that.

Enter the natives

30th September 2012

More productivity at work today, but before I go on my 12-8 shift, I decided to spend this morning (Since 8:45pm) working a bit more on the Amazon Tales project. The deadline is looming closer, but I still manage to spare some of my free time on C64 activities. So what's been happening today? First of all last week, I got the player on screen, move around and shoot. Now it's time to insert some enemies, in which the player will have to shoot at.

First of all, I wanted to test the game sprites to ensure that they all appear on the screen okay, without any movement. I built a test in which shows four natives a dart (which the natives will shoot, and also an aztec coin). Nothing on the enemy front is supposed to move anywhere on screen. Well, it worked out pretty well. Pretty much happy with this so far.

My next job was to get those enemies moving across the screen (or downwards). The plan for the coins will be for those to drop down on to the ground, prompting the player to pick them up. The coins purpose will be to give the player a better ability to shoot at the baddies or move faster - but that will be revealed later on in the blog. If a life gets lost, he loses all abilities. The bullet sprite will be indestructible. More on that later in the blog, when I get round to working on collision.

I got the enemy and bullet sprites moving in a straight line at the same speed - but that wasn't the end of it. I need to add speed table pointers. This is so that the enemies can move at various different speed values. So I added value X + Y tables, according to the speed and direction of the enemy's movement. I also put that into a loop as well. It worked out quite nicely.

Not much time for any more work on this, so I'll be doing more on this game project later on this week.

Enter the Trojahn

17th - 25th September 2011

Well, well well. I have been busy yet again this week. Not only at work but also Woolly Jumper and the Shoot 'Em Up Destruction Set 2. This blog's mainly going to be about SEUDS 2. Well, it's game number 4, Trojahn. Alf has been updating this game a lot, and what I have seen seems to be a huge improvement compared to the old version which he wrote back in 1993. This game featured some more great tricks formed using S.E.U.C.K. Anyway, to make this a SEUDS 2 release. I decided to work on some major enhancements.

Before I actually started programming a new front end for this game production, I decided to work mainly on the in game enhancements. Simply by POKEing the SEUCK to run additional subroutines. One which will play in game music or sound effects, and one which will check for power ups, etc. Also one for the animated background as well. The power up routines only occur if the player breaks the magic urns. These power ups may vary and help enhance the player's skills. Those Urns could reward Trojahn more stamina (faster speed), faster powerful spear throwing, further distance for throwing the spears and also temporary invulnerability for 20 seconds or so. Trojahn loses all his power ups if he gets hit by an enemy of deadly obstacle.

As soon as I was (and Alf was) happy with the power ups, I kept on receiving updated versions of Alf's game. So I referred to using the latest one. I also worked on the in game, ending and title music using DMC V5.0+ and Goat Tracker. The music turned out pretty well, although I was sort of unsure about the title music. :)

Kenz sent me some 2x1 charsets in a bitmap form, but I had trouble converting the C64 bitmap picture into charset form, so I decided to try and convert Alf's original charset into a 2x1 font and then updated it to how Kenz originally drew the chars. The result turned out pretty good.

Now was the time for me to program the front end. I added some text, music, additional routines into the front end source code. I noticed a couple of flickering rasters inside each raster split, but managed to fix this without a problem. The title screen also consists of a music / sfx option, in which is activated by using left / right on the joystick. I also made it where after fire has been pressed, the get ready screen comes on, which reads: ELENA HAS BEEN CAPTURED BY THE SPARTAN KING. GO AND SEARCH FOR HER!. Then I linked the game code to this routine (after the fire button has been pressed) I also added a game over screen, which says TROJAHN'S QUEST HAS FAILED, ELINA HAS BEEN SACRIFICED TO THE MINOTAUR - GAME OVER. Both GET READY and GAME OVER screens have an eerie jingle, to fit the dark atmosphere in the game. Finally I programmed and linked the last part of the game. The ending. Tested the game, seems to be working okay, and I managed to reach the end of the game as well - in cheat mode :)

Get ready for some real carnage

14th August 2011

Sundays are boring, I have to admit. Well, only one thing for it. MORE PROGRAMMING. Well, that's what's been happening today? I have been very busy on a project for Psytronik Software. Since Super Tau Zeta has been finished (Only awaiting Kenz or Ste's loading pic) I decided to work on another game. In fact a very long awaited title, which appeared in Games That Weren't. What game am I talking about? Well does Bloodwheels ring a bell? This game was written back in 1994 originally for Psytronik Software. Perhaps Alf was waiting for someone (before I got involved with SEUCK enhancements at the time) . Sadly it never got enhanced for a commercial release back in the day.

Yesterday, Kenz contacted me via Email asking me if I could implement the logo which he painted for this game on to the front end. Well, I gave it a go, but when I checked out the old title screen I originally did for it back in 2010, I felt that the front end was just too plain. So I decided to make a brand new front end for this game today, and feature some amazing animations and add some extra stuff to the game as well.

The first thing was preparing the files to import into the source code. Those of which were the SEUCK files, music, new charset (which I used from the Pour Le Merite SEUCK game - my charset of course) and also edited the charset to make some frames for the title screen animation. Once all preparing was done, I worked on the programming side of the project. First I programmed a few routines which will hack SEUCK to do amazing things and play music during play. Then I programmed routines that could animate the water (2 chars rolling downwards continuously) and also fixed the score routine, so in 2 player mode, the correct player gets the points per hostage rescued.

As soon as I was happy with all of the in game features, I programmed a new front end, which featured Kenz's cool Bloodwheels logo (from the loading picture) and also got the front end animating and playing music, flashing the "Press fire to start" text. I also added the ability for the players to press fire in either joystick port. Joystick port 2 allowed the player to start a game for 1 players only. Joystick port 1 allowed both players to participate in the action. I also added GET READY, GAME OVER and MISSION COMPLETE scenes. I was really happy with what was done so far.

To end the session, I decided to work on the tape master. I decided not to play around with the loading stripes this time round. An Ocean style loader would be perfect for this compilation, but I used the tape loader source by Martin Piper. Nice loader system, displaying a neat loading picture, based on Alf Yngve's original artwork.