Stand by your Llamas - The Alpacalypse is coming

4th February 2013

Stand by your Llamas. Engage defences as an Alpacalypse is coming - well, near your Commodore 64 and WinVice of course. I have been very busy the past few weeks (despite problems on get graphics in place) bringing yet a sequel to the Jeff Minter tribute "Sheepoid". It's called "Sheepoid DX". It is a fun cute game inspired by the classic Laser Zone, which Jeff wrote back in the early 1980's. Compared to Laser Zone, Sheepoid DX is somehow different. Especially when on later levels, the aliens start moving diagonal directions. One sheep would have to defend the other.

Sheepoid DX consists of 24 levels, in which the world is under threat of an alien invasion - or to put it another way an Alpacalypse. Two sheep have been transported into a incoming mother ship. A funny discovery was made, that there are 24 different neon vortexes, which give a strange vision for the sheep. One sheep is placed at the bottom of the screen, and another is placed on the far right. They have to defend themselves from ongoing invaders of each zone, simply by bleating pulse waves at them - so the aliens get destroyed. The player can also rescue sheep to gain smart bombs, those get activated with the space bar. The player's sheep has to try and avoid shooting the incoming sheep. If those poor little blighters get shot, 1000 points gets deducted from your score. No matter how far you get, it can be possible to end up with a very low score if you keep shooting the sheep.

Unlike the original Sheepoid. This game is more polished, with amazing graphics by Trevor Storey. The front end presentation looks similar to the original title screen from the first Sheepoid. The game has some better features installed. I still added the scrolling void in each neon vortex, but Trevor did amazing level graphics, which I am sure you would love a lot in this version of the game. I also removed the witty captions to make way for a better effect. The lazer beams. These are to make it look as if each invader is entering the vortex.

There are still some old Yak style favourites such as the camels (They still roam level 2 of this game), the Ancipital goat type of creature, but the majority of the enemies are completely different compared to the original Sheepoid.

I had a laugh with some of the ideas I wanted to implement into Sheepoid DX. I thought it would be quite funny to add a funny phrase for engaging a hidden cheat into the game (That was yesterday). I also had some fun playing around making music and sound effects using a music editor I had never used before. SidWizard in fact. SidWizard's awesome. So if you want to be a C64 composer, I recommend that you try it.

Well, the main game of Sheepoid DX is finished (I hope) and it is just the final mastering to finish off. I'm releasing this along with Woolly Jumper, hopefully via Psytronik Software and RGCD in a month's time or possibly over that period. It will be worth the wait I can promise you.


There are

Enter the Sector

1st-6th September 2012

Over this week I have been working on preparing and building the 32 levels for Trance Sector - fixing some additional bugs, building improvements for the game and programming the intro presentation for it. Now finally, the hard work is nearly done, it is on with the BETA test phase, which I hope will get great feedback.

I tested the new levels myself, and I'm not that good a gamer to be honest. I struggled on some of the levels in Trance Sector in cheat mode, but found that every single level in the game is most definitely possible to complete. I feel that this could be a real addictive game as well. If there's no major issues in the game for the beta testers, I can send the final masterpiece to Daniel Kahlin for tape mastering (As he's been doing a mega cool high speed tape loader system exclusively for Trance Sector. I shall be keeping my fingers crossed. :)

My next C64 project WILL be Amazon Tales, a co-op production by Alf Yngve for RGCD's 16KB cartridge game competition - and it won't be a SEUCK game this time round ;)

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.

Once again in the Amazon

28th February 2009

Well it seems as if I have been rather busy on the programming side of things today. Kenz has sent me a .d64 with the enhanced version of The Last Amazon. (See his blog here) The game sure was cool with bonus weaponry, and also the animation of the flowing water was excellent.


Kenz showed me a .gif preview of the type of Front End he would like for this game. It seems to me that he wants a very simple front end with a bitmap logo at the top, a 2x2 charset in the middle of the screen and 1x1 charset at the bottom of the screen. So I took all of the main SEUCK game files , relocated the tunes for the game, and also the other bits of data and created an ACME cross assembler project then I worked on the main code and compressed it, and my result turned out the same as what Kenz expected on the the .gif image example he showed.

Although Kenz did send a text file for me to add to the message lines, I was unable to add the eyes graphics, and numbers, because the text data was being used as !SCR commands in ACME cross assembler. So some of the things had to be left out! After all programming and testing, it seems that I have got a nice result!