16KB Cartridge Game compo - Ideas. Now which should I choose?

26th June 2011

While I feel to have the urge to finish of Super Tau Zeta for Psytronik Software this week (If I finish from work at 4pm on an 8am - 4pm shift). Another game idea has come to my mind. It is also something for the 16KB cart game competition. I attempted a few things when it came to Commodore 64 assembly programming. It all started with moving sprites around and having to dodge them. The crappy "Target-X" series (I actually did do a Target-X 3 in 2001, but it never came to the light - the disk had died on me at the time), the Gravity series, and in 2004-2008, a pure milestone of a shoot 'em up with varied challenges called "Sub Hunter". I also did a couple of psychedelic games, like Sheepoid and Camels in Space, created in the Jeff Minter style mode (Except for the graphics, which used my own sprites and multicoloured all the way through).

There was however one type of game, which I never actually produced, and it is something retro gamers mainly loved in the 8-bit world. We have seen many of those, but this genre does not die out whatsoever. "What is this retro geek, called Richard/TND talking about then?" you may ask. Well, it is the "PLATFORMER". The question is what type of platform game could I write, and how would I come around it?

Well, I could I suppose, do a single screen which uses the Lode Runner style of mode, in which you're a player having to grab dots. Well, this could be quite appealing. Or perhaps I should do a platform game which uses the horizontal scrolling map. Come to thinking about it, I can only scroll 256 chars. Block/Map scrolling is very tricky. Thankfully I can refer to a framework source which was used for the Ultimate Stunt Boat Challenge source code. Or perhaps I could do a simple single screen platform game. Well, I have a few ideas, but I would need to think about what I could implement for the C64 16KB competition. Here are some simple ideas I have come up with - theoretically.

The Death Saw Challenge

An evil scientist has created several rooms, which consist of moving circular saws, which move along the walls, horizontally, vertically or possibly diagonally. Your player must move around the platform maze, climbing up and down ladders having to flick the switches to disable all of the saws. The only problem is that if you flick one particular switch, a saw may stop, but other saws may keep on moving. This would be quite a gory idea, but sounds quite appealing. Later levels could have faster moving saws, and also some trick switches, that will trigger traps.

Sheepoid II - Wooly Jumper

A psychedelic platform game with a slight twist. You are a Sheep which has to get across several levels. The platforms will move at a constant pace, while your sheep is happily bouncing up and down. The player must avoid falling off the edge. Also to make things more interesting, alien ships can fly across the screen in both directions, sapping the player's energy. The sheep can collect laser pods to fight back the aliens.

Put the Kettle On

I remember a classic VIC20 game called "Wacky Waiters" by Imagine software. Now, I'd love to do a C64 conversion, but I had something completely different in mind. It's a funny game idea in the mode of Wacky Waiters, but instead, you are going to one of the kitchens, and then try and serve cups of tea to the customers who are waiting. The only problem is that you have to carefully enter the lifts which are moving up or down. There could be various objects appearing in the background to slow you down, such as banana skins, bottles, etc.

However, I think Wooly Jumper could be the game I may possibly create for this competition. It sounds like a good laugh and ... but you will have to wait and see what gets released near to November time for the RGCD 16kb cart compo :)

Building pipes

7th June 2011

I originally started to do some graphics for the "Pressure Pipe" game yesterday, but for some reason after saving the VICE snapshot in V2.23, I ended up with VICE crashing. So today it was back to the drawn board - Literally :) Okay, don't laugh. We do make mistakes I must however admit. Anyway, today while I was listening to some C64 media on the "Armalyte" CD, and Remix.Kwed.org, I have decided to work on the in game graphics and character sets. I had second thoughts about designing everything on Multi Screen Construction Kit, as it would take me longer. Also I had feeling that VICE may have a popup which could shut everything down.

I loaded up the cross-platform tool, "Cuneiform" and worked on the charset and graphics data. Then saved everything and exported the stuff in PRG format. Once I exported the .PRG file and imported into the .D64, I loaded up Jon Well's Multi-Screen Construction Kit and then loaded up the D64 with the graphics charset. It was then time for me to design and save the objects data, which I did. I had to play around with some of the graphics, as they didn't quite look like how I would have wanted those. So after a few alterations, I succeeded with it. Now all I had to do was for the screen, put everything together. Well, yet again, I succeeded with that. A screen's built and stored, and here's my result for the first level. Maybe I could do some more level designs later on in the project. The programming of the game will be more important now I have a graphics mockup ready for the game. I just need to paint some balls in a Sprite Editor (Might do this tomorrow) and then start programming the game.

Here comes Mario :)

5th June 2011

It's official. Mario is coming to the Commodore 64. Okay, I fibbed there. I bet that caught you attention huh? Well, I guess so, who else would be reading this? So then, I have a week off work this week (as I have to use up ALL my annual leave before 30th June 2011). I decided to work on a brand new game project, which should hopefully be a free download from my web site once finished and tested.

This time round it's a new genre puzzle game (or probably not new) for the good old Commodore 64 called "Pipe Pressure" (Probably would sound a lot better if it was called "Pressure Pipe". You decide for yourself :o)). The concept is a very simple concept, which could probably become an addictive puzzler if all goes to plan. The idea I come up is a very simple concept and was sort of an inspiration from those PC flash games you tend to get on line.

Anyway, the concept is pretty much straight forward. (Yawn). When you start the game, a series of four balls of a different colour will appear on to the screen for a few seconds. You must then memorize what colour balls should go into which pipe (indicated with arrows). Then you get to play the game. You have to race against the clock to get 40 correct coloured balls into the pipes within a certain time limit. To increase the confusion. There will be additionally different coloured balls appearing. If none of those match the ones which you had to memorize. The user would have to throw those into the disposal chute at the bottom (simply by pressing the fire button). To make the game idea more confusing if a wrong ball ends up in the disposal chute, or a wrong ball enters the pipe. A life will be lost. At the moment, it is planned to have 10 levels, but if I find that 10's not enough, then levels can increase later on in the game. Tomorrow, I shall work on the game's graphics. Then maybe later on, I shall program the game.

Richard @ RetroVision 2011 - Llamasoft jolly!

22nd May 2011

Well nothing new to show you at the moment, I did not even take any photos at this event as I really got carried away with enjoying myself (Oops, now that was silly). It started when my brother, Phil and I got up at 9am, had some breakfast and tea (Put the kettle on Philip). I was on the IPod Touch checking for new emails before setting off to the event. We both got ready and driven from Solihull to Oxford, getting stuck in traffic for about 40 minutes or so, due to an accident in one of the junctions. When we got there, we found parking to be really awkward, so we had to use the city centre multi-floor car park.

Anyway, after I got to the Foly Bridge pub, I bought a glass of cola for Phil and also one for myself, then I headed off to the function room and said "I have come for the Retro Vision event, I am Richard, Sheepoid programmer, and this is my brother Philip". Kenz was very surprised to finally see me in person at the event. I went over to the C64 and thought I surprise the people by playing Sheepoid, and then entering on the high score table "Richard Bayliss is here". This was where I then bumped into Vinny, followed by my co-op assistant of Sub Hunter. Frank Gasking. They both were also delighted to see me in person down there. One of them even bought me a drink and offered to buy Philip a drink, but he turned down the offer. Frank also got out his copy of Sheepoid and asked if I could sign it. Which I did. Kenz also came over to me and got a copy of Sheepoid out and asked if I could sign the inlay as well. Which I also did.

The computer, which I was mainly playing games on at the event was mainly on the Commodore 64C (Just like what I have). The C64C also had a 1541 Ultimate device plugged into the back of the machine, with LOADS and LOADS of Commodore C64 games on there, including Sheepoid. I might consider ordering one of these later on this year, as my 1541 disk drive keeps playing up. I also talked to Frank and Vinny about how I was involved in programming games. I even brought a disk with a couple of previews (Super Tau Zeta and Up In The Air), but I really should have brought it on an SD Card.

Later on, after looking around, I went straight back to the C64C and got Philip sitting next to me, and did something which brought memories back. We had a Vioris challenge :) After all these years (1993 or something like that), Philip and I were playing Vioris and he, unfortunately beat me at this game. Pah! Typical ... I'm not that good at gaming am I? ... I decided to then play the classic "Commodore Force" cover tape game, Relax ... Ooops, he beat me once again. Then afterwards, I played Trailblazer against him and I still lost at it! ... It goes to show that I am more of a games creator than a games player today :o) I was then interviewed by Paul Drury from Retro Gaming magazine, asking me questions about how I was involved on the Commodore 64 and why I was involved. I was happy to answer those questions, and as soon as the interview was over after 2 or 3 minutes or so, I went back up and played "Star Sabre" for the Amstrad CPC, as well as Drop Zone on Kenz's Specadore (Commodore 64 with a painted casing to make it look like a Spectrum). Man, that "Star Sabre" game was awesome, I wish there was a port of it for the Commodore C64. Hope a programmer (not me) would be able to take on this challenge).

RetroVision had some great competitions, I participated in only one, but I shall tell you about it later on. One competition, which I did not participate in was Hiper Viper for the BBC computer. I saw the game in action. It was one of those classic remakes of the traditional Worm/Snake style game.

The next competition was "Sheepoid". Vinny was the man in charge of the scores, and the game appeared on the big screen. Darn. I forgot to take some photos of this event. Pff! There were some players playing really well at this game, and there were some players who failed with embarrassment. Especially where one particular person scored NO points at all. There was one person who put their name down for this competition, but they did not seem to be present for the competition at the time, so I got my brother to cover for them. Oh dear. Bad move. He did not do good at all. He scored 30 points, and lost a life straight away. This really made me laugh!

There were also some people speaking to me about Commodore 64 stuff. Colin showed me some classic games which he was involved with, or had friends who made the games - which unfortunately never actually got released. Colin also showed me his music editor, which he's working on for the Commodore 64. One particular game, which took my attention on the C64 was an unreleased blaster, which was written back in 1993. I cannot remember what the game was called, but it reminded me of Firebird Software's classic shoot 'em up called Galax-I-Birds. Another game was some kind of underwater platform game. I said to the person who showed me the two games, if those were released back in the eighties, they would have made great Mastertronic / Firebird releases. Also if the game was released in 1993 it would have made a great cover tape game for one of the two UK C64 magazines that were still alive at the time.

Another gaming competition come up. I signed my name for it, and I signed my brother's name for the compo. Not realising that it is a tournament for more than 5 players. I played my brother up by putting his name as "Philip/Pork Pie". The compare asked for the compo entrants, "Richard/TND" and also "Philip/Pork Pie". I was laughing when I heard that. We played a few bouts of the tournament. I lost completely, Philip made it to the finals, which made me a bit jealous. Well, as I have said before, I am more of a game creator than a gamer in general :)

Before I decided to leave the event and head for home, I was sitting outside speaking to Philip until Kenz come along and asked me to sign a Sheepoid framed poster for the charity auction. I was very happy to oblige to do this. The auction went on for ages, and in the lot sixty something was the picture, signed by me. Philip missed the picture being sold at the auction. After this, I went over to Kenz, Vinny, Frank and some other people. Shook their hands and said I had a great time and sure would love to come to RV2012 next year. What a fantastic event it has been.

Oops, I had a great time at RetroVision 2011, but I had forgotten a couple of things. One was to ask for a tape and premium disk version of Sheepoid, before leaving and another which was to show the work of Up in the Air (A project which I held back, due to feeling uncomfortable with parts of the project and also due to work) and Super Tau Zeta (Which is currently still under development). Sorry to Alf and Wayne for failing to show the previews from my floppy.

Joy-sticks :)

Tuesday 17th May 2011

Just as I thought it was nearly all over for Sheepoid (Baaaah!), I've had quite a big surprise today. First, when I was coming home from work, I bought two ice creams from the Ice Cream van. One for myself, and one for my brother. I sat down, relaxed enjoying my 99 with flake. Then my brother said to me "I have a done a surprise project for you, Richard.". I originally thought that Phil must have been secretly working on a C64 style game on his lap top for my PC or something similar. Well, How wrong I was. My surprise was much bigger. It's not a game this time, but something which I never expected. - A brand new, and pretty special joystick for my (Take a guess) Commodore 64.

I am guessing that Phil found it really difficult to use the SpectraVideo joystick, which I have had for so many years (and is still working today), while he was playing Sheepoid on Friday last week. He even failed to get past the first level, due to the joystick being pretty awkward. So I showed him how to play the game properly. Well, either last week or this week. He secretly ordered various parts and components, and he built a new arcade style joystick inside the garage, and also used some unused wood and boarding, and he coated it with white paint. It must have took him some time to do this, especially the electronics. The biggest problem would probably have been to find a suitable port for the joystick. So he found one of my old joysticks and wired that up to the new joystick. One problem ... The wire's too long :)

Phil also worked hard on making an additional feature for this special joystick by wiring the direction controls, to move the player according to direction of movement. The red button was wired to act as the usual fire button. Finally the blue button was something special, which joystick manufacturers failed to add for the Commodore 64. Especially for driving simulators and platform games. The blue button was used as an extra UP command. This is so that when playing platform games, the blue button could be used to allow the player to jump. What a clever chap ;o)

To finish off his secret project, Phil decided to test the new joystick on my Commodore 64. He had to fiddle around with loading stuff using the DC2N, while I was away. Then he managed to load up the cute and hilarious Thalamus game, Creatures and he tested the joystick on the game. Worked a treat.

I was impressed with the amazing work and time, which Phil spent on this secret little hobby project. I loaded up Hewson's Uridium and played the game using the new joystick. Hmm, it is something I would need to get used to. Mainly because I am used to having the fire button on the left and the direction stick to the right. Instead the buttons are on the right, and the main controller was on the left. That did not really matter because I played Uridium quite well with this device. Huge thanks Phil.

A new front end

Monday 18th April 2011

It was yet again my day off work and I decided to work on the front end for the new Alf Yngve game for Psytronik Software. I had some nice looking ideas for the front end, which unfortunately required a lot of time with raster timing. I got the logo to display and also the credits charset, however I had come across a slightly annoying problem with the source code. The timing of those nice looking colour bars. I had to muck around with the source a little before I got the final result for the static text. I just have the scroll text raster timing to work on. The front end looks quite nice, but is still unfinished. I'm considering to add a simple sprite star field on to the title screen, and also some game options and high score table. Anyway, results are looking good so far. :)

Power Me Up

Saturday 16th April 2011

Okay, something completely different and I think the game's author will feel relieved after he reads this blog. I have been taking a look at one of Alf Yngve's new games, which he has specially written for Psytronik Software, and he has waited ages for a new version of his great sideways SEUCK game. Finally the wait can be shorter, specially for him. I also said that I'm aiming to get this game done in time for Retro-Vision 2011 as well. But can I get it done on time? At the moment there is a great percentage that I can get it done. Enhancing SEUCK games don't really take all that long for me - as long as what I programmed, already had things working properly.

I took a look at some of the production notes on what power ups I should add to the game. I captured the work file, disabled the SEUCK editor and then split the memory into segments. Then I exported the 2 files into the project cross-assembly folder. Once I done this I wrote some new music for the title screen, and took the title screen from TAU ZETA and extracted that into the cross-assembly source code.

As soon as the file preparation was finished, I was able to do a bit of ACME cross-assembly programming. At $0801 (Which will be the run address after Exomizer decrunches the game), I added some routines which will cleverly hack into the SEUCK code to make way for the enhancements (and also fix additional in game bugged routines, such as the scoring, etc). Then I added the power ups code and linked it all into the source file. So now after the player collects a flashing green thing (whatever it is) the player will gain a specific power up. Which could be: A temporary shield, directional fire, fast laser (and longer distance shooting), mega bomb and also a score converter (which converts the alien score into digits). I also made it that a power up is lost after the player has lost a life. The player will then have to battle really hard on quite a longer flight before he or she can pick up the next power up. - and probably lose it again :)

Sunday 17th April 2011

Today I designed the front end logo, simply by using Alf's original front end logo (I liked it a lot), resizing it and then anti-aliasing the image. Then I worked on the new front end character set, in which the main chars are 1x1 and the name in the credits are 1x2. Sorry, but I have no screen shots of the project to show you at the moment, because I have nothing (the new front end) to show. :)

I still have a new front end to program, and also some Get Ready, Game Over jingles, Mission Complete jingles to work on, but that can wait until next time I get round to it.

Sheepoid - Finished - Or is it?

Thursday 30th March 2011

Ok, so you have not really heard much about Sheepoid since the last part of the blog? Well, don't panic. I've not given up with it, in fact I have finished the game itself already. "When and where will it be released?" you may ask. Well, after having a discussion with a few of my regular contacts, I have decided to release this game to Psytronik Software on disk or tape, and of course, you'll be able to download the game FREE from The New Dimension and/or the Psytronik Software web site, as soon as it is released. Although the whole game's finished, I have a secret program to program into the game's warning notice, and of course the most important part of the release. The disk/tape mastering :) This project has been great fun to create and develop :)

More enhancements and memory preservation

27th February 2011

Today I was sort of brainstorming on how to preserve some more memory for additional/final touches with the code. Well, I found a solution. Redesign the front end screen using the Multi Screen Construction Kit, and make a new library with the existing graphics. I redesigned the front end (using another VICE window to help) and then saved the new library. Then I reinstalled it into the game project source. I also moved some routines around and removed one of the screen files, as this was no longer required. I assembled the source and run Sheepoid. BRILLIANT! MORE MEMORY SPACE for the final touches. Excellent :)

Now before I can add the new exploding sheep death to the game's source code. I've got to redesign some of the sprites again. So I loaded up the Sprite Editor V1.3 by Faces and redesigned some of the sprites. As well as created some new sprites. I changed all Space Invader sprites into assorted animals, and my version of the Ancipital creature (Half man, half goat?). Then I renamed the level "They have escaped from their pens". I also recreated the Llamas, my own version of the Zzapstars, dogs, and I got rid of the beer to make it the "Horus and the Sands of time" level instead.

The next job I did was to implement the baby sheep explosion routine, in which will displays the sprite "NO, NOT ME!" and make the sheep squeal if it was shot (and lose 1000 points). Well, thankfully I fixed this routine. I come a cross a small bug in which was aliens dying using the Sheep's death. After a moment or two with the fixing phase, the problem was solved. Now I added the infinite lives cheat routine for testing the whole game. I then assembled, and ran the game in WinVice V2.3 (XS64 mode). I played through the whole game, and was pretty much happy with what has been done through this game. I think the game's pretty much finished now. All I have to do now is the disk / tape mastering system and maybe a possible tweak with the game's colours or something like that. Here's a BETA video of what could be the final version of the game in action!

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).