Darker than Light

3rd-8th July 2014

Back in January 2014. I worked on a SEUCK game co-op with Alf Yngve called "Dark Force". The challenge was originally to get a first release out for new year's day. It failed and got released later on during that month. February/March saw a re-relase of the same game, with a few extra enhancements. Only major drawback was the SEUCK slow-down syndrome... Eurgh!

Now today on 8th July 2014 before I set off to my work place. I am very pleased to reveal the that the final version of Dark Force. It is Dark Force - Redux. The whole game data was imported into the SEUCK Redux frame work, which Martin Piper supplied on github. I also did a lot of additional hard work programming this production the past 4 days. Including re-programming the new front end. Enhancing the background level settings. Here's the overall result.

- Black/Blue loading screen with loading picture and music (Music from the TND intro on the disk version 'Emotions from Heaven')
- New front end with Hi-Score table, as before, but logo had to be carefully downgraded to 3 colour logo mode, due to lack of memory space for bitmaps.
- Slight tweak of an instrument on the front end tune
- Different background colour schemes for each level
- Intelligent enemy fire (Fires bullets in the direction of where the player was last positioned).
- Most important of them all ... No more SEUCK slow-down syndrome

What originally was meant to have been an experiment with SEUCK, turned into a fun 'game inspired by 'Light Force' by FTL.

If you would like to try out the SEUCK Redux engine, then check out:

Martin's C64 Repository on Github

For the C64 game Dark Force, please visit:

The New Dimension - Download games page

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