Flash Bang, What a picture

26th February 2011

Earlier on last week I have been working on new sound effects to suit the game. I'm much happier with the sounds, but there are some effects missing. Many of the great Yak's psychedelic games used options to use strobe effects. So I decided to implement and program some strobe effects for when either the player dies or when an alien gets hit. Before I done this, the Game Over and level complete was lacking some colour over the text. I also wanted to change the Level Complete sequence a bit as well. So to make Level Complete much better. During the bonus countdown, the void scrolls downwards faster. Then I added a routine to remove the whole game playing background by filling the screen with the level's void. Then I added a colour wash routine on the WELL DONE text, followed by the GAME OVER text.

Once I was happy with the Well Done and Game Over text, I had a task which was to make the player lose 1000 points if a baby sheep was shot. So I programmed a little routine, which would deduct points off the player. If the very first digit was detected as a / when decrementing the value, I added a routine which makes all characters 000000 otherwise this would have been a bug in the game. Once that was done, I tried it out. Now the players will be LESS inclined to shoot the baby sheep, and will have to save them. Therefore the game is more challenging now.

One final routine to add was the in game strobe effects. I decided to only use $D021, because if I used $D020 as well, you could see the flicking spots at the bottom of the screen where the raster split lies. Plus using $D020 as well as $D021 could be too much for the gamer as well. I used two colour schemes for the player. I used the blue effect per baddie shot, and I used the orange/red effect for the player death. Something disappointed me though. I should really do an effect, which says NO for when a baby sheep dies, but I have unfortunately run out of memory for my code. There's just too much there for this little tweak. There might be a solution to the problem, perhaps I should reproduce the title screen using the Multi Screen Construction Kit. That will preserve $0400 spare bytes to expand my code a little for the sheep death effect. Which I shall do tomorrow. Then it is on to the improvements/tweaking of the game sprites and then the final phase bug fixing. Once all final phase fixing's finished. I'm ready to release this game to Psytronik Software. :)

A fleecy high score and ending

20th February 2011

Well it's another fleecy furball adventure. Sheepoid seems to be progressing more nicer and today I've been doing yet more music composing and additional programming. This time round, I decided to write a dance style ending tune. So I loaded up Goat Tracker and loaded up the "Sheepoid" theme tune and started a new track number. I added some more instruments and after an hour or so the music was made and I was pretty much happy with it. Great!

Now it was time to add a high score name entry routine. I decided to make this part of the game very basic, because I would have had to muck about with interrupts. After I finished the high score entry routine. I added some improvements to the ending, which uses a psychedelic ending and a special scrolling message. I also tweaked the fire button routine so that the player can't shoot if he/she holds down the fire button. Therefore constant pushes of the fire button would be needed. I also made a routine in which checks if both lasers are off screen. If so, then they can be fired otherwise the process is ignored. One final improvement I have made was that the coloured raster bars can scroll upwards. The result's great so far. All I have to do now is some final tweaking/enhancements and bug fixing, for the game. Then hopefully it is ready.

Let's go Psychedelic ... Baaaaaah!

15th February 2011

The past 2 afternoons, I have been working on Sheepoid - again :). I think so far the game's coming out quite nicely. Yesterday afternoon, I was working on the end part for the game. To build the end, I captured the field at the bottom of the screen and turned it into a straight field, without the upwards field from level 1. Then I saved the colour and screen data of the modified field.

After that was done my next task was to program some imaginative ending in a style of Yak the Hairy. Well, I could not really think of much of an ending and opened my imagination. Caught in the world of psychedelia. I decided that I had no option but to do an ending where there's a washing machine, someone throws a brick into it while the wheels are spinning and then self-destruct. Nope. I could have done that I suppose. Nah! What I really done was based it where a space ship lands back on to the field. The sheep jumps out. The space ship takes off and then the rest of the ending - a big surprise. I shall not tell you, but it does involve some hairy beasties :)

Today I decided to redesign my front end and implement it into the code. The first thing I did was remove those horrible looking thick raster beams. Recreated the title screen logo. It looked too much like 1985 or something like that. There was also too much flashing, so I decided to do away with some of it. I added an extra raster split and programmed a routine for the top scroll text. I put the flashing text on to the PRESS FIRE TO PLAY message. The top scroll was made for a purpose. After playing Revenge of the Mutant Camels and Sheep In Space, I decided to base the high score table on typing silly phrases of 40 characters. Just the way how the great Yak did for those two games. I also added a scroll text which scrolled the high scores across the front end slowly.

The worst part had come for the front end. I wanted to get rid of those horrible colour bars and replace them with something that would look much nicer. Any guesses? Yes, that's absolutely correct, demo-style raster colour bars. Glerk! They're easy to program into the raster split, but the worst part of it for me was timing the darn things so that they are straight. So I spent about an hour or so fiddling around with the timing tables and come up with a nice looking front end.

The last part I did today was updated the music using Goat Tracker. I wanted to make a modern version of the title screen tune for Sheepoid, as just using one sawtooth instrument was so 1984. So I added a few leads and also some drums (Oh no, Master Bayliss is going to put some techno/trance style beats to the production - gibber!). Then I altered the notes to play a rock-style tune for the title screen. No techno/trance for a change. Then I imported the remixed version of the sawtooth tune into the title screen code. It turned out very well :)

Bahtastic new look to Sheepoid

12th February 2011

Well Sheepoid seems to be turning out quite nicely, although I cannot say that this game's finished. There's still some more things to update to code. Today I have been programming my own in game sound effects, and tried to make it as sort of Minter style as possible. I created various sound effects for the Get Ready screen, player shoot, enemy hit, baby sheep pick up, player hit and game over tune. After assembling the code from Turbo Assembler. I saved the sound effects player and data, but I forgot to save the actual TASS code. Doh! Trusty me to do that.

After finishing the sound effects and importing it into the game source. I imported all of the level data into the game code and also altered a few routines, where I could animate all 8 different voids. I also set up the game to display the screen from the MSCK library, according to the level in which the player was currently on. Something promising here :). The game is 76% finished now, I think!

Gardens, sea, pyramids. Everything, Baaaaah!

11th February 2011

My main code for Sheepoid's finished (I think), apart from the ending (Which will be changed) as I felt that the ending for Sheepoid would not really be what people would have wanted. A better idea is planned for that, and I have plenty of time to get this project finished beforehand. Anyway, I decided to take a little break from programming today, and work on the main level schemes and graphics. So off the PC cross assembler, and straight on to my real Commodore 64 I go. ;o)

I loaded up the Multi Screen Construction Kit by Jon Wells and I loaded up my character set from the game project (Which I converted from my PC on to a C64 floppy disk). I created a few other character sets. The game uses a mix of hires and multicoloured graphics, so I created a few chars (from char $60+) to make those the scrolling voids. I also made some additional characters for the bottom and side panel, for where the player will be based. I didn't want to use the same panel as I did for the WIP version of the game. So I decided to draw some additional features, which were 1x1 chars to build flowers, trees, Egyptian, pyramids, water and hot desert (although it looks like custard :o).

After finishing the character sets, it was then time for me to create the objects, for putting on to 24 of the level screens. So I built the different scrolling voids (Alth

ough MSCK does not scroll those), and also different versions of the bottom and right panel which the player's always on. After this I found something to be not right. The panel on the right looks ugly without a curved character between the last 2 rows and columns. So I built a curved panel to put on to the background. It looked much nicer. After designing the 24 levels (Which in all, took me a couple of hours to do, as I was remixing some of the existing pane

ls and voids as well). Finally all 24 screens were built. I saved all the data on to the Sheepoid disk, built a final library (On the same disk). Then I ported everything back on to my PC (in the Sheepoid ACME project folder) using my XM1541 and CBMXfer application.

My next job will be to get all the level screens into the game source code. Then program some arcade/Jeff Minter style sound effects as the sounds I made using the Cult SFX editor wasn't really suitable for this type of g

ame, due to it's restrictions ;o).

Sheepoid - Progress so far

Saturday 27th January 2011

Bleatings everyone :)

This shall not be a big blog, as I have a little update for you - or probably a huge update of my progress with Sheepoid and some other news about this game. Just for now as there's not really any new designs, etc to show you but here's some stuff I have to mention about this game so far.

Well today I've mainly been drawing the sprites, and manually typing in the sprite frame tables inside the ACME cross assembler. But I could get more done later on today :) So far I managed to get 4 levels active - as I have been struggling with the Laser Zone char-style explosion routines, which thankfully were working correctly after a week or so. With special thanks to C64 programmer and TND's contributor, Achim Volkers. The explosions of the enemy are starting to look a bit like laser zone, but I added some additional enemy disappearance sprite, which was an animated diamond/star that shrinks (while the chars fly through the screen diagonally).

As well as the explosion effects, I started implementing random X-Y directional speed, delay and colour of the enemies (according to the levels which they are on) and silly 1-liners. This made the game feel very Jeff Minter like and ideal for a Llamasoft tribute game. The other things I added were the enemy types as well per level. I only have 4 levels working right at the moment, but there's plenty of time for me to implement all 24 levels of game play. :)

Today I have just finished drawing all of the sprites (From $80-$FF) using Cellux/Face's Sprite Editor V1.2. All of the captions have been typed down in the source code. I also extracted the Sprite Data and imported it into the source code, ready for compiling.

There's some other things I have in store for this project but I shall not tell you. You'll just have to wait. ;)

The Cyber Sheep are coming

Friday 7th January 2011

Laser Zone. What a classic game that was for the Commodore 64. It's quite a memorable little Arcade classic, which was on a compilation of crazy and really fun games, called "Yak's Progress" by Llamasoft. After playing Laser Zone, I came up with a nice idea for a tribute game. The game's name is Sheepoid, and last night I was just playing around with some raster splits and experimenting. Okay, so no game yet, but I ended up building a front end for the production instead. Probably a wrong move.

Anyway about the game. Laser Zone had two satellites in which had to blast aliens that appeared on screen before they reached to right or bottom surface and captured one of the satellites. The plan for "Sheepoid" is pretty much similar, except for that the game will have some differences. The starting levels may be quite similar, but the actual game itself will have some differences in attack waves - causing this game to be more zany and psychedelic than before. Instead of satellites, the player will be controlling laser powered sheep. Also instead of a small screen area being used. The sprites will use expanded positions. Therefore the game area's going to be pretty much big.

The official release date of this game is not really known as there's quite a bit of work to do, but I doubt that it'll take longer than 2 months or so. I will not be rushing on this game for a sake of a quick release, as there is seriously no point in rushing it for a sake of a quick release. Hmm. :)

When the game is finished, it will feature a variety of different aliens/psychedelic objects to battle against, wacky sound effects, bizarre get ready , level complete, life lost, game over messages, a possibility of an end sequence. Plus a nice looking psychedelic IRQ tape loader system as well. The final production will be uploaded on to my web site at: http://tnd64.unikat.sk.

We've pushed SEUCK to it's limits! - Nyaaaah!

2nd November 2010

I have left this blog alone for a while, but production is going quite well with Nyaaaah! - 15th Anniversary Edition. After successfully importing the game project's work file into the SEUCK Redux source code, I managed to fit in some power ups, to enhance game play, additional in game enhancements and even a brand new front end. Things for me to do before the game is finished, is add a high score detection, a GET READY and GAME OVER sequence and END SEQUENCE. And of course adding the new score/status into the bottom border inside the game.

Implementing the new front end into the game's source was a bit of a bugger, due to the original title screen IRQ used in it. Thankfully I had a solution to this problem, which was to program my own IRQ inside the title screen code. Well, I wanted the Nyaaaah! logo to swing left and right, and I also wanted a scroll text with music. All seems to look good so far. There's still some work to put into the game, itself but hopefully in a couple of weeks time or so, I should be ready to release this game into the Public Domain.

Below is a mock up of the status bar, I plan for inside the game - to make it look less SEUCK. :)

Nyaaaah! 15th Anniversary is coming SOON!

Friday 15th October 2010

Things have gone pretty quiet with my blog, but I have been busy with this project and another Psytronik project. After sucessfully finishing off the main game, attack waves, etc. I imported the work file into the SEUCK Redux source, added a bit of programming, played around with the player's parameters and wrote some tunes to insert into the source. The colour schemes worked a treat. Especially after I set up the level parameters to change the colour scheme and behavior of the game, itself.

All I will need to do now is put in the power ups, and then a new front end + high score table. Then the job is done!

November should hopefully be the release date of this.

Taking a short cut

3rd October 2010
I have been working on level 3 and also the final stage of Nyaaaah! 15th anniversary. This time, level 3's the castle underground. After Snodge successfully escaped the water stage. He finds himself in a deadly underground of the evil biblet ruler's castle. Poor Snodge has to fight his way through the hardest part of the castle. Where wall climbing biblets and lava biblets roam and make things hard for poor snodge. Then he has to face the death saw challenge.



When I was designing the level's graphics scheme, it was very tricky to work on at first. It actually took me over an hour to have the correct pixels for each block for this level. Plus level 3 is sort of inspired from Imaginator. The idea of this stage was that Snodge has to persue up and down ladders and platforms to fight the evil biblets, etc before meeting his next challenge - The death saw challenge. Well, this was probably one of the most easiest boss stages I came up with for such a hard stage. Snodge has to face a giant circular saw, in which he's to avoid contact with. After this stage has finished, Snodge goes to the final stage, where he has to meet the evil biblet ruler. Sadly I have only 2 valid objects left for this stage, so I decided to reuse level 1's boss and add a crown and different behaviour to it. That solved my problem.

Now that I have (I think) finished the main game, itself. I can import the work into the SEUCK redux source engine and test the game in action with infinite lives ... Stay tuned!!!

I'm forever blowing bubbles!

2nd October 2010

Yet another productive day with Sideways SEUCK. This time it's level 2 of Nyaaaah! 15th Anniversary edition. I know that Saturday last week I worked on the background graphics for level 2, but I wasn't really all that happy with those. So today I decided to spend some time making some much nicer graphics for level 2. Since I didn't want to use the same colours scheme as the first level - as the second level would look ugly with this scheme. I altered the multicolour colours to make the underwater graphics look nice. I used black, blue, light blue and purple - to make it look as if every thing's under water. I wanted to add some pipework to the levels, but I didn't want the game to look like Mario, so I pixelled my pipes, made some spikes then put things in place.
Well, it seems that all this hard work with level 2's graphics paid off and the level looks quite nice.

Now that the stage was designed. It was time for me to set up the attack waves. Before I did, I wanted to make some new enemies for this stage. I don't want to have biblets all of the time in this stage. So I created some fish, water snails and even a mean green boss fish, which the player has to defeat. Then I inserted the wodge load of enemies for this stage I also altered player 2's settings for testing the level. It seems to me that level 2 was just too chaotic. I had to alter the enemy firing rate, as it looked too silly and was way too difficult to play for this level. Much easier, although this stage is still quite hard to play. Maybe I shall work on level 3's graphics (the cave) tomorrow after work. CIAO for now!

My Digital C2N experience!

25th September 2010

Although we are very close (or probably already are) in the digital revolution, where technology expands their horizons. There are still Commodore 64 hobbyists and techbuffs, creating new pieces of hardware for this beloved machine. You would probably ask to yourself "Why are people are still making hardware, software and games for this obsolete machine?". You should never judge a book by its cover. We don't that's for sure.

Anyway in early parts of 2010, I was recommended to try getting myself a DC2N for my C64 tapes. I sent a PM to a member of Lemon 64, to ask about what they thought of DC2N, and the person responded that he had the prototype of the DC2N and that it was remarkably great. So I read a lot of information about the DC2N site and decided to pre-order one. Within 6 months, the device was ready and shipped over to me (after I paid £90.00 for it of course).

Okay, so who remembers the old days where you are loading in programs from tape on your Commodore 64, left the room to eat something, make a cup of tea (or go to the toi..... okay, I better not mention that one)? Then you come back to your room to find either a program has loaded, or a blue screen or load error has occurred? Well most of us TAPE users had to suffer this problem. The datasette can be a problem at times, as it required a steady hand and good head alignment and major cleaning around the capstans, etc. Thankfully for the Commodore 64 fanatics, you can clearly watch your C64 tape deck face the digital revolution. As the DC2N is born.

So then, can you insert tapes into a DC2N to remove those bad loading woes? No, not really. The DC2N does not have abilities to insert a real tape into. Besides that would have been plain silly. You can't exactly read a tape without mechanics, and DC2N is digital. However, you don't really need this. All you would have required was a 5 volt PSU with a correct plug size (No higher voltage as it could cause serious damage to your device), a Commodore C2N datasette, or clone (Fully aligned and cleaned) and a 2gb SD Card for dumping. Oh and the most important of them all (Boo, hiss) a fully functional PC, and a SD card reader (Most PCs have internal SD card drives, like mine does) - and a Dumping utility which converts dump files into TAP files. You will also need - A COMMODORE 64. If you don't find one, I'm sure you can find cheap working ones on EBAY. :o)

So then, how did the dumping of my tapes work on a DC2N? Well, first of all, I plugged in the 5V adapter, and plugged it into the back of the device, I also plugged in an SD Card to the SD card slot of the device (as my SD card was formatted to FAT16) and then I plugged the datasette into the back of the device. After switching everything on, I got the welcome message "F. syst. mounted". This represented that the DC2N was ready for beginning either the dumping process or load .tap files through to your Commodore 64 computer.

The device has six buttons, which are set up the same way as the Commodore C2N tape deck. Because I wanted to make a dump of one of my tapes. (I started with my Sub Hunter tape, to try it out) I rewound the tape to the start (plugged into the DC2N) and then pushed the record button on the DC2N. After pressing record, I pushed the Play button on the DC2N, then the tape deck. Dumping of the tape was then in session. During the dumping process, I could see that the DC2N's light was flashing merrily, showing that the data pulses from the datasette was being read to the DC2N. Once the tape reached the end on the C2N tape deck, the DC2N read the STOP. However, to ensure that I had to keep the correct dump stored on to the SD card I had to press the STOP and EJECT buttons on the DC2N - otherwise I would have a blank .tap image with nothing readable on it (after conversion).

After the Dumping process was finished, I booted up the PC, logged into my user profile on my desktop and then downloaded a program called DC2Nconv. This was a Windows based utility (once installed on to the PC) which can convert a DC2N tape dump file (DMP) into a executable .TAP file that can be stored to the DC2N or loaded from WinVice, CCS64, or Hoxs64 C64 emulators.

Now for the fun bit ... Loading a program from the DC2N to the Commodore 64. I had to switch off the DC2N device from the mains and unplug everything, then plug the device on to my Commodore 64. I stored the .tap file from the SD card into the DC2N and then put it on to the Yes, that's right - it goes into the C64's tape port :). I also selected from the SD card, "SUBHNTR.TAP" (As the DC2N reads files in MSDOS form, so I made it 8 chars so that the filename was easy to find. Then I loaded the device the same way as a Commodore 64 did and everything loaded wonderfully great.

I do remember dumping some other classic C64 tapes, including the Off the Hook compilation, into digital TAP form. One of the games which I always had problems with loading was Black Thunder, due to the unsteady or unstable loader which was used for the game. After dumping and splitting the tapes, in digital form I found out that although this game loaded fine in WinVice, CCS64 with the loader, but when stored on to the DC2N it didn't work. I scanned the loader using FinaTAP and discovered it was PAVLODA pulses - and that to me general opinion was one of the most annoying loaders in C64's history. Well I did have loads of problems loading Tony Crowther's classic fun game on most C2N tape decks. Perhaps either the tape was faulty or the awful loader system was bugged completely. Thankfully to replace this version, I used a version from my old Zzap 64 cover tape - using a more stable loader. :)

Dumping TAPs is indeed hard work. As I have said earlier on, using a C2N with full alignment makes dumping a dream. But if you failed to do this, or tried dumping faulty tapes. Then unfortunately this will not work very well. As there were too many tapes to dump (which would have took too much time). I chosen an alternative option, but I will not go any further than this. I dumped tapes to .tap form, according to the ones that required dumping.

15th Anniversary for Nyaaaah!

5th September 2010

I've been a bit burned out with game programming, since Bionik Granny Returns got released a few weeks back. So I fancied a little change this weekend, so I started on working on a new game. Because near to the end of September (or beginning of October 2010) is the 15th Anniversary of Nyaaaah! (A well know PD SEUCK game, which was released back in those days). I decided to make a final Nyaaaah! game, to mark the celebration of the 15 years of (putting up with) Snodge the Biblet, and his crazy antics.

This time round, I gone for Sideways Scrolling SEUCK, as I thought this could be an ideal engine for a new Nyaaaah! game. Hence that using the editor for Nyaaaah! 11 and also some of the game's existing graphics for the first level. Well, it wouldn't be Nyaaaah! without those. However, I created some new blocks to make a sort of village huts for level 1 of the game. Yes, you have guess it. It's called Biblet Village. I was bored with using plain background with trees all of the time, so it was time for something sort of different.

When it come to adding enemies into the game, I used the angry and bad biblets for the first level. There are no other enemies for this level. Just two types of bad biblets.

I had some clever ideas for the end of level 1's boss stage. I created frames of the same background graphics for the boss stage and set up the level settings to wait a second before some magical effect occurs. This starts with a blue mad biblet (tapping his foot) saying "Hello there little one. So you wish to enter the hole? You got to get past me first!". The blue biblet disappears then a barrier appears to block the hole, and further to the right of the screen, the ground begins to crumble. Then the blue biblet comes back - as a big boss.

The plan

I don't want to make this a standard SEUCK creation, but add additional programming/hacks to the game production. One plan is to use the potion bottles in the game as power ups. Where some are strong power ups. Meanwhile the red bottles will lose Snodge's primary weapon and he has no other choice but to lick the baddies to their doom. Snodge will collect a Snorkel at the end of level 1 for the underwater stage (level 2) - after the level 1 boss stage of course.

Other plans I have for the game is to use different background colour schemes, depending on which level Snodge is likely to be on. For example, level 1 uses the standard colours that I set up for the first stage (The biblet village). The second level uses a blue background and some nicer colours for the underwater stage. And I might use some nicer colours for level 3's platform/ladders stage.

I also have plans to add a new front end to this game, add a high score table, options screen and some music. Hopefully around about October 2010, this game should be finished and available on my web site!

Anyway, here's a Youtube video of the very first level of the game - in action!

Sea Software's Rocket Man Blog

19th May 2010

Not my blog this time, but something quite interesting for SEUCK gamers out there. It's still related to the Sideways SEUCK competition. Enjoy!

At first the game should have been some kind of a "Super Bruno" Remake (Pictured below) (Super Bruno was one of the main characters from Sea Software in the early nineties), but many things made me change my mind; first of all, the skin should have been pink, while the cloak should have been red, but I thought I couldn't manage such a weird colour scheme! So I gave up, deleted the big nose, painted the character grey and put a helmet on his head: The Rocket Man was born! But... Why "The Rocket Man"?

In January 2010 I received a Christmas gift from my brother, a box with 2 DVDs and 5 CDs by the french band "Rockets": "The Rocket Man" was their first, rare single (issued in 1974), and one of those CDs contained the instrumental version (the original version, the A-side I mean, was on the first box, that my brother gave me the year before!); this title came to my mind when I was designing the game, and I decided to name it after that song. In general, the
game was made with Rockets' music in mind; I would have liked to make a SID cover of one of their songs for the title screen, but I gave up, mainly because of the copyright issue, but also because I thought I wasn't able to do it  :) 

Moreover, if you have never heard about this band, they used to dress up like alien robots (they also used to paint their body in grey), so the character of the game can also be considered as a homage to their strange and funny make up  :) 

When I read that there would have been some enhancements for the winner, I had the idea to put two different "power ups" in the game: the "P" was meant as a power up for the weapon (if you check the sprites you'll notice I made three different kind of weapon - I picked up the third at the end because it was bigger and more precise), while the "B" was meant to be a bomb: looking at the game, the B's are put in strategic locations  :)

Note: Sadly this game did not make it to first place as Pour Le Merite had an overwhelming number of votes, which made the game a winner. Thankfully this game made 2nd place, which still won a new front end. :)

Ok, that's all...