I always wondered how the guys/gals at Lucasfilm Games managed to cram Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken onto a few small disks. So this competition was the perfect opportunity to test drive my…
And thus this create a game series ends...
We fix the last few bugs (score was not properly reset on replay, music was stuck on saving the scores). Now the game is complete and can be enjoyed as it was meant to be!
Oh joy, Smila (the graphician) actually touched up the game even more for a retail r…
And of course lots of little bugs were found and fixed
-Live number display was off on a new level.
-Beams would sometimes not be removed on the final boss
-Disable screen output when saving scores (IRQs go nuts if using kernal save routine)
-Cleaned up "extro" text
Have fun!
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in New Old Things
And here's the final bit, the extro part. Never have the player play through your whole game and put "Game Over" there. At the minimum a nice message is required
And yes, it's symbolic at 98, since there's always some bugs left to fix. The last two steps will be mostly bug fixes.
Since it's t…
And here's a little gameplay update, the bats. The diagonal movement was too predictable, so now there's more randomness to it.
The bat will move in curves. On every end of a curve the new direction will be decided randomly. Two tables are enough, however due to the C64 using two bit complement neg…
And a nice little update, Richard Bayliss added sounds effects. Now there's a SFX mode, toggle in the title screen with left/right.
The effects are integrated in the player code as separate "songs". So we add a variable SFX_MODE and check it's value when we want to play an effect or start the music…
Now a little update that adds a change that was long overdue: Zombies do not wake up all of a sudden, but peek out of the ground before. Now players should be able to escape if they're keeping an eye out.
We change the .WakeUp part of BehaviourZombie to show up, look left/right a few times and only…
Now we have a real two player coop mode. It's not both players playing by themselves, but true teamwork. Sam needs to capture, and only then Dean can shoot enemies.
To makes things easier we add a new flag to check if two player mode is active (TWO_PLAYER_MODE_ACTIVE):
;set two player mode…
An addon to make the other bosses a bit stronger against Sam. Now you need to re-grab the boss after every hit you place.
Previously Sam only had to stand there and keep fire pressed. Hardly a challenge
First of all, a new enemy type is added. Normal enemies stay type 1, bosses are now type 3.
Most c…
Poor Sam was left out again. Now he can kill the boss too.
Since the boss is a special beast you wouldn't want Sam just to stand there and kill him without any reaction.
We add a new variable BOSS_HELD, similar to the SPRITE_HELD value.
So if SAM hurts the enemy, and it's the boss, the boss is rele…
Aaaand the torso gets to fight back too, not only sit put.
Time to reuse existing code again. The torso will spit out bats just like the last two bossed did. SPRITE_MODE_POS is used to stop the attacking mode and revert back to movement.
A contains the number of boss parts killed (so 4 = 2 legs plu…
And the boss got a bit more lively (visually), it was quite stiff previously. Moving body parts and the head screams (also visually) when getting hurt.
The boss helper code is enhanced by a routine doing circling movements:
jsr GenerateRandomNumber
and #$03bne .DoY
inc …
Now you can kill the last part. Beware, it will fight back though!
All kind of changes are added to the boss 7 behaviour routine, as it now gets a new state. First of all, handle getting hit
;------------------------------------------------------------ ;boss #7 ;state = 0, 128 -> random movements…
And finally, here's the big boss. Expect him to put up quite a fight once he is completed. Note that currently you cannot kill the last part.
First of all, the boss is not just simply there, it is entering with a few flashes. We reuse Dean's shot flash code for this. To mark the final boss entry we…
And the last portal stage, I promise :)
And something different for a change: Added road side stones to the story pages to make it look a bit neater.
Looks better in motion :)
It's actually pretty simple: We add a stone in front and one in the back. Store positions and update them every frame with different deltas.
Start with the positio…
And now? You guessed it, another portal stage :)
Have fun!
step85.zip
Previous Step Next Step
And here's the next portal.
I hope you don't mind the slower pace, I'm working on a bigger step in the background.
Have fun!
step84.zip
Previous Step Ne…
And here's a new extra for Sam. It works similar to the super bullet. For every demon blood picked Sam can destroy an enemy with one touch.
The code is quite similar to the super bullet. Add a new counter variable (DEMON_BLOOD), a new item image, make it possible for the item to spawn as well.
At t…
A few very small updates coming up, here's the next portal stage. Have fun!
A new pickup! And it shines :)
Sometimes one of those wondrous bullets of Samuel Colt will be dropped. Those can kill any enemy with one shot, so use them well!
The changes are quite simple. In the PickupItem routine we add a handler for those new items:
cmp #I…
Did you notice the huge door in the background? It's about time it opens!
That's actually pretty simple. At the jump-to-next level code we add a check. Whether the open door animation is shown depends on a bit in the LEVEL_CONFIG byte.
GoToNextLevel
lda LEVEL_CONFIG
and #$04
…
Almost a new feature: For the final level range the enemies spawn in waves. In this level, after beating the wolfmen two more waves of other enemies come in. And all without any more memory in the level data!
The key is in the previously used SPAWN_SPOT_SPAWN_COUNT. We use the upper 4 bits to conta…
Added and streamlined all story pages. Now we have locations (mentioned) and a crude "story arc". Plus a little animation on the last two bosses. There's no higher meaning behind the locations, I just wandered about USA with Google maps
Showing no code this time, since it's merely added text to ex…
And another boss. This one is different, as it spawns bats to the left and right. And is only vulnerable during that part
The boss routine is a bit bigger this time. The attacking bat code is already there, so nothing to add on that part.
As behaviours got increasingly complex I started t…
And yet another 10 stages. A few animation bugs show up with the water, in general there seems to be another fixing step coming up.
Have fun!
And more! Now the executable hit the load barrier, so Exomizer is the only way to go onwards (before it was optional). Added a new waterfall char with the same effect as low water.
At the same location the other char is initiated we add this:
ldx #0
-
lda $F800 + 143 * 8,x
…
Another boss!
And one, that works differently than the others before him.
This boss is spawning bats that fly left/right and vanish once hitting the screen border.
Thus we remove the path-8-flying bat and replace it by a simple attacking bat:
!zone BehaviourBatAttacking
BehaviourBatAttacking
…
Nothing new code wise this time, but something necessary: Packing.
The normal file now hits the 40Kb mark, and it's slowly getting too big to simply load. Remember the memory layout?
There is free memory from 2048 to 49151. Above that address the Basic and Kernal are overlayed over RAM. And bo…
